I scaled the wall to the second story, under what I thought was his room. I peeked through the window—
Damn.
Wrong room. I peeked in the window and looked straight into the eyes of a well-endowed prostitute who apparently was just starting her workday straddling some guy who, judging by bits of armor strewn about, was a functionary of the city guard. She locked eyes with me in mid-grunt.
I let go with one hand so I could put a finger to my lips before ducking back under the window. I paused, tensed, under the window, waiting for a reaction. I was relieved to hear the sexy-time sounds continue unabated.
I guess that’s the measure of a professional, how you deal with the unexpected while you’re working.
I held my position while I remapped the interior of the inn in my head. I knew I wasn’t on the wrong side of the building, which meant that I had miscounted windows. Either a room or two had more than the one window, or—more likely given the brief glimpse I’d had of the room beyond the assignation-in-progress—I had missed that one of these windows opened onto the hallway at the head of the stairs.
I moved laterally to the window to my immediate right, and slowly peeked inside. I was rewarded with a view of gap-tooth-guy. He sat in a chair, facing away from the window, toward the door. His braid hung over the back of the chair, almost to the ground, and a crossbow rested across his knees.
A crossbow? Really?
I decided that he was not the smartest guy to have tried to blackmail me.
I climbed up to crouch on the sill outside the window. Lucille’s body had an advantage in lightness, balance, and dexterity that allowed me to stand on a thin ledge that never would have supported the original Frank Blackthorne. I stood there perched on the tips of my toes, maintaining balance with the fingertips of my left hand while I slid the dagger slowly between the window and the jamb.
I used the dagger to slowly, quietly lift the latch.
The window hinged outward, so I had to sidestep all the way to the edge as it swung out. I had a stupid grin on my face. It felt good to be indulging my skills as the old Frank Blackthorne would, without worrying about dragons, or elves, or princesses—
Or boobs.
I’d slid fluidly aside to let the window silently open past me. I’d even sucked in the princess’s nonexistent gut to give the window enough clearance.
And I mashed it into my right tit. I didn’t do it hard, but the unexpected resistance threw my whole body off-kilter, like miscounting a set of stairs in the dark and finding the floor too early.
I managed to keep from yelling, but I dropped my dagger so I could grab the window frame and keep from tumbling into the alley. The clatter was enough to alert gap-tooth-guy. He spun around, knocking the chair over as he stood to point the crossbow in my direction.
He fired.
CHAPTER 21
If the man had had any sense, he would have taken a moment to aim, possibly declare some sort of ultimatum. But, luckily for me, my gap-toothed adversary was something of a moron. I don’t even think a skilled bowman could spin around from a seated position into a firing stance and bring a twenty-pound crossbow to bear on a target and fire with any accuracy, even if the target was less than three paces away.
He did come close, if only by accident. The bolt smashed through the window inches from me, throwing glass across the princess’s inconvenient bosom.
Now that he was armed with an unloaded crossbow, he was considerably less of a threat. As that realization dawned on him, he tossed the crossbow aside and dove for the dagger I had dropped inside the room.
That gave me the perfect opportunity to jump down and land on his back. I felt some satisfaction as he squealed like a girl. But the squeals continued as he threw me off him. As I slammed into the wall I realized I was hearing the prostitute next door.
He came at me with the dagger, and I rolled away and sprang to my feet.
We circled, facing each other. “Aren’t you full of surprises,” he said, gesturing with my dagger.
Great, he likes to talk. “What are you trying to accomplish?”
“Oh, come on, Francis, there’s a price on your head.”
“Why the stupid charade downstairs?”
He laughed. “Please, I know better than to think I could collect that reward. Too much history between me and Grünwald. First official I came to would vanish me and claim the prize.”
He probably had a point there. The guard enjoying himself next door would probably be first in line to cosh this guy in the head and take me to Queen Fiona himself.
We kept warily circling each other. I tensed myself, waiting for him to make a move. “Then what’s the point of this? I don’t have any money, so blackmail is pointless.” That was a lie. I still had a good portion of slaver gold left, but I wasn’t about to tell this guy that.
“No it isn’t. You have something I’d very much like to have.” He licked his lips.
We had now completely reversed positions, my back to the door, his back to the window, the upended chair between us.
“You must be kidding me,” I said.
“Oh, please. After what happened to you, the experience must be . . . unique. With the body of a princess, no less. Let me experience that and no one will be any the wiser.”
Oh, hell no.
“It’s a mutually beneficial situation, ain’t it? Tell me what it’s like, Francis.”
I ran forward, grabbing the chair.
“Don’t call me Francis!” I yelled at him as I slammed the chair into his knife hand. I tried to knee the gap-toothed pervert in the groin, but he swung his leg to deflect my blow and tip me over. I lost my grip on the chair and it fell back into the room, dagger embedded in the seat.
That was the least of my problems. This guy was twice my size, and was strong enough to throw me across the room.
As his hands grabbed my throat, I realized rushing him had been a bad idea.
