The bartender brought out the whiskey and Una raised her glass to Niles, a faintly sardonic smile on her face. "À la tienne," she said, and took a sip.

It was a measure of how long she'd been around and the kinds of places she'd been that she only winced a little.

"A tracker, yes," she replied, amused. He was more right than he knew. An astute observer, then. "And you? You don't sound any more native than I do."

She'd intentionally flattened and coarsened her own accent, which was normally pure cut-glass, but there was still no mistaking her Englishness.