I felt a twinge of guilt, which I rapidly suppressed. Using Juliana and Gabby as bait was low, but there didn’t seem to be any other options. I couldn’t start searching homes or castles at random. All I really knew about the kidnapper was that he was a powerful magician. There were just too many possible suspects. I had to put them at risk, for the good of the Allied Lands. I told myself, as I wove more and more spells of protection around the caravan, that I could keep them safe. The kidnapper wouldn’t see anything waiting, nothing beyond basic wards, until it was far too late.
And someone has been probing the wards, I thought, coldly. They might have already selected them as possible targets.
The thought didn’t soothe my conscience as the hours wore on. I played a handful of games with Gabby, taking the opportunity to weave a couple of spells around her, then watched as two-thirds - not half - of the convoy departed, heading to the gates and freedom. The remainder huddled together, as if they expected to be attacked at any moment. I was silently relieved that Juliana had taken the time to set up proper wards, making it harder for her to move the caravan without taking them down and putting them back up again. The easier it looked to approach the caravan, the more likely we’d draw attention. And yet, it wouldn’t be enough. I needed to spread the word as far as possible.
“I’ll pack up here,” Juliana said, as night started to fall. “You go have fun.”
I nodded, making a show of reluctance that wasn’t meant to fool her. I didn’t want her to call me back, after all. Instead, I strode away, carefully planning my next move. There’s an art to spreading rumours, ones you want to catch fire and spread from one end of the town to the other. The trick is to make the rumours plausible, interesting and just a little outrageous ... but not too outrageous. It was easy enough to spread a rumour about the king’s son being a bastard, in the literal sense of the word, yet impossible to convince people that the queen gave birth to twin sows. They might laugh - it was often the only way the common folk could get back at their tormentors - but they wouldn’t believe. Why should they?
A pair of guardsmen eyed me darkly as I walked past them and into an alleyway. I twisted my glamour as soon as they were out of sight, emerging from the far end in the guise of a travelling handyman. They were really nothing more than apprentice travellers, doing all the nasty jobs while - in theory - training to own and operate a travelling shop or convoy themselves. It was a glamorous job, as seen from the outside. The reality was a little different. Long hours, low wages, corporal punishment from angry masters, no guarantee of actually making enough money to set up for oneself ...
But at least they get to travel, I reminded myself. Most commoners never go more than a few miles from their hometowns.
I walked into a tavern, ordered a drink and sat down. It didn’t take long for me to be joined by a handful of youngsters, all boys save for a girl dressed as a boy. I wondered who she thought she was fooling. She might have gotten away with it in a big city, but in a place where everyone knew everyone else it would be hard to maintain the disguise. I guessed she was planning to run away, as soon as she was confident in her presentation.
“So,” one of them said, trying to be suave and not bringing it off, “what’s it like, being on the road?”
“Well,” I said. “This could take a long time ...”
I allowed myself a shit-eating grin, then started to talk. I knew enough about the life to tell a convincing story, with particular attention on Juliana and Gabby. It was simple to bitch and moan about her, to imply she hexed and cursed people at the drop of a hat ... particularly handymen who tried to get into her underclothes. My audience giggled as I fed them lines about a bitchy witch and an even more bratty daughter, both extremely unpopular within the travelling community. I didn’t need more than a little magic to convince them to spread the word. It would be all over town by midnight.
“She turned me into a rat, for daring to tell her she looked nice,” I lied, smoothly. “I think her poor husband left her.”
The laughter got louder. Sorceresses have always enjoyed more sexual freedom than any other women, save perhaps for the handful of self-made businesswomen. Young men talked in awed tones about what sorceresses were like in bed, stories that were about as true as the nonsense I was feeding them. I’d heard stories that ranged from the believable, perhaps even true, to the downright absurd and perverse. Oh, the story I told them would spread. It was too good not to share.
Good thing she’s leaving tomorrow, I thought. And I have to make that clear.
“It must have been her time of the month,” one of the listeners proclaimed. He’d been downing beer like water. I was mildly surprised he wasn’t already flat on his face. There was so much liquid staining his shirt that the nasty part of my mind wondered if he was only sipping a bit from each tankard. “No
