Shield of Stars

by Hilari Bell

  Was his accent too thick? But if he was from a distant village it might be thicker, or slightly different from theirs. The woman didn’t look suspicious.

  “Have you a kettle to carry something hot back to them?” she asked.

  Weasel shook his head. “They said you’d pack things up for me.”

  She frowned at this and he added hastily, “We’ve got soup on the fire back at camp. It’s just, we’re all mortal tired of Edom’s cooking.”

  She laughed, accepted Weasel’s copper flames, and sent a man off to the cellars for a small cask. While they waited, she gathered up a bundle of the hot pies that hadn’t sold to the passengers of the half-filled coach, along with roast potatoes, and some berry tarts that made Weasel’s mouth water. He had to swallow before he spoke.

  “I’m grateful t’ you, for takin’ all this time. Busy as you’ll be with the guardsmen and all.”

  “Guardsmen?” she asked absently, wrapping a handful of pickles in oiled paper.

  “They don’t seem t’ be here yet,” said Weasel, thanking the One God for that with all his heart. “But we passed them on the road not far back. Heard about them before we passed them too.”

  The woman frowned, looking at him for the first time since she’d started working on his request. “How could a string of carts pass a party of guards on horseback? They are riding, aren’t they? We haven’t room for a company of foot soldiers.”

  “Oh, they’re riding,” Weasel assured her, as he scrambled for an explanation. The arrival of the serving man, who set the cask on the bar with a thump, gave him a few more seconds.

  “I guess they’re going a bit slow ’cause of their prisoner. Be hard on a girl, riding dawn to dark. Nice girl, they say. Just turned fourteen … ’fore it happened.”

  No one could have resisted that bait. “What happened?”

  “She killed her stepfather,” Weasel told her, with the gruesome relish with which some folks speak of murder. “Hit him on the head with a fire iron, and then kept hittin’ him and hittin’ him. They say she had good reason, by most folks’ reckoning.”

  He lowered his gaze, as if ashamed. A well-brought-up country boy shouldn’t speak of such things.

  The woman’s mouth tightened. “He was abusing her?”

  “From the time her mother died, when she was nine,” Weasel confirmed. “Or so she says. ’Course, her stepfather’s kin says different, and it’s her word against theirs.”

  “But why would she lie, why kill him like that, if he wasn’t doing something to deserve it?” the woman asked indignantly. “They’re taking her in for that? Wait, why didn’t this go to court in her town?”

  “It did,” Weasel improvised rapidly. “And the local justices acquitted her. Self-defense, or justifiable homicide, or some such thing. But th’ stepfather was a friend of the shareholder. Or maybe he owed him money. Anyway, the shareholder went t’ the regent, and now she’s going t’ be tried in the city, by a panel of justices the regent’s going to pick. Or so they say.”

  “Lady bless us!” the woman exclaimed. “I never heard of such a shameful thing.”

  Weasel nodded. “I heard that some guards turned it down. That they had a hard time finding men who’d volunteer to fetch her in. Folks along the road are upset about it. I’m told that half the inns they ride into are refusing them service, since they don’t let the girl eat with them, but only their own….”

  A clatter of hooves in the yard announced the timely arrival of the guards. Looking through the taproom windows, Weasel saw Arisa, bound to her saddle. Strands of dark red hair, pulled loose from her braid, framed her plain, freckled face. She looked more like a tired farm girl than a murderess.

  Angry red stained the woman’s cheeks.

  “Here’s your bundle, m’boy,” she said grimly. “Excuse me. I have something to attend to.”

  She took off her apron and straightened her cap, then stalked majestically out of the taproom, like a galleon under full sail—gun ports open. Weasel had several things to do, and not much time, but he couldn’t resist listening to the opening salvo.

  “Bring those horses back here,” she commanded in a carrying voice. “These … men aren’t staying.”

  Weasel grinned. He picked up the cask and his bundle and hurried down the corridor and out the back door that led to the privies. Then he made his way quietly around the side of the inn. He didn’t need to look around the corner to know what was going on.

