The Art of Stealing Time: A Time Thief Novel (17 page)

“Quibble,” Gregory interrupted, and pulled me to my feet while giving Doug a long look. “I assume the audience with your august self is over?”

“It is.”

“There’s just one more thing.” I resisted when Gregory tried to escort me out of the tent. “Have you heard anything about my mothers?” I asked Doug.

“Who?”

“My moms. They were captured by that Holly woman with me a couple of days ago. I guess Ethan needed a couple of witches, because they were given some accommodations and access to an apothecary. I haven’t heard from them, since it’s impossible to get any sort of cell phone reception here, but I thought there might be a chance that you’ve heard if they’re OK.” I told him my mothers’ names, and waited, hoping for good news.

My stomach fell as Doug’s face grew darker and darker. “Lord Ethan has kidnapped witches to use against us? Why did you not tell me this when I first captured you?”

“They aren’t bad witches,” I said, but then honesty prompted me to correct that. “Not evil, that is. Sometimes their magic doesn’t work like it should. But they would never willingly harm someone. They’re very big on the Wiccan Rede, and not doing harm that can be returned to one.”

“Lord Ethan is unscrupulous! He’ll find a way to use their magic against us! I must communicate this to Lord Aaron immediately. You are dismissed, both of you. Be sure to see the armorer about having some new armor made that fits you.”

“I won’t be here long enough to need it,” I said gaily as we left the tent.

“What? What do you mean—”

Gregory let the tent flap drop, which wouldn’t have stopped us from hearing Doug, but it did shut him up. “Shall we make our way into the enemy’s camp?”

I glanced up at the sky, making a frustrated noise when it didn’t yield any hint as to the time. Behind us, someone screamed, followed almost immediately by the sound of shouting. Bottom thundered past us, eyes glinting with an unholy amusement, nostrils flared, and hooves pounding. His saddle was off, and a halter had been placed on his head, but a dangling short bit of rope hinted that someone had gotten a bit too close to him.

“Godspeed and good riddance,” Gregory said as Bottom disappeared into the distance.

I waved.

“As I was saying—”

“Good evening.” A soft, gentle voice behind me interrupted Gregory. I turned to see who it was. A small, tonsured woman dressed in a monk’s garb bowed to us both. A rosary swung from her waist. She smiled. “I’m Brother Helene. I understand that you are going to replace Sir Dedham at the front. If you will come with me, I will take you to his quarters, and thence to the armorer, who will no doubt wish to take some measurements.”

“Brother Helene?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Shouldn’t that be Sister?”

She looked surprised. “No, I am a monk, not a nun.”

“But . . .” I looked at Gregory. He shrugged. “OK, moving on. Thanks for the offer to show me around, but I’m going to take Gregory over to Ethan’s side and show him around.”

“Oh, you can’t do that,” she said in her breathy voice. She sounded like Marilyn Monroe about to burst into “Happy Birthday.” “They are the enemy.”

“I know that, but I was over there a few days ago, and—”

“And I’m afraid that I must ask the thief to leave now. He is not allowed within the confines of our encampment. I understand from the squires that accommodations are to be had in the fornicatresses’ camp. That’s to the northwest, just beyond the curve of the stream,” she said helpfully. “They always appear happy to see men.”

My hackles rose. I hadn’t, until that moment, known that it was possible for people to have actual hackles, but I swear that I felt a tingling between my shoulder blades that paired nicely with the ire that burned hot and fast. “Gregory is not going to sleep with prostitutes!” I said loudly.

Gregory looked thoughtful until I whapped him on the arm.

“Isn’t he?” Brother Helene’s eyes opened very wide as she looked him over. “I don’t see why he couldn’t. Is he diseased? The whores usually don’t mind that unless it’s leprosy, and then they tend to use . . . specialists.”

Gregory rolled his eyes.

“He’s not diseased, and he doesn’t need a specialist. He doesn’t want to be with prostitutes.”

“He looks virile enough,” she said mildly, then added, “Oh! He is a sodomite? I’ve heard—this isn’t from firsthand knowledge, mind you—that there is a camp for those who favor man-minx entertainment a few miles to the south. Evidently they used to be located with the whores, but there was a falling-out over the decorating of the tents, and the male harlots struck out on their own.”

