Мерседес Лэки - Passages

Hannra’s reply washed through her, warm with amusement and pleasure. :I think that whatever it is, you should enjoy it as much as you did today.:

Marjom reflected on that for a bit before replying. :I did enjoy it.:

She followed Witman after the chocolate.

Lerryn Twoblades did not look like much of a fighter. He wore the same scuffed brown leathers as any of his company, and his woolen cape had seen better days. His boots were good, but a merc needed to take care of his feet. He didn’t even wear his savings—which had to be considerable, for a captain of such a well-reputed merc company—in the form of chains or bracelets. In fact, his only concession to rank was a round Guild Captain pin of enameled copper showing two crossed swords bisected by a lightning bolt, used as a cloak-clasp. Thin and not particularly tall, and just now at rest, he wasn’t very imposing, either.

But when he had walked alongside Kerowyn, it was immediately apparent that he was whipcord and steel over bone, and moved with a lazy grace that spoke volumes to anyone who had studied hand-to-hand combat. Those limpid brown eyes missed nothing; those foppish curls covered a skull with frightening intelligence inside it.

Kerowyn had sent Lerryn her letter of introduction this morning, as soon as she had arrived in the tiny village of Bolthaven, where the Skybolts had their winter quarters. And now, at his request, she was meeting Lerryn not in those winter quarters but in the largest building in the village—the tavern. The village was so small there was only one tavern, but anyplace a merc company wintered, there would always be at least one tavern. Bored mercs needed a place to go, a place that wasn’t their quarters.

Tarma had said you could tell a lot about a company by the tavern in their winter quarters. This one was clean, with an enforcer in the corner who looked like he knew what he was doing and was big enough to be a match even for Hellsbane’s strength, and the servers were a mix of the sexes. They looked like they knew what they were doing too, or at least that was what Kero had judged in the brief time she’d had to survey the common room before Lerryn appeared.

Instead of discussing her joining his company, he had asked her to take him to the stable, where he took stock of her Shin’a’in warsteed, Hellsbane. According to rumor, there wasn’t a single horse in his entire mercenary company he couldn’t handle, and it seemed to be true; his abilities included Hellsbane, which had surprised the hell out of both Kero and her horse.

Then they went back to a private room, which was scarcely big enough to be a closet. Since it had a desk and two chairs, it appeared that Lerryn had commandeered the tavern’s office. Once he began to speak at length, it was no secret why the Skybolts were fanatically devoted to their Captain.

“So,” Lerryn said, once they had both settled into the two chairs in the tiny room. “According to this—” He tapped the folded paper from her mentor, Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, that Kero had sent to him when she first arrived in Bolthaven. “You’re that Kerowyn. I’d sent to your teacher to see if she had any protégées she’d send my way, or any former students she could recommend, but I didn’t expect to be facing Kerowyn of ‘The Ride.’”

“The Kerowyn of ‘The Ride’ wasn’t that impressive, Captain,” Kero said dryly. “I assume you know about my grandmother’s sword?” She patted the hilt of Need gingerly. This was neither the time nor the place to be waking the damned thing up. At Lerryn’s nod, she continued. “I barely knew the hilt from the edge. I was basically the sword’s puppet. It did everything, because the only skill I had with a blade was at the dinner table, and the only skill I had as a Mage was the same I have now—none. That song should have been called ‘Need Takes Control.’”

Lerryn just raised an eyebrow, perhaps surprised at her modesty. “Well, you of all people ought to know about the liberties musicians take,” he said instead. “So, since your mentor sent you here, I assume that you no longer depend on the sword?”

“Only for protection from magic, and the fact this hunk of tin is an expertly forged weapon no one has ever been able to break.” She didn’t add anything about the ongoing war of wills—if you could call what the sword had a “will”—that she and the blade had. Need had run her grandmother around half a dozen countries righting the wrongs of women and getting paid little or nothing for her pains. Kero did not intend to allow a piece of metal to interfere with her making a living. “But about that business of me being that Kerowyn,” she continued. “I’m going by Kay Taldress for now.”

Lerryn allowed himself a thin little smile. “Not trading on your fame, then?”

“No, Captain,” she said firmly. “There are three things that fame will get me. Challenges from people who want to say they could take me, contempt from people who think I’m trading on it, and groveling from people I’d rather not have anything to do with. I’ll make it past my recruitment stage in the Skybolts on my own skills.”

“You’re smart for someone as young as you look,” Lerryn said.

“Observant,” Kero corrected. “It was a long road to get here. I had plenty of examples of all three of those sorts of people on the way.”

And in fact, it hadn’t taken her long to adopt the name of Kay Taldress. Naively, she’d assumed that once she was far enough away from home, no one would have heard the song about her rescue of her brother’s newly-gotten bride. But no; it was a catchy tune and a good story, and she’d generally hear it two out of every three stops at inns and taverns. It no longer made her wince to hear it, but with familiarity had come a good bit of retrospection on the road. What, exactly would her life had been like if she hadn’t made that ride intending to track the raiders down herself and looking for help to do so?

I suppose Grandmother and Tarma would have gone after them. That might even have been why Tarma intercepted me in the first place; she might already have been on the way to take stock of the situation. Still . . . how much could they have accomplished?

Probably more than I am giving them credit for.

And then what would have happened to her? Once brought home, Dierna had quickly put her own stamp on the household—an accomplishment made easier by the fact that there had been no one there to oppose her will, since the Old Lord had gone down fighting, and Kero’s brother didn’t care what went on inside the walls of the keep as long as meals were on time and the household was well-run. So unless I’d been willing to play obedient handmaiden . . . Well, there were a lot of ways to get rid of an inconvenient female relation. Packing her off to a religious order was one. Marrying her off to someone old enough to not be too picky about a second or third wife was another.

Or Grandmother could have asked for me herself. In which case I’d be right where I am now. But would she have? Or would she have assumed that the blood I got from her was too thin in my veins for her to pass Need to?

“Well,” Lerryn said, breaking into her thoughts. “If that’s how you want to play it, present yourself and your horse at the garrison tomorrow and ask to see the recruiting sergeant. But coming in this way means you’ll be in for the hazing every new recruit gets.”

“Would you want me otherwise?” she countered.

“As a student of Tarma shena Tale’sedrin? Absolutely. And you can still present yourself as such—you don’t have to claim your name, but you can claim your teaching. You’re not the first of Tarma’s students to take to the road.” He tilted his head to the side, offering this as a sort of tasty bait.