The people of Chatrig didn’t look at the old man or me twice as we made our way onto the platform. Most of the people were too busy fleeing as my pets rushed around the platform menacingly without hurting anyone, chasing the onlookers off. A few watched Chomai–she’d made a bit of a spectacle of herself, but hopefully not enough of one for Kamath to realize who she was when he heard about Ishar’s death, and I was sure he’d hear about it. This was the northern terminus of the railroad line, the access point to wherever he was going, and it was important enough to him that he’d stationed hopefully one of his most dangerous followers there. He had to have several watchers here, reporting everything that happened.
That was why I’d staged things the way I did. Someone from town watching the altercation would have seen Ishar using a bunch of High-ranked pets to obliterate the other two marshals, then get killed by those same pets as he apparently lost control of them. The report to Kamath would look like Ishar had deconstructed the Severing rune, figured out a way to counter it, but hadn’t fully controlled the creatures he’d bonded from it. Kamath might be scrambling to find a way to counter the counter, but he might not. For all he knew, that knowledge died with Ishar. I grimaced as I thought that; Kamath would be a fool not to immediately try to figure out a way to counter an inversion of his rune once he realized what happened, and he hadn’t shown himself to be all that foolish so far.
I paused as I considered the two marshals still tied up in the stock car where my pets had been. I didn’t really want to kill them, but I didn’t know how I could lock them up without drawing attention to myself. If I started making waves, Kamath would realize I was still breathing in a hurry. My goal was to get into Chatrig, get some supplies and information about the trip north, then get going as quickly as possible, just another traveler heading north to find his fortune. If there hadn’t been a welcoming party for Ishar, it would have been one thing; the marshal could have escorted the men to the jail himself without drawing too much attention. As it was, though, I either had to show myself in the town or let them go free, in which case they’d probably report the truth to Kamath first chance they got.
I sighed as I ordered my wave horror to detour back to the stock car. It could engulf both of the men, I hoped, and carry their bodies away undetected. If not, it could eat one and use its acid to render the other unrecognizable. It was a hard decision, but it was my only real option. I commanded the buzzfly to follow me from the air, then sent the rest of my pets scattering through the town, heading north and causing enough panic that I hoped Kamath’s people would have too much to tell him for him to consider anything too closely. Once the creatures were out of sight, the old man and I reclaimed our roadwalkers from the stable car and began leading them into the town, followed by a small but steadily growing group as more and more people gathered the nerve to leave the train.
“I ain’t been here in a couple decades,” the sheriff said in a musing tone, rubbing his chin as he looked around. “Place has grown up a bit since then.”
“Most places change in twenty years,” I acknowledged.
“True. Still, last time I was here, Chatrig was little more than a glorified railroad camp. The only permanent buildings were the station, the runegraph office, the sheriff’s office, and the general store. Everything else was either ramshackle buildings that would fall apart in a stiff breeze or actual tents.” He shook his head. “Now, they got themselves a saloon, a hotel, even a house of ill repute. It looks downright civilized.” He paused and flashed me a grin as a group of people detached themselves from where they leaned on the railing in front of one of the buildings and began moving in an intercept course with us. He jerked his chin in their direction. “Now, this is more of what I was expecting.”
I watched as the five people, three men and two women, none with any obvious pets, moved out into the street and deliberately blocked our path. They formed up in a slightly staggered line that wasn’t quite organized enough to make them look professional. They looked rough, in patched shirts and faded denim pants, and I could smell at least one of them from where we walked. More importantly, they were all armed, two with rifles, one with a shotgun, and the other two with pistols.
I glanced sideways at the sheriff. “This happen a lot, here?” I muttered.
“Used to last time I visited. Things might have changed since then.” He glanced around and saw that the people nearby were quickly clearing out, but no one seemed upset or alarmed. “Then again, maybe not.”
The man in the center, a short man with bronze hair, a scraggly beard, and a patch over his left eye, took a couple steps forward, his hand resting on the pistol at his belt. When he spoke, his voice sounded higher pitched than I’d expected but also like he’d swallowed a bunch of nails before talking.
“Hello there, strangers,” he said in what he probably thought was a friendly voice but that sounded like he was trying desperately not to shit his pants. “Welcome to Chatrig!”
“Mighty friendly of you,” the sheriff chuckled. “Any particular reason you’re standing in our way?”
“We’re what you might call the town’s welcoming committee,” the man replied with a grin that showed he was missing more than one tooth. “We’re just here to inform you of this town’s rules and regulations.”
