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Shin’a‘in have a long tradition of selling their swords—or in your case, magics! And are we not partners by being bloodsisters?”
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    â€œTrue enough, oh, my keeper and partner,” Kethry replied, laughing—laughter in which Tarma joined. “Then mercenaries—and the very best!—we shall be.”

TURNABOUT
    This was the original story I sent Marion which was rejected; I later broke it into “Sword-swom” and this one, and sold this one to Fantasy Book Magazine. It was my very first piece to appear in print!
    The verses are also part of an original song published by Firebird Arts and Music of Portland, Oregon, which actually predated the story. Can I recycle, or what?
    By the way, the song doesn’t exactly match the story; that was because I had left the only copy I had of the song with the folks at Firebird and I couldn’t remember who did what to whom. So, to cover the errors, I blamed them on the Bard Leslac, who began following the pair around to make songs about them—but kept getting the details wrong!
    â€œDeep into the stony hills
Miles from keep or hold,
A troupe of guards comes riding
With a lady and her gold.
Riding in the center,
Shrouded in her cloak of fur
Companioned by a maiden
And a toothless, aged cur.”
    â€œAnd every packtrain we’ve sent out since has 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 swordswoman, 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.
    â€œI presume,” Kethry said when he turned to face her, “that the road patrols have been unable to find your bandits.”
    She