The young one sat down on the stool as soon as Weaver was gone, eyeing her present guardians like a new puppy caught between two veterans of the dog pack. Catching sight of Linkon behind the bar with his daughter, Parno roused himself with a sigh and went to explain matters.
Dhulyn’s gaze drifted idly sideways, until it was caught and held by a line on the pages before her.
“Why Dhulyn the Scholar?” the girl ventured finally in her soft voice.
Dhulyn glanced up. The girl was relaxed enough, seeming to have put the parting from her family behind her. Of course, they were not her own family. Sun and Moon knew that could make a difference.
“Few soldiers can read.” Dhulyn smiled gently enough that the small scar did not pull back her lip. “And it’s pronounced ‘Dillin.’ I am called other things as well.”
“Dhulyn-” the girl broke off as the Mercenary held up her hand.
“You must not call me that,” she said gently. “Only my Brothers may use my name, and I theirs. You may call me Wolfshead, or Scholar, if you prefer. And Parno you must call Lionsmane, or Chanter. It is our way.”
The girl nodded slowly. “My family-my House, will pay well for my safe delivery,” she said. “That, at least, is the truth.”
“I believe it,” Dhulyn said, taking mental note of the qualification. So something else wasn’t the truth. Time enough to find out what, she supposed, when they were on the road. Her eyes strayed back to the tabletop. If they were leaving tomorrow, she must finish this book.
Parno dropped into his seat. Dhulyn blew out another sigh and looked up again. “Linkon says he has nothing else free,” he said. “And he’s already given us an extra cot for the room.”
Dhulyn shrugged. “I’ll take the cot, then.” The girl across the table started and then was still. Her tongue darted out to wet dry lips. Dhulyn stifled her laugh. “No need to look like that, girl. There’s no help for it, I cannot share a bed for two days at least. It’s a vow,” she added in answer to the girl’s unspoken question. “You’ll be as safe in Parno’s bed as you would be in your own. Safer. He won’t touch you himself, and he’ll kill anyone else who tries.” Out of habit her eyes strayed back to her page, but she knew it for a lost cause.
“You’re too young for my tastes, child,” Parno agreed soberly. “I’ll put a sword between us if you doubt me.”
“What’s to do?” Dhulyn asked, surprised when the girl’s anxious expression did not change. “Are you virgin? And mean to stay that way? Has it importance, other than to you I mean?”
“It might. There’s… there’s to be a marriage,” Mar said, lowering her eyes.
“Oh, come now,” said Parno. “It’s only the High Noble Houses worry over such things, and, even so, it’s just until the birth of the heirs.”
Dhulyn drew in her brows and shushed him. “A marriage? Your foster mother didn’t mention that.” She was annoyed with herself for not getting all the information. Well, she knew now, and this could up the fee at the other end.
“She didn’t know.” Mar’s voice hardened, and she sat up straighter. She drew forth a letter from the bosom of her tunic and displayed the seal in the folds of parchment, lifted but not broken. “She can’t read, and she didn’t tell you everything, even of the things she does know. My name is Mar-eMar,” she said, putting the accent properly on the second syllable. “And my House is Tenebro.”
Dhulyn looked at Parno. His lips were pursed in a soundless whistle that changed into a toothy grin. Someone who didn’t know him well would think he was delighted.
Dhulyn sat folded into the window seat, reading Mar’s letter by the light of the room’s single oil lamp. She had made them wait and be quiet while she finished her book in the taproom. By that time it was getting crowded, and Parno had suggested they make an early night of it. Now Mar helped Parno shift their gear while Dhulyn examined the letter from Tenebro House. With three people, the whitewashed room under the eaves of the inn’s west wing was sadly crowded. Stowing the packs carefully left the beds free, but there was little floor space.
Dhulyn was familiar with this kind of letter: a great deal of style and very little substance. Almost one third of the page was taken up by the titles and lineage of the woman who wrote (or who had it written for her, more likely) and of Mar-eMar herself, as the person addressed. The letter itself was quite short, stating that the family had just learned of Mar’s whereabouts and wished her to come urgently to the capital to occupy her place in the House. That was probably the marriage the girl had mentioned. Almost apologetically, a tone no doubt inserted by the clerk, mused Dhulyn, Mar was asked to bring with her any family possessions that might serve as proofs of her identity. What might such things be, Dhulyn wondered? She looked up to see Mar eyeing the bed dubiously.
“I saw a play once about a man and a woman who lay together with a sword placed between them,” the girl was saying. “And it was taken as proof that they were chaste.” She looked up at the Lionsmane, towering over her. “But I do not understand how it… how it prevents…”
“Lying between them? Well, no, perhaps that wouldn’t be proof of much,” said Parno, almost clucking in his imitation of an elderly uncle. Dhulyn smiled, her lip curling back over her teeth. “But then playwrights are not so very accurate. What do you think, Dhulyn? Shall you lay your sword between us?”
For answer Dhulyn unfolded herself from the window seat, reaching out for her sword where it lay still sheathed on the cot. She straightened, drawing the patterned blade out smoothly and in one motion thrust it, point down, into the straw and ticking of the mattress. Two feet of newly sharpened blade stuck out, quivering slightly, a fence post in the center of the bed.
“Do not brush up against it in the dark, my souls,” she said, laughing at the shock on the little Dove’s face. “It will cut you.”
Three
“BUT YOU TOLD GUILLOR you would buy a pony.” The girl eyed their packhorse dubiously. It was a small animal, little more than a pony in size, but Mar was also small, and by careful repacking of their weapons into their own saddlebags, the spare horse could carry both the girl and the balance of the provisions they would stop to buy.
“I told her you would need a pony.” The corners of Dhulyn’s lips twitched. “Not that we would have to buy one.”
The girl stood still, blinking. “Guillor Weaver’s considered a shrewd woman, a hard dealer,” she said finally, halfway between admiration and annoyance.
“Nay, don’t be offended,” Parno said, chuckling at the look on the girl’s face. “Your foster mother’s reputation stands firm. But Mercenaries deal and bargain with all sorts, not just people buying cloth.”
“And we deal for our lives, little Dove,” added Dhulyn. “That makes us sharper.” When she was satisfied that the girl wouldn’t fall off immediately, Dhulyn nodded to Parno and they mounted their own horses. Both Warhammer and Bloodbone knew what packs meant, and were fidgeting, impatient to be off. How they’d feel after a day’s long riding in this cold weather was something else again.
Their first stop was the market, where, after buying a good supply of roadbread and dried fish, Parno and Mar waited with the horses while Dhulyn went to the book merchant’s stall. There she traded the three books she had finished-carefully rolled and tied into tubes-for a single new one, a copy of Theonyn’s poems bound into a traveler’s volume made of the lighter, imported paper instead of parchment, cut into pages and sewn into a binding of stiff leather. She could only afford the one book, and the poems would take longer to read than anything else of equal size.