She fetched my daggers and grabbed a great iron key from a hook on the wall by a rack of halberds. She tossed my bundled daggers through the bars. This daft tart was actually going to let me go. As I strapped on my daggers she turned the key in the lock. “I’ll need to take along my apprentice, as well,” I said.

She threw the door open and stepped aside. “Three days or the giant dies.”

I might have run then, bolted down the tunnel and out into the city, but she had, quite deftly, drawn one of my daggers from its sheath and put the point under my chin.

“I will cut your throat where you stand,” she said. “Harken, fool, I do not trust the duke’s men or the watch. My warriors are confined to the castle, and the townsfolk are afraid to go into the forest at night. You are the only one who can do this, and not because I have any reason to trust you, but because I trust you know that I will kill both you and your great simple friend, slowly and painfully, if you do not do as I command. And if you think to turn to your dark magic, remember this mercy I extend to you now, your life.”

“You fancy me, don’t you?”

She grabbed me by the jerkin and threw me across the chamber into the rack of spears. They rattled down over me. I climbed out from under the weaponry.

“A little bit?”

Chapter 6

Once a Hero

As I made my way out of the gendarmerie I stepped lightly and sang a little song called “Blacktooth the Goat Blower,” which I composed as I went, my spirits lifted for the first time since my pirate wench had abandoned me to suffer among the salty dogs. I suppose it is a testament to my rebellious nature that I do not feel alive unless I am under threat of death by some poxy royal. I am a bit of a calamity whore, I figure, but with Hippolyta’s sword hanging o’er my head, I was absolutely giddy with the prospect of my task. I even encouraged the young, spot-faced watchman who escorted me out to join in on the “Goat Blower” chorus, but alas, he was too earnest in his duty.

I made note of my path—locks, gates, and portals—as I went, should I need to return in stealth to extricate an enormous ninny and sneak him by a half-dozen watchmen and as many guards. (Drool’s forlorn farewells had shaken me as I left the dungeon, and I had promised him I would return.) At last the labyrinth opened into the bright, cobbled street bustling with peddlers, beggars, and bawds. I caught the aroma of peaches wafting from a basket on a passing merchant’s back, a perfume so sweet as to roil a starving fool’s stomach. But alas, I had no coin.

“Buy us a peach, lad,” I said to Spot Face.

Spot Face snatched a peach off the top of the basket and tossed it to me. “Watchmen don’t have to pay,” he said.

“Wanker,” the merchant grumbled as he ambled away.

I bit into the peach with such abandon that I nearly chipped a tooth on the pit, and as the juice streamed down my chin I thought I might swoon—I closed my eyes and sank into the sweet peachy oblivion of it—but before I could take a second bite I was caught up and lifted roughly by the armpits, and my peach, my gentle fuzzy friend, was dashed on the cobbles.

“Duke wants to see you,” said Blacktooth, who had hooked me under my right arm.

“Thought you were away, eh, wee pirate?” said Burke, who had me under the left arm.

I made as if to struggle and when the watchmen braced against my efforts I swung my feet forward, then back over my head into a somersault, and slipped out of their grip, landing in a crouch in front of Spot Face with a dagger in each hand. Before Blacktooth and Burke had turned I was behind Spot Face with one dagger at his throat. The other I flipped and held by the blade, and held ready to send it to a happy home in Blacktooth’s eye.

“Back! Another step and I’ll cut his throat.”

Blacktooth looked to Burke, Burke to Blacktooth with a shrug, then to me said, “Go on then.”

“I will,” said I. “I’ll spill his lifeblood out onto the cobbles.”

“Get on with it, then,” said Blacktooth. “Then we’re off to see the duke.”

I found it odd that neither drew a weapon. Burke’s crossbow remained slung across his back, Blacktooth’s sword in its scabbard.

“Look there,” said I, nodding toward my fallen peach, “you’ve ruined a perfectly lovely peach and this lad will pay for it with his life.” Spot Face squirmed in my grip and I pressed the tip of my dagger into his neck to still him.

“Oh, all right,” said Blacktooth. He ambled to where my peach had fallen, took a small knife from his belt and trimmed off the bit where I’d taken a bite, then spat on the fuzzy bit and wiped it on his sleeve. He held the peach out to me. “Here you be.”

“Aye, slay the lad, take your peach, and we’ll be on our way,” said Burke. “The duke is waiting.”

“Oh bugger,” said I. “I’m not going to kill this pup for the loss of a peach.” I shoved Spot Face away and sheathed one of my daggers. In the same motion I pulled a chit of wood from my belt, a royal seal was impressed upon it in sealing wax. “But I’ve this passport from Hippolyta, and I’ll wager if you cross her, she’ll decorate her bedposts with your heads merely for the music of the night wind whistling through your eye holes.”

“Come along,” said Blacktooth. “Put up that pig sticker and follow us. You’re not a prisoner. Duke just wants a word.”