No, she would not. It was her Sorrow she wanted. And if she would need to go through these men to get to her, then that was what she would do.
“You’re a lovely thing,” said the first man. Up close to her now, close enough to touch, Ama saw each part that made up his face: the pleasing bronze tone of his skin; the symmetry of his brows, arched above flecked green eyes; his full, bowed lips, stretched into a smile now; his teeth, mostly even, the blackness where one was missing from the bottom row.
Ama did not respond. She stood, guarded, waiting.
“Don’t you have anything to say, when a fellow gives you a compliment?” the man asked. “I said you’re pretty, didn’t I? What do you say to that?”
“Yes,” said Ama, for she knew she was attractive; everyone she had met had told her so, from the king to the maids.
The other man, thicker, taller, with a beard he seemed to prize, so well was it groomed, scoffed, “So you think you are pretty, do you?” And, to his companion, “Quite a head on this one. Her ma never taught her a thing about modesty, you reckon, Gib?”
The man called Gib shook his head. “You’re not so great,” he said. “I’ve seen prettier. Ay, Rand? We’ve seen prettier by far.”
Rand nodded, narrowed his eyes, took his time looking Ama up and down, as if she were not covered head to foot in a cloak, muddy as it was. As if she were naked. “The whore at the pub last week was prettier than this one,” he said. “And not stuck-up about it, neither.”
The men walked even closer. Ama smelled their breath, saw the little veins, like tiny red worms, in the whites of their eyes. She stepped back. They stepped forward. She stepped back again, and felt the wall behind her.
She was trapped now between the eyes of the men in front of her and the Eyes of the wall at her back.
Pinned there by their gaze, Ama considered her choices. She did not see this ending well for her.
Above them, the sky rumbled a warning. Clouds gathered once more, and everything dimmed. A cold wind rose up, moving like fingers through the men’s hair, Gib’s and Rand’s, both, and blowing too beneath Ama’s hood, whispering to her, warning her.
But the warning did her no good; Ama already felt the danger. She had no weapons; she had no recourse. She had only this body, which they had said was both pretty and not that pretty, after all, and yet still they remained.
“Give me my space,” Ama commanded, doing her best not to shrink against the wall, trying to infuse her voice with a strength she did not feel.
“Your space?” said Gib. “Rand, this girl seems to think that she has some claim on the air around her.”
“That’s funny,” Rand answered, though he did not laugh. “Last I checked, no one owns the air, least of all some girl loved so little that she’s allowed to roam off alone, in the rain, outside the wall.”
“That’s not true.” Ama flared, grasping as best she could for a way out. “I am not unloved.”
“That cloak is not a lady’s,” Rand said. “I’ll bet you stole it.”
This, Ama could not deny.
“A thief, too, then,” said Gib. “Looks like there are a couple of lessons you need to learn.”
“Lucky we came along to teach you,” Rand said.
“I belong to the king!” Ama blurted, clutching closed the cloak at her throat. “I am his damsel, and if you touch me—even the least bit, even a hair—it will be your heads he will be having.”
Gib and Rand, who had been surging forward, hesitated and rolled back on their heels. They glanced at one another, and Ama saw in their faces their doubt.
She plunged ahead. “The king took me from the dragon, and brought me to Harding, to the castle,” she said. “I am to be his queen. I will warn you just one time—do not molest me, sirs. You will not live to regret it.”
“I did hear the king’s damsel brought with her a lynx,” Rand muttered to Gib.
The men would believe her, thought Ama; they would step back. She would be safe.
But, then—“Everyone knows about that lynx,” Gib said to Rand. “’Tain’t a secret, after all.”
“True,” Rand said, considering. “If we know about the king’s girl’s pet, most likely every slut in town does, as well.”
“Probably all them whores are playacting at being the damsel, don’tcha think?” scoffed Gib, and then, with a falsetto, “Ooh, look at me, I’m the damsel and this scraggy tomcat is my lynx, it is!”
Rand laughed, shoved Gib’s shoulder, and then the men turned again to Ama. “No woman of the king’s is out here beyond the wall,” Rand said. “No girl up to any good goes past the door. It’s to your own mercy if we teach you a lesson.”
“To your own mercy,” Gib echoed.
And they moved toward her again, eyes glinting, mouths set, minds made.
She would scream, Ama thought. She would scream and scratch and kick. Then, just as their hands were about to touch her, and as if in answer to this thought, Ama heard a familiar yowl.
Gib and Rand heard it too, for they froze and their eyes widened. Desperate, hope surging in her breast, Ama swung her gaze in a wide arc, and then—there, exploding through the still-open door, was her Sorrow.
The lynx barreled toward the men, lips curled back, and though the men raised their hands in submission, stumbled away from Ama, Sorrow did not slow. She sprang, flew through the air, striking Rand square in the chest with her paws, knocking him backward and onto the ground.
“God’s balls!” said Gib, but he didn’t move toward the lynx to help his friend, instead backing farther away from both the lynx and Ama.
Sorrow flexed her haunches and growled into Rand’s terrified face, her teeth inches from his throat.
“Call it off, lady,” begged Rand, but Ama would not.
Then, stepping through the wall, his waxed cloak beaded with water, came Emory. And, just a half pace behind, conspicuously underdressed for the weather without his cloak, was Pawlin.
“Call it off, Ama,” Emory said, and Ama did not hesitate.
“Sorrow, come,” she said.
The animal did not even flinch in her posture, her ears did not so much as twitch in the direction of Ama’s voice. She would rip out his throat, Ama saw, and though in that moment it might feel a relief to see Rand dead, such an action would not endear the lynx to Emory, that was certain.
Ama lunged forward and grabbed Sorrow by her scruff, pulling her back and away from Rand’s exposed throat.
The cat yowled and fought, but then Ama had her up in her arms, and she squeezed the lynx with the relief of reunion, and Sorrow’s stiffened form softened, and her yowl turned to purrs, her great long tongue emerging to kiss Ama’s face, the rough dryness of it sopping up tears Ama hadn’t known she’d shed.
At her feet, Rand rolled up to his knees, and Gib knelt, too, where he stood. “My king,” said Rand, his voice raspy now, his eyes cast down, “Forgive us.”
And Gib said, “How could we have known?”
Emory ignored them both. “There you are, my dearest,” he said, brushing past the men without even a glance. “I have found you at last.”
He opened his arms, and, still holding Sorrow tight, Ama stepped into them.
The Swallow’s Inn
“Shh, shh, dear one,” Emory murmured into Ama’s hair. “You are safe, I have you.”