“Like hell I will.”
He made like he was going to pull me into the cage, but I didn’t go through three years of self-defense classes to put up with being stuffed into a box. I dug my feet in, shifted my weight, and flipped him over my hip, heavy armor and all. He hit the ground with a loud crash and a grinding of metal, the dog nearest him managing to scramble out of the way just in time, but before the other man could so much as shout, I was on my nearest mother’s guard, trying to find a point of vulnerability that I could exploit.
Here’s the thing about armor—face on, there’s not a lot there to exploit. With little choice, I did what I could to disable him before intending to move on to the next mother-guarding man.
“This is intolerable!” I yelled as the door-holding guard ran over to pluck me off Mom’s guard, whom I was beating on the head with his own helm. A couple of dogs leaped about excitedly while I was hauled off the man, who now had a cut over one eye that ran in gruesome glory down his face. I tripped over another dog, apologizing as I did so. “Sorry, doggy, but this mean guard jerked me and made me step on you. Look, buster, I don’t hold with people abusing animals, so stop dragging me over the top of these dogs. Boy, there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”
I didn’t have time to continue, since my two guards threw me bodily into one of the cages, slamming the door behind me. I heard a key turn in the lock as I picked myself up and ran to the steel-barred door in an attempt to wrench it open.
Two dogs sat outside the door, panting and clearly hoping I would continue the fun romping game.
“Gwenny, dear, are you hurt?” my mother asked as she, Mom Two, and Mrs. Vanilla were placed in the matching cage. The guards didn’t manhandle them, I was relieved to note. Although there was a space of about six feet between our cages, I was comforted by the fact that they were nearby, and as safe as an unjustly incarcerated person finding herself in the Welsh afterlife could be.
“No. Just very, very pissed. Hey, you, plate boy. My mothers are old, and Mrs. Vanilla is really elderly. Give them some food and water and blankets and stuff.”
The guard said nothing, just lit a torch inside the entrance, and left, letting the tent flap drop as he went.
“Bastard,” I muttered, and began to prowl the cage to look for weakness. The dogs accompanied me. “Sorry, guys. I’m not going to play right now. Maybe later, OK?”
Oddly enough, the dogs seemed to understand, because they both turned and wandered out of the tent, leaving us alone. A few minutes later, another guard appeared, this one minus his helmet but with his arms full of blankets, with two carefully balanced jugs on top. A second guard carried a couple of long flat metal platters bearing bread, cheese, and what looked to be some sort of smoked meat.
I wasn’t surprised to find a fresh company of hounds on his heels, evidently very interested in the food.
The guards passed the food through the bars to us, ignoring my pleas to be taken to whoever was in charge so that we could clear up the situation. Thankfully, they shooed the dogs out before them when they left. So it was that a half hour later, fed, hydrated by ice-cold water that was actually very good, and with the warmth of a thick woolen blanket around us, we all settled down to get a little sleep.
“Things will look brighter in the morning,” my always optimistic mother said as she curled up with Mom Two on one of the camp beds in her cage, Mrs. Vanilla having been settled on the other. “They always do.”
I said nothing, but as I watched the torch sputter and finally die, my thoughts were as dark as the night outside the prison tent.
• • •
“See? I told you things would look brighter,” my mother said some seven hours later. I shot her a brief glare, and she had the grace to look abashed.
“I wouldn’t call a bloodred sky brighter.” My attention was momentarily distracted by the fact that the sky was, in fact, deep, dark red and striped with dirty gray wisps of what I assumed were clouds. Smoke, thick and dark, wafted upward in long, lazy curls from some unknown—but nearby—source. Every now and then, a little rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and twice my peripheral vision caught the sudden flash of lightning.
There were no clouds in the sky.
I took a deep breath, one of several that I had taken during the last ten minutes since we had been released from our prisons. We’d been given more water (which again was fresh and cold and almost sweet, it was so good), thick slabs of bread, a little pottery bowl of butter, and rough-cut slices of the best cheese I’d ever had. Three young-looking dogs who could have been siblings snuck in after breakfast was delivered and waited patiently outside my cell until I couldn’t stand their hopeful eyes any longer and handed over bites of bread and cheese. Two apples completed my food allotment, both of which I stuck in my hoodie pockets for later.
Luckily, I’d just finished using what could only be described as a camping toilet, discreetly located in the corner and hidden behind a long blue curtain that was hung from the bars across the ceiling of the cell.
“Say what you will about the accommodations,” Mom Two said as they settled in to their breakfast. I noticed somewhat jealously that they had also been given plump, juicy-looking grapes. “The food is delicious. Gwenny, don’t give those hounds any more cheese. It will give them wind. Is there more butter, Alice?”
Mrs. Vanilla made happy little noises as she ate grapes.
It was a good thing that we were all hungry, because we were given only a few minutes to eat before a new contingent of guards appeared and herded us out of our prisons.
“Who exactly are we being taken to see?” I asked my guards. I noticed with irritation that I had two of them, while my mothers and Mrs. Vanilla had only one each. The morning sun glinted off the armor they wore, which appeared to be made of pale golden-plated pieces, bound together with mail of the same color. Men and women alike wore the armor, I was somewhat gratified to notice. At least wherever we’d ended up, women weren’t treated like inferior beings. “Hey, I asked you guys a question, and I expect an answer!”
“Gwen, I don’t believe an antagonistic attitude is going to benefit us,” Mom Two cautioned from behind me.
I could have told her that I was fully aware it wasn’t the way to make friends and influence people, but that, at the moment at least, wasn’t my goal. I wanted information, and if being obnoxious was the only way to get it, then I could be VERY obnoxious.
“Dude,” I said, dragging my heels and jerking the guards on each of my arms to a halt. “I am not taking another step until someone tells me what’s going on!”
The guards picked me up with a hand under each of my armpits and simply carried me forward.
“Dammit!” I yelled, kicking my legs and trying to be as dead a weight as possible. “Put me down! Why the hell won’t you speak?”
“They are not allowed to speak to spies,” a man answered. The guards stopped and set me down in front of him, which was at the opening of a purple-and-white-striped tent. The man was also in armor, although his had fancier bits of embossing and little round medallion plates on it. Obviously, he wasn’t just an ordinary soldier. Next to him, on the ground, lay an elderly version of the dogs who had hit me up for part of my breakfast. She lifted her head when the man spoke, her tail thumping on a dark purple rug.
“We are not spies,” I said, straightening my clothing with exaggerated gestures. “I am an alchemist. My mothers are Wiccans. The old lady is just an old lady. She doesn’t talk much. Who are you?”
“Your name?” the man asked, his long, mobile face not at all what I would have pictured as someone in charge of soldiers. He looked goofy, like a young Hugh Laurie pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
“Gwen Owens.”
“I’m Gwenny’s mother, Magdalena,” my mom said as she came forward. She gestured to the right. “This is my partner, Alice Hill. Mrs. Vanilla is our client.”
The man bowed with a metallic rustle. “Colorado Jones.”
I stared at him for a minute. “You mean like ‘Indiana Jones’ but with ‘Colorado’ instead?”
He blinked somewhat vacant blue eyes at me. “I’m not acquainted with Sir Indiana, my lady. Is he with Lord Aaron’s army?”
“OK,” I said after a moment’s pause, “I think for sanity’s sake we’re just going to let that go and move forward. Who do I speak to about this patently ridiculous claim that we’re spies? I don’t even know who we’re supposed to be spying against, or for, and why, but I can tell you that it’s all wrong. We just got to Anwyn about ten seconds before we were captured.”
