I gave Nolan a look that I hoped conveyed both “I have absolute confidence in you” and “if you mess this up, I will find a way to haunt you as a very annoying ghost.” He just sweated in response, which I took as a sign that the message had been received. He shuffled towards the back room, a lumbering shadow of anxiety and Cheeto dust, disappearing behind a curtain of what looked like cured meats. One down.

  I turned my attention to the main event. Bartholomew hopped onto my shoulder, his claws pricking my leather pauldron just enough to remind me he was there and, as always, deeply unimpressed.

  “Ready for your close-up, you fluffy little scene-stealer?” I murmured, smoothing the front of my tunic.

  “I was born for the stage, my dear Paige,” he intoned, his voice a low rumble by my ear. “Unlike some of us, who merely adopted it out of a desperate need for attention.”

  “Hey, my communications degree is finally paying for itself. It’s called public relations.”

  I strode to the heavy oak door of the inn, my boots making a far more confident sound on the floorboards than I actually felt. My heart was doing the frantic staccato of a drum solo against my ribs. I could feel the collective gaze of the patrons on my back, a weighty blanket of fear and morbid curiosity. I paused, hand on the iron latch, and took one last, deep breath. It’s just a hostile audience, I told myself. No worse than open mic night at The Chuckle Hut, but with more swords.

  With a dramatic flourish that would have made a theater professor weep with joy, I threw the door open.

  Sunlight, sharp and unforgiving, stabbed at my eyes. Outside, arranged in a neat, semi-circular formation of impending doom, were six soldiers. They were clad in the livery of the Aethelgard city watch—gleaming steel breastplates stamped with the city’s crest of a stone tower and a key. Their helmets were polished, their spears were pointy, and their expressions were universally sour, as if they’d all just bitten into the same, particularly bitter lemon.

  In the center stood their commander, a man whose jawline looked like it had been carved from granite by an angry god. A neatly trimmed beard did little to soften a face that screamed, “I don’t have time for your nonsense.” He had his hand resting on the pommel of his longsword.

  “Paige Hawking,” he boomed, his voice as sharp as his armor’s creases. “You are to come with us. By order of the Magistrate.”

  I blinked, letting a slow, theatrical smile spread across my face. I held my hands up in a gesture of placation, Bartholomew perched on my shoulder like a fluffy, gray parrot of judgment.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please,” I began, my voice pitching into the syrupy-sweet tone of a customer service representative explaining why your package is three weeks late. “Let’s not be hasty. There seems to be a grave misunderstanding.”The captain’s eyes narrowed.

  “The only misunderstanding is why you haven’t surrendered yet.”

  “Oh, but I can’t! You see, it’s simply not the right time,” I said, taking a step forward. I started to pace in front of them, my steps measured and deliberate. I needed to own this space, to make this dusty patch of road my stage. “The celestial alignments are all wrong. Mercury is in retrograde, Mars is ghosting Venus, and the great cosmic turtle is having a bit of a tummy ache. It’s all in the prophecies.”

  One of the younger guards snickered. The captain shot him a look that could curdle milk, and the sound died in his throat.

  “We are not here for your arcane ramblings, sorceress,” the captain growled. “Lay down your weapons.”

  “Weapons?” I asked, looking down at myself in mock confusion. “I have no weapons. Unless you count my devastating wit and this… this Oracle of Purr-spective.” I gestured a thumb towards Bartholomew.Bartholomew, on cue, puffed out his chest.

  “Indeed,” he declared, his voice resonating with an unearned gravity. “The astral currents are most turbulent. The threads of fate have become a tangled yarn ball of cosmic proportions, and I have foreseen a great… hairball… of destiny in your immediate future.”

  The guards exchanged uneasy glances. A talking cat was apparently just weird enough to throw them off their game. Perfect. I pressed my advantage.

