"There is the matter of the information I need."
He licked his lips. "Of course."
She rummaged in her bag for an instant before withdrawing a small, creased fotter-picture. He seemed to forget his desires as he leaned closer, his lips parted slightly in amazement. Nobody had cammers anymore…but Lilith had known one who did. Perhaps he still had it, wherever he was.
"I'm looking for this man," she told him evenly.
He glanced at her, and his eyes laughed slyly. "Your lover?"
"No."
The word fell upon the desert air, harsher than the sand that would scour the bones of the dead in this part of the world, and he returned his gaze to the picture. "What's he to you?"
"That be none of your ken." She flicked the fotter before him one more time before returning it to her bag; an instant's glance of dark, tousled hair, laughing eyes, impressed itself upon her vision. A shred of an earlier time, when the Consolidation had been but a myth in Lilith's part of the world and there had been other things to be besides a gunslinger; there had been innocence, of a sort, and mayhap even contentment…
"Know him?"
"I might."
She nodded. "I'd share this knowledge, if would were could."
Her informant waved a hand off towards the West. "He comes from there, perhaps once a fortnight. Buys some of the useless scrap the smithy turns out." He sneered, the veneer of reserved intelligence she had seen in the bar now gone. Spirit of a gunslinger or no, his character had been well soured by the decay of his peers. "We call 'im the trashboy; aye, he takes the name willingly, fool he is."
She resisted the impulse to draw, and concentrated on the task at hand. She fell into the Low Speech with practiced ease. "How long ago he be in?"
"Couple days, mayhap."
Lilith nodded. "Very well." She turned and began walking towards the west end of town. Seemingly as an afterthought, she looked back over her shoulder at him. "Coming?"
His steps sounded in the dust behind her as she turned back towards the setting sun. Eager, like a dog's. He was looking forward to a bounce around the campfire tonight, and why not? She was not a beautiful woman, but she would most likely do for him in a pinch, she reckoned. Her mouth turned down in disgust at the thought.
But she was not worried about what might befall her later, for that was the job of Ka; she simply looked to the now. And now, as he followed close behind her, there was a dry snap, followed closely on by a high whinging sound, and the thunk of wood hitting flesh.
She turned and was not at all surprised by what she saw. The weasel from the bar stood in the road, a broken bow in one hand. The arrow which had been the last flung from this deadly relic jutted out of her informant's back. His blood splattered in the dust as he fell. Had he not been behind her, it would be her blood spilling upon the road, her breath and heart and life ending in an inglorious instant. But he had been there to take the shot, and the 'tender would fire no more. Like a small animal (aye, mayhap even a weasel), he turned and ran, and Lilith let him go.
So that was F'nax.