“Got you,” he said, and I couldn’t catch the breath to raise an objection. He pinned me to the ground, grinning and washing me with breath that matched his rotten teeth. “I think I get to call you anything I want now.” He leaned forward and whispered into my ear, “And I like ‘Francis.’”
The bastard licked my cheek, and it was enough to make my whole body shudder. I felt something long and thin brush my hip. What? That can’t be what I think it is.
Thank the gods, it wasn’t.
I reached a hand down and it was the end of the guy’s long braid.
You work with what you got.
I grabbed it, twisted it around my wrist, and yanked.
“Ack!” he said as his head pulled back from my face. The shock made his hands loosen to the point I could breathe. I balled my other hand into a fist and started slamming it into the side of his head. There wasn’t much force behind it, but by yanking his hair with the other hand, his face gradually turned to meet my blows.
He caught my fist in one hand and started squeezing. “You’re going to regret that.”
I responded by pulling harder on his hair. He cursed and reached around for my other hand. That freed my neck, and my head.
So I slammed my forehead into the bridge of his nose.
I think it is good advice not to head-butt someone if you don’t know what you’re doing. The impact blurred my vision and sent a painful shock all the way down my spine. Warm blood gushed across my face and I had no idea whose it was.
As my own brain rattled dizzily in the princess’s skull, I heard that my talkative captor had been reduced to monosyllables, every other one sounding like the word, “Kill.” I might have been dizzy and half-blind but, as he released my fist to grab his face, I could feel that my attack had backed him off me enough so I could move. I bent my legs and pushed myself out from under him to scramble unsteadily to my feet.
He grabbed for me with the hand that wasn’t clutching his face and I dodged backward. My backside pressed against the windowsill. The breeze from outside br
ushed the hair against the nape of my neck.
He took another swing at me, and I leaned backward, half-flipping and half-falling out the open window.
Dizzy as I was, I would have plunged to my death if I hadn’t still held the guy’s braid wrapped around my wrist. I fell down about four feet before we both jerked to a stop.
I hung there for close to a minute, as my head cleared, waiting for some sign of movement or commotion above me. All I heard was heavy breathing and grunting from the pair in the neighboring room above me.
Once my head was clear, I found purchase on the wall and let go of the guy’s hair. When I let it go, it slid slowly upward until I heard a soft thud above me.
I climbed up, peeked into the window, and grimaced.
One problem solved, I guessed.
I climbed back into the room, stepping over my gap-toothed assailant. He wasn’t going to get back up. My abrupt exit at the end of his braid, combined with his abrupt stop at the base of the window, had done fatally unpleasant things to his neck.
“Damn it,” I whispered. I hadn’t wanted to kill the guy. Not to start with, anyway. All I wanted was to discourage him a little. Tie him up so he was out of the way until I accomplished what I needed to do, something like that.
Maybe I should have given the guy what he wanted, distasteful as it was. Given his inclinations, I might have tied up a willing victim.
I righted the chair and pulled the dagger out of it. I sat down and faced the guy. His eyes stared blankly off to my right, above the hand that was still clamped over his broken nose. I kicked the crossbow that still rested between us. “You weren’t very bright.”
He didn’t move.
“Seems like I’m not very bright either.”
He didn’t have a response to that.
“What am I going to do with you?”
My one-sided conversation was interrupted when the door to the room burst in. A man the size of a small mountain stormed in, stumbling, swinging a mace almost as big as I was. I scrambled back from the onslaught, brandishing my dagger as the man swung, spun, took a misstep, and fell on his back in the middle of the room, his bald head landing in the gap-toothed corpse’s lap.
“I don’t believe this.” I stared down at the huge man on the floor. I recognized him from the dinner table downstairs. He was out of breath, panting. He wore leather armor that appeared hastily pulled on, several sizes too small for him. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I am Brock,” he said between breaths. “My Princess. Brock here. To save you.”
“Of course you are.” When no threat appeared forthcoming from the pile of would-be hero on the floor, I sheathed my dagger. I walked to the door and looked out into the hallway to see if anyone was responding to the brief commotion. No sign of anyone, and the only sounds came from next door.
I envied that pair for their blissful ignorance, if not for their inevitable chafing.
I closed the door and latched it.
“Brock thought the door would be locked.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Brock heard a scream.”
I rubbed my temples and sighed. “You probably heard the lovebirds next door. I don’t remember any screaming in here.”
“Brock is confused.”
I righted the chair and sat down again, looking down at Brock the Hero. “You aren’t the only one,” I said.
He slowly sat up, shaking his head. “This is not what Brock expected.” With me in the chair and him seated on the ground, our eyes were about on the same level.
“What exactly did Bro—did you expect?”
“The shaman told Brock his destiny. A princess in a far off land would be in danger. He showed Brock visions of a dragon, and a kingdom, and a princess more lovely than anyone Brock has ever seen.”
I whispered to myself, “Brock needs to get out of the village more often.”
“Brock saw you, Your Highness.”
