The Irish Warrior

“I mean me.”

Her lips curved into a smile that would send a monk running for a brothel. “Long,” she replied, her voice deep with the burgeoning mischievousness he liked so much. “And wide.”

He grinned back. “And deep?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Shallow as a stream.”

He scooped up his mug and tipped it her direction. “I’ll show ye shallow, later.”

She flushed a deep shade of pink and looked away.

The room was deserted now, but for a handful of women clustered at the far end of a high counter, a long flat board set on trestles. Behind it on a high stool sat a tall, striking, but tired-looking woman who had been eyeing them suspiciously since they entered.

“What are we doing here?” Senna asked.

“Rardove’s men are searching all the homes. We’ll wait here until some fat, rich merchant comes, then we steal a few of his things while he’s otherwise occupied upstairs.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Have you always been so enamored of thievery?”

“A lifelong dream.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Cloaks, coin. Whatever might allow us out of these gates at night, appearing to be someone other than ourselves. We’ll not last the night within the town walls.”

She scowled. Finian sat back, kicked his boots out under the rickety table, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Ye have a better plan?”

“Well, not a plan, per se.”

“Desperate straits require desperate measures, Senna.”

“Indeed. I simply don’t like the idea of robbing merchants, no matter how fat or occupied they may be.”

“Ye wouldn’t, seeing as ye are one.”

She gave him a level look. “As a last resort,” she allowed. “If it proves necessary. But if there is some other way…”

Her gaze traveled over the room and settled on the proprietor and the circle of pretty, painted women clustered around her.

He hoped Senna wasn’t getting ideas about whores.

A loud clatter of something falling drew everyone’s attention to the top of the stairs at the far end of the room.

A man stood there, glaring at the pitcher that had sailed over the edge and smashed, spraying shards of crockery all around the feet of the prostitutes. He swung drunkenly toward the room he’d just left.

“Crazed wench,” he shouted, his words slurring together. “I’ll not come here again.”

“That’s for certain, ye won’t!” shouted a female voice. “Not if ye don’t pay for what ye took!”

The man staggered down the narrow hallway that paralleled the hall below. He pounded on another door, shouting vilely. The door ripped open. Two men came out, plucking at their tunics and hefting breeches up around their waists.

“Let’s go,” he snarled. The other men followed as their leader stumbled down the stairs, grasping the railing with a fat, white-knuckled hand. He threw up a palm as the tall, stately patroness took a step in his direction.

“I’ll not be treated that way, Esdeline,” he said in a pompous, drunken voice. It sounded like ‘Ess-dull-leen,’ and was followed by a violent belch. “Either that wench goes, or I do.”

He waved his hand through the air, as if that would enhance the dire nature of his threat, when in truth it made him look like he was fanning away the belch. And with that, the men all staggered out the door.

The three girls who had been upstairs—the one who’d apparently thrown the jug and the two who’d been in the room with the others—came downstairs. Their faces were furious, although one looked close to tears, and not from anger. Finian could overhear them talking, their angry conference loud in the empty tavern. The defeated tone in their voices carried farthest.