“He likes women. I happen to be one.”
“He’s pretty. I bet he’d be a good bounce.”
“He’s too young.”
“He’s our age.”
“Too green, then. I kissed him at Springmarket last year. He was a bad kisser. Very sloppy. Wouldn’t trust him with a bounce.” The prince, on the other hand, wasn’t a sloppy kisser.
“The prince is a Lys’Careth,” Wren said quietly, apparently able to read my mind now.
“I know what he is. I told him goodbye, and we got our coin, and it’s done.” So why did I feel a wave of sadness every time I remembered the truth of it? Why, when I’d told him to leave us alone, was I disappointed that he hadn’t ignored that directive and sent us a message from the palace? I appreciated that he respected the line I’d drawn. But a little part of me would have enjoyed a storybook ending—the prince on his destrier, begging for my hand because he’d never met anyone braver or more beautiful.
She slid the jar toward me. “Keep drinking. You’re still too sober.”
The women at the table behind us, who’d been on their bench before we arrived and had made it through several jars, were much less sober than we were.
“It’s been a week now since he’s come,” said one woman. “No one’s so much as seen the prince.”
“Maybe he’s dead.”
“Could be,” said another. “Could be Anima running the palace, keeping up pretenses. It’s all very suspicious.”
There were murmurs of agreement.
“Maybe he’s ugly.”
“That’s even worse than dead!” They all howled at that.
“Too much coin to be ugly. Probably holed up in his great palace and swimming in gold.”
“Maybe he’s with the girl who saved him. She’s probably rich as the emperor himself now.”
“I heard she was a servant.”
“No, she’s a courtesan.”
“No, she can see ghosts. Ran right into the crowd, pointing out ghosts everywhere. Ought to write a song about her.”
I sat up a little straighter.
“Or she made it all up. Didn’t see shite and just wanted the attention.”
Wren, who’d listened to it all with a flat expression, slammed down her cup and turned back to them. “Hey.” Her voice was like a bolt of thunder. “Lay off talk about the prince.”
The girls looked at each other. “Why should we? Mind your own gods-damned business.”
“There are guards and soldiers everywhere,” Wren said, pointing them out. “Looking and listening for treason. You want to spend Springmarket in the garrison dungeon with the rats?”
That had them looking at each other, then muttering into their drinks.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said when Wren turned back.
“I don’t want to hear about him, either.”
“I thought you said you didn’t care?”
“I don’t care about him. I care about you. And people talk too damned much.”
