built on broader lines. It was a running joke among the Beguine caravan guards that Ciari could take any of them on, male or female, in a fair fight.
“It burned!” Kestrel rubbed at her temple. “It’s much better now. It hardly itches.”
Ciari shifted the market basket on her arm. “An insect?”
Kestrel shook her head. “It felt like someone held a lit straw to my head, but now it’s gone. Sorry, Ciari. I don’t know what the matter is with me. Pay it no mind.”
She bent to retrieve her ledger book, thumbing through it to check for loosened pages, while Ciari efficiently glared away a street urchin who was contemplating an attempt on the sweetmeats she carried in her basket and turned back to her assessment of Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s pies.
The dwarf, engrossed in her work, didn’t look up this time. Without taking her eyes off the silver-chased steel over her knee, she pointed again.
“Mistress Kestrel is the one at the counter over there,” she said.
Arna swallowed hard, braced himself, and looked, holding his breath. Then, impressed, he let his air out with a
Kestrel Beguine was tall, straight of back and well built, with reddish brown hair braided into an elaborate bun at the nape of her elegant neck. She wore a simple dress, deep blue with a tiny repeating pattern worked in gold thread, a modified version of those the more modish women of Turmish wore. His merchant’s eye told him it was well cut and of fine fabric. A wide leather and brass belt clasped about her waist was hung with all manner of keys and small useful tools-and also served to accentuate her figure. She bore a market basket-his aunt had one similar, although Jadaren Hold had no market-hung over one arm. She was currently speaking intently to the small wizened woman, so shrunk and wrinkled that he would make no wager that she was fully human. Kestrel gestured at a neat stack of pies before her, and the wrinkled little woman shook her head.
Vidor’s hand on his arm made him stifle a shriek.
“Easy, fairlady,” said his friend. “The lovely Beguine sisters are at hand, and it is time to do some business. Many thanks, my friend,” he added to the dwarf behind them, who grunted without looking up from the dent she was coaxing into true.
Together they wound their way between the folk streaming between the market stalls. Arna could hear Kestrel as she addressed the pie shop owner. Her voice was penetrating-not unpleasant, but he suspected it could become shrewish with time and usage.
“Why should I pay so much? Our kitchens are sufficient. I buy for convenience, nothing more, that our cook can turn her attention to more important matters. But she can make our pies at need.”
The little widow’s reply sounded amused, and not at all offended, as if they had had this conversation many times.
“The day your kitchens can turn out pies like mine, I will close my shop, young mistress,” she said. “You well know your cooks, skilled as they may be, could never do better.”
“It’s not their practice to use cats-meat as the main ingredient,” said Kestrel dismissively.
Arna and Vidor paused at the outskirts of the stall, where the fringe of the striped cloth hung to shelter customers from the sun shivered in the slight breeze. Arna turned to his friend and quirked an eyebrow. Vidor didn’t see it. He was staring at Kestrel Beguine as she bargained, his mouth slightly open, like a small creature hypnotized by a snake.
A girl stood just behind Kestrel, slighter than the Beguine girl and wearing a dress a rich brown tint. She was brushing dust off her skirt and carried a leather case or book beneath her arm. She was Kestrel’s maid, perhaps, or given the quills strapped on her wide belt beside her purse, her accounts keeper.
She glanced up to see the Vidor staring, looked to Kestrel and back at him, and lifted her eyebrows in turn. Arna saw the resemblance then. The hair, gathered at the nape of her neck and left to tumble down her back, was of a similar tint to Kestrel’s chignon but with more chestnut and fewer red highlights. Her eyes were of a similar shape, although a different color. The curve of the cheek was also similar to Kestrel’s, as was the way she held her shoulders. Arna narrowed his eyes, recalling the Jadaren records room and the innumerable rolled parchments that recorded the families and genealogies of all the merchant families his own had dealings with. This must be Ciari, Kestrel’s elder sister.
She noticed him looking at her then, and he swallowed, thankful she didn’t know he’d mistaken her for a servant. One corner of her mouth quirked up into a wry smile, and she winked at him. Perhaps she did know at that. He shrugged in apology.
He wondered if she was herself betrothed. She and Kestrel were the only Beguine daughters, he recalled, their only sibling an elder brother of an adventurous mind who had elected to look after the family interests in Imaskar.
“Twenty delivered to the House the day after tomorrow-fresh that morning, mind. I won’t serve the stale leavings of your storehouse to my guests or family, good-widow, especially not at the price you demand. And you’ll give me one to take home now, for goodwill.”
She took a length of clean linen from her basket and slapped it on the counter.
“Waukeen forgive you for abusing a poor woman at the end of her life,” replied Mistress Bejuer-Vaud, with perfect good cheer, as she took the cloth and wrapped a pie in it, deftly tying the ends into a neat knot before she slipped it into Kestrel’s basket. “Soon I’ll be dead, and you may burn candles to light my passing to temper your many sins,” she added, looking more than ever like an elderly gnome.
Kestrel grinned. “Never change, Mother Bejuer-Vaud,” she said, sweeping her basket up and turning to go, her sister beside her. The old woman beamed, having made a profitable sale this day.
Vidor had been looking for his chance. As the Beguine girls left the stall, he stepped before them with a polite bow. Arna hastened to stay beside him.
“Your pardon, goodlady Beguine,” Vidor began, bending toward Ciari. He must have deduced that the girl in autumn brown must be Kestrel’s sister, Arna noted. Both girls halted, Ciari holding her leather packet to her breast and Kestrel starting to frown.
Perhaps she wasn’t frowning, thought Arna. Perhaps she was just preoccupied. No, she was frowning. Arna tried not to think of how it would be to wake up next to that frown every day for the rest of his life.
“Pardon my intrusion, but I’ve come at the behest of your good father,” continued Vidor, offering Ciari the coil of the paper from Nicol Beguine. “My family has been developing portable cantrips, suitable for anyone to use at his convenience. Perhaps you received our gift of a box of samples.”
Ciari took it between her long, slim fingers, one of which, Arna noticed, had a blot of ink at the knuckle. He stifled a smile, thinking of how often he’d missed a similar blot until he spotted it out in public. Ciari must do the accounting after all.
Kestrel exhaled impatiently and snatched the paper from her sister’s hand. She glanced at it and thrust it back at Vidor, who took it, startled.
“Vidor Druit, is it?” she snapped. Arna saw she had fine eyes, so brown they were almost black.
“Well, is it? Speak up, man,” she continued, as Vidor only stared up at her, nonplussed.
“So I am, goodlady,” he stammered. “It’s my honor-”
“I’ll have you know two of your so-called fire starters fizzled out with nary a spark,” Kestrel interrupted. “You can hardly expect us to put our good name to shoddy goods, can you?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” returned Vidor with some of his accustomed spirit. “Yet two failing meant eighteen worked, correct? For I’m sure you tried them all.”
She only frowned in answer. It was a pretty enough frown, Arna conceded. Still, he hoped she didn’t make it a habit, although he feared she did.
“How often must one strike a flint until the fire catches?” Vidor pressed on. “Many times, and if the flint is wet or worn, one might never get warm.”
“Ten percent is not acceptable,” she said with such finality that Arna felt he must defend his friend’s venture.
“But it is, for something that can be sold so cheaply and is not convenient in the main,” he interjected, then blinked as Kestrel turned the full force of her gaze on him. His argument, so clear before he spoke, became muddled