  “He speaks the truth!” I cried, throwing my arms wide. My eyes went distant, as if I were staring at something far beyond the grimy walls of Aethelgard. I was channeling every terrible fantasy B-movie I’d ever seen. “I have seen it! I have been doom-scrolling the great scrolls of fate! A darkness comes, a shadow that licks at the heels of this very city! And you, you brave, shiny men, are worried about little old me?” I leaned in conspiratorially, lowering my voice. “Do you know what the portents say? They say the goose of destiny has laid a particularly foul egg, and it’s about to hatch right in the Magistrate’s lap.”

  The captain took a step forward, his patience clearly wearing thinner than a free-to-play game’s plot.

  “This is your final warning.”

  My eyes darted to the side, towards the alley that ran alongside the inn. Nothing yet. I needed more time. I had to up the crazy.

  “Warning? A warning is what you give before a pot boils over! What’s coming is a tidal wave of suck! A veritable apocalypse of poor life choices!” I pointed a trembling finger at the captain. “I see your future, Captain Jawline! You will be betrayed… by a substandard batch of boot polish! Your shine will be found wanting on the day of the grand inspection!” I spun to another guard. “And you! You will lose your favorite sock in the laundry! It will never return!”

  The guard in question looked genuinely distressed.

  “And him!” I pointed at the one who had snickered. “You think this is funny? The Fates have decreed that for a week, you will constantly feel like you’re about to sneeze, but the sneeze will never come!”

  He recoiled in horror. I was on a roll. This was going better than I’d hoped. They were completely mesmerized by my descent into what they clearly thought was madness. It was time for Nolan’s cue.

  “You cannot stop what is coming!” I bellowed, raising my voice to its most dramatic pitch. “You cannot cage the storm or silence the thunder! The prophecy must be fulfilled! For it is written… when the mouse escapes the trap of steel, the horses of freedom will be revealed!”

  I held the pose, arms outstretched, waiting. For a tense second, there was only silence, broken by the distant bleating of a goat. The captain’s face was a thundercloud. He was done playing. He drew his sword with a lethal shing.

  “Enough of this madness! Seize her!”

  Just as two guards started to move, a frantic clatter of hooves echoed from the alleyway. Nolan, bless his sweaty, code-monkey heart, burst into view, leading our two horses and a third, slightly confused-looking Argent he had liberated. He was red-faced, panting, and looked about as graceful as a walrus on a unicycle, but he was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.

  “Showtime,” I whispered to Bartholomew.

  The guards were momentarily stunned by the sudden appearance of our escape plan. That moment was all I needed. I thrust my hands forward, palms out, and focused on the one bit of practical magic Bartholomew had taught me that was pure, unadulterated distraction.

  “Behold! The scintillating syllables of bewilderment!”

  A cascade of shimmering, multicolored light erupted from my hands. It wasn’t fire or force, but something far more confusing. Glowing, ethereal question marks, exclamation points, and a few stray ampersands filled the air between me and the guards, swirling around them like a swarm of dyslexic fireflies. They blinked and flinched, shielding their eyes from the nonsensical, glittering symbols.

  “To me, Nolan!” I yelled, spinning on my heel and sprinting for the horses.

  Bartholomew leaped from my shoulder to Steve’s saddle, landing with practiced ease. I grabbed the reins and vaulted up, my landing considerably less graceful. Nolan was struggling to haul himself onto his steed, his foot slipping in the stirrup.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The captain, recovering first, roared in fury. “After them!”

  I grabbed the gelding’s lead rope from Nolan’s hand. “No time!” I snapped, kicking Steve’s sides. He shot forward, dragging Nolan’s horse and the bewildered Argent along with him. Nolan finally managed to flop into his saddle with a pained grunt as we thundered down the street.

  Arrows whistled past my ear. I ducked lower, urging Steve the Wonder Pony faster. We careened around a corner, scattering a flock of chickens and earning a string of curses from a farmer.

  Looking back, I saw the captain and his men scrambling for their own mounts, their shiny armor now a rapidly shrinking collection of dots in the dusty street.