“Ain’t that the sheriff’s job?” the old man asked blandly.
“Well, it would be, but we ain’t got no sheriffs no more. Them marshals came and killed the old one, and well, you probably saw those same marshals all kill one another just a while ago.” He shrugged, the smile still plastered to his face. “After that, we done took it upon ourselves to help out people like yourselves.”
“And how, exactly, are you gonna help us out?” I asked, making my voice deeper and rougher as I spoke and affecting the local accent as best I could.
“Well, you look tired, friend,” the man laughed. “No doubt from all that extra money you’re carrying. We’ll be happy to help ease that burden for you.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes as I sent a silent command to my buzzfly. The creature swooped down and landed where I told it, waiting for my signal. I took a small step away from my roadwalker, my hand palming a card from my deck while my other drifted down to rest on my whip.
“And if we don’t feel like being helped?” the sheriff asked.
“Well, then, we’d probably have to insist,” the bandit chuckled. He jerked his head back. “My friends and I ain’t about to take ‘no’ for an answer.” He took another step toward us as the people behind him lifted their weapons, readying them but not pointing them our way. “Be smart, friends. Coins ain’t worth your lives. Just toss your money on the ground, leave your roadwalkers, and walk away.”
“You want my roadwalker?” I chuckled. “You can have it.” I reached out and smacked the creature’s flank, and as I did, I ordered the buzzfly to give it a sharp bite on the rump. The mount screamed and reared briefly as the fly’s fangs pierced its hide, then slammed its hooves down and galloped forward, away from the pain–directly into the man standing in front of us.
“Shit!” The bandit’s reflexes saved him, and he dove to the side. The man and woman behind him weren’t so lucky; the roadwalker barreled into them, knocking both down and trampling the woman beneath its hooves. The rest of the bandits scattered and lifted their weapons, but as they did, a frigid wind blew over them, sinking into their flesh and slowing their movements. The rune didn’t affect them as deeply as it should have–I’d forgotten that humans here were resistant to magic–but their shivering arms and numb fingers hampered their movements, giving me time to draw my pistol with my left hand and uncoil my whip with my right.
The sheriff’s hand blurred as he snatched his own pistol out, and the weapon roared its fury. The bandit with the shotgun screamed and dropped his weapon, clutching the bleeding hole in his side. I lifted my pistol and fired as well, catching a rifle-carrying woman in her shoulder. At the same time, I snapped my whip at the leader, who was scrambling to his knees with his pistol held in unsteady hands. The whip cracked, and the man screamed in pain. His hands flew up to clutch his one good eye, the eye that I’d just struck with my whip.
“My fucking eye!” he shrieked. “You took my fucking eye, you bastard!”
The sheriff’s pistol spoke again, and the other rifle-wielder cried out, clutching a hand that bled from the hole piercing it. I fired as well, catching a fourth man in the stomach, then shifted my pistol to the last, a woman who held a pistol in badly shaking hands.
“Go ahead and drop that,” I said pleasantly, activating Terrifying Demeanor as I did. The woman’s eyes widened, and her hand opened spasmodically, dropping the pistol into the dirt. I glanced at the leader, who was once again scrabbling for his pistol in the dust, and snapped my whip at him again. He shrieked once more as the whip cracked across his lips, and he dropped to his back, clutching his face and rolling around in the dirt.
The sheriff fired again, and a man cried out as the bullet passed through his leg. That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back; the other two badly wounded bandits turned and hobbled away, heading for the nearest alley, and I let them. I wasn’t really interested in killing them; besides, if they didn’t get medical attention, their wounds would probably do them in soon enough anyway. I shifted my gun to point back at the unwounded woman.
“You, down on your knees. Put your hands behind your hand, fingers laced together.” She nodded and knelt swiftly, folding her hands behind her head. I walked over to the moaning, sobbing leader and kicked him once in the face, hard. He fell still at once as the blow cracked into his skull. The sheriff moved to kneel over the crippled bandit and punched him with a fist that dropped him like a rock. With the visible threats gone, I turned back to the woman. She stared at me in sheer terror, her dark purple hair matted and lanky against her forehead and neck, licking her cracked lips.
“What’s your name?” I asked her conversationally, holstering my pistol but still holding my whip. I shut off my ability, as well; she looked too scared to talk, and I needed some information.
She glanced at the weapon, then the unconscious man I’d hit with it, and licked her lips again. “R-Rupa,” she stammered. “I’m Rupa.”
