A wave of relief swept over her. At last. And she wasted not another moment, but drew back and gave him a pleading look. “Please! This way!”

On the hurried way back she stumbled at almost every step, but what did she care of how she looked? At her heel was a savior. Only she prayed that they were not too late. Even when they emerged into the potters’ streets, the aloofness of its residents was undisturbed, though some stole glances at the guards uneasily. He halted, looking at them with consideration.

“Why do you stop?” asked she. “It is just ahead. Why do you stop?”

The guard stood still, his hands on his hips as he went on the study the streets, as though she spoke to a statue. Then finally he regarded her with strange eyes. “Who’s this woman you saw, missus? Someone you know?”

“Oh, who the devil cares!” she cried. “She was just standing there, then they argued about money, and he dragged her...” She paused, her face darkened. In an instant, her voice turned cold. “Is it because she’s a prostitute?”

He shrugged, “Settling business disputes is outside of my jurisdiction, missus. Take it up to the lord, if you may.”

“The Knight?” the pitch of her voice heightened by every word. “He’s away, you dunce!”

“Now you are an insolent girl,” he said, reddened. And squinting, he thrust his finger at her. “I will overlook your folly so keep you your mouth to yourself and run along, y’hear? Don’t be a nuisance!”

“What man you are!” She wanted to scream. “What did they make you guard for? To stand around acting important? To look on idly at rapes?”

“Silence!” he growled, “Fine, you want it that bad, eh? Lead the way, if you think this is worth it!”

Her eyes went wide, having not expected him to give in that easily. “Of course... this way. You sure gained some senses,” she added under her breath.

At once she plunged into the sidestreet, recalling the door the woman had been dragged through. But she had hardly passed the first house when she was stopped abruptly. Turning around, she cried in dismay, “What are you doing? Let go of me.”

But the guard’s grip remained solid as steel as he dragged her behind an alley even smaller. Noises of civilization even then reached them clearly from the main street.

He shoved her against the wall, emphasized the many bruises on her back. Incensed with an unmeasurable rage for pain and confusion, she whipped up her face, balancing herself against a barrel, and glared with a look to kill, a curse on her lips. But that was only for a split second. The next, the back of his hand struck across her face, sending her splashing in a muddy puddle.

“That’s for your manner.” The guard stood over her, hands on his hips. “Who’s your parents, girl?” he barked. “I shall give them a good whooping. Once I’m done with you.”

“How dare you!” She glared up from where she lay, holding a muddy hand to her cheek, though her body was shaking uncontrollably and a fright had begun to set in.

“How dare I?” he bent down, the lowered face as corrupted with anger as hers. “How dare you? Am I slave? Ought I to abide your chiding of my integrity in the street?”

“What fucking integrity?” She spat at his face.

The guard swung his hand again, with doubly the strength. She reeled, dazed. Then the ground fell away, and she felt her back slammed against a wall.

Somewhere in front of her, the man’s voice hovered. “Look at you. Not so feisty muddied all over, eh?” Fingers dug in her raw face. “But how well you bleed, I say! You do not get to rough up even the harlots so, not without an excuse, nay.”

Then suddenly she felt suffocating, a stinky smell rose to her nostrils. The profuse breathing of the man panted on her face. And then something wet pressed on her bleeding cheek.

She became hysterical. Something between a yelp and a scream escaped the tightened lips. But the horror groped at her every which way, from the front, from the past, from within memory, from nightmares. She was losing it. She had lost it. A constant, unending scream tore through her mind, rending her every thought, leaving only a blank and throbbing landscape. All the world beyond the shutters of her eyes was darkness, and nothing there occurred.

She had lost completely then, had been floating away. Then came a sharp sound. A thing pierced through the veil of her mind. A voice. “Command,” said it.

“What?” she muttered, in stupor still. And something invaded the moment her lips parted. She tasted with her forked tongue a putrid desire, so foul it at once overwhelmed her mind. But the voice rang clear, “Command!” Again it echoed.

“Command, mistress! By my venom, release thyself!”

“Do!” she cried, though if it was out loud or within her mazed mind she could not tell. At once something slippery whirled around her wrist.

“Argh!”

Suddenly the suffocating feeling was gone. And she slumped against the wall, her vision clearing.

She saw the guard drawing back in surprise, eyeing a set of puncture wounds on his forearm. “Did you pinch me, you bitch?”

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The tiny serpent had bitten him. That she could tell. But she could tell also that the man was unharmed - unaffected, if further agitated. The poison, of course, must fail now of all time. Small chance, yes. But to fail now. To fail and abandon her to wretched fate.

There came another slap. It cleared her mind, so that when he drew closer again, cursing, she was lucid of what was going to happen. She could tell, could see, her inevitable fate, and everything. Everything. So ere even the ringing voice of her familiar pointed it out, she was already aware of it, and was reaching for it.

Her arm had little strength left to command, so it was a stroke of fortune when, as the guard staggered back at the sound of sliding metal, the blade sprang cleanly from his scabbard.

“And what are you to do with it?” the guard said, fixing his eyes on the blade now in Cordelia’s hands.

“Back!” she shrieked shrilly. “Back!”

“You will put that down while I’m still playing nice,” he growled, taking a step back “Put down, I say!”

Cordelia’s eyes darted. Her back was against the wall, in front, the man. To the right was a dead end, to the left, a barrel she would have to climb over to get to the street.

