The Sword-Edged blonde (13 page)

“You don’t even know me,” I pointed out.

She rolled her eyes. “No, I don’t, and I don’t have time to check your damn references, either. I’m a pretty good judge of people, and my fast decisions tend to be my best ones. If you’re in, let’s go; if not, say so.”

“Okay, so what’s in it for me besides your charming company?”

“I have half my fee in advance. I’ll give you half of that, which means I’m out a quarter of it.”

“I can do math, you know. But how much actually goes into my pocket?”

She told me, and it was certainly a respectable amount. I didn’t have to think about it for long. “Okay, you got a deal. Where are we going?”

“Uh-uh. I’m the boss, so we’re in the world of need-to-know. Until, like I said, I know I can trust you.”

“It ain’t very smart to hire a bodyguard you don’t trust,” I pointed out.

“You’re not a bodyguard,” she almost snarled. “I can
guard my own damn body, thank you very much. You’re just along to expedite things.”

“So I’m your arm candy,” I said with a grin.

She scowled, but I saw amusement in her eyes. “I’d say you were arm spinach. It’s good for you, but nobody enjoys it.”

“In case you stop eating healthy, then, maybe I better get half
my
fee in advance.”

She shrugged. “If it makes you feel more secure.” She took out a handful of money and counted out half of the agreed amount.

“You can trust me now,” I said as I put the money away.

“Only halfway,” she fired back, but she grinned when she said it.

And so I met Cathy Dumont, proprietor and sole employee of Dumont Confidential Courier Service. Since we were far enough from Arentia that she’d probably never heard of my family or my own connection to scandal, I gave her my real name, and we shook hands on our bargain. She told me nothing about our destination, or about the “package” she carried in her backpack. As for where we were headed, she said only that we had to cross the Wyomie River sometime within the next three weeks. We could’ve made better time on horses, but neither of us had the money to buy them or was sleazy enough to steal them. So we walked.

We fell into an easy traveling rhythm those first few days. Cathy proved to be quite loquacious, but unlike a lot of people, she actually had something substantial to say. She explained that she’d come from Bonduel, the daughter of a blacksmith who encouraged her to both master some form of weaponry and never allow herself
to be dependent on anyone. She married young, and was widowed shortly afterwards, a memory that seemed to call up no regret on her part; I didn’t ask the obvious questions about just
how
her late spouse had met his end.

Yes, she was attractive. And yes, I noticed, and yes, it had been a while for me. But besides the fact that she was not very encouraging (she insisted we always sleep with the fire between us), I just wasn’t motivated that way. Although I’d visited whorehouses with my fellow soldiers, Janet had been my only “lover.” Even after seven years that memory was still too fresh.

T
en days later Cathy and I reached the public bridge over the Wyomie River. The spring thaw upstream had swollen it high above flood stage, and great foamy waves churned mere inches beneath the span. The banks, thankfully, were so steep and rocky the water had not flooded the town. But if it rose another eight inches, folks in Poy Sippi would be rolling up their pants legs.

Too deep and swift for boat traffic on a normal day, the Wyomie was an impassable border slicing between the last of the foothills and the irregular Ogachic Mountains beyond. Over time it had carved a famously deep canyon, and the bridge at Poy Sippi was the only way across for miles in either direction.

About a hundred years before, a land speculator had paid for the bridge, assuming the real estate on either end would quickly increase in value. But because the location had
only
the bridge to recommend it—the surrounding soil was too rocky for farming, and despite years of effort, nothing useful could be mined from it—Poy Sippi was slow to become a real family-friendly town. At the time Cathy and I passed through,
it was just a ragged settlement of the kinds of people who could make a living off bridge patrons.

On the day we arrived, it was crowded with travelers funneling into, or fanning out from, the ends of the bridge. There was no charge to use it, so for lots of folks it was the only way across the Wyomie. The local constabulary was supposed to police it, but like all isolated officials, they spent most of their time enjoying the illicit spoils of looking the other way. You crossed at your own risk, and if you got beaten, mugged or worse, you were on your own. Lots of bodies washed up downstream.

