Page 61 of Fortune's Blade

“Are ye going to kill me, girlie, or watch me bleed to death?” the old, hippie-looking man rasped, and I noticed that my knife’s blade was sheened with red.

I withdrew it.

“Sorry,” I told him, a little unsteadily. “I didn’t get the tip into the skin when I tried that with Steen, and he grew scales under the blade.”

“And then threw ye the length of the room,” he added, because the story seemed to have spread. “Nice to know ye can be taught, anyway.”

I started to pull the weapons back under the blanket, along with my seriously burned and beat up arms, but he grabbed my wrists before I could. Not in a harsh way, this time; there was no attack. But not in the “she might break if we touch her” way the others had been doing, either.

He was looking at my arms, which were a mess of bloody, half-closed wounds, sticky green salve, burns, a few scars over the smaller cuts, and a mass of black bruises. And then there were my hands, which he examined after removing my weapons and tossing them lightly on the ground. He seemed surprised that I’d even managed to hold them, and frankly, so was I, because I basically had chewed up hamburger meat at the ends of my arms.

The scales I’d been clinging to had sliced open my palms repeatedly, leaving crisscrossing wounds that almost obliterated the skin, and that plus muscle strain from clinging on for dear life had blown my hands up like Minnie Mouse gloves. I’d had trouble just holding onto my spoon this morning, so that I could calm the gnawing hunger I’d woken up with. I was not a pretty sight.

He seemed agree, wrinkling up his nose at the stench of the salve, and then letting out a whistle between cracked and yellowed teeth.

“Flimsy!” he proclaimed, loudly enough that it echoed around the glade. “Puny even! With no armor or protection of any kind! Just meat, and a small, bony sack of it at that. And this is what we’re supposed to ally with? To risk our necks for? To fight alongside?”

There was a murmuring around the glade, and it was clear that he’d just vocalized what a lot of people had been thinking. I glanced at Regin, but he was still looking impassive, as if we were discussing the weather instead of his lord’s foreign policy, which was fast going down the drain. And the old hippie causing the ruckus had just gotten started.

“Look at her!” he raged, suddenly angry. “Look at her! Look at what the battle did to her!”

He jerked me forward, and it was so sudden and so unexpected that I didn’t fight it. Or manage to keep hold of my fur, which dropped away, leaving me standing there in a ragged gown that was more tatters at this point than anything else, having been shredded on the dead dragon’s scales. And that showed a lot more of my lacerations than I’d have liked.

I heard a few indrawn breaths, as the extent of the damage became apparent, but I didn’t know what to do. They’d seen it now, and were seeing more as they crowded closer, seemingly intent on getting a good view. So, dragging the fur up again wasn’t likely to help and might even hurt, especially if I couldn’t keep hold of the heavy thing.

And my knees were already starting to buckle.

“She can barely stand!” the gray-haired hippie shouted. “She’s swaying on her feet! Aye, look at her, poor, helpless creature that she is. Look. At. Her!”

And they were. Those who had met me, and those who had been staying on the edges of the glade, maybe members of the entourages of the leaders, were all surging forward now. And silently judging me, with the weight of their eyes almost a physical thing.

I’d have fallen, except that the hippie wasn’t done yet, and his grip on my mostly undamaged upper arm was like iron. “That’s right, come closer,” he told them. “Get a good look, those of you who didn’t see her before. Get a damned good look. And tell me, if ye can: if you were one such as this, soft, vulnerable, with no physical advantage save fangs so small as to practically not deserve the name—”

“They are,” someone broke in to say, and laughed. “They’re tiny!”

But to my surprise, the bastard gripping my arm didn’t laugh with him. In fact, he glared into the crowd, peering about until he singled out the speaker. And then motioned him forward.

“Ah, Axsel son of Thorra, good son of a great mother. Come forward, lad, come on.”

Axsel son of Thorra came and stood in front of me, a sapling maybe sixteen years old but already almost as tall as Regin if perhaps a third as wide. But a third was still intimidating and likely would be more so soon. He reminded me of Tanet from a year ago, right before he had a growth spurt and put on a hundred pounds of muscle practically overnight.

Not that this one needed it. He was wiry but could probably snap me in two without even feeling it. And it looked like he thought so, too, smirking down at me in a way that might have gotten him a little lesson on another day, in another world.

Come to New York, I thought evilly. And I’ll see if I can’t manage to wipe that smirk off your face. But we weren’t in New York, and his expression wasn’t going anywhere, except spreading to other members of the crowd.

And spreading fast.

I needed to do something to counter it, right freaking now, before I lost whatever respect me and my senate had left. I briefly thought of the consul, who headed up that august body, she of the snaky accessories and beautiful face. Beautiful until someone crossed her, that was, and was quickly shown the ruthlessness behind the façade.

She would never put up with this kind of treatment, but then, she wouldn’t have to. She wouldn’t have been dumb enough to come here in the first place! But I had been dumb enough, and that streak seemed to be continuing, because I was blanking on a response.

My brain appeared to be exerting all its focus on not letting me fall over, and even that was dubious. If it hadn’t been for the hippie’s iron grip, I’d have probably face planted already. And possibly taken the alliance along with me.

But then he spoke again, deceptively soft, although there was anger behind the words that I didn’t understand. “Yes, yes, no fangs worth mentioning,” he said. “Not like us, hm? Not like you, mighty Axsel, with your father’s powerful physique just starting to show. You’ll be a fine warrior someday, and someday soon no doubt—”

The boy puffed up with pride, as if he’d needed any more height. But the woman behind him, with long, gray-streaked blond hair and sharp gray eyes, started to look worried. She glanced from her son—I assumed—to the hippie and back again, and tightened her grip on the boy’s arm.

But he, enjoying the public praise he was getting, didn’t seem to notice.

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