One of the women lay beside her and stroked the hair back from Deryn’s face. The whore’s lips touched hers, at first a tentative brush, then returning more assertively. Deryn pulled the woman to her. She was impelled by the sudden desperate need to touch flesh. Her hand scrabbled clumsily though the whore’s clothes, seeking a way inside.
The whore pulled away and then shifted over so that she sat, straddling Deryn’s waist. The weight, pressing down on her, ignited a fire in Deryn’s groin. Her hips began to move of their own accord, to the rhythm of her desire. She could not stop them if she wanted. She felt the whore’s fingers slipping loose the buttons on her shirt.
The material fell open, letting a cooler draft of air play over her inflamed skin. Deryn grabbed the whore’s hands and fastened them on her breasts. The whore trapped both nipples between thumbs and palm, squeezing and rubbing them, making Deryn groan. At the same time, other hands untied her bootlaces and slipped them off. Teeth nipped gently at her ankles.
Two whores. Double the cost. Money well spent.
Deryn’s need to be touched, to be given release, was a monster inside her, taking control, except that lying down in the dark was working against her. Deryn’s thoughts had been dissolving ever since drinking the beer in the Warrior’s Return. Now the dark was seeping into her head. Her body was drifting apart.
The touch of a tongue between her legs was a flare of absolute pleasure, calling her back from sleep for an instant, but only an instant. The wave of darkness could not be held back. Deryn’s thoughts floated away on a sea of flowers.
*
Rain splattered on Deryn’s face. The droplets trickled down her cheeks and into her hair. They seeped around to the back of her neck and soaked into the collar of her shirt, so that the cold, clammy material stuck to her back and shoulders. Still asleep, Deryn twitched her head, futilely trying to avoid the unpleasant sensation until a chill gust of wind brought a sharper salvo. The sudden drenching was enough to draw Deryn back to the world. Her eyelids flew open so sharply that Deryn heard the snap.
A thin band of morning sky stretched above her, sandwiched by the dripping eaves of two roofs. Gray clouds scudded across the gap between. A mist of raindrops fell into her eyes, making her blink. Deryn raised a hand to her face, feeling her icy wet skin.
Memories returned in a stampede—soft lips and hooded eyes, masquerading desire; beer and Abran’s voice, urging her to drink more; the blur of streets as she had stumbled along with her new acquaintance; hands removing her clothes; the scent of perfume and sex.
Between one heartbeat and the next, a pounding headache erupted. Deryn clamped her hand over her forehead. Her skull felt as if it was about to crack open, but her groan owed more to despair than pain. How could she have been so stupid?
One hand she kept tightly wrapped over her head, just to be sure the top did not come off when she moved. Deryn levered herself up onto her free elbow. She was lying at the end of a blind alley. Green slime and refuse covered the ground. It stank of rotten cabbage, piss, and vomit. The rotten cabbage was nothing to do with her, but Deryn could not be so sure about the rest.
Her clothes were all in place, although disheveled in such a way as to imply that someone else had dressed her hurriedly, and with little care. Her belt and bootlaces were loose. Only two buttons on her shirt were done up, and one of those was in the wrong hole. Her pants were plastered with brown sludge that she hoped was mud.
At the far end, the alley opened onto a wider street. A solitary figure hurried by, without looking in Deryn’s direction. Apart from this, the town was quiet, which Deryn took to mean that it was not long after dawn. Normally she could estimate the time from the light, but something was wrong with her vision. Even through the thick clouds, the sky was painfully bright, making Deryn squint and her eyes water. Her lips tingled numbly and nausea was now matching her headache. Her hands were shaking, and not from the cold.
She had been carried from the clip joint and dumped, without waking. Deryn knew she had not drunk enough to account for it. Taking everything together, it confirmed her suspicion that Abran had laced her drink with some other drug. Why had she not been more suspicious of the strange aftertaste to the beer in the Warrior’s Return?