“Well, Rupa, this didn’t quite go the way you planned, did it?” I kept my voice light and pleasant as I slowly wound up my whip, holding it but not hooking it back on my belt.
“N-no,” she shook her head. She licked her lips again and looked around anxiously. “Look, I–I didn’t want to do this! I told Navin that he was a damn fool trying to rob two armed men in broad daylight! Let me go, and I swear, you won’t never see me again.”
“Well, I do plan to let you go, Rupa,” I told her cheerfully. “I’m gonna need something from you, first, though.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she looked me up and down appraisingly, then shrugged her shoulders. “That’s fine. I done that with worse. I got a little place at the edge of town…”
“No, not that,” I cut her off, ignoring the sheriff’s sudden chuckle.
“What, you think I’m ugly?” she demanded, her eyes flashing angrily. “Not good enough for you?”
“I want information,” I said, pushing past the laughter bubbling from the old man. “You give me some information, and you’re free to go.”
“I can do that and the other thing,” she offered, her voice oddly hopeful.
“How about just the information for now?” I said, managing not to roll my eyes. “Where’s the safest place for a body to spend a night in this town?”
“Ain’t no place safe, not without sheriffs or marshals,” she shrugged. “Mina’s Hotel is better than Prem’s, though. Prem’s place, you’ll be sleeping with some vermin, and the bastard’ll charge you for their company.”
“Can we get food and a bath there, too?”
“If you want. Costs a bit, though.”
“Are the stables safe for our roadwalkers?”
“After this?” she snorted. “Ain’t nobody going near your shit, trust me.”
“Last question. Is there anywhere or anyone we should steer clear of here?”
“If you go to the Brittle Nail–the saloon–watch out for a big fellow name of Motilal. He’s a mean drunk and likes to get into fights. And once the sun goes down, smart folk don’t go nowhere without a gun ready to draw. Things can get rough here.”
I nodded, looping the whip onto my belt. “That’s all I need, Rupa. You’re free to go.”
She unfolded her hands and rose warily to her feet. “Just like that? I can go?”
“Yep.”
She stared at me. “What about–what about that other thing? I mean, I kind of feel like I owe you.”
“Tell you what,” I sighed. “If I’m feeling the need for that, I’ll come find you. How about that?”
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She hesitated. “How you gonna do that?”
“Oh, believe me, Rupa. I can find you if I want to.” I gave her a smile that was definitely predatory, and she took a step back, nodding furiously.
“O-okay. I’m just gonna get.”
“What about your friends, girl?” the sheriff asked, pointing to the two unconscious men on the ground. “This one, at least, is gonna need a doctor for his leg.”
She shrugged. “I ain’t got no coins for a doctor, and if I did, I wouldn’t waste them on Akash. He and I ain’t friends. I ain’t gonna lose no sleep if he’s crippled or worse.”
“Well, here, just in case you change your mind.” I pulled out a brass pital and flicked it in her direction. “Call it payment for the information.”
She snatched the coin and stared at it for a moment before slipping it into her pocket. “Much obliged,” she said, touching her hat and lowering her chin. She turned and scampered off, stopping only to grab her pistol and shove it back in its holster.
“Well, that was quite the welcome,” the sheriff chuckled. “Looks like she took a fancy to you, Naasi.”
“She can keep that fancy,” I muttered. “Let’s go find this Mina’s place and get set up.”
“You might want to catch your roadwalker first,” the sheriff pointed out.
I stared down the road where the creature had run, then sighed. “Fine. Go get us a pair of rooms. I’ll meet you in the saloon. After all this, I could use a drink.”
Fortunately, catching the roadwalker wasn’t hard. I could track it easily enough with the cloudhunter that still hovered overhead, and it stopped running pretty quickly once the initial pain of the bite on its ass faded. It hadn’t gone far out of town and stood in the tall grass a short distance from the road, grazing calmly when I found it. It tried to run away from me–I had smacked it just as it was bitten, after all–but a quick Lightning Bite gave it enough of a shock for me to catch up to it and grab its hanging reins. I spent another five minutes calming the thing down enough to lead it back into town, and by the time I found the stables and got the beast tucked away, nearly an hour had passed.
I seriously needed that drink.
