Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - The Simple Gifts - Mercedes Lackey
Chapter 2 - Catch Fire, Draw Flame - Rosemary Edghill and Denise McCune
Chapter 3 - In an Instant - Elizabeth A. Vaughan
Chapter 4 - A Healer’s Work - Daniel Shull
Chapter 5 - A Leash of Greyhounds - Elisabeth Waters
Chapter 6 - Warp and Weft - Kristin Schwengel
Chapter 7 - Discordance - Jennifer Brozek
Chapter 8 - Slow and Steady - Brenda Cooper
Chapter 9 - Sight and Sound - Stephanie D. Shaver
Chapter 10 - The Bride’s Task - Michael Z. Williamson and Gail L. Sanders
Chapter 11 - Fog of War - Ben Ohlander
Chapter 12 - Heart’s Peril - Kate Paulk
Chapter 13 - Heart’s Place - Sarah A. Hoyt
Chapter 14 - Family Matters - Tanya Huff
Chapter 15 - The Watchman’s Ball - Fiona Patton
Chapter 16 - Judgment Day - Nancy Asire
Chapter 17 - Under the Vale - Larry Dixon
The last thing I expected when I woke up that morning was to find myself running for my life with my clothing in one hand and the other hand holding a sheet rather insecurely about my impressive torso.
Wait, let me back that up a bit.
First, please understand that I have no illusions about myself. I know what my talents are: charm, rugged good looks, wit, a great voice, and an instinct for how to make a lady very happy. I know what my flaws are: the desire to do as little actual work as possible, coupled with a taste for all the finer things in life, and a tendency to stretch the truth paper-thin. These two things make me the ideal candidate for no actual job, but they make me very good at being company for females (face it ladies, you really do not want to know that your butt looks like the rear end of a brood mare in “this dress”).
Yes. Alas, I am a man-whore.
Now that we have the technicalities out of the way, let me add that I specialize in ladies of a certain . . . age. Those who (so they tell me, and so I will fervently believe as long as I am with them) are underappreciated by the husbands. Because, oh yes, I only specialize in married ladies. That way if anything happens, they have a husband to deal with the consequences. And most of them actually are underappreciated. In the class I deal with exclusively, those husbands will have gone out and gotten themselves one or more pretty, young mistresses, so why, I ask you, is the sauce for the gander not just as appropriate for the goose?
I had somewhat worn out my welcome in the western part of Hardorn, so I had crossed into the eastern part of Valdemar, a country with which I was just marginally familiar. Hardorn was rather more to my liking: lots of rich merchant wives, lots of rich minor nobility, lots of husbands who were always somewhere else. However, I’d temporarily run out of the former, and since I was ill-equipped to fend for myself for very long, I took the very nice farewell present from my last “friend” and got a ride with her cousin’s trade caravan west. Her cousin was a widow, and I made an exception to my rule of wives only, and we passed the time pleasantly enough in her plush little wagon.
They left me in a little town called Winefold, which produced, strangely enough, not wine but a pungent little berry that they liked to use in Hardorn to flavor alcohol. Geniver, it was called, and collecting the harvested and dried berries there was the end of the road for the caravan. So I bid the immensely grateful (have I mentioned that ladies of a certain age are always enthusiastically grateful?) widow a fond and somewhat teary farewell, got the best room in the inn (for now, I didn’t intend to be paying for it long) and set about looking over my prospects.
They seemed rosy. A lady of the correct age and more than correct income, spouse away and (supposedly) unappreciative, and charms that, while a bit on the weathered side, were still, well, charming. And besides, candlelight is always flattering. Like me. The campaign was easy enough, pity on the poor stranger with only a few halting phrases of Valdemaran in the marketplace, a meal or two together at the inn, a meal or two together at her manse, a brief overnight trial of my paces, certain key phrases exchanged and understood, and there you go. I was quite satisfied with the results of the evening and was looking forward to leaving my room at the inn and setting up in a guest room as a “cousin”—in fact, I was mulling over just those arrangements while idly tracing circles on the bare shoulder next to mine, when my musings were rudely interrupted by five men bursting into the bedroom with drawn swords and daggers. One of them was richly attired, also of a certain age (but of a dismayingly athletic build) with the outraged expression on his face that told me he was either a husband or a brother.
Now, this sort of thing happens in bardic songs all the time; the sort with seven hundred verses to them. There’re about two hundred to get to the bedroom, and then comes the part where the outraged husband says, “Get up, it will never be said I slew a sleeping man,” allows the subject of the song to get up (and presumably get dressed, though that never seems to be mentioned no matter how many verses there are), arm himself, and even strike the first blow—presumably so the spouse can claim self-defense. This usually takes about another hundred verses. The rest of the song describes how the subject is cut down, mangled, dismembered, eviscerated, hung up for all to see, has various bits pecked out by crows while women lament, and finally is buried beneath a willow, which weeps for him eternally.
I was not going to be around for those several hundred verses, thank you. Especially not the killing and dismembering part.
Out of careful habit and no few close calls, I keep all my clothing right at hand in an easy-to carry bundle when I go to bed with a lady. So as the outraged gentleman opened his mouth, I was already halfway out the window, clothing in one hand, sheet held around me as best I could.
The advantage of going out a window is that your pursuers, if there are more than one, always manage to get themselves jammed up trying to follow you. By the time they sort themselves out, you’ve got a lead on them.
Small problem being in a little town, however: They were going to know where to find me, or rather, my belongings. Which meant I had to get there before they did. Fortunately it was early enough (good lord, not even dawn, what kind of uncivilized barbarians were these?) that I didn’t attract too much attention sprinting through the streets in nothing but a sheet. Bad idea going in through the door, but the inn building was a single, sprawling story, all at ground level. I had left my shutters unlatched but closed—I had all my money with me, and in a town this small, stealing my clothing and other gear would be pretty foolhardy, since it would be immediately recognizable. I’d nipped in, grabbed my gear, pulled on my pants and boots, and nipped out again by the time they came roaring up to the door, which the innkeeper’s servant was only just opening for the day.
I saw all this from my vantage point hiding in the thatch of a roof across the street.
And that was where I stayed, figuring I would wait until the fuss died down, then get a ride out with a farmer or something.
But the fuss didn’t die down. This fellow was persistent! First he made the innkeeper turn out my room to prove I wasn’t in it. Then he made the innkeeper turn out all the vacant rooms to prove I wasn’t hiding in them. Then he made the innkeeper turn out all the other guests to prove I wasn’t with one of them! Then he ransacked the stable. Then he and his four bully boys began searching the rest of the town.
Fortunately none of them thought to look up in the thatch of roofs. I suppose they figured that someone of my sort wouldn’t know how to climb. Silly fellows. Windows aren’t always on the ground floor.
However, this left me with a real problem. By the time they were done, the entire town would know about me, and I hadn’t been here long enough to round up any allies. Which meant not only could I not find a real place to hide out, but it was going to be hard to find a way out of town.
