Tea-Master Louen’s regret at leaving his pristine pavilion lasted all of two minutes, as he hurried about the place gathering up whatever he needed for a flight into Tarnbreck. The General hadn’t returned, but it was early yet and he’d be lucky to get out of the house unnoticed. Of Menys, there was no sign still. He even went to check the scullery twice, then gave up, afraid that that would start to look like suspicious behaviour too. But he was worried. She had her tasks, but it was rare that he could go for more than an hour’s worth of peace without her showing up to bother him. And even if she wasn't with him, she was rarely far from the scullery.

Where had she got to?

What if she's the one the General's looking for, and he’s found her?

Had…had she been the other head, hanging from his saddle?

The thought sloshed over him like a bucket of ice water.

No. No! She’s a crafty little thing; she’s too clever to be around when officialdom comes calling.

Isn't she?

The doubt washed through him in sickening waves. He was so afraid she had been caught, that she hadn't quite been clever enough to understand that someone like the General had been about to descend on them. He hadn't been, after all. He had no real reason think she wouldn't be either. But it was all he had to cling to, as, with shaking hands, he rolled a blanket, a knife and his writing things into one bundle and strapped his belt around it. He couldn’t stay to find out. If she'd got out, she was on her own. He had to be out before that bastard returned.

No. You’re over-reacting. He wouldn’t leave and give any liars, miscreants or otherwise hunted people time to leave before returning.

Unless he wanted a hunt.

The General was well-known for certain vices and he had a particular fetish for hunting people. He’d risen through the King’s ranks having started as a Hunter, one of the elite witch-finders feared throughout the land, and had cut his teeth sixteen years ago when the Limean sorcerers were hunted down and murdered. Even then, he’d cultivated a reputation for himself. He’d started when the old Queen had sent him after the King’s young mistress, and he’d brought her heart back in a golden casket. Some said he still carried that casket with him, and used it to terrorise those he wanted information out of. His name was never spoken, but Louen knew it, and felt the icy frisson of fear shiver down his back as he rolled it off his tongue.

Erwillian.

Erwillian had once been a handsome boy and had enjoyed the former Queen’s lust, which, rumour had it, she slaked twice a day on his lithe young body, and then, when she’d discovered her husband’s infidelity, she’d sent Erwillian after the girl and then to Limea in search of some mage artefact to prevent it ever happening again. Louen didn’t know if that had ever been found. He’d been a toddler and had only heard of the story from his aunt, and she was infuriatingly vague on many details, telling the tale as if it were one of the old stories from a picture book she liked to read him and not a very real horror that had had half the kingdom in a tizz.

Since he’d reached manhood, Louen knew that General Erwillian’s crimes included almost a hundred counts of rape and over two hundred bloody murders. One of the whores in House Willow claimed to be his ‘love child’, and no number of indignant arguments from Louen could persuade her that she was no love child even if she was his bastard and it wasn’t something to be proud of.

There was no understanding some people. He went to bed most nights with a sour taste in his mouth. Only Menys’ company had reminded him there was still sweet innocence to be found in the world.

She had better have got herself clear.

He slung his blanket roll over his shoulder and peered around his doorway. The coast seemed clear enough. It was getting late, the setting sun casting long shadows across the courtyard. If he kept to the far wall, he could probably get to the garden arch without being seen. But there was little activity from the upper rooms, despite Madam’s insistence that the day’s work wouldn’t cease just because they’d been terrorised by some piece-of-shit General sent by the little chi…her Majesty the Queen.

I’ll just go and check the scullery again. One last check for that little brat. And if the back door is clear I can go through there and into the garden and round by the wall.

He dumped his roll, picked up a pile of dirty napkins and walked purposefully across to the scullery. There were two girls still hard at work, one with the iron and a disgruntled look on her face, and he knew from that that Menys had well and truly gone. If she were anywhere there, she’d be the one with the iron.

‘Have you seen her?’ the iron-girl demanded, on seeing him.

He shook his head. ‘Not since last night.’

‘Well, where has she got to!’ The girl slammed her iron on the napkin spread on the board. ‘She’s never far from you. Are you sure you haven’t seen her?’

No chance of getting out this way, then. These tattle-tongues will blab the moment that bastard looks at them.

