Page 21 of Fortune's Blade

He and I had been at it for hours today already, as well as for some time yesterday, after our arrival at the faire. And although the plethora of exotic creatures I had been seeing had kept me entertained as well as busy, there had been little for him to do besides crowd control. The fey whose ride we had unwittingly released had been doing that initially, but had gone off somewhere this morning, perhaps to advertise his new business venture. And had paid several ogres to watch over his property in his absence.

That meant us. By fey law, we were his until we earned enough to restore what we had stolen, which would have normally involved back breaking labor for months, or being sold to someone else for the same. But he’d seen what had happened on the road, and so my newfound skill with Faerie’s creatures, demonstrated on the crab, was being sold instead.

The dog looked up at me pitifully.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, as I slipped into its mind.

Oh. Make that her mind, I thought, reliving a rather steamy session with a much larger creature, possibly another dog, although it appeared to have an otter’s tale. I thought it might be a Dobhar-chú as they were called on Earth, the aquatic dogs of Faerie that I had seen on a few of the rivers the Wanderers had passed over, and had asked the trolls about. But I couldn’t be sure, the night being dark and the woman’s pet having been, er, facing the other way.

But she had definitely encountered something, about six weeks ago.

No wonder she was uncomfortable; the puppies she was carrying were huge.

I fed her one of her owner’s pancakes and she cheered up. And then had Ray explain the situation to the old woman, whose expression shifted from worried to shocked to outraged in quick succession. Apparently, her baby was considered a purebred.

I gave her some advice about a possible C-section being required in another few weeks and sent her on her way.

She and her precious cargo made it out of the tent, but had to dodge the latest cavalcade coming down the busy road outside. That seemed to be a favorite way of advertising here, where people with something to sell loaded up a gaily dressed wagon and paraded it through the lanes, gaining interest as they went. This one was bigger than most I’d seen, with three trolls on top, one driving and the others blowing horns and pointing at the crude, if brightly colored illustrations painted on homespun sheets, which had been stretched along the sides of the wagon.

They were advertising a fight between a gigantic, hulking creature and a tiny person who did not even come up to the first one’s shin. But the little one was feisty and was jumping around in the animated way that fey signs tended to do, pausing occasionally to plunge a sword into the larger one’s leg. Blood spurted, the little stick figure, for that was all that either of them were, jumped away to avoid retaliation, and then waved his weapon at the crowd to drum up excitement.

It seemed to be working.

“Does anyone have any meat?” I asked Ray, who didn’t answer.

He was eyeing up our nearest babysitter, a bruiser with a broken tusk, a scar across one eye, and a ripped, sagging earlobe. But the creature also had a massive, squat body with the approximate strength of a few bull elephants. And one of the feys’ terrible spears.

He had paid no attention to the previous carts, ignoring even the bevy of pretty troll girls in a flower bedecked wagon who had trundled by a few moments ago, hawking some kind of beverage. They’d paused long enough to give the crowd, including the ogre outside the tent who was taking the money, some free samples out of a large keg. But it seemed that something had finally caught this one’s interest, because he went to the tent flap and pushed it aside, eying up the latest cart, which had gotten held up by our queue.

To my surprise, he did not seem upset at the snarl of people clogging the road and disrupting our business, but acted more as if he was excited by it—or by the ad. He said something to the money taker, who huffed out what might have been a laugh and answered back. The two kept talking for a moment while gesturing at the sign, which was unusual as ogres were not loquacious.

But it gave Ray a chance to sidle up next to me.

“You could take him,” Ray said softly, nodding slightly at the guard.

“We’ve discussed this,” I reminded him.

I had suggested something similar yesterday, but he’d pointed out that Faerie was difficult enough to manage without an outraged fey and his friends on our tail, wanting payback and alerting everyone to our presence. We were racking up a good profit here; it seemed better to pay off our debt and then maybe get some help making it to an area that Ray was more familiar with. Moving with a group was preferable to taking off on our own, something we could do when no longer a pair of felons.

I had agreed with his reasoning, which was why we were still here. Only he seemed to be rethinking things. “Yeah, but maybe we need to discuss it again. There’s bound to be—”

Our babysitter turned and grunted, a low, unhappy sound deep in his chest. He did not like us talking, particularly in a language he didn’t know. Ray broke off without attempting to argue, as that rarely worked with ogres, and I sniffed the air.

We had not been given a lunch break, or leave to go find something if we had. But that wasn’t necessary as most of our customers had baskets over their arms. People paid the fee outside, but some had realized that an offering to the ever-hungry outworlders meant preferential treatment and less time waiting, and word had spread fast.

And the smells coming off said offerings were heavenly: warm pastries stuffed with spices and drenched in honey; stews and soups with thick pieces of meat and vegetables in spicy broths; mead and ale of all kinds, their aromas fighting with each other on the air; and—yes! There it was! The fatty, meaty goodness of smoked sausage, and one recently on a fire, too.

I hoped it had come from the nearby stall whose offerings had teased me all morning, whenever the wind shifted. Sausage and onions and some sort of garlicky spread was being heaped onto fresh baked bread rolls. The fey version of hot dogs had me salivating, and nothing else would do.

I must have one!

“Someone has a sausage,” I told Ray, who glanced up absently, his forehead knitted in thought.

“What?”

“But I want one with the onions and garlic, not plain.”

It took him a minute. “Can you stop thinking about your stomach for once?” he demanded, glancing at the ogre.

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