Page 118 of Swordheart
“And they all agree to this?”
“The underworld is remarkably good at self-policing, particularly in the vicinity of Anuket City. I suppose there’s probably places where it doesn’t work.”
“Huh.” Halla considered this. “You don’t really think of criminals as following laws…”
“It’s more that they realize that the other criminals will be displeased at them if they lose regular access to healers. And these are the sorts of people who express their displeasure… pointedly.”
“Was that a pun?”
Zale considered. “More of an observation, really.”
The bandits had a rough camp set up. One kindled a fire.
Halla watched as Sarkis’s sword was tossed carelessly down onthe ground, alongside Zale’s knives. She feared for a moment that the blade might come unsheathed, but it stayed in place.
Just let him stay there long enough to heal from the arrow…
Another bandit came through the trees. “Sir,” he said. “We can’t find hide nor hair of the other one.”
“Because he’s invisible!” yelled Mina.
“Because you shot him, so he ran away!” Halla yelled back.
It occurred to Halla that this was not a good thing in what was supposed to be a hired guard, so she added, “And anyway, he’s fired! What kind of guard runs away because he’s been shot? What was I evenpayinghim for?”
The bandit leader rubbed his forehead wearily.
“Didn’t see him running away,” muttered the one who had been scouting. “Didn’t see any trail.” He scuffed the ground with his foot.
“Thought I saw some shiny light over by them, before,” volunteered another one. Halla’s heart sank. “But I don’t know for sure.”
The leader came and sat down in front of Halla and Zale.
“I am very sorry for all of this unpleasantness,” he said to Zale. “But ma’am, if you can, in fact, make people invisible, surely you can see why that is a skill that I would be interested in making use of.”
Halla wrinkled her nose. “No,” she said after a moment. “I can’t.”
He tilted his head. “I’m a bandit.”
“Yes,” said Halla, “but you’re ahighwayman.You want people to believe you have superior numbers so that they give you their money without a fight. Making someone invisible would just mean that they were more likely to fight you, wouldn’t it? And you can’t very well have an invisible person stop travelers in the middle of the road. They’d just get run down. And then if there’s arrows flying around and someone is invisible, doesn’t it mean that that person is more likely to be shot on accident?”
The bandit leader blinked slowly at her.
“Really,” said Halla, “it just seems like a poor idea all around. Even if Icouldmake people invisible, which I can’t.” She shook her head. “It’s all moot anyway. I think you’ve listened to a really unpleasant person and gotten entirely the wrong impression.”
Mina started forward with an oath. The bandit leader twisted around and said, “If you don’t want to end up in a shallow grave alongside Brett, I suggest you sit down.”
She sat down.
So Brett’s dead, then. I wonder if this man killed him, or if he got himself killed doing something stupid.
Halla didn’t feel guilty over the man’s death, but she found that even as angry as she was at Mina, she could feel a pang. The poor woman was obviously distraught over her friend’s death and looking for someone to blame. Maybe she’d latched on to Halla and this wild tale of invisibility.
Which, ah, is not that wild, when you think about it. She’s got things wrong, but shedidsee Sarkis appearing out of nowhere. It’s not a completely far-fetched theory.
The bandit leader squeezed his eyes shut. He looked as if he had a headache. “Do you know,” he said, “this is not the way that I pictured this going?”
“Oh, I get that a lot.”
