When his stiffened excitement pressing against her buttock began to fade, she knew she was close. The man had filled himself with either too much wine or too much self-importance—after delivering a lonely, starving, destitute young woman into the sanctuary of his good graces—to take much note of his body turning against him. A man could get just as drunk on either. But his hand had lingered on her thigh, sliding up her skirts with a temerity she found more than a little amusing. Farden even went so far as to make a few jests about his tenants, at which she chuckled lightly, and laughed at himself in loud, squawking bursts before burying his face in the neckline of her blouse—as if his mirth had made it impossible to hold his head upright where it belonged.
Rahlizje withstood all this with an outwardly demure patience and took it upon herself to pour them both more wine. In less than an hour, enduring the man’s fanciful notions of what that night might have become, she drank him quite literally under the low table in front of the hearth.
Then she’d left him there, sprawled out on the thick rug beside the growing crimson stain of an overturned cup. The landholder had revealed on either their first or second encounter that his lady wife had journeyed south to the Teriborus for some function requiring her dutiful attendance. Rahlizje had stepped over the inebriated Windel Farden, her stolen skirts draping across his face, and slipped from his study to make her way into the lady’s chambers. But not before she pocketed the rather heavy ring that had been winking at her all night from atop the bookcase. She’d meant to give it a closer look when she was free of Cirgress altogether.
As in many large estates, the Lady Farden’s rooms were just at the other end of the hall on the second floor. Rahlizje had found it painfully difficult to refrain from stripping down the billowing curtain, tossing as many valuables onto it as she could bear, and pilfering the whole lot in a knapsack over her shoulder. But she was not careless, and she most certainly wasn’t stupid. She’d settled for a silver hairpin with pearl inlay, a tree-shaped brooch studded with what she thought were bloodstones, and a small porcelain box that fit snugly in her palm. The thing was most likely not as valuable as a few other choices, but it had been painted in painstaking detail—vivid blues, purples, yellows, and reds depicting a blooming flower garden and two nude nymphs engaged in either celebratory dance or something a bit more intimate. The box itself was also heavier than she’d expected, but these three things slipped neatly into the hidden pockets of her cloak beside Farden’s large ring. And that, she’d been certain, was enough.
The night had gone as perfectly as she’d planned but for one minor oversight. The master of this estate had certainly been quite confident in Rahlizje’s helplessness and how he might exploit it. While his servants had left them well enough alone in Farden’s study, they did not abandon their tasks for the remainder of the night. And this was what Rahlizje had forgotten.
Just as she’d slipped from the Lady Farden’s chambers to make her way toward the stairs, she’d encountered the housekeeper climbing toward her; she’d assumed it was the housekeeper for the large ring of a dozen iron keys the woman clutched with an equally iron fist. Both of them had stopped, and Rahlizje had forced her gaze to the stone floor in faux deference to even the household staff. Her pride did not struggle against it, but she’d spoken before the woman could pummel her with questions.
“Master Farden knows I’ve gone. He sent me out himself.” Then she added an awkward little curtsy quite fit for a poor, destitute creature such as herself. The clumsiness of it was also real; Rahlizje did not make a habit of curtsies or of the heavy gray skirts snagging on the heels of her boots.
The housekeeper’s trained eye felt like worn, calloused fingers brushing over Rahlizje’s face. “Did you disappoint him?”
“No, mistress.” Rahlizje dipped her head again and swallowed forcefully, widening her eyes at the floor as if she truly knew what shame really was. “I believe he fell asleep… after.”
The woman at the top of the stairs grunted in understanding. “You’re free to go.”
“Yes, mistress.” With another foolish curtsy, Rahlizje had stepped slowly, demurely past the woman running the Farden estate in her lady’s absence.
That woman’s hand shot out with surprising speed to grip Rahlizje’s arm below the shoulder, firmly holding her there on the top step and studying the stranger who had captured her master’s attentions for one night. Then the housekeeper reached into her skirts and retrieved a small coin purse, which she offered Rahlizje with tightly pressed lips. “Don’t come back,” she said.
Rahlizje’s fingers wrapped around the modestly filled purse; for the first time, she’d just been paid for the services the housekeeper naturally assumed she had provided between her legs. She did in fact always receive payment, whether or not those services had indeed been delivered, but she’d always had to take it for herself. Her mistake that night had been in allowing her surprise and her triumph to get the better of her. She’d looked up at the housekeeper then, slowly, shamelessly, to meet the other woman’s gaze as something like an equal.
If she’d cut that gaze appropriately short, she might have avoided suspicion altogether. But the ease with which she’d just received two small fortunes—at least for her—had made her outwardly bold. Stupidly bold.
When the housekeeper realized this, her eyes widened beneath a darkening frown. “Get out,” she’d snapped and promptly shoved the coin purse and Rahlizje attached to it down the stairs.