“He does not want man-minxes!” I protested. “And he’s totally virile. He’s the most virile person I know.”

“Thank you, sweet,” Gregory said with a smug little smile.

“He’s virile from here to the moon, but that doesn’t mean he’s on the prowl for some nooky, either male- or female-based.”

“That’s not quite true, but I agree with the sentiment,” he said, pinching my behind.

“Sad,” Brother Helene said, giving him one last look. “I’m sure the strumpets of both genders will regret that decision, but that does not affect the fact that he cannot stay here. Now, if you will come with me, Lady Gwen, I will show you to your quarters.”

She took hold of my arm with surprising strength and tugged me forward. “I really need to go see my mothers—”

“I will take you to your quarters, and you will then see the armorer!” she said in a voice that had shifted from sexy to one that wouldn’t be out of place in a demonic demonstration of dark arts.

“You are not at all monklike,” I told her as she hauled me off down one of the aisles. “Monks are supposed to be nice.”

“We don’t like to be crossed,” she growled. “I have a job to do, and no one, certainly not you, is going to stop me from completing it in the manner I see fit.”

I looked back over my shoulder, waving my free hand at Gregory. “I guess I’m going to see my tent now.”

“And the armorer,” he added with a little twist of his smile. “I will find you later.”

“Not here you won’t!” Brother Helene said loudly, grunting slightly when I tried to dig in my heels. She just jerked me forward until I had no choice but to walk or be dragged. “I will see to it that the guards have orders to remove you should you venture into the camp again. If you do not stop struggling, Lady Gwen, you will force me to render you insensible so that I might easily deliver you to your quarters.”

“Oh!” I gasped, glaring at her when she gave my arm a hard yank. “You are so mean! I’m going to report you to whoever is in charge of monks around here.”

“That would be Brother Anselm, and he’s busy right now with a village of insurgents who are fighting Lord Aaron’s rule.”

“Busy as in tending to their wounds, and helping the innocent people, and providing comfort and all that stuff that one normally thinks of monks doing rather than being a bully, like some people I could name?”

She made a face. “Of course not. Brother Anselm is helping to capture the insurgents, and hunting down those who have taken to the woods in order to avoid justice. He is quite adept at the art of extracting information from unwilling subjects.”

“Great. The head monk is an expert torturer. This place is just so weird.”

“Here is your tent. You may leave your mail inside. I will find a squire to attend it and you. Be ready to visit the armorer in ten minutes.”

She departed before I could voice my intentions to do otherwise, and after a brief consideration of the sort of antics that monks got up to in Anwyn, I decided to get the armor appointment out of the way so I could go find my mothers.

“My arm is bruised in three different spots,” I told Brother Helene exactly ten minutes later when she reappeared.

She
tch
ed without any sign of contriteness, and gestured down another pathway. “We will go to Mistress Antoinette now.”

“Fine, but you can be sure that I’m going to tell Doug or Aaron if I can’t fight because my arm is too sore.”

“Doug?”

“Yeah. The head knight dude.”

“Ah. Him.” She proceeded down the aisle.

I followed, walking a bit easier now that the heavy mail was no longer on me and I’d had a quick wash with an ewer of water that was waiting in the tent. I hadn’t any fresh clothing to change into, but figured I’d address that issue once I was done seeing my moms. “What do you call him?”

“I prefer not to say. The king’s warriors do not share their names, as you know.”

“Because they can be defeated that way, yes, I remember, but everyone knows my name, and I’m now one of his warriors.”

“You are an outsider brought in to fight. You are not the same as one of Lord Aaron’s trusted guard.”

“Pfft.” I pretended that I wasn’t the teeniest bit hurt at not being one of the elite squad, and focused my attention on the surroundings.

The people in Aaron’s camp looked the same as those in Ethan’s camp across the stream—they bustled, they talked and laughed and sang little ditties to themselves. Horses were escorted hither and yon, and a plethora of young men and women scampered about, obviously running errands for their elders. There were no dogs to be seen, but I did spy a few cats lounging around in the sunshine. Almost everyone wore black tunics with gold designs on the front, the designs varying from person to person. Most were animals, although some were runic and other devices.

