The Art of Stealing Time

TEN

“Who the hell are you?”

“Good gravy, it’s a naked man!”

“Penny, where’s the camera? I must get a picture of him. Here, you take a picture of me standing next to him. It’ll make quite the blog post, won’t it?”

“Hey, little boy. Daddy wants some of that sugar.”

“I don’t know who you people are, or why you’ve intruded upon my privacy, but I do not intend to allow you either to photograph me or to engage in acts of sugar. Go away, all of you, before I take my woman’s sword and—”

“Now then, now then, let’s be ’avin’ none of that.”

It was the voices that woke me, and not, unfortunately, Gregory with amorous thoughts on his mind.

“Dammit, there is a woman there. She’s wadded up in the blankets. Crap.”

I sat up, blinking and shoving my hair out of my eyes with one hand while clutching the sheet to my naked breasts with the other. The sight that met me was less than thrilling.

Gregory was also naked, his hands on his hips as he stood facing a semicircle of four people—two women and two men, one of whom bore a familiar face.

“Hello, Al,” I said, holding the sheet tighter to myself. “Don’t tell me—this is another tour group?”

“Early-mornin’ Ramblers Tour,” he said with a nod and a grin. “For those mortals what like to keep fit and see the sights normal tourists don’t see.”

“Go away,” Gregory repeated. “We are not a sight.”

“I don’t know,” said one of the women, a slight, mousy-looking girl in a dowdy gray skirt and sweater. She held a camera in her hands and snapped a quick shot of him. “You look pretty good to me.”

“Penny!” the woman next to her shrieked and punched her in the arm. She had bright red hair, a sharp little nose, and was dressed all in pink. “I’m the ballsy one! You can’t say things like that—it’s my shtick. You’re the good cop, I’m the bad cop, remember?”

“Sorry,” Penny apologized, and took another picture of Gregory. “I won’t do it again.”

“See that you don’t. Now, I’m going to stand next to him, and I want you to get several shots so that I can have some mugs and book bags and things made up. I think my blog readers will love that, don’t you?”

“Oh, for the love of . . . Here.” I tossed Gregory his pants, which I was gratified to see he pulled on immediately. Penny looked disappointed.

“Hey!” her pink friend said. “Here, you, take those pants off again. No one is going to want to buy my merchandise if you’re not full-frontal.”

“Yes,” the other man in the group said in a low, slow voice. The word came out almost as a hiss. His eyes were avid with enjoyment as his gaze crawled over Gregory. “Such a fine, fine specimen. Daddy likes.”

Gregory scowled at him. “Daddy can just shove it up his—”

“I suspect,” I interrupted quickly, “that there’s no way you can end that sentence that isn’t going to be more to someone’s taste than an actual insult.”

“I saw him first,” the pink woman said, rounding on the oily man.

“Yes, we saw him first.” Penny took another picture, as if to prove her ownership.

“That doesn’t matter,” the man said, barely glancing at them. “You are only women. You cannot give him what I can give him. Daddy is always the best.”

“I don’t give a damn who was here first,” Gregory said in his coldest, most formal voice. “I have one word for all of you: scram.”

“Now, now,” Al said, sliding a sidelong glance toward me. “We’re perfectly within our rights to be where we are. Ain’t no one but ’is lordship who owns this ’ere land, and ’e’s said that all are welcome to walk on it.”

While they were speaking, I had grabbed my own clothing and clumsily donned it under the cover of the sheet. Once decent, I stood up and grabbed my sword that Gregory had alluded to. I wasn’t normally one for a show of violence, but I really had had enough of tours.

“You heard him,” I said, moving over to stand next to Gregory. I held the sword easily in my hand and tried to look as mean as possible. “Scram.”

Al eyed the sword thoughtfully, then turned to his group and made shooing gestures. “All right, now, we’ve seen the south side of the lake. We’ll be goin’ round to the north side, where ’is lordship has provided ye all with a pancake breakfast.”

“Will there be a naked man serving the pancakes? I’m quite disappointed that this one is so surly and unwilling to cooperate with the simplest of requests. Not to mention the woman and that sword. Is it a real sword? If it is, there could be a serious health and welfare violation in progress. Penny, get a picture of the sword-bearing woman just in case.”

