“Upset!” Maria shook the basket at him, and Rey cringed. “Upset? You said this potion would make Jacques fall in love with me! You said it was made by witches!”
“Not—Not exactly,” Rey said. He scrabbled for the side of his cart. Unicorn gave him a baleful look as he tried to latch himself to the door like a terrified lizard. Around them, the market crowd in the small border town between Staria and Gerakia was slowly starting to approach, drawn by the novelty of a nearly seven-foot tall man trying to hide from a woman barely out of girlhood.
“You see,” Rey said, tapping the side of the cart. “It doesn’t saywitch-made.”
“Yes, it does! It says it right there,” Maria said, pointing to the words Rey had carefully painted on the side two weeks ago.
“I know you might be confused,” he said, trying to slink over to the front of the cart. “But it doesn’t say ‘witch’, you see. It says ‘vvitch.’ Yes? Two V’s, very important. Vvitch-made.”
“The fuck is a vvitch supposed to be?” Maria cried. Rey managed to get one foot on the bench, but Unicorn, used to this sort of thing, didn’t even bother to look back at him. “Your love potion made Jacques sick. He’s still in the privy!”
“And you’re not holding his hair back and saying that he still looks attractive?” Rey asked, trying to put a touch of admonishment into his tone even as he inched alongside the cart, avoiding swings of the bread basket. “Maybe you don’t really want him to love you after all.”
“Maybe I—that isn’t—that’s not how love potions work!” Maria said.
“Oh, and you know better than a vvitch, do you?” Rey slipped and grabbed the roof of the carriage, making the trays and boxes in the back rattle.
Maria stared at him, mouth open.
“He was supposed to get sick,” she said, dubiously.
“Oh, yes,” Rey said, desperately. “Then it would work, you see, when he saw how concerned you were. Except you’re here, aren’t you, yelling at a poor defenseless man while your true love heaves his guts out somewhere? Shame on you, mademoiselle, shame on you.”
Maria stared at him for a few seconds, mouth slack, basket hanging from limp fingers.
“Go on and comfort him, then,” Rey said, and Maria ran off, clutching the basket to her chest. Rey waited a full minute before jumping down, landing in the street with a grunt.
Well. That was the end of his time in this town, then. It usually was after the first altercation. In the last town, Rey had been a down-on-his-luck farmer’s son with a bruise balm he’d made out of soap he lifted off the back of a cart. Before that, he’d tried claiming the inheritance of a late noble with no descendants—until he learned that all he had to inherit was debt, and had to sneak away in the night before the lawyers descended. Love potions usually worked in a pinch, since most people who wanted them just needed a little confidence to ask their intended out in the first place, but it was just Rey’s luck that alcohol didn’t go well with castor oil.
Apparently.
He was just trying to wheedle Unicorn into letting him hitch her to the cart properly when he heardanotherruckus in the market. At first, he thought it was Maria back for revenge, but then he spotted the telltale signs of a fight forming near the flower cart.
“Wait here,” he told Unicorn, and sidled over to the fight. Fights were usually good for a bet or three, and even if Rey made an awful love potion, he knew how to read a fight.
This one was interesting, at least. The man who instigated it was a skinny fellow with blazing red hair cut short save for a floppy bit that kept bouncing over his forehead, and he’d discarded a truly beautiful green cloak with gold embroidery in the shape of overlapping leaves. He could have been the picture of an elegant woodland prince if it weren’t for the fact that he drew his sword like it was a cudgel.
His opponent was a burly, broad-shouldered man who towered over the would-be prince like a giant over a cat. It didn’t help that the prince was even shorter than Maria.
“Two silver on the little one,” Rey said immediately, and a man came by with a paper and a box full of coins. The princeglanced Rey’s way—perhaps someone didn’t like being calledlittle—and turned back to his opponent.
“My name is Eli,” the prince said, in a soft, rasping voice. “And I challenge you, Sabino, on behalf of Lydia Martre.”
“Lydia?” Sabino laughed, but there was a touch of fear in his eyes. “She must have gotten cold feet after our last meeting.”
“I’m not here to discuss the charges,” Eli said, and—oh, bless him, he actually smacked Sabino’s thigh with the flat of his blade. “I’m here to demand satisfaction.”
“Make that six silver on the little one,” Rey said.
“Fine.” Sabino drew his own sword. “To first blood, then.”
“I don’t give a shit about that,” Eli said. His voice was so quiet Rey had to strain to hear it. “She just wants you beaten.”
It was the most chaotic duel Rey had seen inyears.Eli had no care for form or grace. He didn’t follow any rules of combat that Rey knew, just threw himself into it with all the ferocity of every small dog cursed to live in a big dog’s world, and old Sabino didn’t stand a chance. It didn’t matter when he almost got a hit on Eli’s arm and cut his sleeve open—Eli just slashed a messy line over Sabino’s chest, threw his sword to the ground, and leapt at Sabino like a wild cat.
“The fuck are you?” Sabino cried, as Eli slammed his face into a cart selling wooden dolls and pushed him to his knees. “What’d I do? What’d Ido?”
“You think you’re a hunter,” Eli snarled, grabbing Sabino’s hair to hold him still. “Trust me, I’ve seen hunters. They’d eat you alive.
