Page 55 of Time's Fool

“It couldn’t have been,” Kit argued. “There are occasional problems, like with that Gideon fellow, I will not dissemble. But he was preying on your area in an attempt to avoid attracting the Senate’s attention. Attacking a coven leader, and one married to a member of the gentry at that, would be a fool’s bet—”

“Then perhaps he was a fool.”

“—and I would have heard about it.”

“It was before your time,” Gillian reminded him.

“Before his time?” Rilda echoed. “He’s a master, or he wouldn’t be mostly healed already. And it only happened a few years before the storm.”

“He’s a young master,” Gillian said, looking uncomfortable. As if she shouldn’t have said anything.

But Kit was not so guarded. He was proud that he’d survived his ordeal, proud that he served the Lady that he did. Let them make of it—and him—what they would.

“I was Pushed,” he told Rilda. “Two years ago now.”

“Pushed? Ye mean . . . ye’re a two-year-old master?” she stared at him in shock for a moment. And then she laughed, slapping her knee and spilling some of her pottage. “Well, no wonder, then!”

“No wonder what?” Kit asked stiffly.

She just grinned at him, but the doxy answered, having followed all this with interest. “Ye have that look,” she said. “Angry, stiff-necked, and proud, but underneath it all, the eyes move back and forth, like ye’re not sure of anything—”

“I was just attacked by a dragon!” Kit snapped. “How do you expect me to look?”

“—including yourself. Took it for fear of our sort, of streets ye didn’t know, but I see it now. Ye’re just a babe—”

“I’m older than you! And I had a life before this—”

“A hardscrabble one,” the Abraham man agreed.

“Impoverished artisan for a father with too many mouths t’feed. Sounds like my old man,” the courtesy man put in. He’d come back with some of the juice that the tiny men had been pressing, a whole skin of it, which he used to top up everyone’s drinks. And then passed the rest to Kit, who made the mistake of taking a swig.

“God’s teeth,” he swore, and everyone laughed.

“Makes a mockery of ale now, don’t it?” one of the sailors said.

“How is it like this?” Kit demanded hoarsely, when he could talk properly. Which took a moment, since his tongue was simultaneously on fire and tied into knots. “They haven’t even distilled it yet!”

“It ferments on the vine,” the friar said. “That’s why the fruits are so large. They wait to pick them until they swell up, right before bursting. Thus, when they press ‘em, t’is a marvel from the start.”

He smacked his lips.

Kit cautiously took another sip, and it burned all the way down. He’d had aqua vitae once or twice, a strong spirit distilled from grapes and used as a base for many medicines. But even it fell short.

“T’is the devil’s drink,” he said, because they seemed to be expecting a verdict.

“No, just the fey,” the friar said wryly, holding up his tankard to honor the little men, who had finished their work and were now sitting on their tables, drinking the remains of their labors while watching some dancers.

A man had brought a fiddle and another a flute, and they must have finished their meal early. Because they had started entertaining the people who were now scattered about, eating and drinking and talking and laughing, as Kit’s group were. Several couples got up as soon as the music started and began to dance.

It was no impressive performance, at least not any more so than could be found in taverns across London every night. But they were using steps Kit didn’t know, and the musicians were playing an alien tune, while the taste of a spirit he had never encountered before still burned on his tongue. He watched them, feeling his head spin.

It hit him suddenly, as it hadn’t before, probably because of his recent brush with death. The completely incomprehensible idea that he was in another world. He had to be, and not just because of the seasonal change or the strange little men or their drink that looked like lavender water and burned like fire.

But because it felt different; he felt different. It reminded him of waking up after the Push and realizing that his life would never be the same. When all the old worries and fears fell away and yes, new ones replaced them. But they were new.

And Kit had always loved the new.

“Look, it’s caught him,” the friar said, eyeing him with a small smile. “Takes everyone like that, sooner or later.”

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