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We’ve entered the square from a side street at the southwest corner, and appear to be heading for a large main thoroughfare at the center of the northern end.
Hundreds of people mill about all over the place. Some are trying to sell wares from pushcarts. Others are shopping. Citizens rush around on whatever errands they’re engaged in. Town guards tromp back and forth on the lookout for pickpockets and thieves. I half expect to see a flock of Dickensian waifs swarm out of a nearby alley and piranha all the valuables off someone who looks wealthy.
Tammy makes faces at me as if to prod me into starting a conversation with Demetria right here and now. Maybe I can start slow and wheedle some information out of her.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To my manor,” says Demetria. “You will be safe from prying eyes there, and we can speak freely.”
I’m about to ask exactly whose prying eyes she’s worrying about when a high-pitched scream rings out from our right, all the way over by the eastern edge of the square. People rapidly distance themselves from one particular spot. The scream’s coming from a ten-year-old girl in a commoner’s dress. As I spot her, she’s pointing at whatever scared her so much she shrieked. A man near the child scoops her up protectively, dragging her backward from the source of her fear.
My gaze jumps across to a whirling mass of fabric. Two men, one almost as tall as Kingsley, the other significantly smaller, spin around each other like a pair of gladiators. The little guy—who’s honestly not unusually small, merely tiny compared to the other dude—is dressed like the man who appeared in Tammy’s bedroom. Black hooded cloak, black leather armor, boots, daggers everywhere. If ‘assassin’ had a picture in the dictionary, he’d be it.
Subtle. Real subtle.
The big guy is wearing a plush velvet tunic in emerald green with gold trim and a fur-collared cloak. He looks like someone who has money but doesn’t like to wave it in everyone’s face. Big dude also happens to be carrying a big sword. A third man crawls away, clutching at a small knife protruding from his upper chest.
Damon the actor reaches for his sword. Kingsley grabs his arm to hold him back.
It’s over before I can even decide whether to get involved or not.
Big dude kicks the assassin’s legs out from under him, rounds his enormous two-handed sword up into an overhead chop, and down at the fallen killer. The assassin rolls out of the way at the last second, going for a close-in stab to the groin. Unfortunately for him, the big man is much faster than he looks, grabbing the assassin’s wrist in his left hand, stopping the dagger two inches away from his manhood.
The assassin next spins into a backflip that includes a kick to the big guy’s face. The hit’s not terribly devastating, though it is enough to make the guy let go of his arm.
The smaller guy sprints away, his black cloak billowing behind him.
People in the vicinity shout for guards.
In much the same way the assassin decided he had no chance to survive a fight with this big man and noped out, the big guy appears to decide he has no chance of beating the assassin in a foot race, so he just stands there being angry.
The girl who initially screamed clings to the man who picked her up. As soon as I hear her call him ‘father,’ I stop paying attention to her. She’s safe, merely frightened. Most of the other people in the square stand there in a state of ‘okay, that just happened’ for about ten seconds, then resume doing whatever they’d been doing as if an attempted assassination happened so frequently it deserved little response.
“Wow,” whispers Lindsey. “Someone just tried to kill Roldon Barathor.”
“Operative word there being tried.” Tammy laughs.
I stare at her. “Umm. Excuse me, young lady. Why are you laughing at an attempted assassination? This may look like a TV series, but it’s not.”
“It’s not funny. I mean…” Tammy gestures at the big man—who’s still seething. “What kind of idiot tries to kill Roldon in a face-to-face fight? If you’re going to assassinate him, you better either use poison or shoot him with an arrow from somewhere up high.”
“Seriously…” Lindsey rolls her eyes.
Damon exhales. “I shouldn’t be surprised that he looks exactly like Randall. Lord Ceomar—the one from this place—looks just like me.”
“Thae doesn’t look like the actress who plays her,” says Tammy. “She looks closer to the way the books describe her.”
“Huh, wonder why.” Anthony rubs his chin.
Tammy thinks for a moment. “Maybe Quentin has a really strong vision for her that’s overpowering what the TV people did? Wonder if that means he likes her enough not to kill her?”
“Keep dreaming,” mutters Lindsey. “The cuter and more innocent a major character is, the more likely they are to die in a most horrid way.”
“Guys.” I sigh. “You’re forgetting that I don’t know anything about this place?”
“Oh, sorry. Roldon is the head of House Barathor,” says Tammy. “He’s the favorite to be the next king. He’s also a badass warrior... hence the beat down you just saw.”
Lindsey nods. “More than badass. People think he’s got ancestral powers or something that make him supernaturally good at fighting. He knows what his opponents are going to do seconds before they do it.”
