‘Is that what you think?’ he asked in a growl.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she retorted, slouching and setting her tankard down on the thigh of the lone leg she stretched out – the one bare and pale and with a delicious curved line where the meat of it slung down from the chair’s edge, and the sight of that made Hordilo want to fall to his hands and knees and crawl up under that thigh, if only to feel its weight on the back of his neck. He shifted about, felt sweat everywhere under his clothing.
‘I don’t like it when women think that,’ he said.
One brow arched. ‘If you weren’t that way then no woman would think it, would she?’
‘I wasn’t until some woman did me in, not that I was ever married, of course, but if I had been, why, she would’ve done me in, all because she was thinking what she was thinking.’
‘You’re blaming the water for the hole it fills.’
‘I’ve just seen that too many times,’ Hordilo said, feeling surly. ‘Women thinking.’
‘If that’s what you think, why talk to me? You could’ve questioned Gust Hubb, or Heck, even. But you didn’t. You picked me, on account of me being a woman. So let’s face it, you keep making the same mistakes in your life and I ain’t to blame for that, am I?’
‘If we’re talking blame here,’ Hordilo retorted, ‘then it was you that sat down thinking what you were thinking. I ain’t blind and I ain’t dumb and I don’t take kindly to being thought of that way, when we only just met.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Hordilo. Captain Hordilo.’
‘All right, Captain Hordilo, since you know what I’m thinking, what are we doing here?’
‘Women always think I’m that easy, don’t they.’
‘Is that what I was thinking?’
‘I know what you were thinking, so don’t try and slip around it with all this talk of us taking a room upstairs to continue this conversation. I got laws to uphold. Responsibilities. You’re a stranger, after all.’
‘You only think I’m a stranger,’ she replied, ‘because you ain’t got to know me yet.’
‘Of course you’re a stranger. I never seen you before. Nobody has, nobody around here, I mean. I don’t even know your name.’
‘Birds Mottle.’
‘That hardly matters,’ he replied.
‘Yes it does. Strangers don’t have names, not names you’d know, I mean. But I do, and you know it.’
‘What were you thinking, showing me that leg of yours?’
She glanced down and frowned. ‘I wasn’t showing it to you. I was just letting it lie there, resting. It does that when I sit.’
‘I ain’t fooled by anything so obvious,’ Hordilo replied. He reached down and held his hand under her thigh. He hefted it once, then twice. ‘That’s a decent feel, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘I know. Decent weight. Solid, but soft, too.’ He moved it up and down a few more times.
‘Looks like something you’d be happy doing all day,’ Birds Mottle noted.
Sighing, Hordilo sat back. ‘And you said you didn’t think I knew what you were thinking.’
‘Got me.’
He rose. ‘All right, then.’
‘Upstairs?’
‘I get this all the time,’ he said, ‘for being so handsome.’
Her eyes widened. But he’d seen that look, too, plenty of times, and whatever she was thinking, why, she could keep it to herself.
Feloovil Generous watched the two head up to Hordilo’s room. She shook her head. There was no telling the tastes of women, and of all the idiotic conversations she’d heard from Hordilo over the years, that one was close to tops. Can’t figure how he does it. How it works every damned time.
We’ll still see her hang, of course. So, I guess, everyone wins.
She patted the stinging slashes on her cheek, looked round to see if Felittle had cracked open the cellar door and slipped out, but even as her head turned she saw the door snap shut again, the latch thrown with a muted thunk. Good, that embarrassment from her own womb could rot down there, for all Feloovil cared.
In the rooms above – all the rooms barring the one now occupied by Hordilo and that slutty woman – all of her girls were weeping and trying to put together what was left of them. Someone would have to sweep up the clumps of hair and bits of skin, but that could wait on her lovelies repairing themselves with make-up and wigs and whatnot.
She’d warned her daughter about taking in that lizard cat. It might have shown up looking half-dead and with a witless look in its wandering eyes, but a wild creature was just that. It belonged out among the rocks, sliming across the cliff-faces above the waves eating birds and eggs and stuff, instead of killing and eating the village cats and some of the dogs, too.
A spasm of grief clutched her at the thought of the two dogs Red had torn open. Scurry and Tremble had been decent hounds, a little fat and slow, true – fatally so, it turned out – and now Wriggle was all alone and pining under Ackle’s table … and where had that stinking man gone to? He should have been back by now, with Spilgit in tow, which would have given her the opportunity to turn this miserable day right around.
Throat-cut tax collectors stung no tears in any village. Questions of vengeance didn’t need utterance, in fact, as it was more or less a given. She could picture a score of indifferent shrugs, and maybe a low quip about how Hood, Lord of Death, was the biggest tax collector of them all, or some such thing. A justifiable murder, then.
She should never have trusted Ackle with the task.
The door opened again and in strode three more strangers.
The man in the lead, carrying in both hands a huge sword, fixed Feloovil with a glare and in a ferocious accent said, ‘Where are they, then?’
‘Up at the keep,’ she replied. ‘Everyone’s up at the keep, and there they’ll stay, for as long as the Lord wants to entertain ’em. Now you three, you look worn out and all. So put those weapons away and sit down and I’ll check the cookpot.’
They stared at her for a moment, and then the man with the sword sheathed it and turned to his companions. ‘Like Wormlick said, we’re almost there. Time for a celebratory drink.’
The other man – the third one was a woman, slinky and evil-looking – edged up to Feloovil where she stood behind the bar. His beard could not hide the mottled rings on his face, and he was eyeing the stairs and licking his lips.
The first man asked, ‘You got girls for hire, then?’
‘For you, aye,’ she replied. ‘But not the one with ringworm. Got to take care of my girls, right?’
The man glanced over at his companion and shrugged.
‘Always the way,’ the ringwormed man said in a grumble. ‘Never mind. You go on, Bisk. Take two and think of me.’
The man named Bisk made a face. ‘Thinking of you won’t do me any good, Wormlick, if you know what I mean.’ He then strode to the stairs and clambered up them as if he was one short cousin away from an ape.
The woman sidled up beside Wormlick. ‘Don’t get down on yourself,’ she said to him. ‘Things could always be worse.’
‘So you keep saying,’ Wormlick replied, and then caught Feloovil’s eye. ‘You, ale and food, like you promised!’
‘And here I was starting to feel sorry for you,’ Feloovil said, heading off to check the new pot of stew on its hook above the hearth.
‘Yeah?’ Wormlick called out behind her. ‘Maybe I’ll just take what I want and damn to you, then! What do you think of that?’
‘Go ahead and try,’ she replied, ‘and you’ll never leave the Heel alive.’
‘Who’d stop me?’
She faced him. ‘I would, you rude pocked oaf. Don’t test me ’cause I ain’t in the mood. Now, d’you want to eat and drink in here? Fine, only pay up first, on account of you not being local and all.’ She collected up a couple of bowls, filled them both with broth and then spat in one before turning to walk back to the strangers.