Agatha muttered a stream of silent expletives as a well-dressed, portly, young nobleman dragged her through a narrow corridor of the gambling house in the Central Market of the city of Rubenstraad. The man, Lyon Rhynster, was the youngest son of Lord Algernon Rhynster, the Baron of the great Rhynster estate and Chief of the Advisory Council of the current regime. Lyon Rhynster was close to thirty years old, but with a layer of fat spilling over his breeches and a prematurely receding hairline, he looked closer to forty. In this instance, he was clearly inebriated.
"Please, Sir, I am not a whore. You are making a mistake," Agatha pleaded as she tried to wrench her hand from his vice grip.
"You are one now," Lyon Rhynster slurred back at her, as though that settled the matter. For the thousandth time, Agatha cursed her decision to visit her friend, Lyla, in the evening. Lyla had suspected that she was pregnant when she missed her moonblood last week, and had sent for Agatha to bring her one of her potions for a discrete abortion. Agatha, who had difficulty saying no to complete strangers, had rushed to the aid of her friend as soon as she had managed to complete her tasks for the day. Meister Erwan, the court's physician and her mentor, had not been happy with her decision to visit the brothel. "You spend too much time making potions for the harem women already. You need to devote more time to the soldiers. The Luteri uprising will not stop anytime soon."
"I'll be back in an hour," Agatha had promised him. And now she was stuck with an intoxicated nobleman in a public place, with no way of escaping him without revealing her powers. Agatha shuddered, thinking of how the men around them would react if she cast a spell on Lyon Rhynster. She decided it would not be wise to attempt that. Women had burned at the stake for less. Lyon Rhynster dragged her through a set of ornate double doors into a dimly lit, crowded chamber.
He took a seat at a round table and dragged Agatha along with him on the chair beside him, never relinquishing the firm grip on her wrist. Agatha was beginning to lose circulation in that hand.
"Here, Castor," he gave her a little push and she nearly landed on the lap of a bearded, heavyset man sitting next to her, "I am holding up my end of the bargain. Now where's my gold?"
The man called Castor glanced up from the cards splayed open in his palm and ran his eyes over Agatha, who was gripping on to the edge of the table to regain her balance.
"I wanted a young one. Which part of this wench strikes you as young?" Castor seized a handful of Agatha's hair and pulled her head backwards, sniffing her exposed neck. Agatha ground her jaw and tried to breathe methodically through her nose. She did not want to lose control of herself here. A rough, eager hand surged forward and fondled one of her breasts through the fabric of her simple cotton dress, then squeezed it indecently. Castor raised his head and leered at Agatha, revealing tobacco spotted teeth. "Her parts are still perky, though. How old are you, wench?"
There was a chorus of muffled laughter from across the table at her plight. Someone cackled lewdly, "not too old for me, Castor. I'll make ya a deal for that one."
Castor shook her by her hair. "I asked you a question, wench. How old are you?"
"Twenty nine," Agatha lied, not daring to go any higher and praying that the men were drunk enough to believe her. "And widowed," she added for their benefit.
Castor released the pull on her hair so that she could look in front of her. There were seven men sitting around the table. Lyon Rhynster appeared to be the most respectably dressed out of them, though it appeared that Castor, a mountain of a man with sunken eyes, a thick beard and tobacco spotted teeth held a position of leadership amongst them.
"A'ight, Rhyster," Castor drawled, leaving Agatha's hair and circling his arm around her waist, "price has dropped. Thirty gold pieces for the widowed maid. Take it or leave."
"I'll give you sixty, Lyon," the man across the table piped up, the one who had offered to take her minutes earlier. Lyon vacillated between the two men, undecided. Another man leant forward on the table, "How about we pay twenty each and share? Boys, she ain't half bad, being widowed and all is I'm sayin'. There's a chamber behind the gambling house, we could do whatever we want. No one's gonna come lookin' for a widow if you get my meaning."
Agatha regretted her lie immediately. The day had been a long one for her, with tending to an unceasing outpouring of wounded soldiers from the battlefield in Luteri and an equally persistent stream of complaints of cold and cough from younglings, now that the season was changing. And thus, in that moment, the exhaustion of the day caught up with Agatha and her nerves failed her. She gathered her skirt up in her fists, kicked back her chair and ran. Castor, who had not been prepared for the escape, let his hands slip from around her waist. It took the men a few seconds to understand that their entertainment for the evening was running away, another few to get to their feet and start chasing her. Agatha ran through the same set of double doors she had come through and down the dingy hallway, and straight into another chamber that turned out to be the tavern associated with the gambling house. Agatha slid under a pinewood table and scrambled out of the other side, then slipped behind the wine barrels stacked at one corner of the dark room. She breathed heavily, peeking from behind the barrels. Unfortunately, she had attracted quite a bit of attention, careening into the chamber like a madwoman on the run, and as soon as her pursuers entered the tavern, multiple bystanders pointed out her hiding place to the men. Agatha cursed silently, and decided to hex the men into vegetables as soon as they took her to the private chamber they had mentioned earlier.
