Mercedes Lackey - Oathblood

Tarma looked askance at her she'enedra -- her blood sister.

"Not of my doing," Kethry said, awe in her voice.

"The Goddess' then." Tarma was certain of it; with the certainty came the filling of the empty void within her left by the loss of her Clan.

"In that case, I think perhaps I should give you my last secret," Kethry replied, and pulled her sword from beneath her bed. "Hold out your hands."

Tarma obeyed, and Kethry laid the unsheathed sword across them.

"Watch the blade," she said, frowning in concentration.

Writing, as fine as any scribe's, flared redly along the length of it. To her amazement it was in her own tongue.

"If I were holding her, it would be in my language," Kethry said, answering Tarma's unspoken question. " 'Woman's Need calls me/As Woman's Need made me/Her Need must I answer/As my maker bade me.' My geas, the one I told you of when we first met. She's the reason I could help you after my magics were exhausted, because she works in a peculiar way. If you were to use her, she'd add nothing to your sword skill, but she'd protect you against almost any magics. But when I have her-"

"No magic aid, but you fight like a sand-demon," Tarma finished for her.

"But only if I am attacked first, or defending another. And last, her magic only works for women. A fellow journeyman found that out the hard way."

"And the price of her protection?"

"While I have her, I cannot leave any woman in trouble unaided. In fact, she's actually taken me miles out of my way to help someone." Kethry looked at the sword as fondly as if it were a living thing -- which, perhaps, it was. "It's been worth it -- she brought us together."

She paused, as though something had occurred to her. "I'm not sure how to ask this -- Tarma, now that we're she'enedran, do I have to be Swordsworn, too?" She looked troubled. "Because if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. I have very healthy appetites that I'd rather not lose."

"Horned Moon, no!" Tarma chuckled, her facial muscles stretching in an unaccustomed smile. It felt good. "In fact, she'enedra, I'd rather you found a lover or two. You're all the Clan I have now, and my only hope of having more kin."

"Just a Shin'a'in brood mare, huh?" Kethry's infectious grin kept any sting out of the words.

"Hardly," Tarma replied, answering the smile with one of her own. "However, she'enedra, I am going to make sure you -- we -- get paid for jobs like these in good, solid coin, because that's something I think, by the look of you, you've been too lax about. After all, besides being horsebreeders, Shin'a'in have a long tradition of selling their swords -- or in your case, magics! And are we not partners by being bloodsisters?"

"True enough, oh, my keeper and partner," Kethry replied, laughing -- laughter in which Tarma joined. "Then mercenaries -- and the very best! -- we shall be."

"And every packtrain we've sent out since has just vanished without a trace-and without survivors," the merchant Grumio concluded. "And yet the decoy trains were allowed to reach their destinations unmolested."

In the silence that followed his words, he studied the odd pair of mercenaries before him, knowing they knew he was doing so. Neither of the two women seemed in any great hurry to reply to his speech, and the crackle of the fire behind him in this tiny private eating room sounded unnaturally loud in the absence of conversation. So, too, did the steady whisking of a whetstone on blade-edge, and the muted murmur of voices from the common room of the inn beyond their closed door.

The whetstone was being wielded by the swords-woman, Tarma by name, who was keeping to her self-appointed task with an indifference to Grumio's words that might-or might not-be feigned. She sat straddling her bench in a position that left him mostly with a view of her back and the back of her head, what little he might have been able to see of her face screened by her unruly shock of coarse black hair. He was just as glad of that; there was something about that expressionless, hawklike face with its ice-cold blue eyes that sent shivers up his spine.

The other partner cleared her throat, and gratefully he turned his attention to her. Now there was a face a man could easily rest his eyes on! She faced him squarely, this sorceress called Kethry, leaning on her folded arms that rested on the table between them. The light from the fire and the oil lamp on their table fell fully on her. A less canny man than Grumio might be tempted to dismiss her as being very much the inferior of the two; she was always soft of speech, her demeanor refined and gentle. She was sweet-faced and quite conventionally pretty, with hair like the finest amber and eyes of beryl-green, and it would have been easy to think of her as being the swordswoman's vapid tagalong. But as he'd spoken, Grumio had now and then caught a disquieting glimmer in those calm eyes-nor had he missed the fact that she, too, bore a sword, and one with the marks of frequent use and a caring hand on it. That in itself was an anomaly; most sorcerers never wore more than an eating knife. They simply hadn't the time- or the inclination-to attempt studying the art of the blade. To Grumio's eyes the sword looked very odd slung over the plain, buff-colored, calf-length robe of a wandering sorceress.

"I presume," Kethry said when he turned to face her, "that the road patrols have been unable to find your bandits."

She had been studying the merchant in turn; he interested her. There was muscle beneath the fat of good living, and old sword-calluses on his hands. Unless she was wildly mistaken, there was also a sharp mind beneath that balding skull. He knew they didn't come cheaply-it followed then that there was something more to this tale of banditry than he was telling. Certain signs seemed to confirm this; he looked as though he had not slept well of late, and there seemed to be a shadow of deeper sorrow upon him than the loss of mere goods would account for.

Grumio snorted his contempt for the road patrols. "They rode up and down for a few days, never venturing off the trade road, and naturally found nothing. Overdressed, overpaid, underworked arrogant idiots!"

Kethry toyed with a fruit left from their supper, and glanced up at the hound-faced merchant through long lashes that veiled her eyes and her thoughts.

Tarma answered right on cue. "Then guard your packtrains, merchant, if guards keep these vermin hidden." He started; her voice was as harsh as a raven's, and startled those not used to hearing it.

Grumio saw at once the negotiating ploy these two were minded to use with him. The swordswoman was to be the antagonizer, the sorceress the sympathizer. His respect for them rose another notch. Most freelance mercenaries hadn't the brains to count their pay, (much less use subtle bargaining tricks. Their reputation was plainly well-founded.