“I didn’t say it was easy,” he protested, laughingly.

Kero laughed with him. “I should confess, then. I make jewelry. Actually, I carve gemstones. Now that is a portable hobby.”

“I used to write bad poetry.”

She glared at him.

“I stopped.”

She made a great show of cleaning her knife and examining the blade. “Wise man. If you’d told me you still did, I’d have been forced to kill and eat you. And the world would have been safer. There’s nothing more dangerous than a bad poet, unless it’s a bad minstrel.”

She said that with such a solemn face that he began laughing. “I think I can see your point,” he chortled, “I think in your position I’d start using my extra pay to put bounties on Bards!”

“I’ve thought about it,” she said wryly. “And not entirely in jest. Traditional Bardic immunity can lead to some misusing their power, and Bards have no one making sure they behave themselves the way the Healers and you Heralds do.”

“Only the Guild,” he acknowledged, soberly. “They’re pretty careful in Valdemar, but outside? I don’t know. I’ll bet Karse is using theirs.”

“They’re using their Healers,” Kero pointed out. “No Healing done outside a temple of the Sunlord. When they’re in the mood, they even go hunt down their poor little herbmen and wisewomen. The only reason they don’t go after midwives is because the priests can’t be bothered with something that is only important to females.”

Eldan’s expression sobered considerably. “I didn’t know that. There wasn’t anyone like that in the villages I’d been watching. Makes you wonder. About what else they’re using, I mean.”

“That it does,” said Kero, who had a shrewd notion of what they were using. Dark magics? It was likely. And no one to stop them. You might as easily stand in the path of a whirlwind.

And all that was pitted against the two of them.

The night seemed darker, outside their cave, after that. and when they made love, it was as much to cling to each other for comfort as anything else.

The hunt stayed in their area for longer than Kero had expected, which led her to believe that the priestesses were getting some kind of indication of where they were. During that time, she got to know Eldan very well; possibly better than he knew. A mercenary learns quickly how to analyze those he will be fighting against or beside—and everything Kero learned led her to trust Eldan more.