The next hour was spent talking to a very nice middle-aged woman with yellow hair and piercings in a number of visible locations (and I suspected just as many that weren’t visible), who deftly took my measurements, then circled me silently for three minutes before she said, “I know what’ll do for you.”

She disappeared into her tent, which stood alongside a makeshift forge, and emerged with a couple of pieces of plate in her hand and her assistant, Marigold, trotting behind her. “Lady Constance asked me to make this for her a few decades ago, but she’s yet to visit the front, so we can modify it to fit you. Here, hold this up and let me see what changes I’ll need to make to it.”

I did as she asked, admiring the metal chest plate while she fussed around me. It was a gorgeous piece of armor, well crafted and even graceful in its lines. It looked like it was made of sterling silver, although I knew it had to be some kind of steel. The breastplate was curved to fit a woman’s form, with breast cups that would please the heart of Grace Jones. The center of the breastplate curved down in an inverted arrow, much like a corset’s busk, the sides of which swept out to little hip flares that reminded me of a peplum. It was held on the torso by leather straps, and as Antoinette and Marigold strapped me into it, I was aware that not only did it fit reasonably well (although I overflowed the cups a bit), but it was also surprisingly light.

“Wow, I can bend and stuff,” I said, bending down to touch my toes. “This is much nicer than the other armor I was given.”

“The mail will be too small for you,” Antoinette said, eyeing me as I flexed and stretched to determine my range of motion. “But we can patch on a new section easily enough. The skirt, however . . .”

“There’s a skirt?” I looked down at my jeans. “I can’t imagine fighting in a dress.”

“It’s a mail skirt. It hangs down over your hips to your knees.”

“Oh. I thought that was part of the shirt thingy.”

“Men wear those. We’ve found that ladies prefer the flexibility that separate pieces provide. Marigold, fetch the skirt. Lady Gwen looks to be bigger in the hips than Lady Constance, which means we’ll have to make a few extra links.”

“Sorry about my hips.” I felt stupid apologizing about something I couldn’t control, but at the same time, there I was creating extra work for them. “My mom says I get them from her. She’s always been broad in the beam, too.”

“Nothing wrong with good birthing hips. Ah, here we go.” She held up what I can only describe as a wraparound skirt made up of links of shiny silver metal teardrops that overlapped in a beautiful floral pattern. Antoinette strapped it around my waist. The two edges were supposed to strap together, but a three-inch gap kept it from closing properly.

“Well, now I feel like a great big elephant,” I said, glaring at the gap. “That’s it. I’m going on a diet.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Antoinette said in what I was coming to realize was her usual gruff tone of voice. “Men like women with a bit of meat on their bones. Marigold, get the fire stirred up. Three rows of links should do the trick. I’ll have them and the breastplate ready for you by Nones.”

“When is that?”

“A few hours.”

Reluctantly, I took off the pretty armor, chiding myself for that emotion, since I hadn’t wanted to be a warrior in the first place.

“And I have no intention of actually fighting,” I argued with myself after bidding Antoinette and Marigold farewell. “Maybe if I suggest word games instead of physical combat. Or perhaps I can beguile whoever I’m supposed to fight with daring tales of mystical alchemy.”

The problem there was that I knew no daring tales of mystical alchemy. As a whole, alchemists were studious introverts not much given to any acts of daring, let alone those that would entertain someone enough to distract him or her from the thought of fighting.

“I’m doomed,” I said with a sigh, and started off for Ethan’s camp.

“L
ady Gwen! Lady Gwen!” I stopped, watching with growing misgivings as a squire ran up and immediately began tugging my arm. “You’re late! Master Hamo will be most upset.”

“Late for what? No, wait, it doesn’t matter. I’ve done the armor fitting, so now I get to go see my mothers.”

“Late for training! Master Hamo trains all the new warriors, and his lordship said you are to attend because you have no experience fighting.”

“His lordship who? Or whom. No, I think it’s who.”