Before crossing, we stopped for lunch at one of the roadhouses clustered around the ends of the bridge. The sign proclaimed it
The Sway Easy
, and beneath that was what appeared to be a motto:
Pain Don’t Hurt
. After the waitress delivered our drinks and food, Cathy leaned over to me and said softly, “My instructions are really clear. We have to be sure no one follows us across the bridge. Specifically, no women on white horses.”

“Okay,” I agreed. That seemed easy enough. “But why?”

“I think my client is a little paranoid.”

“So who
is
your client?” I asked. “Seriously. We’ve spent every minute of the last ten days together, surely you can trust me now.”

She bit her lip thoughtfully, then nodded. “Okay. I had taken a set of property deeds to Cape Querna down on the coast of Boscobel. While I was there, I was approached by a messenger with this job. He wouldn’t tell me who it was for, but he paid up front. When I’m done, I’m supposed to go back to Boscobel and check into the same boarding house. They’ll contact me then about the balance due.”

I scowled. “And you wouldn’t trust me,” I said sarcastically.

“Got nothing to do with trust. It’s how couriers operate. We never get paid everything in advance, and a lot of times we don’t know who’s hired us.” She shrugged. “It’s the business.”

The back of my neck suddenly tingled. I looked around at the other travelers in the roadhouse. None of them seemed interested in us, yet I knew someone was studying us with more than idle curiosity. It’s a skill, or a sense, that develops quickly in battle, when two eyes just aren’t enough. “Maybe your mysterious client isn’t paranoid,” I said quietly. “I got that prickly feeling.”

She nodded and muttered, “Me, too. Do we run or try to draw them out?”

“You’re letting me decide?” I teased.

“I’m asking your opinion.” She kicked me sharply under the table. “This is my
job
. Be serious.”

I grinned. “Okay. Since even I don’t know jack about your job, how likely is it that someone else knows what you’re carrying?”

“Not very.”

“So unless it’s some woman on a white horse, they’re probably no more interested in us than they are in anyone else who might wander through. Probably think we’re newlyweds with pockets full of wedding cash. If we let ’em pick the fight, we’ll draw an awful lot of attention.”

“So we should just valiantly tiptoe away?”

“You’re the boss.”

She smiled. She did that seldom, but when it happened, it was dazzling. It made her eyes crinkle at the corners and completely eliminated the hard, no-nonsense
warrior-bitch look she cultivated. It also made her, momentarily at least, quite beautiful. I’d never tell her that, of course.

“Prudence over passion, then,” she said, and dug out money to pay the check. “Just like my daddy always said. Let’s at least let ’em know we’re not complete morons, though.”

Outside she casually joined the pedestrian traffic moving toward the bridge, pushed aside by the bigger wagons and horses. I headed in the opposite direction, looped quickly around a smithy shop and watched two thuggish men emerge from the roadhouse. They saw Cathy walking away alone and instantly looked around for me, knowing they’d been smoked. I stepped out so they could see me, tapped the side of my nose to indicate I knew exactly what they were up to, and watched them shuffle back inside. Evidently they weren’t up for such hard work.

I caught up with Cathy. “Just a couple of bums thinking they’d surprise us. Gave up when they saw we were on to ’em. Good call.”

She just nodded, but I saw her blush slightly at the compliment. It was so adorable that, combined with the smile she’d given me over lunch, I found my thoughts turning in a surprising direction. But I kept them to myself, out of respect for Janet, and Cathy.

T
HAT HAD BEEN
a long time ago, before traveling all day made my lower back throb like it did now. Now Poy Sippi was huge, and new gates controlled the bridge traffic. There was still no charge, but pedestrians could only cross at certain times, wagons at another, and so forth.

