“Innkeeper.”
Stars, of course.
“Innkeeper, how do I purchase information from you?”
“It’s a simple exchange. You tell me what you want. If I confirm I have what you need, you give me information in return before I give you an answer.”
Not ideal, but her father had taught her to play.If you underestimate your opponent, you overestimate yourself.
“I am looking for four riders on three horses. They should’ve come this way last night. One boy, my age, of Torrent, is a hostage.”
The man’s posture relaxed. It was as if he only had two settings: cold and stubborn or sagardoa warm and ready for gossip. He leaned back and, though he didn’t have a mug in his hand, she imagined him at one of the cafés lining the market outside of the Itspi, trading information of a less valuable kind. “That is somethingI know about. The only question is how you plan to pay for it. I trade in like. In this case, information requires more information. I will accept nothing else.”
The diamonds lining her pockets clicked together, at the ready to test his policy. The knife in her boot, too. Amarande chewed her cheek. Somehow, she thought her news would hit this man differently than it had the guards. Finally, she spoke.
“I am the information. Princess Amarande of Ardenia, running away from my castle after someone dear to me was kidnapped to push my hand into a marriage contract.” She lifted her chin. “Surely you can find value in that.”
The man leaned forward and again tented his fingers. Amarande’s knife hand twitched.
“You were correct earlier—your looks do not deceive, Princess. What do you think those who you seek paid for their time here? I already know all about you and your stableboy.”
“Good, then which direction did they go?”
The man clicked his tongue—tsk, tsk, tsk.“Tell me who they work for.”
“Pyrenee.”
The man tilted his head. “I saidwho.”
How was that answer incorrect?“Renard.”
The man tilted his head farther. Clicked his tongue again.Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Amarande’s guts turned to water. Had the kidnappers lied to him?
“Where are they? Was my… was he hurt—the hostage? What did they tell you?”
The princess’s questions died on her lips as a door opened to her left and she realized they weren’t alone. The innkeeper made the rules, but he didn’t abide by them. A man twice the size of her father staggered out and grunted, “Pretty compost.”
Amarande’s hand was in her boot in a flash, but the ogre wasmuch faster than he looked, picking her up as she grappled for her knife. His massive hands grabbed her about the waist, an arm curling around her back and across her stomach as she knelt. She was upside down, several feet in the air, knife jiggling against the slit of space between her stocking and the top of her boot shaft. The giant man belly-laughed, and she shook with it. “No weapons, girl. No weap—”
The repetition died on the man’s lips as Amarande kicked back and uphard,heel of one boot and then the other smashing into his jaw from the underside. The giant’s head cracked back, spittle and blood flying along with maybe a tooth or two, and his arms failed.
She fell to the floor face first, getting her arms out in front just quick enough to roll forward, backbone smacking against the plush rug and wooden floorboards with a thud, and to her feet.
The giant stumbled into a vase and marble pedestal with a crash, knocking the candle there to the floorboards. Amarande didn’t see if the flame caught, because the ogre was moving toward her again, the man behind the desk screaming orders now. The giant tossed the sharp remainder of the vase at her as she reached again for her knife, and Amarande turned in time for the large shards to hit her back.
The man stumbled forward and dove at the innkeeper’s orders: “Catch her before she gets that hand in her boot again. You’re no good to me with a knife in your eye!”
The giant was so long his fingers were wrapped around Amarande’s ankles in the next instant. She kicked, but his hands were large enough to void her movements, and he pulled her forward as if she were a rag doll, the silk of her skirt slick against the expensive weave of the rug.
“No… don’t.… I-I…,” the princess stuttered. She’d been taught to fight much larger people, Koldo always emphasizing that for women technique was everything, but they’d never taught her how to survive an eight-foot nightmare.
Scrambling, Amarande put a hand in her pocket for her diamonds—the innkeeper’s greed was the only thing that might get her out of this now.
But then there was more movement, the ring of steel, an extended spray of blood.
Osana.