The teen didn’t even look at me, just kept tugging me onward until we were clear of the tents. “His lordship. The man in charge of all of us.”

“Yes, but what’s his name?”

“I can’t tell you, for I do not know.”

“Oh, him. Well, you can tell Doug that I’ve done what he asked, and now it’s my time.”

“There ye be,” a deep, bell-like voice bellowed as the squire, who was now behind me shoving me forward with both hands on my back, pushed me into a roughly circular patch of dirt. A massive man stood there, barechested, with metal bands about his wrists. He had no neck, was bald, and stood with easy grace for someone who apparently had muscles on his muscles. He hefted a great sword that was taller than me, and nodded. “Ye look like ye have the makings of a fighter. Lad, her sword.”

The squire behind me stopped shoving me and darted to the side, returning with my borrowed Nightingale sword.

“Look, I really don’t have time for this—
aieee!
” I hadn’t even finished speaking before the massive man, who I assumed was Master Hamo, swung his equally massive sword at me. It was parry or die, and parry I did, all the while feeling sure that just that defensive act alone would result in my losing an arm.

“OK, so I was wrong,” I panted, blocking another thrust, the Nightingale singing as I swung her through the air. “That doesn’t mean I want to waste an hour fencing with you. Hey!”

Master Hamo had evidently just been toying with me, because I suddenly found myself flat on my back, my head ringing with the impact of it upon the dirt.

“That’s what ye get for not paying attention,” Hamo said, looming over me so that he blotted out the red, roiling sky above. He looked like a mountain in man form. “If I had wanted to, ye’d have been dead. As it was, I hit ye with the flat of me sword.”

“How about you don’t hit me with anything,” I snapped, woozy enough that I took the hand he offered, which hauled me abruptly to my feet.

“I won’t if ye learn what I’m about to teach ye.”

The events of the next hour are painful to recount, so I shall draw a veil over them. Suffice it to say that I ended up in the dirt pretty regularly every couple of minutes, but by the time the hour was up, I was dodging, spinning, and parrying almost all of Hamo’s blows.

“That be enough for today. Tomorrow we’ll work on yer attack skills. Give yer sword to the lad. He’ll see to its care until ye have a squire of yer own.”

“Every individual atom in my body hurts,” I complained as I hobbled over to the waiting squire. He looked about sixteen and wore the anxious puppy-dog look of perpetual worry and admiration that I was coming to realize indicated one who hoped to be a warrior someday. “It’s not as much fun as you might think,” I added.

The squire blinked at me, then bowed and trotted off clutching my sword.

“Right, now I see my moms,” I croaked to myself, and limped with a bent back toward the direction of Ethan’s camp. I moved with all the grace of an elderly crab, and my body screamed for a hot bath and a soft, comfortable bed, but I had to check on my mothers before I could give in and collapse into a ball of mewling, whimpering Gwen.

“Oy! You there!”

“Oh, for the love of . . . no. Not going to listen,” I said loudly, one hand on my back as I continued on my way.

“You! Hold up!” another voice called.

“Not on your life.”

Two men rushed up from where they were loitering on the fringe of the camp. I ignored them, brushing past them to the tree that had been felled and dragged over to make a bridge across the stream.

One large hand shot out and grabbed my arm, right where Helene had left bruises. I yelped. “Watch it! My arm was sore to begin with.”

“We’ve got you now,” the arm-holding man said. Wearily, I gave him the once-over. He was big—not muscles-upon-muscles-big like Hamo, but what I thought of as club-bouncer big—with tattoos of snakes that circled his neck, and dragons that emerged from under both sleeves of his shirt to run down the length of his arms.

“Unhand me, knave,” I said in my best Renaissance Faire manner.

“What did she call me?” Arm-boy asked the second man.

He was just as big and bulky as the first guy, and like him, had copious amounts of ink, but his tattoos consisted mainly of nude women in various poses. “A navel. The daft-witted hen called you a navel.”

“Like an orange?” The first man squinted at me. “Did you call me an orange, missus? Why did you call me an orange?”

“I didn’t. I called you a knave.”

He shook his head in dismay. “Now I gots to rough you up a bit. I don’t want to, but I gots to.”