When I entered the saloon, I paused briefly and scanned the room, seeking out potential threats. The place was busy, probably thanks to the train arriving in town. What looked like a battered upright piano stood in one corner, and a woman sat before it, playing a jaunty tune that was hard to hear over the sounds of laughter, conversation, and occasional swearing. Two large men with rifles leaned against opposite walls, watching the place but not looking particularly alert. A man and woman stood behind the long bar, busily taking and filling orders, while another pair of women weaved through the tables carrying wooden trays loaded with drinks. Smoke half-filled the air, obscuring the light of the glowing oil chandeliers hanging overhead, and a scent similar to burning tobacco tickled my nose.
Besides the two security guards, my eye picked out a few to watch. A woman at the bar who looked to be in her thirties, dressed in a dusty leather coat that hung to the floor, had a creature that looked like a rust-colored lemur with a canine head and muzzle perched on her shoulder, marking her as a handler. An older man in fine black clothing gambled at a nearby table, the pistol at his side looking far more used and practical than the rest of his attire. Two men in a back corner sipped their drinks and scanned the crowd with hard eyes, obviously looking for someone; they glanced at me as I entered and looked away unhurriedly, hopefully meaning that I wasn’t the one they looked for.
Despite the crowd, Chomai and the old man had found a table and sat at it in what looked like uncomfortable silence. After a moment, I realized that they hadn’t found the table free when they entered; it had cleared for them. The space around the pair stayed oddly open: the servers avoided passing their table, even if it meant going a longer way to deliver their drinks; the tables closest to them looked like they’d been scooted away; despite people standing at the bar or around the edges of the room, no one asked to sit with them or took the chairs from their table.
I wove through the crowd and joined the pair, dropping my bags heavily into the seat next to me. I looked between the two; the sheriff had his usual inscrutable half-smile plastered to his lips, but Chomai looked morose, sipping her drink with her elbows on the table and one hand propped against the side of her face.
“Don’t lecture me about drinking,” she growled as I sat down. “This is medicinal.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word,” I assured her. “I could use some of that medicine myself.” I looked around and tried to get the attention of one of the women walking through the room, but they all studiously avoided looking in our direction.
“You’re gonna have to go to the bar for that drink, boy,” the old man chuckled. “After that little display outside, ain’t nobody gonna give either of us any reason to pay them any extra attention.”
“What display?” Chomai asked.
“A few people tried to rob us. We convinced them it was a bad idea.” I shrugged.
“Dammit. I missed it.” She took another small sip of her drink. “I’ve got some extra mad I need to work off, and some damn fool thieves would’ve been just the ticket.”
I smiled at her, the turned to the sheriff. “What’s the road north of here like?”
“It’s a road,” he shrugged. “More or less the same as all the other ones you’ve seen, except it’s a little bit worse for wear since there ain’t no train or river to take you north from here, so it gets a lot more use.”
“I was more wondering where it went, and what the surrounding terrain was like.”
“Should’ve asked that, then,” he chuckled. “The road heads mostly east and a little north from here to Copperbell, a mining town up against the Mahads. That land’s all prairies and hills that get steeper and higher the further east you go. At Copperbell, it turns north and follows the mountains to Farpoint, and that’s some rough terrain. From there, it splits, going northwest to Sinakha in the Uttar and northeast to Nampur in the Ohr Valley.”
I frowned. “Wait, if the road heads into the valley, why was Ishar sure that Kamath was in the Uttar? Couldn’t he have gone into the Ohr, instead?”
“He could’ve, sure, but Nampur’s a city, not a little town,” the old man shrugged. “A man like Kamath, well-known as he is, would raise a fuss in Nampur, and so would wagonloads of beasties being brought in.”
“Wouldn’t they raise the same attention in the Uttar?”
“The forest’s a no-man’s-land,” Chomai muttered. “The Empire and Republic both claim it, but neither one ever sent any troops to enforce those claims, and there ain’t nothing like the marshals or sheriffs up there. People do whatever the hell they want, and there ain’t nobody to stop them.”
“It ain’t quite that bad. See, boy, the forest is just one big logging camp. The wood there is good for building, soft enough to be easy to work but tough and springy so it don’t crack and break easily. The closest they’ve got to what you’d call towns are just camps built around a mill or two that have lasted long enough to get a name. Half the time, the mill’s the only permanent building in the place, and it ain’t got what you’d call a long-term population. Even the mill owners who own the whole camp don’t live there; they live in nicer places farther south.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because summer up there lasts about a moon and a half,” Chomai snorted. “And when it’s summer, the sun never goes down, just kind of hangs in the sky. Then, when winter comes, the sun vanishes for weeks, and it’s nothing but darkness. Nobody lives in a place like that if they don’t have to.”
