Complications!
We didn’t make it much of a waylay, either. The woman watching us figured out right away that we had ‘made’ her, as the Old Americans used to say. She didn’t do anything stupid, like run away or start swinging, which also seemed promising. Pros may be deadlier in a fight than amateurs, but they don’t start as many.
“I told Etienne not to go up on the roof,” she remarked to us in way of greeting as we reached her table. “Sometimes people look up. — Good evening, Miss Mahota, Ms. Deckard. Care to sit? I’m not here to start a tussle.”
I assessed her as I sat. First, the obvious: a few years younger than me, black hair, green eyes, a face that knew exactly what kind of impact it had on the more impressionable types. She had that kind of complexion that’d be ‘weathered’ when she hit my age, but right now was just ‘healthy.’ I’m not one to ogle on the job, but the body under the leathers was nicely turned out in the right places. The voice, though: that voice had the pure Marcher rasp. That meant she came from the west Ohio country, which absolutely meant that she’d grown up wondering who to mistrust the most: the Universal Dominion, my Kentucky Free State, or Mahota’s Greater Hershey. Personally I’d say the Dominion, but the Marchers don’t always agree. In other words, she was dangerous, and I wasn’t sure yet exactly how.
“Name’s Jane. Jane Sisk, adventurer with no fixed abode. The two gentlemen adventurers about to show up are Etienne and Laurent Hudon. Don’t worry, they speak English.” She saluted us with her wine glass. “Let’s not use Elvish, though. They’re trying hard, but it’s slow going for them.”