Heaven's Needle by Liane Merciel Page B

crowded and she had a good cloak. She tossed a silver shield to the nearest serving maid. Even at the White Hound’s prices, that would keep them in ale for the night.
    â€œNot the friendly sort, are you?” Heradion commented as he took the chair opposite. “Seems like the only way you could get a table farther from the crowd is if you carried it outside.”
    â€œI’m not in the mood for company.”
    â€œI hope that doesn’t last. I don’t love the sound of myown voice quite enough to want to listen to it all the way up to Carden Vale and back.”
    â€œI could gag you, if that would help.”
    â€œAh, the lady has a sense of humor! I’d begun to wonder.”
    So had she. There’d been little room for laughter in her life before Oralia died, and none after. She had almost forgotten what it was like. The simple pleasure of a good ale shared with friends was not one Asharre had often enjoyed; she had no gift for words, much less the aimless chatter that summerlanders seemed to love. But Heradion had an easy manner, and a stock of stories from growing up with three troublemaking brothers on a farm, and he did not seem to mind that she said little herself. She drank and listened, and once in a while she laughed.
    Finally, Heradon pushed his empty cup aside. “Enough about me. Will you tell me a little of yourself?”
    Asharre shrugged, gazing into the last of the ale sloshing about in her chipped mug. She wasn’t drunk, but three tankards of Tarrybuck brown and the evening’s conversation had left her with a pleasant muzziness. “What do you want to know?”
    â€œWhat do you want to tell? I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that if we’re to travel together, it would be nice to know something about my companion. Beyond your formidable skills with a sword, of course.”
    â€œNot that formidable.”
    â€œYou’re too modest. I’ve seen you in the yard. If I had a third of your talent, I’d hie myself off to Craghail and fight a Swordsday melee. Win myself a princess, a fortune, and the right to bore my listeners senseless with bragging until I was a graybeard.” He grinned. “Well, I have the last already, but it’d be a good deal more impressive if I’d won something first.”
    â€œThey don’t give away princesses anymore.”
    â€œNo? I suppose it’s back to hard work and humility then. Curses.”
    She grunted and finished her drink in silence. Then Heradion suggested: “Tell me about your scars. What do they mean?”
    Her first instinct was to refuse. The marks of a sigrir were not something to be discussed with summerlanders. She had never done so before. It was a fair request, though, and he was right: if she was to travel with these people, they should know something about her.
    Asharre traced her scars with a fingertip. “That I have bad luck.”
    â€œAll scars mean that. Take this one here”—Heradion touched a crooked white line across the back of his wrist—“ that was a spot of bad luck, thinking Merilee’s brother was joking when he said he’d cut my nose off if I tried to kiss her. Fortunately for me he was drunk and his aim was bad. I suspect your story’s more interesting than that.”
    She managed half a smile. “I had a different sort of bad luck. My mother had no brothers. She bore four daughters, but only one son. He died of fever when I was eight. My father was killed in a raid when I was twelve. After that … after that there was not much choice, really. Among the White Seas clans, women have little privilege. They cannot defend the family’s honor in feud, cannot hold property … cannot do many things. Someone had to negotiate my sister’s marriages, and there were no men left in the family. So I became sigrir. ”
    â€œSiegrar?”
    She corrected his pronounciation, emphasizing the second