Except where the Cutters run things, she thought with a scowl. They think women in pants are an abomination. But then, they think pretty well everything is an abomination. From the way most of them smell, soap included.

Here in notoriously well-policed Idaho it wasn’t even so very odd that a comely young woman would come into a town by herself. She’d still be noticed; strangers were always noticed. The only places she’d ever been where that wasn’t so were a handful of large cities. And there weren’t more than a handful of large cities in the world a generation after the Change, a world where the overwhelming majority lived in places the size of St. Hilda’s or smaller.

“I’m off to Bree,” she said, and Aunt Astrid chuckled.

“Let’s hope there aren’t any alarming and unexpected delays with your contact.”

St. Hilda’s wasn’t entirely without defenses. A quartet watching some blackcoated Angus in a meadow noticed as she cantered along with a pack-horse on a leading string, and three set arrows to their bows as they legged their horses closer while another drew a shete.

Closer, and she could see that the archers were women, and the man with the shete was a hard-worn thirty and with only two fingers on his mutilated left hand. That could have been an accident in half a dozen trades, but she would bet on a sword-cut. He rode close and checked her over, noting the rolled pup tent, duffel bag and camping gear on her spare horse.

“Your name?” he said, sheathing the blade.

“Jane Cross,” she said, falling into a ranch-country rasp.

It was actually the accent of the Bend country just across the Cascades from the Willamette and Mithrilwood, but it would pass anywhere in the interior in a casual conversation with people expecting a stranger. Local ways of speech had diverged widely in the last generation now that twenty miles was a good day’s journey again and everyone from farther than that a de facto foreigner.

“What’re you doing in these parts?”

“Lookin’ for respectable work and a bunk, before summer’s past, sir. Maybe some place to settle.”

“You don’t look hungry.”

A shrug. “Rabbits ain’t hard to come by, but . . .”

He nodded understanding. Anyone with the right tools and skills could feed themselves for a while in the wilds in the warm season, though even then it was risky to travel alone. A simple sprain or fall could kill you with nobody there to help. Winter would be deadly. Plus even if there was much empty game-rich land between settlements all of it anywhere near civilization was claimed by somebody, who’d eventually run off a vagrant hanging around the fringes. You had to; neglecting that was how bandit gangs got started.

“How come you’re wanderin’ loose?”

“My Rancher up in the Panhandle country had to let some hands go, what with the war and the taxes. Got no kin there now, my folks is dead and they were from Spokane way back. Don’t know how they’ll manage without us, but—”