The old roadhouse we’d stopped at for lunch was long gone, replaced by a brand-new tavern advertising gourmet dinners and great-looking waitresses. I tried lunch, which was adequate, and admired the waitresses, who were attractive. But then again, so were the girls in the place next door. And across the street. The individual quality was gone, replaced by cookie-cutter roadhouses owned by far-off noblemen. I missed the individual touch.

“Everything good?” the waitress asked brightly. Her name tag said
Trudy
. “Shall I freshen up that ale for you?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “You know, I haven’t been here in a while; the place is really built up.”

“Oh, yes. There’s talk of putting in a whole other bridge to handle the traffic. If they do that, this place’ll explode.” She was young, so the thought excited her. I bet she’d be bored to tears by the town I remembered.

“You live here long?” I asked.

“All my life.” A guarded tone slid into her voice, probably because she thought I was about to proposition her.

“Did you ever know a woman named Epona Gray?” To aid her memory, I put money atop my check and a sizable pile next to it for her tip.

Trudy thought about it, her serving tray balanced on her hip. “No, I don’t think so. A lot of the old-timers left when it started getting crowded, maybe she was one of them.”

“How about Andrew Reese?”

“No, haven’t—” She stopped and looked puzzled. “Do you mean the children’s rhyme? ‘Andrew Reese is broken to pieces’?”

Those words, said so casually, sent a chill through me. The only time I’d ever heard them before was from Epona Gray’s own lips. “You know that one?”

She smiled. “Everyone here knows it. We all learned it when we were little kids in school.” She closed her eyes and softly sang:

“Because he had no manners,

She pounded him with hammers
.

Because he was so rude,

She fixed his attitude
.

Because he was so mean,

She made him scream and scream
.

And now Andrew Reese is

Broken to pieces.”

She laughed a little. “Wow. It must really stick in your head if I can remember it after all this time.”

The last couplet, in Epona’s drunken voice, echoed maddeningly in my mind. “Yeah, I bet it does. So there’s no real person with that name?”

“Oh, I’m sure there is somewhere. But not in Poy Sippi. Nobody would be cruel enough to name their kid that. That’d be just asking for him to get beaten up.”

After she left to attend other customers, I sipped my ale and mentally kicked my own ass. I’d assumed, for no good reason, that Andrew Reese was a real person. I don’t know why, given the lunacy of everything else Epona said, that I’d seized on this one thing as an indisputable fact. Had she just been drunk, singing some nursery rhyme?

No. I was certain she’d said Andrew Reese sent the package Cathy delivered. And whether or not she meant it symbolically—
an
Andrew Reese instead of
the
Andrew Reese—it still counted as a clue. If my trip into the mountains crapped out, I’d pursue the origins of this children’s song. It was only a slightly longer shot than my current course of action.

I came out of the roadhouse and started down the street when a voice said, “Hey, mister.”

I turned. A tiny young girl stood in the alley between the livery stable where I’d left my horse and a ramshackle swordsmith’s shop. I guessed she was around four, with matted hair, a dirty face and clothes that were little more than rags. You saw kids like this in every town, especially those on trade routes like Poy Sippi: orphans or junior criminals, sometimes both. When I’d first passed through town with Cathy, the gangs had been adults; now, with security to keep the grown-ups in check, the streets fell by default to the kids.

This girl certainly looked more like a victim than a crook, but the voice that called me had belonged to an older child. As soon as I’d had time to make solid eye contact with the girl, a hand appeared behind her and yanked her out of sight down the alley.

“Help!” the other child’s voice called.

I looked around. None of the other passersby seemed to have heard, or else had sense enough to ignore it. I sighed, unsnapped the catch on my scabbard and strode toward the alley. I’m sure they counted on finding someone unable to just walk away from a child in danger, preferably a stupid do-gooder with a wallet full of gold and a naive belief in his own invulnerability. They’d soon find out how wrong they were—I had very little gold on me. My only advantage was that I knew exactly what I was getting into.