“I will slay you,” her voice trembled. Her hands were shaking as she held the sword with both. A miracle that she could still stand. Even this unsteady stance with her both hands outstretched to hold the sword did not seem bearable for even some seconds more.

“I will spare you a beating yet if you put that down right this instant!” The man howled. “I. Said. Put. That-“

Abruptly dropping the sentence midair, the man dodged to her right, taking her by surprise, and charged.

Her fey senses were wide awake and keenly alerted the way her muscles were not. She saw him move, knew that he was fast, observed as the fist thrust out savagely. She shifted the blade.

Weak and feeble, Cordelia could not hold onto the weighted hilt, it slid from her hands. Nevertheless, the man’s determined charge undid himself. His bulging eyes stared down at his skewered chest, his mouth foamed with blood.

At her wrist, there came a hissing cry of victory. “The swine dropped onto his own blade! My word, ‘tis a capital trick!”

Meanwhile, Cordelia stared and stared. The blood soaking her hands, her skirt. The lifeless, liveried corpse slumped against her as she slid dumbly to the foot of the wall, dazed as before when she had been slapped.

“Mistress,” Mastema said, “Unless you have a mind to convince the guards this man committed honorary suicide, I strongly advise you to fly straight from the premise.”

“I killed him...” she muttered, “I killed him... did you not see?”

“Damn right you did, mistress. ‘Twas a good slaying, but it will not be long ere the people come investigate.”

“What mean you?” she said weakly, “He tried to... he tried to...”

“To rape you, aye. And you killed him. And I would fain congratulate your first in a safer place.”

“Stand, I say!” It shrieked when she would not stir. “You killed a guard! Will you offer yourself to the laws? To the hand of this swine’s comrades? So that they may show you the little beating and groping just now is but the slightest suggestion of the humiliation they may render?”

“No... not again,” she whined, getting to her feet at last, her eyes wild. “I must flee. Flee, of course. But whither should I fly?”

She thought of the siblings. They might be able to defend her against the city’s guards. For surely such mortal men would be nothing to an army of feys. They could. But, would they? Had not the people of this town ignored the rape of that woman? Had not they turned a blind eye though they wandered just a street over, even as Cordelia screamed her heart out? And killing - murder is, to be sure, the gravest crime. Though she did not regret it, who’s to say Derrick would not slay her out of hand for this foulest deed? How could she trust them, knowing not the least of the laws of this world? She: a fey, natural enemy of knights! Flee, she must, wherever to but that inn! And there was no one she might trust.

The world, the town, felt bustling with people, with faces, with watchful eyes. As though from every side street, behind every window, under every cart and wheel, there might be spilling peasants any second now, looking for the culprit of the hideous murder. She found the town wall, and hugged close to it, moving along at the back of houses like a fearful rat, starting at every sound. Every voice raised in the distance was the voice of a pursuer finding his mark. Every innocuous sound from within a house the drawing of weapons to end her where she stood. The unbearable terror accumulated to the point where she must wonder how her heart had not burst. Nor could she conceive a possible escape. There was no crossing the main street, to be sure, for her front skirt was soaked with blood, her hands red, and her composure in tatters. She quickly banished the thought of escaping through the gate, for it was closely guarded. Water then? But these stains could not be washed. No way. Then she must discard the skirt. Yet how suspicious she would look going half naked! She could steal some clothes, then. But there was nothing.

Then, even in her fretful state and jumbled thoughts, a chilling sensation ran down her spine. She was being watched. The sensation of doom almost froze her in place. But she whipped her head around, found no one. Absolutely no one. Yet the dread was real, more real than aught else she could sense at the moment. She waited for the cry murder. It did not come.

“Above,” hissed Mastema at the same time as something moved.

The wall.

A shadow flitted away.

She broke into a mad run, no more regard for caution. Whoever that was, she had been seen.

Yet she knew there was no use running. Not when the entire number of the town guards were headed even now towards this place.

Then ahead of her, there appeared a fenced garden facing the wall. The only thing within the confines of the small garden strewing with dead leaves was a low but long shack, its back against the windowless wall of a large building. A clamor came from the distance. She hesitated no more, pushed the creaky gate in the fences open, it was not locked. Hoping against all hope, she placed a hand on the door of the shack - a dark and damp wood door. This too was not latched, and no signs of living beings could be heard from within.

The noise grew louder. Holding a deep breath, Cordelia slipped in - the creaking was deafening to her ears - and shut the door behind.

Inside it was dark, too dark. Only the outlines of what seemed a counter and a stove were visible in the wall near where she stood. But, to be sure, no movement in the dark. No one to betray her location with an astonished cry.

For an eternity she stood there, her heart beating louder than she should like. The clamor without went on for a while, though no voice or sound she could comprehend, then gradually diminished, to the point where she wondered if it was just the noisome market’s wholesome exchanges her overcharged senses had picked up. She did not wish to find out. The idea of hiding in this shack for a few days for now seemed highly agreeable. Or at least until midnight...

There were whispers. This time there was no doubt. And then footsteps echoed somewhere in the dark, yet she could perceive no movement still. It was coming from beyond the wall the shack leaned against. Now that her eyes had accustomed to the dark interior, she saw in the opposite wall and further to her right, until now partially obscured by a large cupboard, a door.

The thought to hide behind the cupboard had hardly formed in her mind when the door opened.