Carefully, Deryn rose to a sitting position and then buried her face in her hands. She needed to prepare herself before confronting the world and owning up to her ridiculous gullibility. She could not believe how dim-witted she had been. She did not know where in Oakan she had ended up the previous night and had even less idea where she was now. Apart from Abran, she would not be able to identify anyone she had seen, and it was a safe bet that he would not be showing his face around town until it was certain she had left.
Abran had hooked, drugged, and trapped her. How had she not spotted it? The con was so old that Deryn could not claim she had never been warned about it. Of all the sordid, catchpenny tricks, she had just fallen for the cheapest.
Deryn did not need to feel for her purse to know it was missing.
*
The King’s Marshals did not much care for Iron Wolves. The sentiment was mutual.
Deryn stood, glowering at the two officers on the other side of the room. “Useless, arrogant, fucking ass-kissers.” She mostly kept the thought to herself, no more than muttering the words under her breath. For their part, the two men ignored her, as they had been doing for the previous half hour.
The marshal’s station was a typical example of Oakan architecture, with rough-sawn, mud-plastered walls, a stone floor, and waxed cloth instead of glass in the windows. The main thing that marked it as different from any tradesman’s workplace in the town was the king’s standard, hanging from a rafter. The other thing was the complete absence of anything resembling work going on.
One officer was a clerk, sitting at a small writing table. He had insisted Deryn tell her story three times, doubtless for the entertainment value, before he had taken any notes. The other was a soldier, armed with a weighted net and quarterstaff, the usual weapons employed by marshals in towns for enforcing the king’s laws and subduing criminals. So why was he not out in the town, stopping crime, rather than farting around in the office? His only role seemed to be sniggering at the clerk’s comments and scratching himself.
From the outset, Deryn had known that making a formal report on the theft was a waste of time, but she was low on options. Without money, how would she get through winter? The only question would be whether she starved or froze first. If the marshal could not help her track down Abran and his gang of crooks, she would have to go cap in hand to the Wolves’ Den and see if someone would lend her money to cover the journey south. Having to beg would be humiliating beyond enduring, but nothing compared to hearing what Brise would have to say when she got to Ellaye.
Deryn closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to restrain a groan. Maybe starving in the snow might not be so bad. The only good thing was that she had paid the stable in advance for Tia’s care. Of course, her final option was to sell her horse, and Deryn was nowhere close to being desperate enough to do that. I’ll starve first.
“Hey. You.”
Deryn opened her eyes. “Yes?”
The clerk jerked his head toward the door behind his shoulder. “The marshal’s free now. You can go in.”
Seeing that nobody had left the room, Deryn suspected the marshal had been free ever since she arrived. The clerk had made her wait for the fun of it.
As she passed the two officers, she heard the soldier murmur to his colleague, “Like they say, fighting and fucking.”
“What else can you expect from rabble?”
Their voices had been low, but they clearly intended Deryn to overhear what was said. She clenched her fists, wishing she was able to force the words back down their throats. Regardless of her chance of winning the fight, taking her anger out on someone would feel so good, but under the circumstances, the luxury was not one she could afford. The door closed behind her, c
utting out another round of sneering laughter.
The King’s Marshal for the district sat behind his desk, pouting disdainfully at the sheet of notes from the clerk. He was a hatchet-faced man in his mid forties, with a more businesslike manner than either of his subordinates, although this was no great feat. Deryn knew his name was Palemon, and that he was a distant cousin of the king, although allegedly out of favor, which explained his exile to the unfashionable northern fringes of Galvonia. The prior knowledge was useful, since Palemon did not bother to introduce himself.
“You claim to have had money stolen by a whore?” Palemon’s tone made a question of the statement, as if its truth were in doubt.
“Yes, sir.”
“But you have no idea where, and only a rough guess for when?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could you describe the whore?”
“No, sir.”
“Male? Female? Or didn’t you notice?”
