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Chapter Eight

“I know what a Pythia is,” Mircea said harshly.

Perhaps it was his wet clothes, which even the tavern’s impressive fire hadn’t yet dried, that were the problem. Or his equally soaked shoes and stockings, an issue I also had, with my toes squelching unhappily in my boots. Or the tobacco-loving table nearby, whose smoke kept drifting into our faces.

Or perhaps there was a more magical reason for his mood. The two women who had invited us for a drink, and who had arrived at the small tavern shortly after we did, had put a spell around our corner of the room. It cut out the noise so we could talk, but it was eerie, watching the usual evening madness take place without the din that should accompany it.

A wet dog slipped through the door alongside some patrons and headed straight for the fire, where it shook itself all over the people clustered there. That was followed by a lot of yelling and throwing of bread, which the dog happily gobbled up. And then ran to the back of the tavern, to bark at the turnspit cur on its wheel, which was running in place to keep the many haunches of meat that the cook was working on rotating over the secondary fire.

The cook shooed the mongrel off, which ran through the middle of a game of pitch-penny, jumped over a table full of card players, and stole a pie off of a man’s plate before pelting back out the door, his work finished here.

I looked after it briefly, watching it almost trip up another group of patrons trying to get in. I was supposed to be paying attention to the conversation, but after the events of the evening, other things were taking precedence. Like making sure that we weren’t surprised again.

My throat hurt from the almost hanging, which even with a dhampir metabolism was likely to take a day or more to heal. The bitch’s rope had left a throbbing line around my skin, which had eaten into the flesh far enough to be a potent reminder of just how close I’d come. I kept wanting to rub it, even thought that would make it worse, but I didn’t.

I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction if she was watching, and every instinct I had said that she was.

Just like I had all day, I felt her presence, her malevolence, like a pressure between my shoulder blades. It was my imagination; I knew that. A reaction to the fight that still had me on edge. The witch had no reason to be here, considering that she had what she’d wanted, although why she did, I didn’t know.

The vampire should have let me hang, like he should have walked away before then, using the attack on me as cover to beat a hasty retreat with his prize. Instead, he’d given it up in exchange for my life, and now we had nothing. The mystery around that was another of the things distracting me from the conversation.

The rest was mostly down to food.

I continued watching the room while stuffing down as much as possible, because a dhampir’s stomach was never satisfied, and over the years I had learned to fear hunger above all else. No food meant no strength, and no strength got you killed. Food was therefore always a priority, and the tavern the vampire had chosen was well stocked.

There were no fewer than three wooden platters in front of me, filled to overflowing with roast pigeons, black pudding, oysters fresh from the sea, mussels stewed with wine and anchovies, pickled herring, fresh crusty manchet rolls, and a nice, fat duck.

I looked up to see the younger witch, looking a little bedraggled with a missing cap, wet hair and a soaked dress, staring at me with an odd expression.

“Forgive me,” I rasped, and pushed the duck at her.

She stared at me some more.

“Ah, don’t mind if I do,” the older woman said, and wrenched off a leg.

She had a flagon of the dark, sweet beer that the tavern specialized in and waved it at a serving wench for more. The woman bustled over, then paused in confusion at the fact that she suddenly couldn’t hear anything. But the witch flapped a hand at her, and sent a spell along with it I supposed, because the woman left her pitcher and wondered off.

The older witch refilled her flagon and looked at me. I held mine out and she topped me off. “Many thanks.”

“No trouble,” she said cheerfully. “They have decent beer here, I’m glad to say.”

“Yes, but not a patch on the double-double they once had.”

“Double-double?”

“Extra strong,” I said, her question confirming my suspicion that they weren’t from around here. “In England, they have small beer, very weak, mainly to replace the water, which can be dangerous. And normal beer, called double, as it is twice the strength of small beer. And finally double-double, which was a nice, robust drink, and kept well, but the queen had it banned for causing too much drunkenness.”

“Shame, I would have liked to try it.”

I nodded. “T’is hard to get these days. Most taverns no longer make their own beer, but buy it from breweries, and of course, nobody will make what the queen forbids—”

The young witch slapped her hand down onto the table, hard enough to cause the dishes to rattle. “Can we stop. Talking. About beer?” she seethed.

We all looked at her.

“This is on the brink of becoming a disaster—it already is a disaster!” She flung out an arm at the tavern, which was one of those closest to the end of the bridge that had just gotten the muck blasted off it for the first time in centuries.

Soaked men and women kept staggering in, looking bewildered, because the Circle’s people had cast a blanket spell to blur their memories. They knew that something had happened—their dripping clothing was a testament to that—they just weren’t sure what. And by the time they finished drinking themselves into a stupor, tonight would seem like a dream.