  “You know,” I gasped, the wind whipping tears from my eyes, “for a group of people paid to keep things in order, they really have no appreciation for performance art!”

  Bartholomew just clung to the saddle horn, his fur flattened by the wind.

  “A satisfactory diversion, Paige,” he conceded, a hint of what might have been approval in his voice. “Though your grasp of prophetic imagery remains, shall we say, distressingly pedestrian.”

  I just laughed, a wild, breathless sound of relief. We weren’t safe, not by a long shot. Not yet.

  We galloped hard for another five minutes, the sounds of the city fading behind us, replaced by the rhythmic drumming of hooves on the dirt road and the ragged sound of our own breathing. The adrenaline that had propelled me into action was beginning to curdle into the familiar, shaky exhaustion that followed every near-death experience in this ridiculous, magic-infested world. Which, lately, was a daily occurrence.

  “I think… I think we lost them,” Nolan wheezed from his horse, which was struggling to keep pace under his considerable weight. Sweat plastered his greasy hair to his forehead, and his face was the color of a ripe tomato.

  “One does not ‘lose’ the city guard, you imbecile,” Bartholomew sniffed from his perch. “One merely creates a momentary cessation of hostilities. They will regroup. They are, if nothing else, persistently bureaucratic.”

  “He’s right,” I said, slowing Steve to a trot and scanning our surroundings. The open road was a death sentence. We were too exposed. A hundred yards ahead, the land dipped into a small, wooded crease, a dark green gash in the rolling fields. A creek snaked its way through the center, its presence marked by a line of thick willows. “There. We hide there.”

  We urged our tired mounts off the road, the soft earth of the grove muffling their steps. It was a perfect little hideaway, cool and shadowed beneath a canopy of oak and elm. We dismounted near the creek, letting the horses drink. My knees felt like jelly. I leaned against Steve’s warm flank, closing my eyes for a second.

  “Okay,” I said, pushing myself upright. “New plan. We wait here until dark. Once the sun is down, we circle back and head north. With any luck, Kaelen will meet us at the coast.”

  Nolan just nodded, still breathing heavily as he flopped onto the ground, his back against a mossy boulder. He looked utterly miserable.

  “I think I’m allergic to this entire dimension,” he muttered, rubbing his streaming eyes.

  Bartholomew leaped gracefully from the saddle to the boulder beside Nolan’s head, where he began meticulously grooming a single tuft of fur on his tail, completely unfazed. “A rather pedestrian allergen, I imagine. Not nearly as debilitating as, say, an unexpected encounter with a Manticore’s neurotoxic saliva. One must maintain perspective.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Nolan grumbled, his nose starting to twitch. “You’ve got nine lives. I’m working with a strict one-and-done policy here, and my warranty feels like it’s about to expire.”

  We fell into a tense silence, the only sounds being the gentle babble of the creek and the horses cropping at the sparse grass. Every rustle of leaves, every snap of a twig, sent a fresh spike of anxiety through me. The minutes stretched into an hour. The sun crept higher, dappling the forest floor with shifting patterns of light. I was almost starting to believe we’d actually gotten away with it.

  Nolan’s twitching nose had become a full-on battle. He was pinching the bridge, sniffing violently, and shaking his head as if trying to dislodge the tickle by force.

  “Nolan,” I whispered, my voice sharp with warning. “Don’t you dare.”

  “I’m trying,” he hissed back, his eyes squeezed shut. “It’s… the pollen… it’s… ah… ah…”

  It was a force of nature, a gathering storm contained within his sinuses. He took a final, gargantuan inhale that seemed to suck all the air out of our little grove.

  “Ah-ah-ah-CHOOOO!”

  The sneeze was a cataclysmic event. It wasn’t just a sneeze; it was an explosion of sound and moisture that echoed through the quiet woods like a gunshot. A flock of birds erupted from the canopy above, squawking in protest. Even Bartholomew was startled, his fur puffing out to twice its normal size as he flattened himself against the rock.