  The officer’s voice was very stiff. “Mistress, I know the girl looks innocent, but she—”

  Weasel stowed his bundle of food under a nearby bush and worked the bung out of the cask. The rich smell of beer greeted him.

  “She was found innocent, you withless pig,” the inn’s mistress proclaimed. “By a panel of justices in her own town.”

  “She was?”

  Weasel, pulling the sleeping syrup from his pocket, heard the baffled note in the officer’s voice. But after several days of glares and muttered insolence, this insult was the final straw. The officer’s hard-held annoyance buried the questioning tone so deep that only someone listening closely could have heard it. The crowd would only hear …

  “You’ve even got the gall to admit it!” the innkeeper exclaimed. “Well, you’ll find no shelter under my roof! Dragging a girl who was only defending herself off to be hanged!”

  A hostile growl, from what sounded like the beginnings of a good-sized mob, greeted this remark, and Weasel risked a glance. There weren’t as many he’d thought—less than twenty men and women gathered around the guardsmen. But the anger on their faces made up for their small number. Arisa sat silent on her horse, her gaze lowered and her cheeks scarlet. The watching country folk probably took that for shame at her situation. Weasel suspected she was struggling not to laugh.

  He uncorked the sleeping syrup and hesitated. The apothecary said only three or four drops to a mug, but that was for a sleep aid, not to make a man sleep so deep he couldn’t be roused. There were four teaspoons in the little bottle. How many mugs were in this cask? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? How many drops in a teaspoon? Weasel didn’t want to kill the guardsmen—they were only doing their jobs.

  “I don’t know where you came by your information,” said the officer. “I myself don’t know what she’s been charged with. But my duty is—”

  “I heard you volunteered to bring her in,” the woman growled.

  “Like a girl her age could be guilty of anything worth arresting her for, much less hanging her!” a man’s voice added indignantly. “In the old days, when the king had the sword and shield beside him, a man could count on justice. Nowadays—”

  “It wasn’t the sword and shield made the king,” a woman told him. “It was the crown of earth! Not that the city kings have that, either. And Regent Pettibone doesn’t for sure!”

  The nonsensical argument reminded Weasel of the Hidden, quarreling over their portents, but the crowd rumbled agreement.

  By the scent of it, this batch of ale was fairly strong. The apothecary said the amount of alcohol was what magnified the effect. Weasel took a deep breath and poured half the sleeping syrup into the cask. He corked the bottle and put it back in his pocket.

  “I know she’s young,” the officer said grimly. “But I assure you, she is not what she appears.”

  “And how would you know that?” a different woman demanded. “You said you didn’t even know what she was charged with! How do you know she’s guilty?”

  The crowd growled again, louder.

  Weasel found a rock and pounded the bung back into its hole. Under most circumstances he wouldn’t have dared do it so quickly, but the crowd, on the brink of becoming a mob, made enough noise that the hollow thuds were lost.

  Weasel didn’t think the officer would admit that one slim girl had almost outfought his men. And the mob probably wouldn’t have believed it, anyway.

  “I see there is no point arguing with you.” The disdain in his voice brought forth another gr
owl. “Clearly, you are open to neither justice nor common sense. We will depart now, but when we reach the city, we’ll see what our commander says about an inn that refuses to serve officers on the king’s business!”

  Perfect! Weasel had hardly dared hope for a threat. He peeked out, just in time to watch the officer wheel his horse around, scattering the crowd, and ride out of the inn yard. His men tried to look equally proud and indifferent, but the nervous way they scanned the faces around them undermined their efforts.

  Weasel didn’t blame them. A city crowd might have thrown stones at this point, but the country folk were less violently inclined—or perhaps the handful of villagers who’d been caught up in this affair weren’t the troublemaking kind.

  Weasel let the guardsmen get a minute’s start, then he picked up the cask and ran after them.

  The street was busy enough to slow their horses, so he caught up with them a few blocks from the inn.

  “Sirs,” he gasped, for the run had left him short of breath. “Stop, sirs, please. M’master wants t’ apologize. Please!”

  The officer gave him a single, arrogant glance, but he pulled his horse to a stop. The other three looked at the cask.

