The sun was very low as we reached an isolated little inn, just a main building and a stable, surrounded by a few wide farm fields and beyond that deep forest.
“They probably serve dog and call it pork, and I’m sure they use straw for their mattresses,” Allura sighed, sounding more like my father’s fashionable light of love than the cold-blooded assassin I now knew her to be. “But we will stop here for the night.” She looked straight at me. “It looks safe.” Meaning I would have nowhere to run to if I tried to escape. She was wrong about that, but I had no intention of letting her know it, yet.
“I will introduce you as my daughter. My very shy daughter who will not leave my side. Understood?” I nodded. “And we will sleep in the same bed.”
I guess for being a prisoner, she was treating me well—she probably could have tied me up and stowed me in the wagon for the night. Certainly her servants would not have objected, and the people of the inn might never have noticed.
We had hot chicken and cold beef for our meal. I found them neither as tender nor as tasty as Guillaume would have produced. Whatever Allura really thought, she turned on her charm and praised the innkeeper, to his serving maid and then to his face.
While we were still eating, another traveler came in—a smallish middle-aged man in loose-fitting clothes with long dark hair, a long beard, and a cap pulled low on his forehead. He left his cap and cloak on while he ate.
Allura tensed when he walked in and didn’t relax herself until he was methodically shoveling food into his mouth. Her back was to him, so she didn’t see how often the stranger looked at us. I looked back. What little I could see of his face was not familiar, but the graceful way he used his hands was tickling my memory.
As Allura finished she said, “We should retire.”
The innkeeper led us to our room on the ground floor. As soon as the door closed and the room latch fell, Allura grabbed my arms and in seconds my wrists were tied again, this time behind me.
“That man is trouble,” she hissed. “You stay here while I deal with him. To enforce that, lie on the bed while I tie your ankles.”
I was sure that complaining as to how tight Allura tied me would not work as it had with Giacomini, so I held my tongue until she closed and locked the door.
“I am not going to stay a pawn!” I then whispered, to gather my courage.
I could not loosen the knot holding my wrists, but I keep myself flexible and my ankles came easily into reach of my hands. That knot I could get loose with some difficulty. Five minutes after Allura left, I could stand.
I saw nothing in the room to cut or loosen my wrist ties, and feared that a search of Allura’s baggage would be not only time-consuming but likely knock something onto the floor loud enough for her to notice. The single window was small so I opened the door and slipped into the hall, my wrists still bound behind me. I approached the door to the outside, managed to get it open …
… and found myself once more in the arms of Allura, waiting just outside the door! She grabbed me by the hair and pointed my head up, so that besides being a helpless pawn I couldn’t even see where I was walking! She led me back inside and I shuffled slowly up the hall towards the common room. As we got close, she pulled her stiletto out and pressed it painfully into my throat as she lowered my head so I could see. In that position we walked in together.
In the center of the room stood the traveler we had seen before. There were mystical symbols of some sort incised on the shaft of the over-long cane in his hand. On either side of him lay one of Allura’s burly menservants, very still. Two paces away, giant Giacomini was on his knees, head down, coughing up blood. The other servants were nowhere to be seen.
“Let us pass,” Allura said sternly, poking me so that I gasped audibly.
The stranger laughed. “And just where would you go? Your servants can’t help you, Allura. Are you going to walk to safety?”
“I’m serious,” she said.
The man put his foot to the head of one of the fallen servants and pushed until there was an audible “crunch” from the neck bones. Oh, God, it was a terrible sound! I prayed the man was dead already.
The traveler stared at Allura. “Hurt her, and you won’t go so easily.”
I felt Allura tense, then to my surprise she pushed me forward, away from her!
“Oh … I was always so terrible at these macho pissing contests!” she said in her richest, most feminine voice, now full of displeasure and frustration.
I had fallen to my knees but I managed to turn and look at her. I saw Allura place her stiletto just under her sternum and thrust it up into her heart. She thrust well; the blade went in up to the hilt. As the light left her eyes, she said to me, “I do envy you. Do better than I have.” And she collapsed to the floor.
In the stillness I heard Giacomini’s labored wheezing and the moaning of the innkeeper’s wife where she sat huddled against the side of the serving bar. The innkeeper and their staff were nowhere to be seen.
The stranger ordered the woman, “Help him,” gesturing at Giacomini.
Then he sheathed his cane in a scabbard, came to me, helped me up, and used his belt-knife to cut the straps on my wrists.
“Are you all right?” he asked gently, and his voice was different now … I could almost recognize it. “Your father and the Baron will be here soon. Come into the yard, away from this.”
He led me there, and for the first time in what seemed like ages I didn’t mind being led somewhere. As I sat down on the bench by the inn’s front door, the man tipped his hat to me—and his wig with it. After a second or two, I saw that it was Grigor’s laughing eyes peering out from behind the false beard! I jumped up and gave him a big hug … a really big hug. I was so happy to see him!
“Grigor! You’re a spy for the Baron! That’s so exciting!”
In fact I could feel my heart was now pounding as we sat down together. “I could help clean up,” Grigor said. “But I think you need me more than they do.” He listened with sympathy as I told him of my kidnapping, and of my earlier brief imprisonment by Giacomini in my bedroom. “If the Baron had known that Allura was willing to do you violence, perhaps we would not have given her a chance to capture you as she did.” And then he insisted I tell him the real story behind the fossils that, playing the fool, he had called dragon bones.
When we returned inside, we discovered that there was a flaw in Grigor’s victory. Allura’s body was nowhere to be found. It seemed that the Black Widow of Milan had not completely emptied her bag of tricks; she had disappeared while the innkeeper’s wife was concentrating on Giacomini. Perhaps she really did walk to safety. Whatever she did, we could find no trace of her. And we looked hard.