He returned her look of suspicion with one of utter disgust, and dumped the pile of napkins he’d brought by the laundry pile, with a curt instruction not to burn them with her unskilled clumsiness. That would make them think he cared and would be there to receive the clean, ironed napkins back again. Then he went back to his pavilion, and waited for them to lose interest in watching him.

A shadow fell over the threshold and he whirled around, ready to defend himself if it should be any of the Queen’s men.

One of the whores, Bresgion. Louen sagged with relief. Bresgion smiled wanly and flicked aside his cloak, revealing a bundle under his arm. ‘I figured you’d be leaving. Mind if I join you?’

Louen looked the young man over. Bresgion reminded him of a birch sapling; tall, slender, all birdlike bones and peach skin and pale, silky hair. He doubted the boy had ever stepped outside the town walls. He’d seen him leave House Willow a grand total of thrice in his time there. Bresgion was soft, pampered, weak.

Louen shook his head. Bresgion had figured he was leaving? Then who else had?

Definitely time to go! He'd lingered too long already. ‘You’ll slow me down.’

‘I can tell the General that you’ve gone if you don't take me with you.’ Bresgion’s expression hardened. ‘Please,’ he added. ‘I need to get out of here.’

I’m not going to ask why. I don’t care. Last thing I need is a burden like this soft milk-fed boy.

‘Please,’ said Bresgion again, at Louen’s frown. His eyes turned imploringly on Louen. ‘I’ll die here otherwise.’

‘Get yourself out then. No-one’s stopping you.’

‘I haven’t earned my contract out!’

‘Is that my problem?’ Louen glanced out of the door. A couple wandered past; one of the house whores and a sweetheart, heads bent, their arms around each other, a rare and precious stolen moment.

‘I don’t want to be like them,’ said Bresgion. He looked at Louen again. ‘I don’t want to watch my lover’s heart break because he knows I’m on my back with another man’s dick up my arse! Or my dick up...look, I’m asking you: will you help me get out of here?’

‘I’ll get you out of the town and on your way but that’s all,’ said Louen, relenting. He’d seen what Bresgion described. He wouldn’t have wished that on anyone. ‘But it’s only because I don’t want you spilling my secrets to that bastard. I couldn’t care less about your love life. You’ll do exactly what I say, without argument, is that clear?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t stress that enough,’ Louen said sternly, not convinced Bresgion understood the severity of the situation. Or why he was really fleeing. ‘It could mean the difference between us finding our way to freedom, or dying skewered on the end of the General’s pike.’

Bresgion looked at him from under heavy eyelids, painted a pale green, glitter sparkling at the corners. ‘Thank you.’

‘Clean your face,’ said Louen. He quickly rinsed a tea-cloth under the pump at the sink and handed it to Bresgion. ‘You can’t go out there looking like that.’

Bresgion scrubbed at his eyelids with the cloth, then handed it back. ‘Will that do?’

Louen nodded. ‘Throw the cloth in the stove.’

‘Destroying evidence?’ Bresgion gave him an impish grin. He took Louen’s chin in one thin hand and looked him over thoroughly, with admiration in his wide blue eyes. ‘I’ve always wondered what you’d look like with a whore’s paint and powder. Why did you never…’

Louen jerked away. ‘Enough! I’m not a whore. Never will be.’ He picked up his bundle again, gave Bresgion a pointed look, and went to the door. The coast was clear still, and the scullery door had been pushed to now, to keep the chill evening breeze out. Those inside wouldn’t be able to see the courtyard.

‘We’re going over the wall,’ he told Bresgion, who nodded, and followed him out.

The garden of House Willow was set on a cliff edge that formed a natural boundary for the town and acted as part of its wall. It was a twenty-foot drop into a thorn-tangled gully, which then ascended steeply the other side, and into a scrub of hazel, gorse and birch before it gave way to the moorland that stretched to the South-West.

To the South-East was Tarnbreck Forest, and beyond that, Karon. Louen intended to make for Karon, for the Karoni Patrician was not a fan of Duhnos’ monarchy and was rumoured to enjoy harbouring Duhnosi fugitives. Sometimes he handed them over, if he deemed them too distasteful to allow into his own society, but mostly they got drafted into his own army and then aimed back at Duhnos’ forces. The two countries had been drifting along in a half-assed war for some time now, even before the trouble with the Limean sorcerers. Mostly there was peace, but now and then skirmishes flared along the borders.

