Robert Asprin - Uneasy Alliances

The mage's fingers covered hers and drew her hand away from her lips. Then he was examining her palm, where the wasp nest's mark still could be seen.

When he looked up, his brow was furrowed. "What's here means more to me than you'd understand. It would be a favor if you'd share your experience with me, and anything else that might be relevant that's happened to you lately. Wasps and I have a ... special understanding."

The hand that wasn't holding Merricat's went to his waist, where a wavy sword, short and foreign-looking, hung in a tooled scabbard.

Miserably, afraid to trust her traitorous voice, Merricat nodded. How to tell him about it all? About the wasp on the first plane, and the weapon her friend Shawme had found, that silver tube that shot tiny wasplike pieces of metal when you blew through it-the weapon Merricat was certain that Dika had wanted Shawme to keep?

In fact, how to tell Randal anything at all, with her tongue tied in knots and her heart pounding? How indeed, while she was sure to the very depths of her soul that she'd done something wrong in helping Shawme, and in coming to the Mageguild, and in falling hopelessly in love with the famed and fearsome mage Randal in the first place?

Shawme was trembling uncontrollably and afraid someone would no- tice her, making herself small in a comer among the other girls in Myrtis's saloon.

And someone had. One of the musicians, a percussionist who pounded drums and shook bells and crashed cymbals, kept watching her as he played.

The attention of the musician made things worse. As did every man who came ducking in through Myrtis's beaded curtains, who stalked around the room, drink and smoke in hand, and touched this girl or that before making up his mind and escorting his chosen up the back stairs to the girl's room.

Worse, because none of them so much as ogled Shawme. She might as well have stayed upstairs. Worse too, because if a man did approach her, she was sure she'd break and run- Unless, of course, that man was Zip.

After a while she closed her eyes, secure in her comer with stout redfrescoed walls against her back, certain she'd get through this whole night unnoticed. As much trouble as that might cause with Myrtis, she knew she could handle that. Other girls must have failed to make conquests on their first night here. Most of those who'd gone upstairs already, went with men they obviously knew quite well, men who took them boldly in strong arms and crushed silken bodies against armored chests with no preamble.

Shawme didn't know anyone like those soldiers, any more than she knew the sort of brocaded nobles who came in groups of twos and threes, smelling of perfume like the women, and gathered up giggling ladies by the armload.

The only man who noticed her was the musician, a youngster with barely a beard and naked, sweaty arms. Her son. From undistinguished beginnings Eking out a living among his betters and here to please. The more he watched her, the more Shawme felt a kinship. She began wondering if, when his music was done, the youth would come toward her.

But it didn't work out that way.

She was studying the frescoes in the saloon through a growing fog of smoke, finally realizing how instructive they were to an ignorant girl. On them men were portrayed doing what she'd seen dogs do in the street. And women knelt before them, doing mysterious things that involved kissing. Shawme was trying to guess at what that would be like, feeling her mouth grow dry and her heart pound as each successive man took someone else and the crowd of women thinned while she tried not to notice and prayed that Myrtis wouldn't come down tonight to find Shawme the only unclaimed girl, the only one who hadn't made a copper's worth of profit for the house ...

So she didn't notice the newcomers until the beaded curtain rattled, and then she quickly lowered her eyes.

Three men had come in together, laughing, arm in arm, with a fourth behind them, taciturn. The three were military men, highly ranked since they'd been allowed to wear their weapons in here. The fourth was armed as well, and unsmiling. His glance caught hers before she looked away.

In front of Shawme's corner was a couch on which three older girls reclined, each showing thigh or bare perfumed shoulder or a hint of rosy breast. The three jolly soldiers, unmistakably a little drunk, came their way. The tallest one was blond with braids in his hair and a goblet in his hand.

He stared directly at Shawme for three heartbeats, and on the fourth her heart threatened to stop entirely. That look was a look of recognition, but she couldn't remember ever meeting such a soldier. She was sure he was coming for her.

She shrank back in the corner, trying to push her way through the frescoed walls; trying to get breath into her lungs, enough breath for flight if he held out a hand to her as she'd seen men do here.

She would run right past him, duck under his arm and fly out through the curtained doorway, into the street, back to Ratfall. She'd run and run until her heart burst.

But the blond man looked away then, at the girls on the couch between Shawme and his soldier friends, and held out a hand to one of them, who squealed, "Oh, Walegrin, you're looking fit tonight," and giggled.

In relief, Shawme squeezed her eyes shut. In that solitary darkness, her relief was eaten up by chagrin. Then came embarrassment and mortification, shame and despair. No man was going to choose her. She was going to fail. All the other girls would laugh at her.

She thought to herself, Perhaps it's the mandrake. Perhaps it's ugly.

Perhaps it's working too well and keeping the men away So she reached up behind her neck, eyes still shut, and undid the thong that held it there

When the thong came undone, she opened her eyes and surreptitiously pulled the mandrake from between her breasts, hiding it behind her, under the cushions of the bench against the wall

When she straightened up, a shadow fell on her She looked up And up Standing directly in front of her was the fourth man, the one who'd come in alone.

She thought wildly. He's not here for me, he's going to ask one of the girls on the couch. But all of them were gone While she'd had her eyes shut, they'd left with the blond soldier and his friends

There was no one else in this comer, darkened by the big man's shadow, but Shawme She craned her neck, unable to nse as a girl should, her knees like water

He seemed gigantic, all dark cloth and leather She looked up past his weapons belt at eye level, and could hardly see his face, just the dark shadow of new beard and a hand that came suddenly toward her.

"Young lady," his deep voice said, "what's your name9"

"Sh-Shawme," she quavered and hated herself His hand was waiting Somehow, she lifted hers. Then, with his help, she was standing

"Your room, if you please," said the voice and still she had no clear impression of his face Her gaze was level with his broad chest, and his eyes beat down on her with such fire in them-as only those of Dika the peregnne had ever done before

Too late to run, the deed all but done, she remembered her training "A dnnk, kind sir, or something stronger9" Drugs were purveyed at Myrtis's-drugs to embolden, drugs to give stamina, drugs to make up for whatever needed making up for, so Myrtis had told her

"I'm known as Shepherd, little lamb," he said and she knew from that he wanted no dnnk or anything at all but her

At the last minute, while his hand inexorably drew her from the corner toward the stairs, she remembered the charm that Merncat had given her, her mandrake root, without which this man was soon going to know she was a virgin.

Anguished, she halted, their arms stretched out between them, without the strength to pull away His big head turned questioningly and she saw his profile for the first time a grown man's profile, hard and seasoned, a bold nose and lips trying hard not to laugh above a stubbled chin This was a stark man, a man from whom you ran on the streets because such men took what they wanted There was no fooling such a man as he