The Gift

Chapter Two

True to my habit, I awoke just at the sun was starting to peek up from the horizon.  I sat in the doorway of my tent, watching it rise.  Daniel still slumbered in front of the tent.  I considered him in the growing light of the sun.  He looked like he could only be a couple years older than my own twenty one years but his face wore the signs of hardship.  His skin was toughened by time spent in the sun and wind. I knew his hands would be calloused from years training to be a fighter.  Shaggy dark brown hair hung to where it almost hid his eyes from me.

“You’re staring at me,” he mumbled.  A light blush crept across my cheeks, embarrassed that I’d been caught.  His eyes fluttered open, showing me their deep brown color.  “And you look like you’re pouting.”

“Thinking; not pouting,” I corrected him as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

“Then why were you staring?”

“I wasn’t.  I was just thinking, Daniel.”

“What did I say about that name?” he asked me.  He wasn’t angry but slightly annoyed at having to repeat himself.

“I apologize.  I am not accustomed to using a name other that one’s own when addressing them.”

“I had to be very careful at first too.  Any time somebody used that name, I wanted to turn.  It took me some time before I had trained myself to answer only to Christopher.”

“I would not be able to do it.”

“Why not?  Surely you have the perseverance to train yourself to do it.”

“I cannot lie,” I reminded him.  “I would not be capable of introducing myself by any name other than my own.  To do so would be to tell a falsehood.”

“I see.  It seems like it would be hard, not being able to lie.”

“It has been a danger at a few points in time.  I always manage a way around it, though.”

“When does it get dangerous?”

“Upon entering a city that is guarded, I am usually asked my business.  Sometimes that business is to be an assassin.  The guards usually aren’t too willing to let in a woman who intends to kill one of their citizens.  Of course at first they laughed me off because I am a woman.”

“Then people got to know your name and just what you are capable of.”

“Exactly.  I had to get creative.  I’d sneak in with another group that wasn’t examined closely.  A couple times I slipped in during the night.  I’ve also learned to tell people that my business is my own and not theirs.”

“That doesn’t constitute as lying?”

“It is the truth.  What we mean by business may differ but it is no lie.  Your men are late sleepers.”

“They always sleep in a bit after a successful job.”

“The job’s now over until you have returned and have been paid,” I commented.

“True.  Are you hungry?”  He pulled his bag over into his lap and started rifling through it.

“A bit,” I admitted.  He produced a box of cookies.  I raised my eyebrows at that.

“Come on; you’ve never had cookies for breakfast?”

“No.”

“Then this is the perfect time to be your first,” he grinned, opening the package.  I smiled back at him, shaking my head as I took an offered cookie.

“What kind of jobs do you do?” I asked, swallowing a bite.

“We’ve done just about everything from helping a family move across town to assassinations.”