Louen climbed the wall with little difficulty, then lowered himself carefully down the other side, Bresgion behind him. He used a little magic, because to climb without it was risking his neck, but using as much as he’d like might bring the General down on him like a tonne of bricks. Louen didn’t know if the General had any mage-detectors on him, but he wasn’t going to take the risk of acting like he didn’t.

‘Lower your foot to your right,’ he instructed, when Bresgion hesitated, clinging with white-knuckled desperation to his handholds. ‘There’s a crevice there. Push your foot in. There – now bring your left foot to the same spot…and your left hand…now your right…’

In that manner he got them both down the wall, and Bresgion breathed a shaky sigh of relief as his feet touched the earth again. He wiped his trembling hands on his cloak and took another deep breath. ‘I’ve never climbed anything except a man before,’ he joked, with a nervous little laugh.

Louen gave him a long, disapproving look, but said nothing.

Once at the bottom of the ditch, they scrambled along it as fast as he could. He wouldn’t have long at all before he was missed. He’d wished he could have waited another hour or so before leaving, which would have given him the whole night to get away, but he had no way of telling when the General was on his way back to the brothel. And since Bresgion had turned up, it would look suspicious if they spent too much time together. Hanging around in the pavilion wasn’t a habit Bresgion had formed, although he had come there a handful of times when he’d had little better to do. Louen didn’t really tolerate much company though. Once he’d seen off the day’s clients, he liked some privacy and peace.

They had to get undercover by the time night fell. Luckily, Louen was no stranger to the terrain, having scouted it thoroughly on many occasions. People like him didn’t get complacent in comfortable lives.

‘Keep under the wall,’ he told Bresgion, when the young man drifted into the middle of the gully, where it was easier going. ‘The shadows will do wonders to hide you. And put your hood up!’

Bresgion obeyed, shrouding his bright hair with the dark hood. While it was a dark night, the moon a mere sliver of pearly light, Louen didn’t want to take any chances. Bresgion’s hair was a blond so pale it was almost white.

They kept to the gully under the wall until the it rose out onto the moor, then they turned into the hazels and huddled in the undergrowth and waited for night to fall.

Bresgion fished in the pocket of his cloak and brought out three slices of fruitcake wrapped in brown paper. He offered one to Louen. ‘I brought eggs too, if you want one. I didn’t have much time to gather good supplies. I had to sneak into the kitchen behind Cook's back.'

Louen took the cake, and ate it thoughtfully. ‘Where are you going to go?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bresgion admitted. ‘Wherever you’re going, I guess. Any ideas?’

‘You’re not going with me,’ snapped Louen.

Bresgion was silent, his hand hanging limp with the remains of his slice of fruitcake in it. Then he finished it, wiped his hands on his knees, and lay back, looking up at Louen through pale lashes.

‘Get up,’ said Louen, still unsympathetic and intending to stay that way. ‘We’re not staying here. If we move fast enough we can make Tarnbreck before the General finds we’re missing.’

Bresgion scrambled to his feet with a grin.

‘And don’t look at me like that! You’re not my responsibility, and you’re sure as hell not going to be my bad luck! If I find myself in any danger because of you, I’ll throw you to the wolves to save my own skin! Do I make myself clear?’

'You're harsh,' pouted Bresgion, fluttering his lashes. Evidently, old habits died hard. 

Louen gave him a little shake. 'If I'm harsh, it's because I want to stay alive! I'll do my best to keep you alive too, but not if you disobey me. Better you dead than both of us.'

'Still harsh,' smiled Bresgion, looking flirtatious now, and twirling a strand of his hair.

'I asked you if I made myself clear.'

Bresgion hesitated, sighed dramatically as if giving in only after a long deliberation, then took Louen’s face in his hands and planted a kiss full on his mouth. ‘Perfectly clear. But I can promise you, all the wolves in the country are going to go hungry! There will be no need at all to feed me to them!'

'I'm glad to hear it.'

Bresgion let Louen go, smoothing Louen's tunic with the air of a mother hen. 'So: which way?'

                                                      *****************************************************************

Some brief edits for place names and minor things. Wayland's the town they're in, Duhnos the country.