“Daddy does not like pancakes,” the man said as Al hustled them off. “Daddy likes waffles. With a side of nubile young man.”

We watched them leave. When Gregory turned to look at me, his expression was as dark as the sky to the north. “I take it that since you are dressed, you are not going to let me make love to you as I intended to do?”

“We kind of lost the moment,” I said, with a wry little twist of my mouth. I gestured toward the retreating tourists with my sword. “I don’t think I could really enjoy myself knowing that Daddy and the Pink could happen upon us at any time.”

He sighed, pulled me into an embrace, and kissed the dickens out of me. “I will consider myself in debt to you.”

“Because I rescued you from their clutches with my spiffy sword?” I asked, giving it a little twirl as he moved over to release the horses from their hobbles.

“Because I owe you ground-shaking, aftershocking lovemaking at the nearest opportunity. If you will fill up our water supply, I will see to the horses.”

We didn’t encounter anyone else, tourists or otherwise, until midafternoon, although we did see signs of habitation some distance off to the west. Gregory was all for investigating what looked to be a small village, but I was anxious to check on my mothers’ welfare.

“I think we should have a game plan,” I said when we were almost within yelling distance of Aaron’s camp. People bustled to and fro just as they had the first time I’d been there. In the distance, I could make out the battle mound itself, and two silhouetted figures who danced around, the light glinting off their weapons and armor.

The sky above us was now as disturbing as it had been the first time I’d seen it, the red, roiling clouds blotted out here and there with drifting wisps of gray smoke, and the occasional rumble of thunder. The hairs on my arms stood on end as lightning flashed above. “Did you do that?” I asked Gregory.

“Do what? Oh, no, that wasn’t me.” He looked upward, examining the sky. “Why is it red?”

“I think it has something to do with the nature of the battle. Maybe it reflects the blood spilled or something?”

“You said that the battle was only single combat. That can hardly qualify for enough blood spilled to be reflected in dramatic environmental effects.”

“‘Stranger things . . . ,’” I half quoted. “About this game plan: I was thinking—”

Gregory held up his hand to stop me and pulled his horse to a stop, quickly dismounting, then standing very still and frowning in concentration.

“What is it?” I asked, reining in Bottom when he took exception to halting (he took exception to everything, but I was getting used to his ways). “Is something wrong?”

“No. Wait for it.”

“Wait for what?”

Gregory held up a finger, then grinned and reached up to snatch something out of the air. I’d caught just the glimmer of lightning as it started to stretch out across the sky, but Gregory had caught it before it could go anywhere and redirected it down his body. He was lit up in blue and white light that sparked and snapped off him for a few seconds before dissipating.

“Show-off,” I said, impressed nonetheless.

His grin was cheeky in the extreme. “What’s the good in having a talent if you can’t use it to impress your woman?”

“She’d be more impressed if you could do something useful with it, like zap some sense into these people and make them stop throwing her in cells.”

He picked up Mabel’s reins and led her forward. At the camp, someone had clearly seen us and had set off to the largest tent at a fast trot. “I suspect using lightning on a person who isn’t a Traveller—or one who can participate in porraimos—would be a direct violation of the Watch code of behavior.”

“I suppose so. OK, quickie game plan time: I’m going to check in and let Doug set me up with whatever it is I need to do, and then I’m going over to Ethan’s camp to make sure my moms haven’t gotten into any trouble. I’ll introduce you to them then, all right? They might be able to help you find the stuff that Ethan stole from Aaron, although I suspect that at least the dog is going to be an issue because there’s like a hundred of them there. That’s assuming the dog is still alive, and there’s no guarantee it’s immortal.”

“Halt!” called a high, reedy voice. Gregory kept walking toward the two men who were approaching us. One was a tall, thin figure in armor; the other, larger and bulkier, strode up behind the first. “Stand and be recognized.”

“Really?” Gregory said as we continued onward.

The larger man passed the first, cuffing him on the back of his head as he walked by. “Ignore him. He spends too much time watching Errol Flynn movies. I see that Lord Aaron has sent you back to me.”

“He has.” Gregory stopped when Doug, now stylishly garbed in black leggings and a black tunic with a gold outline of a stag, halted. Doug and Gregory considered each other for a minute. I couldn’t tell if they were having a silent manly weighing-up of the enemy, or some form of male bonding, but I didn’t at that moment care overly much.