  For a moment, there was only a stunned silence. Then, from the direction of the road, came the one sound I was dreading.

  “Did you hear that?” a voice yelled.

  “Sounded like it came from the woods!” another answered.

  My blood ran cold. I locked eyes with Nolan, whose face was a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I breathed.

  The jingle of chainmail and the heavy tread of armored men on horseback grew closer. They dismounted, spreading out to sweep the grove. There was no escape. The creek was too shallow to hide in, and the trees weren’t thick enough to offer real cover. We were trapped.

  Within seconds, they were on us. The captain, his face a thunderous mask of fury, stepped into our clearing, sword drawn. At least ten of his men fanned out behind him, their spears leveled, effectively pinning us in a semi-circle of pointy death.

  “Performance art, is it?” the captain sneered, his eyes glinting with malicious satisfaction. “Let’s see how you perform in the Lord Commander’s dungeons. Seize them!”

  I instinctively reached for the hilt of my sword. Nolan scrambled backward, looking like he was about to cry. Bartholomew merely sighed, a long, suffering sound, as if this whole affair was a tedious inconvenience he was being forced to endure.

  And then, a new sound cut through the tension—the thunder of a single horse galloping at a reckless pace. It wasn’t the measured tread of the guard’s mounts. This was urgent. Desperate.

  A massive warhorse, all black muscle and wild eyes, burst through the trees on the far side of the creek, splashing through the water without slowing. Its rider was a figure of cold, imposing authority. He wore the tarnished silver armor of the Knights of the Silver Gryphon, his sigil emblazoned on a surcoat that had seen better days. His face was hidden behind a lowered visor, and his gray eyes swept over the scene with an icy command that made the guards hesitate.

  Ser Kaelen.

  He pulled his borrowed steed to a rearing halt between us and the guards, the horse’s hooves churning the soft earth. He didn’t even glance at us. His entire focus was on the captain.

  “Captain Emsworth,” Kaelen’s voice was a low growl, laced with an authority that brooked no argument. “What is the meaning of this? You have a dozen men chasing a cat and two vagrants while the city teeters on the brink of chaos?”The captain was clearly taken aback, both by Kaelen’s sudden appearance and his tone. “These are fugitives, Ser! They assaulted a member of the watch and fled custody!”Kaelen’s gaze didn’t waver.

  “And I am on a direct order from the Lord Commander himself. The grain merchants are protesting the new tariffs at the West Gate. It’s turned into a full-blown riot. Fires have been started. Your men are needed to restore order, not to play tracker in the bloody woods.”

  Captain Emsworth paled slightly. A riot at the West Gate was a serious matter, far more than apprehending a few escapees. He looked from Kaelen’s stern face to us, then back again, his mind clearly warring between his duty and his desire for petty revenge.

  “The Lord Commander…” he stammered. “He sent you?”

  “He sent me to find the nearest ranking officer and get his men back to the city before the entire quarter burns down,” Kaelen snapped. “Are you that officer, Captain, or shall I find someone else who understands the meaning of a direct command?”

  The threat was clear. Defy a Knight of the Silver Gryphon on an errand from the Lord Commander, and his career was over. Emsworth’s face tightened with frustration. He shot me one last, venomous glare that promised this wasn’t over.

  “You heard him!” he barked at his men, sheathing his sword with a clang. “Back to the city! On the double!”

  The guards, looking relieved to be out from under Kaelen’s oppressive stare, scrambled to obey. Within a minute, they were gone, their crashing retreat through the undergrowth fading into the distance.

  The silence that descended was profound. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding for a solid three minutes. Nolan made a sound that was half-sob, half-gasp of relief.

  Kaelen remained on his horse for a long moment, his broad back to us. Then, with the weary sigh of a man burdened by the incompetence of the entire world, he slowly turned in his saddle. His steel-gray eyes found mine, and they were devoid of any warmth or relief.

  “Paige,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Tell me you had a better reason for getting the entire city watch called on you than simply forgetting to pay your bar tab.”