"Come out, come out, little widow," Castor taunted as he made his way through the barrels littering the rough hewn wooden floor. Agatha waited until he was close enough, then rose out of her hiding place and elbowed Castor in the face. Taking advantage of his momentary preoccupation, Agatha lunged for the knife sheathed in his belt and plunged it into his torso right upto the hilt and twisted it for added effect. Ignoring his guttural cry of anguish, she slid past him and scrambled towards the center of the tavern, intending to run into the street this time. She was so intent on her escape that she did not notice the feet stretched out in her way, intended to trip her. Agatha sprawled down on the floor and bit dirt, finally letting loose a lovely stream of expletives that would have put sailors to shame. Someone hauled her up to standing by her hair and another tugged at her dress, ripping it cleanly down the back.
"She's got quite a bit o' fight in 'er," the third man, the one who had offered to pay sixty for her, sniggered. A groping, indecent hand tugged futilely at her breast band, trying to unwrap it from her torso, but did not succeed. Agatha lashed out again with her elbow, connecting with soft flesh, but both of her arms were seized immediately and pinned to her back. The fourth man, the one who had suggested that they share, surged forward and landed a glancing blow to the side of her face. Men sitting around in the tavern gaped at the scene unfolding in front of them, but none came forward to help. The tavern wenches were huddled together in one corner, staring at her with sympathy and fear, but they did not speak out either.
"Walk, girl," the same man pushed her towards the door while Lyon Rhynster stood by.
"Enough." A deep voice spoke out from a corner table behind them. Agatha twisted as much as her restricted posture would allow and spotted the owner of the voice, a towering, broad man wearing a cloak, with the hood pulled over his face so that his eyes were hidden in darkness. From whatever Agatha could make out of his face, he had a strong jawline barely softened by a smattering of a dark stubble. The stranger walked up to them and lowered his hood. The effect was immediate. Every single living being in the tavern sank to their knees, with reverent murmurs along the lines of "General", "Your Honor," and "Azure Rider." Agatha, shocked by the relief surging in her, soon realised that she and the stranger were the only ones standing. Quickly, gracelessly, she sank down to her knees, but she couldn't help peeking through her lashes at him. She had heard all about the Azure Rider ever since she was a child, about how he was virtually invincible, about how he had assumed the mantle of the General of the Army ever since the King's Egbert's brother and the previous General, Elrond had been murdered by Vandan assassins, and she had seen the dragon fly across the sky multiple times, often so high that he was a mere speck, but she had never met the Rider up close. Legends said that he was over a hundred years old, and naturally, in her mind, Agatha had expected that the Azure Rider would be a wizened old man with blue scales for skin, but the man standing in front of them looked distinctly young, no older than thirty, with wavy brown hair pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. His eyes came to rest on Agatha and she shivered involuntarily-- his eyes were an eerie shade of blue and was as cold as two chunks of ice. Perhaps, it was fitting that his dragon, covered in deep azure scales, was named as Ice. It was an unimaginative name, Agatha had always thought, but now, looking at the Rider, she could make sense of where the name had come from.
"At ease," the General said with the easy grace of a man who was accustomed to ordering people about, and the humans in the tavern rose collectively, heaving a sigh of relief. No doubt, they had heard the stories of the Azure Rider's temper, just as much as she had.
"Rhynster." The Rider spoke quietly, but there was an uncanny chill in his voice that stopped the nobleman's son dead in his tracks. "I remember you cited your scholarly pursuits as the reason for not enlisting," he continued. "Now that I have seen the ardency of your pursuits, I am afraid I'll have to insist that you join in on the training as early as tomorrow. Sir Blaxton is in need of a page."
Agatha stifled a giggle as she turned to leave. Forcing a fully grown man to serve as a page was the ultimate insult in their kingdom, one that no one except the General would have dared to carry out against Nobleman Rhynster's son. Feeling decidedly happy about the turn of the events, Agatha tugged her split dress together to cover her bare back and began walking towards the door.
"Wait."