“Aye, you gots to,” the second man agreed. “Can’t have people calling you an orange when you’re not an orange.”

I suddenly wished I had my sword again. “Look, I said ‘knave,’ not ‘navel orange,’ and even if I had said ‘orange’—”

“You can’t rough her up too much, though, Irv,” the second man added after some thought. “Boss won’t like it.”

Irv, who was looking sadly at me, chewed that over for a minute.

“Help!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, deciding that in this case, it was better to seek aid before the situation got out of hand. “Help! I’m being roughed up by two be-tatted hulks who don’t understand medieval-speak!”

“Aye, boss won’t.”

“Help!” I yelled louder and tried to wrestle my wrist away from Irv.

No one in camp so much as looked my way. I wondered where Gregory was, and why he wasn’t where I needed him to be: namely, conveniently located adjacent to the stream. Damn the man for going off and doing his job.

“Better you don’t rough her up at all,” the second man said, having evidently completed some great undertaking of thought processes.

“Aye,” Irv said slowly, then nodded his head. “That way, boss can rough her up.”

“No one is roughing me up!” I bellowed, and making a fist, punched Irv in the nose as hard as I could.

He caught my fist about a quarter of an inch away from his face. “Here, now!” he said, clearly offended. “There’s no call for that! Frankie, did you see? Daft hen tried to smack me in the gob.”

“Aye. Feisty wench, she is. Best we take her to the boss afore she hurts herself. Boss won’t like that any more than he’d like you to rough her up.”

“Helleeeeeeeeeerp!” My last cry for help morphed into a startled scream when Irv bent down and hefted me onto his shoulder. “Put me down, you great lummox!”

“What’s a lummox?” I heard him ask his friend as they crossed over the tree to Ethan’s side of the stream.

“Don’t know. Might be another fruit.”

“Daft hen.”

“Aye, daft hen.”

“I’m not a hen, and I’m not daft. Oh, for the love of the stars and moons, would you put me down?”

“Imagine someone calling you an orange,” Frankie said conversationally as the two men strode along.

“I didn’t—wait a minute. Why aren’t you taking me to Ethan?”

I had fully expected that the two bully boys would go straight into Ethan’s camp and deliver me to their boss, but they didn’t. They made a sharp right at the camp and headed for the woods that ran along the far side of the encampment.

“Who?” Irv asked.

“Ethan! The man who owns . . . runs . . . the camp just there.”

“Oh, him.” Irv made a gesture with his shoulder that had me sliding down his back a few inches. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

“Daft hen doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Frankie offered.

“I’m going to be sick all over you if you don’t set me down!” I warned them.

That did the trick. Irv stopped and set me onto my feet, retaining a hold on my wrist as he did so. “Don’t be thinking you are going to get away,” he warned. “Boss said we wasn’t to let you get away.”

“Aye, he said that.” Frankie nodded and took my other arm in his beefy hand.

“Who, exactly, is this boss?” I twisted around to look over my shoulder at Ethan’s camp, stumbling when the men started forward. I had half hoped to see Gregory lurking about the edges, in the process of thieving, but although I could see people moving around in the camp, we were too far away for me to yell for assistance.

“Boss is boss,” Irv answered in a bewildered tone, as if he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t figured that out.

“Yes, but what is his name?”

“Oh. Tessersnatch. Baldwin Tessersnatch.”

I froze, and was promptly jerked off my feet when the two men kept walking. They paused to help right me. “Tessersnatch?” I cleared my throat when my voice came out a squeak. “The lawyer?”

“Aye, that’s him.” Frankie gave me a pitying look. “You’ve gone and made him angry, you have. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

“No good being in your shoes,” Irv agreed, marching forward again.

My brain whirled those two words around and around. Baldwin Tessersnatch was a mortal lawyer who had ties to the Otherworld, most recently with my two moms. Desperate for funds for their school, they—foolishly, and quite illegally—had agreed to sell, through Baldwin, some incantations to another mortal man.