Rahlizje had bowed her head and taken her leave, but she did not flee down the stairs to the estate’s great hall; if she had, she knew such speed would bring triumphant laughter bubbling up her throat. Of all the things she’d learned not to do in another’s presence, laughing took precedence over everything else—until she was alone again and gone from whatever town or territory had both amused her and filled her pockets. But with her back to the housekeeper and the great hall nearly empty now, Rahlizje gave herself the luxury of smirking as she took her leave.
She’d gone directly back toward Cirgress proper. The journey from Windel Farden’s estate did of course take much longer on foot than upon the master’s saddle; even so, it was a fraction of the distances she’d traveled on her own in a single stretch. Both the wine and her staggering success had fueled her with restless energy; if she’d thought she could get away with steeling a horse and thundering off with it out of the valley, she might have. On an estate like Farden’s, a horse would bring a lot more down on her head than a few trinkets and an extra bit of coin.
By the time she’d reached the main part of town and The Open Barrel, that swell of victory had passed. But the restlessness remained. Challenging the housekeeper with that wavering glance had most assuredly given her away as something more than what she seemed. The head of Farden’s household was clearly an astute woman, and Rahlizje had been a fool for not anticipating the presence of any staff within the estate before she took her leave. If the woman had not suspected Rahlizje immediately, she no doubt would quite soon. Especially come the morning when Windel Farden himself could not confirm any bit of Rahlizje’s lie, whether or not he remembered the truth.
Her only viable option then had been to flee into the night. She’d returned to the empty stall in the stable where the inn’s owner had let her sleep, though he’d seemed entirely confused by her willingness to spend the night on top of straw with the horses when she paid for so much ale and food in his tavern. There, Rahlizje had dropped her stolen skirts—which had only been for Windel Farden’s unfulfilled benefit—and donned her dark breeches. With everything she’d needed in the pockets of her cloak and her dagger strapped to her belt, she left Cirgress altogether that night. Never to return, of course. And she used both what she’d taken and what had been given to her to press east across the rolling valleys at the foot of the Bladeshales.
Vereling Town had welcomed her with open arms when she finally reached it, if only for the fact that it already teemed with vagabonds, merchants
, travelers, dubious tradesman, drunkards, and—she had no doubt—more thieves. What better place to hide herself than a town in which they were all the same? Except she just so happened to be the only one among them with a coin purse freely given by Windel Farden’s housekeeper and stamped with his house seal. And the only man to have seen it just so happened to be the one-eyed merchant looking for it.
Chapter 3
That first day was a lesson for them both in how far the other was willing to go to make a point. The merchant only offered her water once more before they stopped for the evening. Again, Rahlizje refused. She aimed to hold out as long as she could, to defy her captor with stony glares and a rejection of every necessity the day brought upon every being of flesh and blood and breath. The last time he offered her anything, the man also had the presence of mind to slip another length of rope through her bound hands and knot it quite firmly to an iron loop nailed into the side of the cart.
At sunset, with just a few hours left in the long day, he pulled the cart halfway off the road and unhitched his horse to let her graze beside the tree to which he’d tied her. By the time he’d finished, Rahlizje’s bladder had stopped obeying her commands. The man had just reached up onto the cart’s bench to retrieve his knapsack, satchel, and waterskin when Rahlizje’s lack of control pattered against the bed of the cart between her legs, soon followed by the muffled drip of it through the wooden slats and onto the dirt road. He looked back at her to reaffirm what he heard, and she glared at him above a defiant smirk. He would now, of course, be compelled to change her and clean up the mess she’d left on his property. If that didn’t give her an opportunity to escape, it would at the very least make her presence a lot harder for the man to endure.
The one-eyed merchant raised an eyebrow, then withdrew her dagger from the sheath he’d strung on his own belt. This he waved at her, leaning forward as if to share some secret revelation. “I’d keep an eye out for whatever beasts you just called to you with that.” He nodded once, then left the cart to stalk through the trees toward the camp he meant to make for the night.
Rahlizje waited for him, knowing he’d come to collect her from the cart and keep her under his watchful gaze through the night. She saw him strike flint to steel before the kindling beneath his gathered wood caught flame. The warm orange glow of it grew quickly enough, and she counted down the seconds until he returned for her.
He did not.
With her hands still bound behind her and attached to the cart’s siderail, Rahlizje was forced to slump back against the painful knot. She managed to get her feet out from under her to stretch them across the damp floorboards already reeking with piss, but true sleep was a stranger to her that night.
The next morning, she was much more willing to accept the merchant’s waterskin for a few long pulls. She even managed to chew her way through a dry, coarse strip of salted beef her captor shared with her to break their fast. He let her wash that down with more water when they were through, but it wasn’t nearly enough to take the sting out of so much salt in her quickly drying mouth.
Then they were on their way again, traveling north on some road whose name Rahlizje never bothered to learn because they were all the same. All roads led to her next target and her next temporary fortune. At least, they had before Vereling Town. She might or might not have traveled this very road over the years, but for the first time, she now traveled it as a thief and a prisoner. The salted beef was easier to swallow.
Only once before their next stop did she call out to him at the front of the cart. “Mercenary!”
His head turned just a little, but it wasn’t a full glance over his shoulder.
