He still saw one of the two people she’d thrown out in the street get back up and lunge toward the blue woman. The attacker was a big Merik man with several inches on Teer and far broader across the shoulders than the gawky youth.
Teer had enough time to wonder how in Winter the big man had been thrown before the blue woman grabbed the Merik’s incoming hand, bent it back at the wrist, and forced the larger man to his knees in the mud, whimpering in pain.
“Doka told you,” she repeated. “Now whatchu say to Doka?”
Kard was slowing up on the edge of the scene and Teer pulled up beside him, their horses putting them physically above the whole affair. The other man Doka had thrown out of the bar was slowly and gingerly getting up—and clearly trying to avoid drawing her eye again.
“I say you got pretty tits and a stick up yer ass,” the Merik man growled, grabbing her arm with his other hand and clearly trying to overpower her.
Even from six feet away, Teer heard the crack of the man’s wrist snapping as Doka pushed a bit further. She used the big man’s hand on her wrist as an anchor to deliver a heavy boot to her attacker’s upper thigh with another ugly-sounding crack.
Suddenly, her attacker was entirely on the ground. Whimpering.
“What that?” Doka demanded. “Whatchu say to Doka?”
“Sorry,” the likely crippled man ground out. “The boss gonna hear about this.”
“And you think Iko going side witchu?” Doka asked. “What use you to them with broke leg?”
“Stop digging, son,” Kard advised, swinging down off his horse. “You’re still more use to Iko broken than dead; trust me.”
“Who the fuck are you?” the big man snarled, levering himself up onto his intact knee.
“The man watching you get your ass beat,” the El-Spehari told him. “And the only one here big enough to help you get somewhere you can splint that leg. Now. You going to keep digging, or you going to let me help you?”
“You take fun out everything, Kard,” Doka complained. “Ziger can help him. If he done.”
“I done, I done,” the Merik man finally conceded.
“Who this, then?” Doka asked as they took a seat at the table. She looked Teer up and down frankly in a way that made him suddenly empathize with the cattle he used to sell. “Young, muscles, Merik. Not your type. May Doka?”
Teer wasn’t even entirely sure what she meant, but Kard burst out laughing.
“Doka of Tribe Hansvelt, meet Teer, my new junior partner,” he told her. “Took him on as a favor; he’s been useful so far. As for may you.” Kard shrugged, laughing again. “Take that up with him—but we won’t be in town for long.”
“Nah, you hunting,” Doka agreed. She took one last long look at Teer and winked at him before turning her attention back to Kard.
“Boulder,” Kard confirmed. “Should have six or more men with him. He was seen near here two tendays ago.”
“Could be long gone. Doka would be,” she said. “But. Man like Boulder might’ve found something worth staying for.”
She pulled a map from inside the leather jacket and spread it over the table. That movement gave Teer a view that sent a warm flush to his cheeks.
He wasn’t exactly innocent, but Doka was something outside his experience. And he got the clear feeling that the more he reacted to her, the more she was going to tease him.
“Where he seen?” Doka asked, gesturing across the map.
Focusing on the task at hand, Teer studied the map. It was more detailed than any he’d seen of anything except Hardin’s Ranch. It covered the region of hills they were in, centered on Odar and barely stretching as far as Carlon, a hundred miles to the north.
“Twenty-three days ago, he shot up a bar in Carlon,” Kard told her, tapping the wardtown. “Left three Wardwatches and a dozen innocents dead. Every hunter with a writ for him inside three hundred miles is headed to Carlon to pick up his trail.”
“An’ you want to get ahead, as always,” Doka guessed. “That all you got?”
“No,” Kard replied. “I was in Alvid four days ago.”
He pulled two white-glass chip coins out of his pocket and laid them on the map.
“A hunter I know thought he’d spotted Boulder over by Otrutch, here.” Kard put down a coin.
“Shepherd village,” Doka told Teer. “Nothing and nobody there of value.”
“Probably why Boulder didn’t rob it blind,” the El-Spehari agreed. “My friend is staying there for reasons of his own. Reasons that don’t line up with him going after Boulder himself, even if he thought he could handle seven guns alone.”
“Which you do,” Doka said. It wasn’t a question.
“With Teer? Yeah, I do,” Kard confirmed. He laid a second coin on the map. “Other bit of news I wasn’t expecting dropped in my ear while I was in Alvid. One of the coaches out of Odar thought they were being watched around here.” He tapped the coin.
“Another coach was overdue when I left,” he continued. “Might be as much as a hundred stone worth of gold and raw redcrystal. He was spotted by Otrutch seventeen days ago. Coach that went missing should have arrived five days ago; previous one saw watchers eleven days ago.
“You know this area better than anyone else alive. What do you see, Doka?”
“Doka see Doka not being paid yet,” the blue-skinned woman told him. She was eyeing the map with an odd gaze. Something about her…Teer realized that, strange as she was, he could read her feelings surprisingly well.
So long as they weren’t directed at him, anyway.
“That’s not how this works, Doka,” Kard replied. “I need something solid.”
“She knows, boss,” Teer said bluntly. “She knows exactly where he is.”
“How you…” Doka trailed off, studying Teer. “You scary, boy. Doka like you.”
Kard shook his head.
“I trust Teer, but I need more,” he told Doka.
“He
