Free Return of the Guardian-King by Karen Hancock Page A

too. The tendril of fear thickened. Dog packs could be dangerous, even deadly, to a person alone and unarmed. The hot spice mixture she carried in a secret pocket in her cloak would not work in this wind, and the short club looped round her wrist was not nearly enough to deal with so many threats. Best to get away from them as quickly and unobtrusively as she could.
    She turned, intending to cross the street on the angle so as to avoid the two dogs who’d come out of the alley, and froze in horror to find two large men standing where the dogs had been but moments before. Her first, irrational hope that they would scare off the dog pack was immediately dashed by the awareness that they were coming straight for her. Recollection of Trap’s innumerable warnings about traveling alone through the city at night flashed through her head, and she knew she was in trouble. But she was upwind of the men, and there were only two of them.
    Without missing a beat she strode purposefully across the street as the cloak billowed forward around her again. She had to fight to find the pocket she’d sewn into it and the bag of spice.
    They crossed the street to cut her off, and when she judged them close enough, she tossed a handful of spices into the nearest man’s face, then flicked her wrist to grab the club and smash it against his temple. He reeled backward coughing and sneezing as the wind flung the cloud of cayenne, ginger, and cloves into the face of his companion, and he, too, was overcome with a sneezing fit. She dodged around them, but a jerk on her cloak wrenched her backward. Then a hand gripped her arm and pulled her around. She went with the flow, letting her free right hand come around to fling the bag and the rest of its contents into her assailant’s eyes.
    As he wilted into a second fit of coughing, she twisted free of him, only to find the other man had recovered enough to lumber toward her— A shout rang out as a third man stepped out of the alleyway now across the street, the steel of his unsheathed sword gleaming wickedly in the lantern light. She recognized her finance secretary at once, even as her attackers fled up the street, away from the dog pack at her back.
    As Trap drew up beside her, she straightened. “I’m all right,” she said quickly, turning so the cloak would blow away from her. “They didn’t hurt me.” She looked about for her spice bag, but the wind had blown it away. He took her arm and steered her back into the alley from which he’d just emerged. With the sudden relative abatement of the wind, they didn’t have to shout.
    “What are you doing out here, ma’am?” Fury made his voice low and hard.
    “I . . . I don’t know. I mean . . . I was pretty upset, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
    He frowned at her. “Penchott told me you were sent to serve his esteemed guest after all. Is that what got you upset?”
    She stared back at him, feeling suddenly and intensely foolish. Yes, the Sorite had called her a whore and tried to buy her child, but what of it? She was pretending to be a serving girl. Ronesca had called her the same thing this morning. Why was she so upset?
    Back in the street, framed by the alley’s shadow-swathed walls, three dogs stepped into view, sniffing at the spot on the wall where the other pair had recently left their marks. More of the pack ambled up to join them, the jackal last of all.
    Trap pushed her around in front of him. “We can talk of it back at the palace,” he said firmly.

CHAPTER
    5
    Six days after arriving at Caerna’tha, Abramm awoke to a deep sense of depression and the all-too-familiar howling of the wind in the eaves outside his dormitory cell. Gusting snow granules ticked erratically on the cell’s shuttered window, through which filtered the muted light of a new day. He lay on his side on a straw-mattressed cot, his back to the outer wall, clutching heavy fleece coverings to his chin as he stared at the