  Weasel’s newly dark hair clung to his sweaty face, but it would be better if they were listening to his country accent instead of looking at him.

  “The master of the Growing Grape sends you this cask of fine ale in the hope that you’ll forgive the i’pertinence of his wife,” Weasel announced, in the half chant of someone repeating a memorized message. “He didn’t mean no disrespect, and if he’d known what was happening he’d have stopped it.”

  “It would seem,” said the officer frostily, “that your master has little control over his establishment, or his wife.”

  “Well, that’s the truth, Goodman, ah, sir,” Weasel admitted. “I don’t know why he thinks he could’ve stopped it, for he never can, not when Mistress has the bit between her teeth. Proper harridan, she is. But he did send me t’ bring you this ale. It’s the good stuff, too,” Weasel went on, confidingly. “Nothing cheap. Mistress will skin him for it, when she finds out.”

  The soldiers laughed, and the officer unbent enough to smile.

  “We accept your master’s apology.”

  “And no need t’ go mentioning this t’ your commander?” Weasel asked hopefully.

  “That depends,” said the officer. He kicked his horse into motion.

  “’Pends on what?” Weasel asked.

  The soldier who took the cask from him winked. “Depends on the quality of the ale.”

  Weasel watched them ride out of town. He hadn’t dared look at Arisa, but surely she’d know better than to drink that ale—assuming she was offered any, which he thought unlikely.

  If the guards accused the inn’s proprietor of taking a hand in their prisoner’s escape, the simple fact that she had no husband should make it clear that someone else had managed the affair. Once the full story came out, all she could be blamed for was falling victim to Weasel’s lies, which the soldiers had done as well. Her spirited defense of the innocent would do her no harm.

  Weasel turned and made his way back to the inn, reclaiming his bundle of food and his basket. He had plenty of time now.

  Walking steadily, Weasel came in sight of the camp shortly after darkness fell. They had chosen a clearing in a small copse of trees—judging by the blackened fire rings, it had been used for this purpose before.

  Out of reach of the firelight, too far off to be heard as long as he didn’t make a lot of noise, Weasel tucked himself under a thick bush and dined on cold meat pie, potatoes, pickles, and two of the berry tarts.

  Watching the firelit camp was like watching a stage from the darkened rear of a theater. The troopers set up their tents, cooked a simple meal, and allowed their prisoner to eat before they gave her a handful of blankets and bound her to a tree. Weasel frowned, for the tree was too far from the fire for him to see exactly how they did that, but it probably wouldn’t matter.

  Only after the camp was ready for sleep did they broach the ale.

  Weasel watched them drink. Had he made the dose too strong? He had no desire to poison four men. But your honor, I didn’t mean for them to die. Honest. He could all but see the justices’ sneers.

  Surely it wasn’t too strong. Even if alcohol amplified the effect, he’d only put two teaspoons into the whole cask.

  Had he used too little? If the sentry didn’t fall asleep … Or even worse, what if someone woke when Weasel was in the midst of freeing Arisa? His imagination supplied the feeling of heavy hands descending on his shoulders and a rough voice exclaiming, “Got you!”

  In fact, this whole journey could be an attempt to lure him into the open! But if that was true, surely they’d have recognized him when he offered up the cask, despite different clothing and hair. No, he was imagining things. He went right on imagining them until the yawning troopers finally sought their tents. Until the sentry, whose head had been drooping for the last half hour, lay down by the fire and began to snore.

  Weasel waited another half an hour, until the waxing moon began to rise, before he paced quietly down the road and, even more quietly, into the guardsmen’s camp.

  A couple of men were snoring, so he probably hadn’t commenced his career as a mass poisoner. He’d have been happier about that if the sentry beside the fire hadn’t muttered something and rolled onto his side as Weasel approached. The man had turned his face away, and his snoring resumed as soon as he settled, but Weasel’s heart continued to pound.

  Yes, the sentry had fallen asleep, but it seemed to be a normal sleep, not nearly as deep as he’d hoped.

