It took all of Jace’s skills of communication and persuasion to convey to his aging master that there was in fact a whole mass of people following up the path behind him, eager for meat, drink and gossip.
In the end, he managed, and between the two of them they had the rough establishment ready just ahead of the crowd, with sleeping sailors roused from the tables, joints of meat spitted and set over the fire, and the high quality spiced rum, fortified wine, and aged whiskey that Prit reserved for his mates was switched out for the economically produced but dearly priced grog he sold to all comers.
Jace did his best to keep his ears open as he served the throng, which was so large that it spilled out from beneath the canopy. It was hard for him to pick out any one conversation as he darted and dashed and dived through momentary openings in the sea of people, but he didn’t need to focus on one conversation when every conversation was on the same topic… though with precious little agreement.
Was she a princess? Of course. Of course not.
Where had she come from? Fell from the Skylands. Found in a brothel.
She was an untouched virgin. She was infected with every disease known to man and had a whole litter of feathered babies on the way.
Whoever bought her would find a whole army of her people swooping down on top of their head as retribution. She was an outcast, a pariah sold into bondage by her own people for some hideous crime or simply for being an embarrassment to somebody in power.
The most distressing possibility Jace heard–and this was advocated solely by a beady-eyed, floppy-eared sot with tiger striped fur–was that the governor’s interest in the exotic woman was actually culinary, as “everybody” knew that the flesh of Skylanders was addictively tasty.
That didn’t seem very likely to the young man, but he took the mention of the governor’s interest as a reminder. One way or another, the girl would soon be beyond his power to help, whether the governor completed the purchase or the slavers fled in their ship.
From that moment, Jace struggled to pace himself. He still had most of the afternoon and evening ahead of him, and he would need to be alert and awake when the tavern closed and Prit retired to the cave to collapse. He would make his move that very night… sneak down to the harbor, find out which ship belonged to Montaldo and Striggs, and slip aboard.
After that? He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He could swim away from the ship under water. Could the princess? Probably not. But she was feathered, and supposedly from the Skylands. Perhaps once free of her fetters she would prove able to fly, as some of those folk were rumored to.
Jace wasn’t overly worried, in either case. He knew that she wasn’t meant to be a slave, and therefore, fate would favor him in his attempt to rescue her. That was all there was to it.
He just had to do his part, and the most difficult part of that would be keeping himself awake.
It was going to be a very long day.
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