“Why doesn’t this surprise me?”
“Brock is here to save the princess.”
“You aren’t the only one,” I repeated.
• • •
Brock had come from a barbarian village far to the east, past two mountain ranges and one rather large desert. He wasn’t the best regarded member of the village; being large and slow, he wasn’t much use for the hunt. He’d been subject to taunts and pranks by his peers all his life. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d been abandoned in the forest, his so-called brothers laughing as they outran him.
So when the village shaman shared a vague vision with Brock about saving a princess, Brock took it as a sign to leave—even though Brock knew quite well that it was probably the tribe’s way of getting rid of an embarrassment.
I might have come to terms with the universe having a practical joke at my expense; I wasn’t ready to have the joke involve other people so literally.
“You came all this way by yourself?”
“Brock has learned how to be alone.”
“Well I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I’m not the princess.”
Brock shook his head. “No, Brock saw you in a vision.”
“I’m sure you did. But for the moment I’m a thief named Frank Blackthorne and the both of us are a little out of our depth.”
He gave me the “Brock is confused” look. I empathized with the guy.
“The good news is I am trying to save a princess.”
• • •
Brock was a bit smarter than he seemed. I only had to go over the backstory twice before he got it—and I got the feeling that the second go-round was an attempt to catch me in any inconsistencies. It was clear, however, that I had gained an ally whether I wanted one or not.
He did make it easier to dispose of an unwanted body.
Also, I had to admit that it was helpful to have an errand boy. The presence of both Brock and the late gap-toothed-guy here showed that I was nowhere near as anonymous as I needed to be. I needed some protective coloring, and I didn’t want to risk going out and getting it myself. So, when dawn came, and Brock the Barbarian returned without the inconvenient body, I had another mission for him. I gave him a bag of coins and a list of things to get from the marketplace for both of us. Then I hunted down the innkeep without venturing into the common room where someone else might recognize me. I paid for another two days in advance out of the funds I’d liberated from the gap-toothed guy, plus a little extra for discretion’s sake.
Then, I discreetly asked for a favor.
He took the extra coins and nodded, smiling.
I retreated to my room and, about an hour later, I heard a knock that was way too subtle to be Brock. I opened the door and caught my visitor in the midst of a yawn.
She froze, mouth open, and stared down at me.
“You?” she finally whispered.
I waved her inside. “I figured you worked here. This kind of place tends to frown on outside contractors.”
She shook her head, rippling a mane of curly black hair. “Honey, it’s nice to have an admirer. But you’re a girl.”
“What,” I said, “my money’s no good?”
“It’s not my area of expertise.”
Even though she was still rubbing sleep from her eyes, I found her very attractive. Too attractive. I hadn’t been able to have an intimate moment with anyone since the virgin, now “ex-,” that I had rescued from the Nâtlac cultists of Grünwald. Expertise or not, I was sorely tempted to help her with some on-the-job training.
My cheeks started burning, and my guest’s expression went from befuddlement to an amused smirk.
“That’s not why I wanted to see you,” I said quickly. “I just want to buy your time, and your silence.” I tossed her the rest of the gap-toothed-guy’s gold.
She grabbed it out of the air. “Why me?”
“From what I’ve seen, you’re observant, discreet, and have some contact with the city guards in this town.”
&nb
sp; The coin purse disappeared somewhere into her bodice. “Correct on all three. You’ve bought my time. What else is it you want?”
CHAPTER 22
I had a plan.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it was a particularly good plan, but I had managed to cobble together something plausible in twenty-four hours. And I didn’t have any more time to come up with anything more airtight since, according to my informant, the queen was only going to make an appearance for the jousting tournament. That would be the only time I would be able to use the festival as cover to get close to her.
Not that it would be easy in any event. That area of the tent city wasn’t open to commoners, and everyone entering the festival town itself fell under the scrutiny of the city guard making sure all the proper taxes were paid. Then, of course, there was the problem of the wrong people recognizing me, either as a thief or a princess.
However, thanks to Brock’s shopping trip, I had the means to deal with that last concern.
The morning of the queen’s appearance, I transformed myself. I wrapped my boobs—more uncomfortable than it looks—and donned a motley outfit of garish yellow and green checks. I braided the princess’s hair—again, not as easy as it looks—and tucked the unfortunate result under a big floppy hat. My face I disguised under a thick coating of white greasepaint. I drew new lips on top of that in black, as well as shadowing my eyes until they looked like holes into my skull. That I covered with a black domino mask.
The result was a vaguely androgynous jester character who shared only height and weight with the princess.
I left the inn with Brock, who wasn’t only a new ally for me at this point, but another element of my disguise. Those on the lookout for Frank Blackthorne or the Princess Lucille were looking for a woman traveling alone. Not for a huge bear of a man, masked and cloaked, holding up a chair with a juggler clad in garish motley and white makeup.
When I had mentioned disguising ourselves as street performers, he had been somewhat skeptical.
“Are you sure people would believe that?”