Scar grabbed the terrified landlady and thrust her angrily at the gasping, teary-eyed Rat. "Hold fast, jack; the woman'll not harm you," he sneered, and shoved past the other man to confront Liam.
With his arms tightly held behind him, Liam could only kick at Scar, but the bigger man swatted his leg away easily. The man who held him wrenched at his arms and hooked one foot around his, drawing· him off balance. Scar snorted with laughter and waded in, slamming his fists into Liam's stomach with a sound like the thump of heavy sacks.
Liam's face mottled with pain and sickness, his sight grew blurry, and he became aware that the man behind him had eaten onions. The strong smell washed over his neck and face.
Onions, gods, he thought, and closed his eyes against two more punishing blows. Then he felt himself slipping to his knees, let go, and a rough hand grabbed his hair and jerked his head back. He opened his eyes weakly. Scar's face was only a few inches away, and he focused with difficulty on the puckered edges of the man's disfigurement. It was a livid purple, a shallow trench across the face.
"There's a man we both know of that's not pleased you've been to another man we both know of," Scar said, "and this man fears y'ought to part Southwark soon. Y'understandr'
He shook Liam's head by the hair he held, which did not help Liam's concentration.
"I haven't been to anyone else," he managed over the roaring ache that was his stomach and chest.
Scar stood up and let go of his head, sending him straight to the ground. The stone floor of the kitchen was wonderfully cold.
"You lie, Rhenford."
"Aye, and at full length," the man who had held him laughed, and aimed a perfect kick directly between his legs. Liam tried to curl up, but his stomach screamed in protest and he simply lay prostrate. Somewhere in the room, the Rat giggled.
"Remember," Scar's voice came to him, close to his ear, "part Southwark soon. This day." A rough hand cuffed his ear, but the stinging was nothing compared to his other pains.
He heard a number of footsteps hurrying out of the kitchen, and then the slamming of the door, but he did not open his eyes. The floor felt good against his burning face, and his muscles would not allow him to move much.
"Oh, Master Rhenford, what've they done!" His landlady was kneeling over him, tentatively touching the back of his head, but he was aware of it only as an annoyance.
Well, he thought dimly, at least Marcius has done something.
Chapter 13
BY THE TIME Coeccias came bustling in with the drudge, Liam was sitting up on the stairs, hugging his stomach. Mistress Dorcas hovered, pestering him with unwanted attention.
"You're awfully quick," he said sourly to the Aedile, moving an arm to wave away the piece of steak his landlady was shoving at him, and wincing at the movement.
"You don't seem to've taken much hurt," the Aedile said. "The girl had you drawn and quartered three times over." He gestured with a wry smile at the drudge, who was staring unashamedly at Liam's pallor. "Who was it?"
"Some of Marcius's playfellows." He finally pushed the landlady gently aside as she tried to probe a particularly delicate area. "Please, madam, I'm fine. And steak is only good for black eyes." He wondered where she had gotten the steak; she never served anything so good to her boarders.
"Y'are all right, then?" Coeccias moved to his side, and Liam quickly nodded, not wanting the Aedile' s blunt fingers added to his landlady's.
"I'll be fine. Just winded."
He was much more than winded. Bright yellow and dull blue bruises blossomed in his imagination, counterparts to the ones he knew would soon appear all over · his torso. Still, Scar had done his job remarkably well, for all the apparent indiscriminateness of his blows. No broken ribs, nothing damaged internally. He had checked himself over as thoroughly as possible, and saw none of the telltale signs he remembered from seeing more badly beaten men.
"And soon to bruise," he added. "But then, I bruise easily."
"I've heard scholars do," Coeccias said in a strange tone, as if something else was occurring to him. "So, Marcius has thrown's hand in?"
"It seems so. Why don't we discuss it upstairs?" He nodded significantly at his landlady, who was wringing her hands and clucking with sympathetic concern as well as watching them greedily and pricking up ears for every word. Amused, the Aedile bent forward to help him up, but Liam forestalled him with a grunt.
He made it to his feet and then began to sway, seized with dizziness. The Aedile casually steadied him, and gave him his arm to lean on as they went slowly up the stairs.
"Our thanks, madam," he said over his shoulder, "if you'd send up some wine?"
Liam lowered himself gingerly into the chair by the window and slumped slowly over the table, unspeakably happy he had not eaten that morning. The nausea was receding, but bright points of light still squirmed at the edges of his vision. They merged with the motes dancing in the mild beam of light lancing through the window, and he closed his eyes and leaned into it, trying to warm away the dull pain.
Coeccias paced silently around the room, waiting, apparently, for the knock at the door that revealed Mistress Dorcas herself with a jug and two mugs. He took them and pressed a coin into her hand with a stem look.
"For the girl," he warned. "A good lass, and quick-legged. Our thanks again."
The landlady let him shut the door in her face without so much as a word.
With his own cup filled, he put one down by Liam's open