Deryn ignored the sarcasm. “I can describe the grifter who spiked my beer and took me to the clip joint.”
The marshal looked again at the notes, as if refreshing his memory. “Ah, yes. You claim you were drugged.”
“I was drugged.”
“I have no difficulty believing you weren’t in full possession of whatever wits you own. But what’s your evidence it wasn’t merely that you’d had a few beers too many?”
“I’m sure.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I thought at the time the beer Abran gave me had a odd aftertaste.”
“I asked if you could prove it. Do you have any proof?”
Deryn sighed. “No, sir.”
Palemon leaned back and steepled his fingers. “So, supposing I have all my officers ignore the rest of their responsibilities, and devote themselves solely to tracking down this brothel, though we have no information about where to look, or how to recognize the place, or anyone in it. If they should be fortunate enough to succeed, what if the whores claim you had agreed to pay them this money for their services? Could you deny it? I agree, given the state you were clearly in, it’s doubtful you could have gotten value for money, but that’s not their fault.”
“I was drugged, not drunk. It was part of the scam they were all in on, so it fucking well was their fault. And I had a whole season’s pay in my purse. For that much, I could have had every damned whore in Oakan for the week.” Admittedly, this was a slight exaggeration. Even five years’ pay would not stretch so far. Oakan held a vast army of prostitutes.
Palemon slapped his hand on the desk. “I don’t appreciate that sort of language in my office.”
Deryn dropped her eyes to the floor, fighting to keep control of her anger. This was worse than being robbed. Abran had taken her money, not her self-respect, and if ever she laid hands on him, he would not object to her swearing. He would have quite enough else to worry about. She would make sure of it.
“The fact remains that you can give us nothing to work with in tracking down these supposed thieves, and no firm evidence to hold against them if we did. I really don’t see what you’re hoping for me, or my officers, to do.” Palemon’s self-satisfied smile was the final insult.
Deryn would put up with it no longer. She turned to the door. “I’m sorry for wasting your time, sir. I hope you’re equally sorry for wasting mine.”
“Wait a minute.”
Deryn stopped with the handle in the grip. “What?”
The smile had gone and Palemon was now giving her an appraising look. “If that was your entire year’s earnings, what do you intend to do now?”
As if you give a flying fuck. Deryn swallowed her first reply. “I’ll think of something.”
“Because, although I can’t help you with the lost money, I might have an offer you’d find useful.”
“Such as?”
“A job.”
Was it another game? Judging by the marshal’s expression, there was more to it, but the bait was too enticing to ignore. Deryn turned back to face him. “What sort of job?”
“There’s a small farming community, a few miles to the north of here. It’s only a day’s travel, but when the winter snows hit, it will be cut off for weeks on end. However, it’s part of the Kingdom of Galvonia, and therefore it’s my job to protect it. Luckily, it doesn’t need much protecting—the odd pack of wolves, a half-starved bear, a lost child. At worst, a farm may get hit by an avalanche and need digging out. That’s all you’ll see in winter. In summer, they might have an occasional thief who makes the mistake of going there before finding out there’s nothing worth stealing. The winter garrison is only three soldiers, but I’m still having trouble finding volunteers.”
“Why?”
“I’ll be honest with you. It doesn’t pay well, and it’s deadly boring. I’d prefer to have my own men stationed there, but I’ve employed Iron Wolves in the past when I had trouble making up the numbers. Are you interested?”
Deryn raised her eyes to the ceiling while she made a pretense of thinking it over. Instead of a winter in the southern warmth, swapping stories with Brise, she would be freezing her tits off in the ass-end of nowhere, with soldiers, snowmen, and sheep for company. But what option did she have? If nothing else, it would be an excuse to put in the letter to Brise, explaining her absence that winter.
“Okay.”
