Besides, what could one woman have on her that would be worth much split seven ways? And let’s not forget our leader’s double share, which would end up looking more like half. I wasn’t sure what kind, but I felt it like a chill or that charge in the air before a storm that raises gooseflesh. I had studied magic, you see, just a little, and this traveler had some.
I had a bad feeling about our potential victim, and not just because she walked like nobody was going to hurt her, and not just because ravens were shouting in the trees. So there I was, crouched in ambush, watching a figure walking alone down the White Road toward us. The tattoo was bad enough already, thank you very much. I had more than half what I needed for my Lammas payment to the Guild to keep them from making my tattoo worse. Killing never came easily to me, but I was willing to throw a few arrows to keep myself out of the shyte. I was only a month in with this group, and we had robbed wagons with too few guards, kidnapped stragglers off groups with too many, and even sold a merchant’s boy to a group of crooked soldiers who were supposed to be chasing us. It pays surprisingly well, being a highwayman. Alas, I owed the Takers Guild so much money for my training that I found myself squatting in the Forest of Orphans with these thick bastards, hoping to rob somebody the old-fashioned way. I also knew several dozen cantrips-small but useful magic.
I was trained in lock-picking, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, voice-throwing, trap-making, trap-finding, and not a half-bad archer, fiddler, and knife-fighter besides. Now they were thieves, but not subtle thieves like me. Frella, just next to him in rusty ring mail, used to be his wife. I looked over at Pagran and decided he looked uncomfortably like a billy goat, what with his long head, long beard, and unlovely habit of chewing even when he had no food.
If everybody’s wearing clean linen and silk and looking down at you squirming in your bassinet, you’ll have a very different life than if the first thing you see when you open your eyes is a billy goat. It’s important who’s with you when you’re born, after all. Not that I was afraid to die, but maybe who you die with is important.
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