He nodded, embarrassed to be equating the kind of bravery that last charge had taken with the sum of two paltry gold pieces. Then again—that’s their job, isn’t it? The laborer is worth the hire. “Where are you going now?” he asked. “We finished this a lot faster than I’d thought we would; it’s barely past Midsummer. Have you got another job lined up?”

She shook her head, which surprised him a little. “We’ll go straight to winter quarters,” she said. “Remember, you hired us before Vernal Equinox because the Prophet had stolen a march on you in the winter; it’s been plenty long enough for us. We don’t need to take another job this season, and we haven’t needed to take winter jobs since the second year I was Captain. Ending early in the season will give us a head start on training the green recruits, schooling new horses, healing up—” She noted his surprise, and chuckled. “That’s right—Tarma never taught you all that, did she? Winter quarters is what makes a good Company stronger. When we can winter up, we get a chance to learn without killing anybody, we get a chance to get everything Healed right. There’s another side of it, too; wintering is where we become—well—a kind of family, if that doesn’t sound too impossible to you. And since the Skybolts don’t need to take the extra jobs anymore, I’ll be damned if I cheat them out of that rest time.”

She fixed him with a sharp glance, a look that told him that if he’d been considering offering them hire for the winter, he’d better change his mind.

But since that wasn’t what he’d had on his mind at all, he smiled right back at her, and her expression softened and relaxed. “Is there any reason why you can’t leave them for a month or two?” he asked, innocently.

“Well, no,” she replied, obviously wondering why he would ask that particular question. She waited for a reply, but he simply smiled at her, until she said, impatiently, “All right! Why do you want to know that?”

“Because my brother wants to meet you, and this seems like a good time.” He grinned at her blank stare, and continued. “Tarma trained the lot of us, remember? But she trained us a little differently than the way she trained you—she knew you were going to end up a hire-sword, so she gave you things she never gave us. My brother wants to pick your brain. ”

“On what?” she asked, with a hint of suspicion.