“She’s right,” Ramka agreed. “In the winter, snow can cover the ground as high as a man is tall, and the cold drives powerful beasties out of the deep forest to attack the camps for food. The mill owners have to pay good coin to make it worth anyone’s while to live there, and most people go up for a year or two, put away as much coin as they can, and head back to where it’s civilized. Since nobody wants to live there, the owners usually contract with mercenary groups to protect it from monsters and keep the peace.”
He shrugged. “Problem is, both the owners and mercenaries only care about making money. So long as the logs keep coming in and people don’t start leaving in droves, the owners are happy, and the mercenaries only step in if there’s enough of a ruckus that it bothers them. Then, their usual solution is to kill everyone involved and rob the corpses. Don’t make for a very friendly place, but a man with coin can get away with just about anything, no questions asked.”
I nodded. “So, how long is it from here to that Sinakha place?”
“Two weeks, at least. Three days to Copperbell, another five to Farpoint, and from there, a week to Sinakha.” He shrugged. “Depending on weather and such, of course. It rains a lot up here, enough to feed the Sonkhee and water the whole, damn basin south of us. The road north from Copperbell ain’t much fun in the rain, and that close to the mountains, that can turn to ice or snow real quick.”
“I can’t wait,” Chomai muttered.
“We’re gonna need heavier gear,” the sheriff went on, ignoring the woman. “Some waterproofs, thicker coats, blankets, the whole works. We can buy it in Copperbell, but it’ll cost twice as much there since most folks wait until then to buy it.”
“Do you mind getting all that?” I asked. “It sounds like you know best what we need.”
He glanced at Chomai, still sipping her drink, her face melancholy, then nodded. “Yep. I’ll handle it.” He rose to his feet and headed out, leaving the two of us alone.
We sat in silence for long minutes as Chomai barely touched her drink. It was, I thought, more for comfort than anything. Having the drink gave her something to do, and sipping it gave her an excuse not to talk. Finally, though, she set the mostly full glass on the table and leaned back with a loud sigh.
“Do you know how many nights I’ve dreamed of killing that man, Naasi?” she asked. “How many different ways I imagined ending his life?” She shook her head. “I knew it weren’t never gonna happen. He was too strong, too good a handler. That didn’t stop me from dreaming about it, though. Now that it’s done…” She fell silent, and I just sat there with nothing to say. Anything I could think of struck me as either too personal or possibly offensive. Fortunately, she wasn’t done talking.
“I told you we was lovers, him and me. It was more than that, though.” She reached up and rubbed her face. “I came out of the academy an idealistic fool, a little girl with dreams of taming the wilds. I’d graduated top of my class, you see, and I knew even then that I was gonna walk two paths, which I reckoned would make me a stronger handler than most. And Ishar, he was a legend, right up there with Kamath, someone that every new marshal tried to be like.”
She took another drink, a larger one this time. “When I got placed as his deputy, I was excited. No, I was damn thrilled. I figured that together, we would bring the Code to our part of the Gistal, drive out the monsters and beasts, and let the people there know what living in the Empire could be like.” She shook her head ruefully. “I was a damn fool, is what I was.”
“What went wrong?” I asked quietly.
“Everything,” she snorted. “Oh, not right away. For a few years, everything was great. He was my mentor, taught me how to be a marshal and a real handler, not the academic shit we learned in the academy that’s mostly useless. He helped me get a powerful pet, and when I wanted to walk a second path, he showed me the way to do it. I admired him–and eventually, I loved him.”
She slammed down another large swallow. “But things started to go wrong. Slowly, at first, just little things that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Bandits that we hunted scattered just before we got to their camp. We missed catching wanted bounties cause we was too busy hunting the rumor of some beastie raiding a town or village. Criminals got out of town the day before we arrived. Things that looked fine on a report and wouldn’t raise no questions in Na Jhauta but still didn’t feel right.”
She took a deep breath. “And then, it all went to hell. I got a tip that a mercenary gang, Rura’s Red Hands, was planning to move in and take over a little town called Mudleaf, a logging town between Eastlake and Grimbark. I told Ishar, and we went to handle it. Rura was a dangerous handler, but he weren’t no match for the two of us. We rode to Mudleaf and set up, and Ishar volunteered to patrol the forest to watch for Rura and his gang. I told him I’d take my turn, but he insisted.” She shook her head ruefully. “I should’ve seen it. I should’ve known what was happening. I didn’t, though–or I refused to. It don’t much matter either way, I guess.
