found he had only one egora's worth of copper on him. So, while carefully watching to ensure she held her hands perfectly still, he quickly borrowed two others from his peers.
'There you are,' he proclaimed. 'Three silvers, even if two are in copper. Now show the coin!'
'Your guess?' asked Kehrsyn.
'Crowns!' barked the soldier.
'You're sure you won't change your mind?'
'Quit trying to flummox me and show the coin!'
Kehrsyn lifted her hand. The egora very plainly showed verses. The audience erupted in laughter and applause. In the midst of the noise, the soldier stared at her in shock and anger.
'The trick,' she told him, 'is knowing when to stop.'
But before she could scoop the coins from his hand, Noseminer clenched his fist and stormed off, followed by the jeers of the gathered crowd. The rest of the soldiers ambled off as well, chuckling to themselves.
Despite having been shortchanged, Kehrsyn still had a profit to show for her efforts. She paid the merchant back two silvers as she had promised, and received an ovation for her honesty. But, in the end, applause was all that the crowd was willing to part with.
She performed prestidigitation and sleight of hand through the early afternoon, to an ever-changing crowd that watched with enough interest to withstand the drizzle, if only for a short while. Finally, however, the ongoing drizzle chilled her thoroughly, and her hands began to shiver. She had to stop. She looked into her little box, open at her feet. Save a thin film of water, it was empty. She had nothing to show for her efforts but a single silver egora and the fading memories of a score or more of bright, young faces. One silver for a young woman with nothing to eat and no place to stay…
She hoped the children's happy memories of her would last longer than her pittance.
CHAPTER TWO
Kehrsyn had stopped her performance, but the shopping in the plaza showed no sign of winding down, despite the cold rain. The initial crowds drawn by the arrival of a new shipment of food were thinner, but still persistent in the face of prices that had doubled, then doubled again. Chilled guards scowled over the newly arrived edibles, while the city watch occasionally roughed someone up.
Probably just trying to keep warm, thought Kehrsyn.
She gathered her gear and pulled her hood over her rain-dampened hair. Kneeling, she tipped the water out of her small box and closed the lid, put it back into her bag, and slung the bag's strap across her shoulder. As she rose, she saw a scrawny youth standing nearby. Kehrsyn recognized him. He'd been hanging around the fringe of the crowd, trying to pretend he hadn't been watching her. He met her eyes, then dropped his gaze, then tried to look at her again but more or less failed and stared in the general vicinity of her neck.
'Yes?' she said.
'You're real good, Miss,' he mumbled. He reached out one hand to her, hiding his face behind his shoulder. He held a large, ripe golden pear in his grip. 'Um… here.'
She took the offering with both hands and smiled.
'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you very much. What's your name?'
'Jaldi,' said the lad, with a self-conscious smile. He paused, then blurted, 'You're real pretty, too.' Then he turned and ran away.
Kehrsyn waved at his rapidly retreating back, but he didn't look behind him before he left her sight. She took a big, contented bite of the pear, staring vacantly in the direction the boy had gone.
The delight engendered by his awkward compliment faded and was replaced by a cool dread. The boy's admiration had put her in mind of the sole other member of the audience who'd watched her entire performance: a harsh-looking man with swarthy features and a dark green cloak. At first, she had taken him for one of the army, so military was his bearing. He had situated himself here and there around the plaza, never obvious, always where the view was best, leaning against a wall or wagon, arms folded across his chest, eyes narrowed, running his thumb back and forth over his lower lip.
She turned, chewing her lunch, and skimmed the courtyard. There, to her right. The same man was still watching her, over by the horse trough next to the blacksmith's. While Kehrsyn liked admirers as much as anyone, there was something in the man's stance that was far too businesslike for her tastes, as if he looked on her as an adversary and not a potential flirtation.
Kehrsyn casually walked out of the courtyard. She paused to inspect a blade offered by an arms merchant (weapons were priced almost as exorbitantly as food) and, turning the polished bronze weapon in her hand to reflect the Jackal's Courtyard behind her, caught a glimpse of the dark man moving parallel to her on the other side of the plaza. He was shadowing her, to her left and rear.
The merchant stooped under his table, and Kehrsyn's hand strayed to her sash, but she remembered her vow and forced herself to return the blade with a 'thank you' and a dazzling smile. She continued on her way to a street leading off the plaza. Once out of the man's view, she increased her speed and turned into an angled street on her right, quickly enough that he-whoever he was-could not have seen her.
Just to be safe, she picked up her speed even more, then ducked into a narrow alley that opened to her left, keeping her free hand on her rapier to keep it from bouncing around. She wasn't certain where the alley led, but, wherever it did, she was certain that she had evaded the stranger.
Though the alley protected her from the chill breeze, the rain and the cold remained, enhanced somewhat by the foul smells of rotting refuse. For once, Kehrsyn found a reason to thank the cold weather. In the summers, alleys stank something foul. Her breath steamed around her limp hair as she moved down the alleyway, looking for an outlet to another avenue. Navigating by instinct, she moved through the narrow, winding gap, passing a few branches before coming to a dead end. She paused and stared blankly at the wall in front of her, concealed as high as her waist by a pile of decomposing garbage. She pulled a lock of wet hair out of her face and retraced her steps, but just as she arrived at the first juncture, she saw her way blocked by an armed man.
She was relieved to see that it wasn't the same man from the plaza… and, for just a moment, she also felt a slight pang of disappointment.
He was short, shorter than she. The steam curling from his sneering lip combined with his powerful build to give the impression of a bull or a fighting dog. A thick cloak covered his head and shoulders, and a black tabard with some sort of gold emblem draped off his wide chest, the hem shedding droplets that splashed in the dirty puddles at his feet. A shield hung across his back. He straightened as he saw Kehrsyn approach, and her ears picked up the grate of steel on steel. He's wearing mail beneath his cloak, Kehrsyn thought, splint or scale.
'Olare,' she said, for lack of anything better, and took another bite of her pear. 'So, um, what kind of uniform is that? That's s no soldier's outfit that I know. And you don't have that medallion the Northern Wizards' people wear. Are you a mercenary? Or some kind of deputized…'
Kehrsyn's words trailed off as the burly man drew a long sword from a well-crafted scabbard. He swung it at his side in a lazy figure eight and stepped toward her.
Kehrsyn jumped to an unwanted conclusion.
'I'll scream,' she said.
'Go ahead,' said the man in a surprisingly high-pitched voice with a noticeable northwestern accent. 'If the local pikegrabbers get here, I don't gotta trot you all the way over to the damn barracks to get my bounty.'
Kehrsyn furrowed her brow.
'Don't try to act so damn innocent, pretty little thief,' he said, sounding more like a juvenile than the veteran he clearly was. 'You stole that pear, and there's a bounty on freeloaders like you.'
Kehrsyn's eyes widened as she stared at the half-eaten piece of fruit in her hand.
'I did no such thing!' she blurted.
She began edging backward, down the dead-end alley.
'Of course not,' replied the man,' 'cuz I hear that in this city, if you steal food, they don't chop your hand, they chop your damn neck.'
'I didn't steal it!' said Kehrsyn, knowing how thin her protests must sound. 'It was a gift! This boy, he liked-'
