"The Woman Who Was Expected"

Tom turned.

He turned slowly, the way Old Iberra had once taught him to turn in a tavern when a knife was at his back — feet first, then hips, then shoulders, the candle held a little high so that whoever stood behind him would be looking into the light and not at the cutlass his other hand rested on. He kept his face empty. He had practiced that, too, though never well.

She was small.

That was the first surprise. He had expected the woman with the cord, or the tall man with the fowling-piece, or some figure out of Marrow's old stories. What he got instead was a woman no taller than his shoulder, brown-skinned, perhaps fifty, perhaps seventy — the kind of face the sun and salt had finished writing on long ago. She wore a clean linen shift and a man's leather waistcoat, and there was flour on her hands.

She had a knife. A small one, paring-sized, tucked behind a loaf-end on the table behind her. He noticed it the way one notices a closed door.

"You're bleeding through your shirt, Mr. Pell. Sit. The captain has perhaps an hour. I have water boiling. I will not waste either on a boy who chooses to die standing."

"How do you know my name."

"He told me. Years ago. He said one day a boy would come down my passage carrying his pistol, and I was to feed him and bind him and ask no questions of the packet." Her eyes flicked, sharp. "Which I see you have already chosen not to bring."

"It's safe."

"Of course it is. He chose you for a reason."