“Awww, you do like me.”
He dropped the expression. “I’m tolerating you until I can safely make you someone else’s problem.”
“Oh, naturally,” Rahma agreed easily. “One of these days, you might actually succeed.”
They walked in silence for all of seven steps before she changed the subject.
“Have you really been doing this for years?”
He frowned a question at her.
“Back in Nahr. During negotiations, you said that we were paying for your years of expertise.”
“Oh.” He slowly started nodding. “Right. Uh . . . I’d guess it’s been”—his hand moved side-to-side in the air—”maybe a year?”
“A year of this con, or a year of living on your own like this?”
As’ad wasn’t too keen on the shrewd look in her eye. “I mastered this use of the pipes about a year ago,” he stated, hoping she would catch his tone and leave it alone.
“Thisuse? How else can you use the pipe?”
His next words were slow and enunciated clearly as he turned comically wide eyes on her. “To. Play. Music.”
“Bah.” Rahma threw her hand toward his shoulder and rolled her eyes. When he left it at that, she shook her head. “You really haven’t experimented with anything else?”
As’ad blinked.
“What if you can do more with it? Maybe even something useful!”
Her emphatic hand motions were back. He moved over to stay out of her flailing range.
Rahma stopped to put both of her hands on her hips, and he automatically paused, as well. She leaned forward to stare into his eyes. The sunlight caught in their depths and brought out a mahogany hue As’ad had never seen before. It distracted him from her next words.
“I know you don’t like pulling cons. This could be your ticket to something else.”
“I don’t know how to do anything else,” he answered without thinking. “Hey, wait! What do you mean, I don’t like pulling cons? I’mverygood at it.”
A satisfied smirk settled on her lovely face. “There. You see? You couldn’t flat-out refute my statement, so you tried to distract me by pointing out your skill.” Her eyebrows rose. “Beinggoodat something doesn’t mean you like it.”
As’ad stared stupidly as she spun on her heel and continued walking down the road. She called over her shoulder, “I, for one, amverygood at finding grubs in the crops. That doesn’t mean Iwantto do it. I learned out of necessity.”
After a beat, he began moving again. He rolled her words around in his mind for the next leg of the trip. Rahma mercifully stayed quiet for longer than he had previously thought possible, and he was able to work through his thoughts in peace.
That night, as they sat around the campfire and played—or tried to play, in Rahma’s case—with the rats, As’ad worked up the nerve to ask her a question.
“How do you know I don’t like pulling cons?” He wanted to add a stick to the fire to avoid looking at her, but they were running low, so he examined his fingernails instead.
“You don’t take as much money as you could, for one thing,” she stated.
“So?” He risked a glance in her direction, but Rahma kept teasing Fat Carl, who had sidled near, with her braid.
“That tells me you aren’t greedy.”
Fat Carl rolled over on his back, revealing the V-shaped patch of white under his neck that looked like a collar against the brown of the rest of his fur. She gave him a piece of fruit, and he chirped happily before delving right in with his round belly still exposed.
As’ad shook his head. That rat behaved nothing like any of his other pets. Then he remembered what they were discussing.
“Maybe it’s because I don’t want to get caught.” He leaned back on his hands. “A little less money more often works out mathematically to be much more profitable than prison.”
