Page 2 of The Warrior Priest
“I’m not a child. I’m seventeen.”
He scoffed. “Nice try. You’re thirteen, fourteen at most. Tell me, why is an educated girl living on the streets as a boy?”
“None of your business.” It was a pathetic response, but it was all I could think of at the time. He’d unbalanced me with his assessment. He was right—I was educated, a girl, and living on the streets disguising myself as a boy. He only got my age wrong. Iwasseventeen. Perhaps if he’d studied my figure more closely, he’d have noticed, but he kept his gaze firmly fixed on my face.
“What’s your name?”
“Jac.”
“Short for Jacqueline?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “My name’s Rhys Mayhew. I’m a brother in the Order of Merdu’s Guards.” He tapped the badge depicting a sword crossing a blazing sun stitched into the tunic at his chest.
“I noticed.”
He removed a small pouch from his pocket, tossed it in the air and caught it. The clinking of ells had me salivating. The apple had been my only food that day. “An advance payment.” He dropped it onto my outstretched palm. “There’ll be more if you meet me back here tonight when the temple bell strikes eleven.”
I stared at the pouch. “How do you know I won’t run off with your money and not come back?”
“You won’t.”
“But how do you know?”
He smiled, revealing a dimple in each cheek, and signaled to the ostler to bring his horse.
Weeks later, Rhys admitted that he hadn’t known, he’d simply gambled on me being desperate enough. Once again, he was right. Even though my thieving kept me from starving, I was tired of always looking over my shoulder, tired of living in squalor, and sleeping with one eye open and my back to the wall. His offer was the best thing to happen to me since I ran away from my great-uncle’s home. I had no choice but to accept, if I were to survive.
Before the ostler could bring out Rhys’s horse, the two constables walked past the entrance to the yard and just happened to look through the archway directly at us.
“There he is!” shouted one, pointing at me. “Brother, you’ve caught the thief! Thank you. Now hand him over.”
Rhys regarded the advancing constables as if he didn’t have a care in the world. In truth, he didn’t. It was me who’d be thrown into prison if I were caught, not him. All he had to do was reassure the men that he had indeed caught me and was about to take me to the sheriff’s office. He could claim I escaped on the way. The lie would keep his reputation pristine and me free.
Instead, he spoke to me under his breath. “I feel like having a little fun. Do you, Jac?”
The constables strolled toward us, swords still in their scabbards. They weren’t worried about me attacking them, and they were entirely unprepared for Rhys working against them. “If your idea of fun is saving me, then yes. Do you have a plan?”
“Of course.” He clapped me on the back, grasping a fistful of my jerkin as he did so, and marched me toward the constables.
My stomach plunged. He was apprehending me, after all.
Although I didn’t say a word, he must have felt me tense beneath his grip. “Have faith, Jac.” The laconic drawl defined the carefree twenty-four-year-old Rhys Mayhew. His words, however, would one day haunt me.
Faith would tear us apart.
“Slip past them while I distract them,” he went on.
“That’syour plan?”
“You underestimate how distracting I can be.”
“Ha! Nobody underestimates that.”
His grip loosened. “Good sirs! The lad is a slippery fish, but no one outwits a brother of Merdu’s Guards.” He angled us between the constables and the exit, then released me. “Here you go.”
I ran.
Behind me, I heard the constables shouting at me to stop, then at each other to go after me, then at Rhys for blocking the way. “You’re obstructing us on purpose!”
I didn’t hear Rhys’s response, or perhaps he didn’t give one. The next moment, as I sprinted down the street, he drew up alongside me. “Turn left,” he directed. “Get lost in the market.”
