“Yes, this is Anwyn.” He gave me a look filled with pity, as if I was the one who was a sparerib short of a barbecue. “This is the battleground, my lady.”
“Why do you keep calling me—no, never mind. I refuse to be distracted by minutiae. Who is Lord Ethan battling?”
“Lord Aaron, of course. Ah, here comes Branwyn.”
A stout young man of about sixteen burst out from a nearby tent, bright freckles dotted across a face that was almost as red as his hair. “You bellowed, Sir Colorado?”
“Aye. Take Lady Alice and Lady Magdalena and . . . er . . . Mistress Vanilla to Mistress Eve’s former tent, and then hence to the apothecary’s. And do not dally. They are powerful witches and will bespell you should you waste their time.”
The boy’s eyes widened as he looked from me to my moms.
“Hold your horses there, Hopalong Cassidy,” I said, putting up a hand to stop him. “We’re not going to anyone’s tent until I find out exactly what’s going on.”
“Oh, you are not to go to Mistress Eve’s tent,” Colorado said with a sunny smile. “You are young and comely and mightily built. Lady Holly would have my head if I didn’t bring you to her.”
“We’ve already met Holly.” I bristled a little at the “mightily built” comment, tugging down my hoodie so that it covered the expanse of what my mother referred to as “child-birthing hips.”
“I’m sure we’ll see you shortly, Gwen,” Mom Two said, taking Mrs. Vanilla by the arm. “After we see what stores the apothecary has.”
“I think we should all stay together,” I told both mothers as they urged Branwyn forward.
“Don’t be silly, dear. We’re safe now, and Mrs. Vanilla clearly needs to rest. We’ll get her settled in our new tent so she can replenish her strength.”
“But—”
“You know how your mother and I dearly love a visit to a well-stocked apothecary’s shop,” Mom Two added. “We’ll see you later. You go off and meet with that young woman again. Perhaps she’ll lead you to the people in charge. Give her our best wishes. Young man, do you know if the apothecary has wortsbane in stock? We’ve been out for the last two centuries and unable to find a reliable source for more . . .”
“This way,” Colorado said, gesturing in the opposite direction. The old dog started to get to her feet. “No, Rosemary, you stay there. I won’t be long seeing this lady to her destination.”
I bit my lip, watching my mothers wander off, part of me feeling it really was better for us all to stay together, but the other part of me wanting them out of the way in case the situation turned dicey. I didn’t like the look of that woman Holly, so all in all, it was best that I confront her on my own.
Colorado chatted about nothing in particular as we wound our way through the camp toward the far edge, most of which I didn’t listen to because it was something about trees and plants and how he had an affinity to aspens, or something of that ilk, and I had more important things to chew over. Like whether the Holly woman would throw me back into a cell and how I was going to convince her that we weren’t spies.
I kept my eyes peeled as we walked, not only so I could retrace my path if necessary, but because I wanted to get a better idea of why there was a battle going on in Anwyn and why it wasn’t being fought with modern weapons.
Men and women moved busily through the camp, some people clearly employed as blue-collar workers, hauling buckets of water, trays of food, armor, bedding, and sundry other items. On the outer edge of the camp, visible down one of the aisles, a parade of horses marched past, on their way to or from a stable. And everywhere there were dogs, dogs, dogs.
“—of course, what was I to do but to answer the call of Lord Gideon?”
Startled, I realized that Colorado had been talking to me about something other than his love of trees, and I’d missed it all in my musings. “Um. Sure, why not?”
I glanced around, noticing something. I expected that with so many dogs around, there would be a lot of dog poop. But there was nary a pile to be seen.
He nodded. “That’s what I said. It was my duty to answer the call. I was honored when Lord Ethan chose me to be one of his knights.”
“That’s got to be a big honor,” I said, hoping that was true.
“It is indeed.”
“Who is Lord Gideon again?”
He shot me a startled look. I made a little face. “Sorry. I was thinking of something else and must have missed that bit.”
“Lord Gideon is a magician of much power and breadth. He is responsible for all of this,” Colorado answered, gesturing toward the camp. “He is also Lord Ethan’s younger brother.”
“Ah. Gotcha.” I had a feeling that “magician,” in this case, didn’t mean the guys in Vegas who pulled off the kind of illusions that made tigers and elephants disappear. No doubt it was a reference to the Otherworld version, the kind of mage who performed public feats of magic . . . real magic. “You guys must really like dogs. And have them really well trained, because I don’t see any obvious signs that so many live here.”
“We all must take a rache, yes.”
“Rache?”
“Hunting dog. All that you see here are the spawn of Lord Ethan’s bitch, Ergo. She is long dead, but as you see, her progeny live on.”
“They do indeed.” And I had to admit, all the dogs I saw looked happy and healthy. There wasn’t a single dog that had that air of skulking around hoping for a bite to eat or a friendly pat; they were all glossy-coated, well fed, and apparently well cared for. “You must have someone pooper-scooping on a full-time basis.”
“Naturally, we make prisoners attend to their droppings. It is suitable punishment.”
That surprised me. “You have other prisoners? Other than my mothers and me, that is?”
“A few that we’ve taken over the centuries. Here we are. Lady Holly, I bring to you the lady Gwen.”
We stopped in front of two people, one of whom was the pale-skinned bedaggered woman from the night before, the other of whom was a man in armor who sat on a wooden stool, holding out his arm.
“It’s an RSI,” the man was saying, the words giving my brain a moment of trouble resolving a modern acronym for a repetitive injury with the anachronism of armor. “I can’t even grip the hilt of the sword without my entire arm burning in pain. Lo the healer says the MRI shows I need time off so that the herbs and physical therapy can heal the injury.”
“Injury, schminjury,” Holly said in a disgusted voice. “We don’t have a spare soldier, so you’re just going to have to get out there and do your job.”
“But Master Lo said—”
“Lady Holly!” Colorado said loudly, tapping her on the shoulder.
She spun around, her hair whipping like little blades of black silk. “Do not touch me!”
“My apologies, but I did not think you heard me when I said that I was here with Lady Gwen.”
Her dark green eyes shifted to me, narrowing as they raked me over. “This is the spy from last night, isn’t it?”
“I am not an it, nor am I a spy,” I said, meeting her gaze. I’d never been one to let someone intimidate me, and I certainly wasn’t going to start with this thin, prickly woman.
“Who are you?”
“Gwen Owens. I’m an alchemist. I came to Anwyn last night in the company—”
“Suit her up,” Holly interrupted before striding off. “She can take the place of the injured soldier.”
“Suit—whoa now!”
I stared at her back for a second as she marched off, then ran after her, grabbing her arm to stop her.
She whirled around, a dagger in her hand that was at my throat before I could so much as blink. “Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said not to touch me.”