After cursing for a minute or so, the man took half a shuffling step forward, shaking a fist. Denna said something and made a short, sharp gesture with the knife towards the man’s groin. Silence filled the alley and the man’s shoulders shifted a bit. Denna made the gesture again, and the man began to curse more softly, turning away and walking down the alley, his hand still pressed to the side of his neck.
Denna watched him go, then relaxed and slid the knife carefully into her pocket. She turned and walked to the mouth of the alleyway.
I scurried to the front of the building. On the street below I saw Denna and the other woman standing under a streetlamp. In the better light I saw the woman was much younger than I’d thought, just a slip of a girl, her shoulders heaving with sobs. Denna rubbed her back in small circles, and the girl slowly calmed down. After a moment they began walking down the street.
I hurried back to the alley where I had spotted an old iron drainpipe, a relatively easy way to get back down onto the street. But even so it cost me two long minutes and most of the skin off my knuckles to get cobblestones back under my feet.
Only through a pure effort of will did I keep myself from running out of the alley to catch up with Denna and the girl. The last thing I wanted was for Denna to discover I’d been following her.
Luckily, they weren’t moving very fast, and I caught sight of them easily. Denna led the girl back to the nicer part of the city, then took her into a respectable-looking inn with a painted rooster on the sign.
I stood outside for a minute, peering at the layout of the inn through one of the windows. Then I settled my hood more firmly over my face, walked casually around the back portion of the inn, and slid into a seat on the other side of a dividing wall, just around the corner from Denna and the young girl. If I’d wanted to, I could have leaned forward to peer at their table, but as it was, neither one of us could see the other.
The taproom was mostly empty, and a serving girl came up to me almost as soon as I took my seat. She eyed the rich fabric of my cloak and smiled. “What can I get you?”
I eyed the impressive array of polished glass behind the bar. I motioned the serving girl closer and spoke softly, with a rasp in my throat, as if I were recovering from the croup cough. “I’ll take a tumble of your best whiskey,” I said. “And a glass of fine Feloran red.”
She nodded and left.
I turned my finely tuned eavesdroppers’ ears to the next table.
“. . . your accent,” I heard Denna say. “Where are you from?”
There was a pause and a murmur as the girl spoke. Since she was facing away from me, I couldn’t hear what she said.
“That’s in the western farrel isn’t it?” Denna asked. “You’re a long way from home.”
There was murmuring from the girl. Then a long pause where I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t tell if she’d stopped talking, or if she was speaking too quietly for me to hear. I fought the urge to lean forward and peer at their table.
Then the murmuring came back, very soft.
“I know he said he loved you,” Denna said, her voice gentle. “They all say that.”
The serving girl set a tall wineglass in front of me and handed me my tumble. “Two bits.”
Merciful Tehlu. With prices like that, no wonder the place was nearly empty.
I tossed back the whiskey in a single swallow, fighting the urge to cough as it burned down my throat. Then I drew a full silver round out of my purse, set the heavy coin on the table, and put the empty tumble down over the top of it.
I motioned the serving girl close again. “I have a proposal for you,” I said quietly. “Right now I want nothing more than to sit here quietly, drink my wine, and think my thoughts.”
I tapped the overturned tumble with the coin underneath. “If I am allowed to do this without interruption, all of this, less the cost of my drinks, is yours.” Her eyes went a little wide at that, darting down to the coin again. “But if anyone comes over to bother me, even in a helpful way, even to ask if I would like anything to drink, I will simply pay and leave.” I looked up at her. “Can you help me get a little privacy tonight?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Thank you,” I said.
She hurried away and went immediately to another woman standing behind the bar, making a few gestures in my direction. I relaxed a bit, reasonably certain they wouldn’t be drawing any attention to me.
I sipped my wine and listened.
“. . . does your father do?” Denna asked. I recognized the pitch of her voice. It was the same low, gentle tone my father had used when talking to skittish animals. A tone designed to calm someone and set them at their ease.
The girl murmured, and Denna responded. “That’s a fine job. What are you doing here then?”
Another murmur.
“Got handsy, did he?” Denna said matter-of-factly. “Well that’s the nature of eldest sons.”
The girl spoke up again, this time with some fire in her voice, though I still couldn’t make out any of the words.
I buffed the surface of my wineglass a little with the edge of my cloak, then tipped it out and away from me a bit. The wine was so deep a red that it was almost black. It made the side of the glass act like a mirror. Not a wonderful mirror, but I could see tiny shapes at the table around the corner.
I heard Denna sigh, cutting off the low murmur of the girl’s voice. “Let me guess,” Denna said, sounding exasperated. “You stole the silver, or something similar, then ran off to the city.”
The small reflection of the girl just sat there.
“But it wasn’t like you thought it would be, was it?” Denna said, more gently this time.
I could see the girl’s shoulders begin to shake and heard a series of faint, heartbreaking sobs. I looked away from the wineglass and set it back on the table.
“Here.” There was the sound of a glass being knocked onto the table. “Drink that,” Denna said. “It will help a bit. Not a lot. But a bit.”
The sobbing stopped. The girl gave a surprised cough, choking a little.
“You poor, silly thing,” Denna said softly. “Meeting you is worse than looking in a mirror.”
For the first time, the girl spoke loudly enough for me to hear her. “I thought, if he’s going to take me anyway and get it for free, I might as well go somewhere I can pick and choose and get paid for it. . . .”
Her voice trailed off until I couldn’t make out any words, leaving only the low rise and fall of her muffled voice.
“
“But . . .” the girl began.
Denna cut her off. “There’s no young prince out there, dressed in rags and waiting to save you. Even if there were, where would you be? You’d be like a dog he’d found in the gutter. He’d own you. After he took you home, who would save you from him?”
A piece of silence. The girl coughed again, but only a little.
“So what are we going to do with you?” Denna said.
The girl sniffed and said something.
“If you could take care of yourself we wouldn’t be sitting here,” Denna said.
A murmur.
“It’s an option,” Denna said. “They’ll take half of what you make, but that’s better than getting nothing and having your throat slit on top of it. I’m guessing you figured that out yourself tonight.”
There was the sound of cloth on cloth. I tipped my wineglass to get a look, but all I saw was Denna making some indistinct motion. “Let’s see what we have here,” she said. Then there came the familiar clatter of coins on a table.
The girl made an awed murmur.
“No, I’m not,” Denna said. “It’s not so much when it’s all your money in the world. You should know by now how expensive it is to make your own way in the city.”
A murmur that rose at the end. A question.