“One morning, Ishar comes to me and says that he got word of a beast hunting in the forest nearby. He tells me we both need to go find it, but I tell him one of us has to stay in case Rura shows up. He says that Rura ain’t coming, and my tip was bad. We fight, and he pulls rank, orders me to go along. I did, but of course, there weren’t no beast. We spent the day on a damn fool’s errand, and he wanted to camp in the woods–at least, until we saw the smoke.”
She swallowed hard. “Ishar said it was probably a fire or ash beast, but I knew what it was. I told him that I was going back, with or without him, and damn his orders, so he came along. We was hours from the town, and by the time we got back, Rura had come and gone. Turns out, my tip was wrong. He didn’t come to take over. He came to rob the place, and he killed every man, woman, and child there to cover his tracks. Every damn one.”
She took another drink. “It was the worst thing I ever seen,” she said hoarsely. “The things those people did–I can’t barely talk about them, Naasi, but the Red Hands didn’t kill the people quick. They took their time. The used the women and girls, even the little ones. They killed babies and old people, stole everything from the town, and set it on fire. If we hadn’t seen the smoke and come back, there might have been nothing we could do, but they was only an hour or so ahead of us. Ishar said we should wait for the morning, but I told him I was setting out, right then, by myself if I had to, so he had no choice but to come with me.”
She smiled grimly. “We caught up to the Red Hands quick enough. They was carrying a town’s worth of loot, after all, and wagons are slow. When we got there, I told Rura he was under arrest. He turned to us, and you know what he said?” She snorted in dark laughter. “He said, ‘Marshal, I thought we had a deal! I pay you, and you look the other way! You going back on it?’”
She tossed back the rest of her drink and slammed the glass on the table hard enough that I thought it might break. “Well, Ishar attacked him right away, of course. Killed the man and his pet without too much trouble, and the rest broke and ran. I just watched it happen. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think of anything but what Rura said.
“Of course, Ishar told me the man was lying, that he was trying to get us to fight, but I knew who the liar was. Too many things just all of a sudden made sense. All the little things, all the times we was just too late to catch someone or too busy to stop someone kept playing, over and over in my head. I knew what had been happening. Ishar had been taking bribes, plain and simple.”
She leaned forward and rubbed her forehead. “Once I found my voice, I told him that, told him what I knew, and that I was going to the service. He attacked me. I didn’t fare no better than Rura did, except that he left me alive. I woke up tied onto the back of my roadwalker and gagged. I stayed that way most of the way back to Eastlake, except when he took me down to eat or take a piss.
“At first, I wondered why he let me live. After all, I was still gonna tell the Service about him. But I found out I was too late. He’d already told them a story about me, about how I’d taken him out of Mudleaf on a fool’s chase, about how I’d attacked and killed Rura instead of bringing him to justice, and how he had to kill my pet to stop me from slaughtering the Red Hands. He made the whole, damn thing my fault, and the Service believed him. I faced an inquiry and got a damn reprimand and a new posting in the Ohr Valley, where I couldn’t screw nothing up; he got promoted to be in charge of Fazil, the best posting in the whole, damn Gistal.”
She took a deep breath. “Now, you see why I don’t like liars, Naasi, and why I got so angry at you two when I found out who you really were. I don’t trust easily after Ishar, and when that trust gets broken, I don’t forgive.”
I nodded slowly. “I don’t much blame you, honestly.” I leaned forward. “But you know that I’m not Ishar, Chomai. Neither is the old man. We’re not doing this for ourselves, or to make money. We’re doing it because it has to be done.”
“I know, and that’s why I’m still here.” She gave me a steady look as she spoke. “And you ain’t Ishar, but I don’t think you’re that far off. What would you have done if I hadn’t agreed to come along?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Would you have killed me?”
“Maybe, yes. Not because I think you’d betray us, but because I couldn’t risk you falling into Kamath’s hands with what you know.” I kept my voice and face carefully neutral as I spoke. I expected her to explode, but she just nodded sadly.
“That’s what I thought.” She rose from her seat. “And that’s why, when all this is done, I hope I never have to see you again. I don’t hate you, Naasi, but I don’t trust you neither, and I’m tired of being around people I can’t trust.”
She walked out of the saloon, and I watched her go a little sadly. I didn’t blame her for not trusting me. I was here for a job, nothing more, and I’d do what was necessary to finish that job. If that meant killing her–or the sheriff… I pushed aside that line of thought and lifted a hand, waving to the server to finally get her attention. I really, really needed that drink.