else in the room. Brenna waved her hand at the
bar keep to order an ale and sat back to watch. There was a door past the bar
that probably led to a kitchen - her pack was somewhere in there.
A worn-looking woman with
brown hair tied back with a string placed a mug of ale in front of her. Brenna
slipped two coppers onto the table in front of her.
“There’s double the coin
if you can tell me who to talk to about finding something I’ve misplaced,” she
said quietly, keeping her fingers on the coins as the woman reached for them.
“You don’t want the Black
Swan for that.”
Brenna looked up into cool,
gray eyes.
“Just drink your ale and
leave if you know what’s good for you.”
Brenna lifted her hand
from the coins and the serving woman slid them towards the edge of the table.
She bent closer to Brenna to pick them up.
“It’s not safe here for a
woman alone,” the barmaid said before she left to tend to her other customers.
At the table of four,
despite hurrying to retrieve the empty mugs, the poor woman struggled to slap
away roving hands. She sent a worried look toward the barkeep. Brenna was
certain that he saw what was happening but he turned away and poured four more
ales. The barmaid put the ales on her tray and returned to the table, this time
her heavy load preventing her from escaping the slaps and pinches of the men
she was serving.
“Heya Neemah, how’s about
a little kiss,” one man said as his hand cupped her buttocks.
Seeing the fear and
revulsion on the woman’s face, Brenna settled her hand on her knife hilt.
“I want more’n just a
kiss,” a second man said. “We know from yer brat that ye know how t’ tumble a
man.”
The barmaid, Neemah, put
the last mug of ale on the table and tried to back away but the second man held
her wrist. Neemah sent a panicked look towards the bar keep. When the man simply
grunted and wiped the counter, Brenna stood up in disgust.
“Take your hands off her,”
Brenna said. She was over at the table and had her knife at the man’s throat in
a moment. “I mean it.” She dug the point of her knife into his skin and clamped
down as the old steel sang its bloodlust to her. She reached for old steel and
found Dasid just a few streets away. He’d lost his own sword the night of Avery
and Neal’s rescue and his borrowed old steel was very noticeable on her
internal landscape.
The man let go of the barmaid
and she darted out of their reach. Brenna backed away from the table, holding her
knife up in front of her.
“Please don’t,” the
barmaid said. “They’ll hurt you. I’m all right, I’m used to it, really.”
“No woman should be used
to that kind of treatment.” Brenna took a deep breath to calm her anger. The
man she’d blooded with her knife stood up, his face red with anger and drink.
“You should listen to her,
little girl,” he said as he took a step towards her. “She’s a witch and a whore
and she gets what she deserves.”
“My own mother was called
that by a man with a lot more power than you,” Brenna replied. Duke Thorold’s
taunts echoed in her head as she took a step back, eying the other three men, but
her opponent’s companions stayed seated, seemingly content to let their friend
handle her. “I took offense then and I take offense now.”
The man lunged at her and
a moment later he was staggering and clutching his groin. Brenna followed with
another kick to his left leg and he stumbled to the floor. Balanced on the
balls of her feet, her knife held chest high, Brenna watched the room. It was
silent, except for the man’s groans of pain - then a chair scraped across the
floor as one of the other men stood.
“What did ye do to Symes,
ye witch? I’ll get ye fer that.”
He moved towards her and
Brenna shifted her weight, staying low to the ground.
He lunged at her, pulling
out a dirty knife. Brenna hoped the man didn’t fall on it. She didn’t want to
hurt anyone, not really, but she couldn’t
Matt Christopher, Stephanie Peters