  Oh, well. There came a point in any lift where you had to grasp the mark’s purse—to commit yourself to the job and get on with it. Weasel eased himself between the tents, one step at a time, testing to make sure there were no snappable branches buried in the grass. The grass rustled softly, but Weasel thought he was making an astonishingly small amount of noise … until he drew near the tree and met Arisa’s critical gaze.

  He raised a finger to his lips for silence, and she rolled her eyes in exasperation. Like I don’t know that?

  Weasel suppressed a sigh. He should have known that three days’ imprisonment wouldn’t turn her into a tearful puddle of gratitude. And while he was delighted to do without the tears, a little more gratitude wouldn’t have hurt.

  When he was a few feet away, Weasel drew the knife, prepared to cut whatever ropes held her.

  Arisa grimaced again and sat up, shedding her blankets so slowly that not even a whisper of moving cloth broke the silence. Her hands and arms were free. Only one ankle was shackled to the tree, with a padlock securing the chain.

  So much for the knife.

  Weasel thanked the One God that he hadn’t fallen so in love with respectability as to obey Justice Holis’ irrational whims, stuck the knife quietly into the ground, and pulled out his lock picks.

  Arisa smiled, but she still didn’t allow her ankle to so much as twitch—the chain hadn’t clanked once.

  Weasel appreciated her self-control. If she moved, the drowsy soldiers would probably assume she was turning in her sleep, but any sound might rouse the sentry, and if it did …

  Weasel had just knelt to examine the shackle’s lock when he heard a rustling sound and Arisa’s fist thumped on his shoulder.

  He didn’t even turn to look, scrambling as quietly as he could behind the tree. He could hear Arisa drawing the blankets over herself, a soft whisper of fabric.

  He heard the scrape of a canvas flap falling into place, and stumbling footsteps. His heart raced and his eyes sought some path through the trees. Could he hide among them if he had to evade pursuit? He should have used the whole dose, curse that soft, stupid conscience Justice Holis had foisted on him! Would the man only chastise the sentry for falling asleep? Or would he take the sentry’s place? If they compared notes about how sleepy they felt, if they realized the ale had been drugg
ed, and started looking around … The knife! He’d left it sticking in the ground in front of Arisa, and if that wasn’t enough to give them away …

  He heard the liquid hiss of a man pissing and risked a glance. The soldier was standing some distance from the camp, with his back turned. The knife was gone. Arisa must have snatched it into the blankets when she covered herself—smart girl!

  But there was no way to conceal the fact that the sentry was asleep.

  I’ll wait till he’s yelling at the man, then I’ll run, Weasel decided. The guard’s attention would be fixed on his erring comrade, and the loud voices ought to cover any sounds Weasel might make, but the brush around the camp was so thick that someone running through it would sound like a charging cow. And even if Weasel made his escape, even if they didn’t suspect the ale, anyone posted as sentry for the rest of the night would do his utmost to resist the drug. The syrup had made them sleepier than normal, but it hadn’t knocked them out.

  Weasel bit his lip in frustration, waiting for the man to notice the dozing sentry … but he never did. Unsteady footsteps took him back into his own tent, and cloth rustled as he settled himself. A few minutes later, another snore was added to the chorus.

  The syrup might not have knocked them out, but it had fogged their minds. He still had a chance.

  Weasel came out from behind the tree and sat beside Arisa, but he didn’t start working on the lock right away—you can’t pick a lock when your hands are shaking.

  Arisa gazed at him curiously. Drugged? Her lips shaped the word without a sound.

  Weasel nodded.

  Ale? she mouthed. Weasel missed most of the rest of the sentence—he wasn’t an accomplished lip-reader—but the words for “you” and “cask” were distinctive, and he nodded again.

  Respect dawned in her expression. Was this the first time he’d seen it? If so, he should complain! He’d done plenty of good, smart work over the last week. Still, his breathing slowed and his hands finally steadied.

  He lifted the blanket gently, trying not to disturb the chain, and set about picking the lock. The small snap when it opened made him flinch, but none of the snores even paused. Arisa’s ankle showed raw patches where the steel had rubbed. She pulled her foot from his grasp and donned her stockings and boots.