enchantress’s feet. She jumped past, committed beyond heed for further risks. Her crystal burned against her skin as once again she raised power. Her hastily-wrought net of spells caught and strained to stay the mob who now surged to butcher an unconscious victim.
‘Stop!’ Elaira shouted clearly. ‘This one’s mine. I claim his life as spoils.’
The front-rank aggressors rocked to a stupefied stop, hostility stamped on every red and sweating face; the swords flashed at angles still eager for slaughter. Trembling before that hedge of raised weapons, Elaira held her ground. Should even one man control hatred enough to see reason, the whole crowd would discover she was not the painted doxie her glamour made her appear.
Yet grudges in Erdane ran obsessively deep.
Startled by female intervention and emotionally charged from adrenalin, the furious ones were easiest to deflect. Elaira’s mazework of confusion hooked their anger and carved out a foothold for change: in something like sheepish embarrassment men glanced at the prince behind her knees. Their minds recalled no barbarian impostor, but instead saw a wine-raddled street-rat who had carelessly offended someone else.
The few who had sustained injuries were far less easily diverted. Some of these shoved forward, waving bludgeons of snapped-off chair legs; not a few still wielded knives and the fellow who had tumbled from the rafters was howling in self-righteous indignation. Sweating, Elaira strove to extend her spell of influence. But her fragile fabric of illusion only thinned and shuddered near to breaking: she had no more resource left to spare.
Beyond hope, past all recourse, she faced defeat. Erdane’s ongoing feud with the past was going to end her life and that of the prince she had rashly tried to rescue.
Then like a miracle, the voice of the minstrel offered surcease. ‘Let the doxie have him and be done! Dharkaron knows, he’s filthy enough to disgust a hog. Probably going to leave her with the Avenger’s own pox to remember him by.’
The slur raised a wave of scattered laughter.
‘Sithaer, now,’ Elaira added, somehow through terror and an unstable grip on two spells finding a note that approximated disgust. ‘It wasn’t my bed I’d be offering him!’
A weatherbeaten captain toward the fore loosed a bellowing guffaw. ‘Leave him to her!’ he said. ‘She’ll probably scald his ears well enough.’ He shrugged to unlock a battered shoulder, then sheathed his steel; around him, other off-duty companions backed off smiling. The most rabid of the headhunters wavered and in that instant of reprieve, Elaira hooked the door adjoining pantry and commonroom and slammed the panel closed. For the benefit of the kitchen staff who gawked in the path of her retreat, she jabbed her fallen prize in the ribs, then launched into spiteful imprecations.
‘Daelion mark ye in the hereafter for stinking bad habits! Ye wasted lump of a lout, ye dare te be stealin’ my hard-earned coin fer spendin’ on tankards at the tap!’
The cook stepped into the breach and shook Elaira’s arm. ‘Wench, if you’re minded to scold, spare us some peace and do it elsewhere.’
The enchantress whirled in crazed fury. ‘How will I, with himself sprawled there with the onions and limp as dead dogmeat into the bargain?’
She waved the fist with the pastry roller and set a row of canisters tottering. The cook snatched the implement away from her, jerked his greasy bangs toward his staff, then barked a command to lift the unconscious object of this madwoman’s scorn and forcibly heave him out.
The pot-boys grinned and lent their efforts to the cause. Arithon was hefted under the armpits, dragged through dustings of spilled flour and the grease-scummed runoff from the dish tubs and ejected through an exit that led to the rear of the tavern.
Elaira followed, crying curses. She swore with redoubled vehemence upon discovery they had pitched her hard-won royalty headlong into the midden.
She shrilled at the fast-slamming door, ‘Dharkaron break ye for rogues, now I’ve got te wash his blighted clothing!’
The panel banged shut and a bar dropped in place with a final, sour clank.
Elaira subsided, shaking.
The alley behind the Four Ravens was dark and damply cold. Feeling the chill to her bones, the enchantress sucked a breath past her teeth that came shudderingly near to a choke as she gagged on the rank stench of garbage. ‘Sithaer and Dharkaron’s Five Horses,’ she muttered to the form at her feet. ‘What in this life am I to do with you?’
The prince, sprawled limply in a nest of wilted carrots, returned an involuntary groan; then, from the shadow to one side, a sane voice proffered reply: ‘Where do you think he would be safe?’
Startled, Elaira spun and released a hissing gasp. The speaker proved to be the singer, leaning against the alley wall with the prince’s salvaged cloak draped on his wrist. He smiled in quick reassurance. ‘You probably saved his life back there. He’d better thank you properly for the risks you undertook. If he doesn’t, make sure to break all his fingers, then tell him I gave you permission.’
Weak in the knees with relief, Elaira slumped against the midden door. ‘You know this man?’
‘We’re acquainted.’ The bard picked his way through the compost and crouched to check the victim’s prone body. Satisfied to find no lasting damage, he clicked his tongue. ‘Now where are you wanting to hide him? Or do you trust him so much you’d have him wake up alone and maybe blunder into further mischief?’
Elaira thought quickly. ‘The hayloft, please.’ Since the gates closed at sundown, no mounted travellers could be expected to arrive or depart from the tavern until day-light; the grooms would be carousing and the horseboy predictably asleep.
‘All right then,’ the bard said agreeably. ‘Help me lift him before some churl inside sits up and notices I didn’t duck out to use the privy.’
The loft above the Ravens’ innyard was dusty with the meadow-sweet scent of hay and warm from the couriers’ mounts and coach-horses stabled in stalls down below. Couched in a cranny between haystacks and the high, windowless north wall with Arithon sprawled by her knees, Elaira bent over a bucket and wrung out a strip of linen torn at need from the lining of her shepherd’s cloak. Lit by a glimmer from her crystal, the enchantress dabbed caked dirt and sweat from the unmistakably s’Ffalenn features of the prince. Belatedly, she discovered blood in his hair. His scalp had been split by the pastry roller.
