When they got back to Castle Howard, sentries on the wall shouted questions, asking how the fight had gone. "We made stooges of 'em," Curls shouted, and they burst into cheers.
Up rumbled the portcullis. Down creaked the drawbridge. In bounded the rabbit riders. In plodded the prisoners. Out rolled the beer barrels. Backwards ran the sentences.
The sun set. A wizard set a small fireball floating above the courtyard, just to work a little bit of magic into the story. Georgia took care of Clumper while Lani saw to Thumper. Lani might mangle mere men, but she was always kind to bunnies. Once every whisker had been washed and Thumper's cottontail curried, Lani said, "See how they're all happy out there, Georgia?"
"Yeah, I see." Georgia longed for a mug or three of beer herself. Sometimes keeping an eye on Lani was singularly unrewarding. Other times, by contrast, it was plurally unrewarding.
"I won't do nothin' bad, Georgia," Lani said. "Honest I won't."
She always said that. She always meant it, too. Except on the battlefield, she didn't have a mean bone in her body. Even then, she just smashed people. She didn't dislike them—not that the difference did them any good. Off the battlefield . . . Off the battlefield, things had a way of going wrong. "Remember what happened in Crabgrass?" Georgia asked.
A few days earlier, Lani had. Georgia could tell she didn't now. She wondered why she'd bothered to ask. Lani wouldn't have remembered her head for long if it wasn't stapled on. Georgia muttered a curse. The only way she could have kept Lani out of the celebration was by sitting on that empty head. Georgia was damned if she would. She'd earned some celebrating of her own.
"Just keep your hands to yourself," she said. "You got that?"
"Sure thing, Georgia." Lani was obliging. She was always obliging. That was part of the problem.
People cheered when the two of them came out into the courtyard. Hard-bitten, beer-swilling mercenaries shouted out Lani's name. Some of them shouted Georgia's name, too, but Lani was the one who'd made sure the cracker captain could never admit his real name in a hiring hall again. The cheers and the shouts made her blossom like a sunflower.
"They like me. They really like me!" she said.
"Yeah." Georgia eyed the soldiers. Some of them—quite a few of them—were liable to like Lani altogether too well. What had happened in Crabgrass hadn't been unfriendly. Oh, no. A lot of other things, sure, but not unfriendly. That was Georgia's last thought before somebody thrust a foaming mug into her right hand and somebody else thrust another one into her left. She had to get rid of them—she had a reputation of her own to uphold, after all. But by the time she came up for air, she didn't see Lani any more. Then a different somebody else gave her some more beer. Once she'd downed that, her own head started to swim.
Curls' wife whirled through the crowd in a dress that couldn't have been any tighter if it were painted on. By the way the mercenaries, male and female, rubbed up against her, they wanted to find out if it was painted on. By the way she giggled and swayed, she didn't mind in the least.
Curls whirled through the crowd, too, but somehow never in the same part of it as his wife. The happier she looked, the more sour he got. Georgia had noticed she was drinking hard. If anything, Curls was drinking harder. That might turn out to be . . . interesting.
Georgia really would have wanted to see Slim Jim, but he seemed to have disappeared. A little muzzily and more than a little resentfully, she looked around for Lani. She didn't see her, either. And, for one of the rare times in her life, she had enough beer in her that she didn't much care.
Curls went by, his face red and angry as the sunset before storms. He scowled at Georgia and breathed hoppy fumes into her face. "Have you seen my wife?" he asked.
"Just a little while ago," she answered. "She came right by here."
"Well, I don't see her now. Do you?" Curls went on scowling. By the way he asked the question, he might have suspected Georgia of owning a system of eyesight different from and superior to his own.
For her part, she wished she were in a different barony, one where things like this didn't happen. She shook her head. "No, I don't see her now." As if to prove the point, she looked around again. She still didn't see Curls' wife. She still didn't see Slim Jim, either. Yes, that could add up to trouble.
She looked around some more. And she still didn't see Lani. Not seeing Lani added up to trouble almost by definition. Lani got in trouble even when you did keep an eye on her. When you didn't . . .
"I'd better go," she said to Curls.
"How come?" He grabbed her left arm in a way that made her want to reach for her knife. "Are you looking for her, too?"
"By the gods, no!" Georgia said. If Curls' wife was with Lani, then Georgia was looking for her, but not the way the baron's son meant. She would sooner have cozied up to a barrel of Greek fire with the wick lit than had anything to do with Curls' wife that way. Some things were more trouble than they were worth. That was how Georgia saw it, anyway. Thinking ahead of time about how much trouble she might land in never once occurred to Lani. Lani leaped before she looked.
More than what Georgia said, the way she said it convinced Curls she might mean it. "I'm going to find her," he ground out, "and when I do find her—" He stopped. His hands closed into fists.
He stomped off. Georgia followed him. She didn't need to be subtle about it; Baron Howard's son had forgotten she existed. She wondered why he'd married a woman like that. It had probably seemed a good idea at the time. A lot of things did, even—or maybe especially—if they weren't.
Had Curls been sober, he would have prowled. Had pigs had wings . . . But pigs didn't, and neither did Curls. He wandered and weaved and wobbled like a sailboat in heavy seas and contrary winds. That wasn't because of the crowd he was navigating through, either. Even when he was by himself, he still stumbled sottishly.
He meandered through the keep, Georgia in his wake. He kept yanking doors open. Georgia wouldn't have done that if she were him. There were a lot of things Georgia wouldn't have done if she were him, but she thought that one likely to prove hazardous to his life expectancy. The squeals and gasps that rose when he did open doors did nothing to disabuse her of her opinion.
Luckily for Curls—probably more luckily than he deserved—none of the squealers or gaspers turned out to be in a homicidal mood. None of them turned out to be his wife, either. To Georgia, that was a good thing for all concerned. Finding her squealing or gasping probably would have turned Curls homicidal.
He didn't find her anywhere in the keep. "Why don't you just have yourself some more beer?" Georgia said when he went out to the courtyard again. "I'm sure everything's all right."
"I'm not," Curls snarled. Neither was Georgia, though they could have put her on the rack before she admitted it.
Curls grabbed another mug. Georgia hoped he would grab the serving girl, too—that would have been good for what ailed him. But he didn't. And the beer didn't prove good for what aled him, either. It just made his glower grimmer than ever.
Georgia found herself with a fresh mug in her hand, too. She couldn't have said how it got there, but there it was. Plot contrivances are like that sometimes. Stay tuned. Curls' wife wasn't in the courtyard. Neither was Slim Jim. And, more importantly to Georgia, neither was Lani. Georgia started worrying in earnest.
With Curls, it wasn't worry. It was swelling rage. He growled, "When I find her, I'm going to . . ." He still didn't say exactly what he'd do. That left Georgia unsurprised. Curls didn't strike her as long on imagination. But, if the time came, she suspected he'd think of something.