The dread that filled me at the name turned swiftly to hot, consuming anger. “Well, now. How about that. Baldwin Tessersnatch, the man who threw me off a cliff to my death when I told him my moms wouldn’t be fulfilling the transaction. You know, I think I’d
like
to see him. I have a thing or two to say to Mr. Murderous Tessersnatch.”

“Baldwin,” Irv corrected me.

“Daft hen was making a funny,” Frankie said. “At least I think she was. You never know with one what calls you an orange.”

I shook off their respective holds on my wrists and marched forward, saying in a voice that should have dropped the birds from the trees, “Oh, I have several things to discuss with Baldwin Tessersnatch!”

“It’s a good thing that we got to her before that other hen,” Irv told Frankie.

“I wonder if I can remember the spell for shriveling up a man’s testicles,” I mused as we entered the woods. “I know it started off
Misbegotten wart on the backside of humankind,
but I can’t remember if the second line is
Go and boil your bollocks in a vat of rime
, or
barrel of lime
. Hmm.”

“Aye, she gave me the willies, she did.”

“Maybe it’s
Shrivel the stones till the end of all time
? Damn my crappy memory for spells. Wait—what other hen?” I stopped again, turning to look back at them. “A woman is looking for me? Is her name Holly?”

“Don’t know her name. She never said, did she, Frankie?”

“I’m of a mind that she didn’t, Irv.”

“All she said was that her boss wanted to see you, and that she would see to it that we were paid twice what the boss pays us if we’d help her find you.” Irv looked thoughtful again. “We were tempted, weren’t we, Frankie?”

“We were,” his buddy admitted. “But only until she told us who her boss was, and then we figured we’d be better off with our boss.”

I was a bit confused by which boss was which, but managed to sort it out enough to ask, “Ethan, you mean?”

“Naw, he’s not badass like the hen’s boss.”

“We like Ethan, don’t we, Irv?” Frankie said, apropos of nothing in particular. “We were helping him.”

“He had the wrong idea about how you wage a war,” Irv confided. “He didn’t once think of using a car bomb, or offing the competition’s family.”

Horror filled my veins. “You guys are hit men, aren’t you?” Really stupid hit men, but still, obviously, professionals in the art of killing.

“Not us,” Frankie said at the same time Irv answered, “Yes, but we don’t always do that.”

“That’s right. It’s only
sometimes
we take care of the boss’s bigger problems.” Frankie didn’t even blink over his sudden change in story. “Mostly we’re the boss’s right-hand men.”

“And enforcers.”

“Sometimes we do a hit or two, just to keep our hands in.”

“It doesn’t pay to get rusty,” Irv agreed.

“Messy.” Frankie nodded sagely. “It can get messy if you don’t keep your hand in.”

I was tempted to run screaming away from them, but given this new and more deadly light on their characters, I felt a little subterfuge was in order. Subterfuge and distraction. “So who is this woman’s boss if it’s not Ethan?”

“Badass,” Irv said, giving me a little shove forward. To my relief, he didn’t try grabbing my arm again.

“Really badass. Badder than the boss, and he’s pretty bad.”

Just the thought of Baldwin had me squaring my shoulders. “Yes, well, you haven’t seen my ass. It’s going to whup your boss’s.”

They both looked at my butt. I made an annoyed sound and charged forward through the woods. I would deal with this woman once I had vented my spleen on Baldwin. “Where is your boss? I want to get him taken care of quickly so I have time to see my moms before I’m due for my shift.”

“Boss is in Cardiff,” Irv said.

I stopped and looked at him. “Cardiff? You mean the town? He’s not here in Anwyn?”

“Naw,” Frankie said. “Boss can’t come into Anwyn.”

“He was banned for trying to sue the boss of Anwyn. Boss said our boss can’t come back. So he sent us to fetch you, said we wasn’t to come back unless we had either you with us or your head in a duffel bag.”

“Now that was a great movie.”

I stared at them both in horror.

“What movie is that, then?” Irv asked his buddy.

“
Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag
. Don’t you remember? We watched it right before the night we had to take care of those trolls what were making a stink about the boss forcing them to plague folks in Manchester.”

Irv shook his head. “Six heads, that was.”

“Eight. It had that American bloke in it. What’s his name? Italian, he is.”