“Hi, Doug. Don’t get too close—this horse bites.” I added the last sentence quickly when Doug, evidently finished having a stare-down with Gregory, moved over to help me off my horse.

“He knows better than to bite me,” Doug said with a look at Bottom. To my astonishment, the horse looked the other way, and if he could have whistled innocently, I swear he would have.

“Wow,” I said as I swung a leg over Bottom’s neck, allowing Doug to help me dismount. “I didn’t think it was possible to intimidate him, but you did.”

“I could have intimidated him if I’d wanted to,” Gregory said loudly, then looked horrified that the comment had come out of his mouth.

Both Doug and I looked at him. Bottom bared his teeth until he saw Doug glance his way.

“Please forget I said that,” Gregory said with an embarrassed cough. “And Gwen, cease looking as if you were pleased that I was jealous of a man who is able to frighten that hellish nightmare of a horse. I am not jealous of the fluffy bunny, although I do find it amusing that he insists on holding on to you despite the fact that you are fully capable of standing on your own. Ha ha. I laugh at such a notion.”

I stared at Gregory, growing delight welling up inside of me. Not jealous, my shiny pink butt! He was practically green with it. He marched over and plucked my hand from where Doug had been holding it, giving both Doug and me matching glares.

“Ah,” Doug said, glancing down at where now Gregory held my hand, then up at me. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Yes, it is, and I’ll thank you to stop ogling my woman.”

“Hey,” I said mildly, giving him a mail-clad elbow to the ribs. “I’m standing right here. If I don’t want to be ogled, I can speak up. Not that he was ogling me. Were you, Doug?”

“I might have been, just a little bit, but that’s only because the sight of a woman in mail is a turn-on.” A little frown creased his forehead as he shifted his attention to Gregory. “I assume Lord Aaron sent you both back to fight, although you appear to have lost your armor.”

“Unfortunately, it’s worse than that,” Gregory answered with a grimace.

“Is it? I’d better hear about this in my tent, then.” He gestured to the tall, skinny young man, who had remained several paces behind him. “Have their horses seen to. This way.”

We followed Doug to the biggest tent and took adjacent canvas stools that sat in front of a long wooden table littered with papers. Doug settled behind the table and nodded at Gregory.

“There isn’t a great deal to tell,” Gregory said, and proceeded to give a succinct accounting of our last meeting with Aaron.

“A thief,” Doug said slowly when he finished. “How very novel. It hadn’t occurred to me to engage the services of a thief to end the war, but I can see the value in Lord Aaron’s thinking. Very well. Lady Gwen will take the place of one of my warriors who wishes to return to his home for a short period. His wife is due to birth their first child any day. You may have Sir Dedham’s tent. Your shift begins at vespers.”

“Um . . .”

“About six in the evening,” Gregory told me, giving my fingers a supportive squeeze.

“How on earth do you know that? You’re only sixty-four years old,” I pointed out.

“I read a lot. Where is my tent?” he asked, addressing Doug. “I’ll wish to get a few things together before I start my career of crime.”

Doug shuffled through his papers, apparently deeply engrossed in them. “Accommodations are only for those members of Lord Aaron’s household who are fighting or are present in a support role to ensure the comfort of the warriors. You are neither; therefore I am not obligated to provide you with food or shelter.” He looked up and gave Gregory a wicked smile. “Technically, the rules of war forbid me to acknowledge the existence of rogues, thieves, and highwaymen. You can’t even be classed as a spy who has obvious uses to the campaign. I’m afraid I must henceforth institute a policy of neither seeing nor hearing you. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding a place to sleep amongst the other camp followers.”

“That seems unnecessarily harsh,” I protested. “Gregory is here because Aaron asked him to do a job. And a successful completion of said job will end the battle, so you should be kissing his butt rather than engaging in this medieval-esque pissing contest.”

Doug’s eyebrows rose. Gregory, who had been looking irritated, gave me a warm look that had his eye crinkles standing out. He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “It warms my heart that you defend me, dulcea mea.”

“Well, it’s not fair! And I, for one, am not going to—”

“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 tched 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.