Marra grimaced. She didn’t want to see the woman who had sent her sisters out in the world so ill prepared. But if I must, I suppose I can demand to know why she wasted such a chance. She could have stopped all of this long before it happened. Why didn’t she?
“Yes,” said Marra, feeling anger stir in the pit of her stomach, anger that for once had little to do with Vorling. “Yes, let’s.”
* * *
It was one of life’s ironies, thought Marra, that they had left the Southern Kingdom unmolested, only to be attacked as soon as they returned to her own lands.
Marra and the dust-wife were sitting by a well in a little gray town on a little gray road, surrounded by little gray fields. There was nothing to make anyone think it was dangerous. Fenris had negotiated a meal with the innkeeper in return for splitting yet more firewood. Marra was sitting on the edge of the well, thinking nothing in particular, when a shadow fell over her feet.
“The hell are you supposed to be?” said a thick, wet voice.
Marra jerked upright, panic firing her nerves. She had to grab for the stone to keep from pitching backward into the well.
The owner of the voice was not looking at her. He was a big, lanky, rawboned man and he was swaying slightly. Day-drunk, thought Marra. Oh, Lady of Grackles.
He was looming over the dust-wife.
The dust-wife was deeply unimpressed. Under normal circumstances, Marra would have applauded her calm, but she’d encountered a few drunks in her time with the Sister Apothecary and very few of them liked to be ignored. It made them angrier. The Sister Apothecary had been good at talking them down, usually by saying that there was a birth going on and suggesting they go have a toast to celebrate. Unfortunately that didn’t seem like it would apply here.
“You a witch?” asked the drunk, stabbing a finger at the dust-wife. “That your familiar?” He snickered.
Marra looked around wildly. Where was Fenris? Behind the inn, probably, chopping wood. Dammit. Two or three bystanders had stopped and were watching, but no one was intervening.
“Go back to the bottle, man,” said the dust-wife. “Leave an old woman alone.”
He made a grab for the brown hen. He was in no danger of succeeding, but the dust-wife stepped back anyway. Marra was very sure that the dust-wife could protect herself, and also that if she did, they might have to leave the village in a hurry.
Do something! Stop this! Think! How are you going to fight a prince if you can’t even handle one drunk?
“There’s many a man who’ll not think twice to mistreat a woman but who lives in fear of a habit and a holy symbol.” Remembering these words, Marra stepped in front of the dust-wife, running her fingers down the cord that held the carved grackle feather. “We mean no harm, my son,” she said, trying to sound like the abbess.
The drunk blinked at her. “The hell are you?”
“I serve Our Lady of Grackles.” She sent a silent prayer to the Lady to add it to her tab for these frequent impersonations.
Glory be, he took a step back. Marra had a moment to think that she’d pulled it off, that it was all going to work, and then Bonedog began to bark at him.
Perhaps if he had a voice like a normal dog, it might not have mattered. But the working throat and snapping jaws of a silent bark caught the man’s attention and he aimed a kick at Bonedog, with predictable results.
“Ow! Goddamn beast bit me!”
Oh hell. She snatched for Bonedog’s collar and took a step back.
“It bit me!” he shouted to the growing crowd. “You all saw it!”
From what Marra could see, Bonedog had barely scraped the man’s boot leather. She took another step back, dragging the dog with her. The dust-wife muttered something under her breath and dipped a hand into a pocket. Marra hoped she was grabbing something that would calm the man down, not something that would strike him dead and leave them with a corpse to explain.
A shadow fell between them.
“Excuse me,” said Fenris.
Relief flooded Marra. At least if they had to make a break for it, they wouldn’t get separated. And possibly the drunk would listen to another man, if not a nun.
The drunk turned. He had to look up to meet Fenris’s eyes. “This isn’t your problem, old man,” he said.
“Friend,” said Fenris in a just-between-us voice, “you’re frightening the nuns. Let them go on their way in peace. The gods look out for them and so should we, eh?”
“Their dog bit me,” muttered the drunk man.
“Ah well, even nuns have protectors, eh? Come now. I’m new in town, and you look like the sort of man who can tell me where I might find something…”