The door popped open.
“Look out!” Griffin pulled me out of the way as a bucket of piss landed on the street.
A boy our age with a mop of light hair leaned out. “Griffin?” He sounded confused. He hustled over, wiping his hands on his apron. “That really you?”
Griffin let go of my hand. “Thoma—”
“Didn’t expect to see you slumming it down here,” Thoma sniffed.
I suddenly felt like I’d walked into the middle of an argument. “This is your best mate?”
“Well, yeah,” Griffin answered me, then frowned at Thoma. “Oh, is that how it is, then? That’s hardly fair.”
Thoma suddenly realized Griffin wasn’t alone. His face broke into a huge grin. “I saw you on the king’s balcony.” He narrowed his gaze on Griffin. “You dating Topper ladies now?”
“I’m not a Topper, and not a lady,” I exclaimed harsher than intended.
“Certainly look like one.” Thoma smiled.
“Thoma, meet Maggie . . . of the Hinterlands. Maggie, meet Thoma, son of the owner of this fine establishment called the Wilted Rose.”
Thoma softened at that. “Yes. My inheritance is secured with ale and a job by day at the blacksmith shop. All I need now is to find a good woman. I’m not discriminating. Hinterland girls are always welcome at my table, and other places,” he said, and winked at me.
“That’s enough,” Griffin insisted.
Another boy walked out. Similar height and age to Thoma, he was dark haired, only his was cropped short. His eyebrows were so thick they looked like they could pop off, crawl away, and have a life of their own. He didn’t look so happy to see Griffin either.
“Well . . . look who finally decided to grace us with his presence?”
“Dres, Griffin’s with company,” Thoma said.
“Company, is that what he’s calling it now?” Dres laughed, staggering back into the building.
“Ignore him. He’s drunk,” Thoma explained.
“We should go anyway,” Griffin said to me.
“Go? Because of Dres? Martha and Hugo are here too. All the gang from the shop. My father will open a fresh keg. Come on. Let us toast our champion.” Thoma’s proud gaze fell on me. “King takes credit when it’s us who made him what he is.”
Griffin sighed, as if this was a repeated refrain. “I wish I could, but we have something else to do right now. It’s important. I need a favor.”
“He’s too good for us lot anymore, Thoma.” Dres came out. He leaned on the side of the building to keep from falling over, his drink still in his hand. “Go back to the castle, Griffin. No one wants you here.”
Thoma tore the glass from Dres’s protesting hands, spilling it all over his trousers. “Get inside, Dres, before you fall down.”
Dres made a rude hand gesture, then tripped down the steps into the tavern. He must’ve bumped into a table because suddenly his name was yelled out by many.
“He’s a cheery fellow,” I said.
“He’s . . . well . . . Dres.” Thoma shrugged. He cast a weary glance to Griffin. “You want to leave the horses? That the favor?”
Griffin nodded, looking relieved. “Thank you.” He tied both sets of reins to the hitching post, then grabbed a torch tied to his pack and handed it to Thoma. “Can I get a light?”
Thoma went into the tavern and returned with the torch lit. He handed it to Griffin.
Griffin tossed him a coin.
Thoma held it up and gave them a cheeky grin. “I’m not too proud to take it. My someday wife is going to need pretty things.” He winked at me, sliding back into the tavern, and shut the door.
Griffin and I started walking again.
All the doors in the Bottom were shut, but the windows were open and loud conversations spilled into the street.
“You lived there? In the Wilted Rose?” I asked. I liked the name.
Griffin nodded. “I stumbled down the stairs practically frozen in the middle of the night. Half dead from working in the ducts. The stench must have been pouring off me.” Griffin cringed. “Thoma got his father to let me work for supper that night, stink and all. When it was done, Thoma hid me in the cellar with the casks. Gave me a bucket to wash myself and a cot. I lived down there for a week before his father noticed. Wolfbern’s his name. Told me I could work there at night in exchange for the cot. First home I had here. They live above it.”
Griffin pointed to the dark windows above the tavern.
I nodded. “And the Hugo he mentioned. Is he the blacksmith you worked for?”
A slow, shy smile spread over Griffin’s face. “You were listening.”
“I’m always listening.”
Griffin glanced over his shoulder at the old tavern. “They don’t like me much these days. My life feels so far away from them, and so different from theirs. Know what I mean?”
“Yes, and no. I don’t have friends like that. Xavier and I, we move all the time.”
“That hard?”
I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”
It was all that I could remember. . . .
As we passed under a wooden arch, Griffin’s demeanor changed. He handed me the torch without explanation. His shoulders lifted. He shook his sleeve. A dagger dropped into his palm, the blade’s tip visible in his hand.
“What’s wrong?”
We stepped beyond a gap between buildings. I heard scuffling.
“Muggers,” he groaned.
Before I knew what was happening, a pudgy, sweaty arm grabbed me around the neck, pulling me against a soft belly. Another plump limb knocked the torch out of my hand and pressed a dagger against my chest. “Donna move.” His breath smelled like ale.
Another stepped out of the shadows. A boy close to our age, he was short, light-haired, in a black cloak that was far too big on him, and as scarred as Griffin. Maybe more so. His scars started at the patch over his left eye, heading both north and south, with wide berths.
“Lookie lookie, Finn,” he said, spitting at Griffin’s feet. “If it isn’t the reigning champion. Slumming, Sir Griffin? With this fine-lookin’ lady too.” He pulled a dagger. “If you don’t want her cut like your ugly mug, hand over your pockets.”
Griffin held his hands up, his expression turning cold. “My pockets are empty. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
The blade inched upward to my cheek. “Careful, Nesbit, he’s quick.”
“Not so quick as we are,” Nesbit said, inching toward him.
A second later, Nesbit was facedown on the ground, gasping for breath, Griffin’s own dagger digging into his shoulder blade. Griffin managed all that one-handed. He turned on the larger man holding me. “Let her go.” When he didn’t, Griffin applied pressure.
“Gah! Let her go, Finn. Do it.”
His grip loosened. I ducked out, kicking him in the shins on my way to retrieving the torch. Griffin yanked Nesbit up, shoving him at his partner. “Now run.” He spun the grip, taunting them.
Our assailants fumbled over each other, racing into the shadows.
I laughed. “They can’t be very successful if you could run them off so easily.”