The hills above Neupor,
30 miles north of Oakan, northern Galvonia
Two days later, octubre 9, dawn
Alana woke and rolled onto her back. Gray predawn light peeked through the window shutters and drew faint lines across the rafters. She yawned and stretched out her arms. Something was missing. The bed beside her was empty.
Alana closed her eyes, mentally rebuking herself. Why should it still surprise her each day? The bed had been empty for the last year. How long before she got used to it? Or was missing a warm body to hug and soft lips to kiss every morning something that only got worse with time? In which case, the future looked grim. The ribald local jokes were no longer quite so funny. Another few years and I’ll be eyeing up the sheep as well.
The crowing cockerel broke the peace, destroying any hope of snuggling under the covers and going back to sleep. Alana took a deep breath and slipped out of bed. Chores awaited her: wood to chop, the cow to milk, eggs to gather. She pulled open the door, letting wisps of morning mist trail into the room. The air was crisp and clean, heady with the scent of pines and wet earth.
On three sides of the cottage, the forest of dark green conifers formed a high protective hedge. Her herb and vegetable garden filled the clearing in front, with the chicken coop and cow shed off to one side. Her home was sited high on the hillside, overlooking farms dotted around the glittering small lake below. From the doorway, Alana had an unimpeded view of the mountains lining the horizon on the opposite side of the valley, buttressed by sheer cliffs and topped with snow. The sky to the east was a riot of pink and gold. Dawn was close. Only the brightest stars still twinkled directly overhead. Even the ramshackle hamlet of Neupor looked quaint in the distance.
Alana sighed. The panorama that greeted her each morning was worth everything Ellaye had to offer and more. It was a shame Reyna had not thought the same.
Looking back, Alana had not been surprised when Reyna finally left. More surprising was that she stayed as long as she did. In the end, it had been the comforts of court life, not the arms of another lover, that Reyna had been unable to live without. Even so, Alana wondered who the rival had been. Reyna never offered any clues and Alana had not challenged her on the subject.
The cottage was admittedly basic, just a colorless single room. The furniture was sparse; a couple of chairs by the stone fireplace, a table under the unglazed window, a dresser against the wall facing it, and the box bed built into the corner. The thatched roof was smoke blackened. Unpainted clay plaster filled the gaps in the log walls.
Reyna had complained that the decoration lacked refinement, and it had not helped when Alana
pointed this was not strictly true. There was no decoration, refined or otherwise. Everything was purely functional, simple and basic. No paintings or relics hung on the walls, no hint of gold or gems enhanced their possessions, no embroidered carpets lay on the slate floor. Alana had offered to get a sheepskin rug, but this had not made Reyna happy, although her refusal had surely cheered up a sheep somewhere no end.
The absence of anything beyond what was absolutely necessary included their clothes. Alana grabbed her outer garments off the back of the nearest chair: loose pants and a looser shirt, made from coarse, homespun cotton; thick woolen socks; and boots so chunky they had probably taken half a cow each to make. Alana’s family could have afforded better—the Quintanillas’ annual outlay on shoe polish alone would buy the cottage several times over—but fine linen and a mansion would rather have spoilt the pretense of being ordinary commoners.
Reyna had understood the logic of it, yet clothes had been the start of their final argument.
The stem had snapped while the carrot was stuck half out of the ground. Reyna had slipped and fallen on her butt. She squeaked as she landed and Alana had laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sorry.” Despite the word of apology, Alana had continued laughing. Maybe that had been the biggest mistake.
Reyna scrambled to her feet and scowled over her shoulder, trying to see the coating of mud she had acquired. “It’s bad enough I’m wearing rags I wouldn’t give to a stable boy. Now I’m filthy and I’ve got to put up with you cackling. Look at the state I’m in.” Disgust and shame came off Reyna in waves.
“It doesn’t matter. Who’s to see you?”
“Nobody.” With that word, the nature of her upset shifted, from distress to anger. “Damn well nobody.”
Wolfsbane Winter Page 10