Page 34 of Kill the Beast
“I don’t care! Boo!”
The performer scowled and, without taking his eyes from Lyssa’s, began the next line of the ballad regardless.
“The Beast did roar and—”
Lyssa’s last piece of bread hit him square in the face, leaving a smear of butter on his nose as it flopped to the ground, where it was instantly set upon by pigeons. “Hey!” the singer shouted. “You don’t have to throw things at me!”
“I would have thought you’d be used to it by now.”
The man gestured crudely at her before moving on to another patch of pavement, where a crowd of ladies looked eager to accept him into their midst.
“Thank the gods,” Alderic muttered, downing the rest of his coffee. “I hate that song.”
“I would rather stab myself in the ear with a rusty nail than have to listen to it one more time,” Lyssa agreed.
“The way they’vecompletelyromanticized a tragedy,” Aldericsaid with disgust, before looking at her appraisingly. “Your aim is impeccable, by the way.”
“I’m a woman of many talents.”
“Antagonizing people being chief amongst them, it would seem.”
Nadia plopped down in the empty chair across from them. Brandy, who had gone with her for protection, got a piece of fried cod from Lyssa’s pocket for his troubles.
“We should avoid Fletcher Street,” the little witch said.
Lyssa frowned at her. “What? Why?”
“The Children of the Moonlit Grove are there, handing out flower crowns. Faerie-lovers,” she explained to Alderic as Lyssa groaned, rubbing her hands over her face in frustration. Fletcher was the fastest way back to the memorial park, and it would take them twice as long to go around.
“Like the ones who chased me through my wall?” Alderic asked.
“Sort of. Different cult, same delusions,” Lyssa said. “Though the Children of the Moonlit Grove aren’t considered enemies of the Crown.” At his puzzled look, she added, “As far as the king is concerned, the citizens of Ibyrnika can worship the faeries all they want. But the Hounds slaughter his taxpayers indiscriminately, and that is where he draws the line. Protecting the monsters is akin to attempted murder.” There was a bounty on the head of every single Hound-warden on the isle, as a result, and Lyssa was not ashamed to admit that she had collected a few of them herself—though not the one that mattered most.
He frowned. “I still don’t understand why anyone would worship faeries.”
Nadia cut off Lyssa’s rant before it could begin. “Remember what Rags told you about the Blessed Ones and the Wicked Ones? There are good and bad faeries just like there are good and bad people, for all that the Butcher here pretends that every last one of them is a horrific monster intent on murdering humans.”
Lyssa scowled at the little witch. “Yeah, there are ‘good’ faeries,”she sneered. “Right up until they decide you’ve wronged them. Then they’ll fly into a rage and try to murder you.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Nadia said with a smirk.
“Do we need to be worried about them?” Alderic asked.
“No,” Lyssa said, still glaring at Nadia. “The Hound-wardens pose an actual threat, but the Children are completely toothless.”
“Then why do we need to avoid them?”
“Because they hate Lyssa,” Nadia said brightly, as if that fact delighted her. “Whenever they see her, they throw eggs at her.”
“Wasteful idiots,” Lyssa muttered. “It’s not my fault I got hired to kill the dryad they decided to worship. They don’t throw eggs at Deborah Grayson or the new mansion she built on the land where its tree used to be.”
“You should travel in disguise,” Alderic said, and, with a wicked smile, added, “I know. I’ll buy you a dress. You could sail right by them, and they’d never guess it was you.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You say that like you think it would humiliate me to wear one. For your information, I have nothing against dresses. They’re just impractical in my line of work.” Impractical, and a symbol of the life she had lost when her mother died. She couldn’t shrug it back on again, even if she wanted to. “It’s a fine idea, but we’ve wasted enough time here as it is.”
“What about this, then?” he asked, fishing a bowler hat out of one of his shopping bags.
“Well, that’s lucky,” Nadia said as Lyssa wound her braids around her head and jammed the hat on over them.