“I’m not overly fond of relieving myself in your wagon, but if that’s what you prefer, I’m happy to oblige.”
The man’s shoulders slumped a little, but the horse and cart kept moving another few meters before he finally pulled on the reins and brought them to a stop. Hopping from the bench, he then reached over the side of the cart to draw another length of rope. This he fashioned around Rahlizje’s waist once he’d lowered the cart’s rear gate; obviously, he meant to use this as a lead, as if she were a goat being led to market. She studied his face as he completed this next task, noting that he did not seem affected by the day-long stink of her, nor did he meet her gaze with his one good eye. Not until he untied her bound hands from the iron loop nailed to the side of the cart. Then he untied the coarse rope from around her wrists and tossed it onto the cart’s lowered gate.
Rahlizje could have taken the next few seconds as a criminal prisoner who’d accepted her fate. She could have rubbed her chaffed wrists or stretched her arms after they’d been bent behind her for a full day and night. Instead, the minute that rope left the merchant’s fingers, she lashed out at him with a booted heel and struck the man squarely in the chest.
He fell back onto the dirt road with a grunt, and Rahlizje leapt from the back of the cart toward freedom. Her right foot met the ground just a second before the rough hand clamped around her left ankle and jerked her back. The next thing she knew, she’d hit the dirt road as well with a mouthful of dust and the wind knocked completely out of her. Just as she got her hands beneath her to push herself up, the merchant’s knee crashed into her back between her shoulder blades, and her cheek grazed the dirt. A puff of fine red dust spewed into the air when she grunted. The cold point of her own dagger pressed to her neck again put an end to her escape attempt.
“I like to consider myself a patient man,” the merchant growled in her ear. They both were out of breath. “That does not make me a fool. Eventually, you will help me recover the price of what it cost me to track you down. Until then, let me remind you that while I’m half blind, there is nothing you can hide from me.”
Rahlizje coughed beneath the weight of his knee, spewing another cloud of dust into the air.
When he released the pressure, she sucked in a full, burning breath. The man didn’t pull off her all the way, but it was enough to let her know he didn’t mean to kill her there in the middle of the road. “If you tell me true, thief, it’s a simple thing to honor your request. Do you still need relief?”
This was the longest conversation Rahlizje had ever had with a focus on her bodily functions, but she nodded into the dirt. Her cheek scraped across a few more pebbles beneath her. Then her captor removed the blade from her neck, bunched the back of her tunic and cloak in a huge fist, and lifted her to her feet. The ale and the buzzing stupor that came with it had left her body completely, which made his strength and the speed with which he pulled her across the road toward his cart nothing short of incredible. He shoved her against the back of the cart’s lowered gate and retied her hands behind her back with the shorter rope. Then he spun her around and kicked her legs apart with his boot. Rahlizje felt her dagger’s tip pressing into her ribs through her cloak and tunic; it was still sharp, and the merchant held it quite steady.
His one good eye flickered back and forth between each of her own as he pressed his lips together beneath his wild mustache. While one hand threatened her life with her own weapon, the other moved between them to deftly undo the stays of her breeches in sharp, jerking tugs.
Rahlizje let out a wry chuckle. “Oh, that’s what you want, is it?” Of course it was. Life had proven to her time and again that any man who found himself with an advantage over the poor, the weak, or the destitute was more than willing to use that advantage to the fullest. All the better if that unfortunate soul just so happened to be a woman, wasn’t it? She snorted. “Recover the price. Was it your manhood you lost on your journey to hunt me down?”
The man blinked at her only once, then he tugged quickly on each leg of her breeches until they dropped from her waist and pooled around her ankles in the dirt. That one eye of his never left her face. “Nature calls, does it not?” He stepped away from her, sliding his grip down the length of rope he’d fashioned around her waist before their little struggle on the road. “Answer it.”
; Rahlizje scowled at him, wondering how she’d misjudged everything about this man from the beginning. She’d thought for a certainty that her jibe would have shown her more weak points in his character—or at least stoke a bit of rage and humiliation she could manipulate further the longer he kept her in the back of his cart. But he’d given her nothing. Patient? Absolutely. And he was definitely no fool. So just what in the world was he?
Of course, she hadn’t lied about the urgency of her body’s needs. Glaring at the man holding the end of her rope, Rahlizje shuffled across the road with her breeches around her ankles until she could both squat beside the cart’s rear wheel and lean against it while she did her business.
When she finished and returned to the back of the cart, her captor swiftly pulled her breeches back up into place, laced them just a little tighter than was comfortable, and kept the tip of her dagger pressed just enough against her to make the warning perfectly clear. “I don’t believe in cruelty for its own sake,” he told her, his voice low and bristling through his thick black beard. “Whether or not our journey together remains more difficult than it has to be is up to you. But try that again, and you will not leave this cart until I’m rid of you.” His eye narrowed again, then he nodded once and stepped around the cart toward the driver’s bench. The end of the rope tied about Rahlizje’s waist trailed from his hand as he sheathed her dagger once more at his belt.
Playing With Fire Page 102
