The door closed on the horrors left inside. The narrow hall below echoed with ribald laughter and the clinking of mugs as Hjordis and Tryggve descended the creaky wooden stairs.

"I don't like this," Hjordis murmured over the fiddler's cheerful melody, eyes darting nervously around the room. It didn't take long before her borrowed face earned her unwelcome attention and lecherous looks from patrons who had been waiting for Nellie.

Then the barkeep looked up and saw them — the burly woman with a rough jaw, pointing a sausage-like finger at them. "Oi! That's our Nell you got there!" The room fell eerily quiet. The fiddler played quieter, watching.

The nearest table stood up. Six men, the kind built for standing up in situations like this one. At the back, a group in matching black leather lowered their mugs, leaning in with interest.

The barmaid came around the bar. "And you." Her finger leveled at his nose. "Gold hair. Face like a Zyrellian horse. Who the fuck are you and why have ye got our Nell in a bloody potato sack?"

"What now genius?" Hjordis mumbled somewhere behind Tryggve's flank.

Tryggve ignored her remark, put on a lazy grin and raised his hands in mock surrender. "Now, now. No need for such accusations. She and I were just about to take a breather."

"That Zyr Twiglet's planning to leg it with our Nell!" A thick-necked fellow pointed out, moving in close. More patrons closing in.

"Twiglet," Tryggve said. "Charming."

"Where's the other girl?" The barmaid took one more step. "The Arable girl." She turned to Nellie, or Hjordis really. "Why are you in her dress, has he been feeding ye pixie lass?"

Hjordis opened her mouth, tried to speak, her head tilted, eyes flared. Then in a burst of words.

"Sod off yer dung-breathin' skank!"

"What did ye just call me Nell?"

"And that's our cue," Tryggve said happily and clapped his hands together in a placating gesture. Got a hold of Hjordis's firm shoulders and had barely taken one step back toward the backdoor when the thick-necked man yelled and rammed his forehead into Tryggve's and sat him down on the bottom stair. He blinked. The room went briefly double. A raucous roar erupted through the taproom. The fiddler, a small man on a high stool with his eyes closed, resumed their tune but went up a key.

Someone yanked him up by the collar, then sideways, aimed a fist at him. Tryggve sidestepped, overcommitted, and pinwheeled into a table and sent three mugs airborne. Ale spilled over a furious bald patron.

A bottle whistled through the air. Tryggve ducked, back on his feet, sidestepped the incoming projectile. Splinters went flying, cards went flying, someone crying out in pain.

The bottle crashed into the bald man's head and he sat back down.

Across the room, Hjordis stood very still. Then her feet moved — not her — the rest of her following like the figures on those clever Myrian clocks, head turning in small uncertain jerks while she watched her own feet choose the direction, navigating and dodging between moving bodies.

The fiddler played faster.

Cups everywhere. Someone grabbed the back of his collar and he dropped, knees loose, and the grab got a large portion of the generous tunic instead and he slid out of the grip and came up behind a chair which he shoved at two more men. The barmaid picked up a high chair, threw it with an accompanying feral roar. Tryggve raised one arm but too late, the impact made him stumble into the arms of a man the size of a wardrobe who swung at him. Tryggve ducked by slipping in spilled ale and the meaty fist went over his head and into the face of the old crone behind him.

The fiddler modulated to a higher key, accompanied her shrill cries.

Tryggve straightened his tall neck, watched Hjordis slip outside the back door following a red tomcat, but as he turned he ran straight into the barmaid who lifted him — actually hauled all of his gangly frame over her shoulder and slammed him onto the bar. Tryggve's head hit polished wood.

Stars. Nice ones. The whole taproom cheered. A flask of what in polite company would be labelled as port crashed over his head. More stars. Lovely. Tryggve blinked, rolled over. Hands pulled him down by the feet, another knuckle rushing forward, straight to the jaw. Tryggve's neck popped, head turning. He stumbled for a second in spilled wine, head probably bleeding.

"Come now, this is hardly—" he managed, slurred. Sidestepped another incoming blow by accident. Assessed the situation. Three men with arms like logs between him and the back door.

Then the men in black leather stood up in unison. Their leader — a compact man, curly dark hair, nose like a geographical feature — cracked his knuckles and said something to his companions. They spread out into the room with the practiced ease of men who did this recreationally.

Tryggve took his chance and ran. He hit two people, got hit by one, used a third as a brief stepping stone by planting a boot to his bent back as the man tried to tackle him low, which propelled him forward. He reached for the first thing he got, which was the lamp, hung there for two beats away from the action, long legs akimbo, then back into the fray. His hands slipped. He dropped face first to the floor, back to the bar situation. Another chair struck his back, a boot and the weight of a small moose pressed him down, pinching his face into the mucky floorboards. "Oof," he said, while air went out of his lungs. At least Hjordis was safe and free.

He'd done something right for once. Hands grabbed at his clothes again, hauled him back to his feet.

Here we go again. The same hands adjusted the blade slipping from his belt, a sure hand on his shoulders, clapping twice. It was the footpad leader.

"Up you get, mate."

Tryggve simply stared at the fellow. The stocky man, a head shorter than him, wrapped in sweat-reeking dark leather, nose like a swollen sundial, was the most extraordinary thing he'd ever seen. Around him the band of thieves fought on voraciously, and what had been a skirmish against Tryggve alone dissolved into a free-for-all. The noise and the fiddler's mad tune all became a distant blur.

"Name's Bruno," he offered, shooting Tryggve an uneven grin as he swiped a stray curl from his beady dark eyes.

"Tryggve," he stuttered, nodding his thanks. Rescued. By a footpad. First time for everything. It was quite the opening for a romantic novel. He just stood there, swaying dizzily. Not his type though, short and hairy as he was.

Another man lunged at Tryggve. Rough knuckles flew through the air, striking a patron right in the face. Bruno winced in pain, shaking his burning fist. Scratch that, he was definitely his type.

"Best skedaddle, Twiggy," Bruno panted, pointing to the recovering henchmen. His grin widened, a spark of mischief dancing in his eyes. "Don't worry, me and my boys'll hold 'em off for a bit. You take your mistress and you run."

Tryggve stole another look at his hero, then stumbled away, ducked an incoming chair. He broke into a staggering run, darted out the back door. The barmaid's profanities behind him, a shriek of rage, then the sudden discordant scrape as the fiddler was finally pulled into the fray. The cool night air a shock after the stuffy interior.

Rounding the dark corner he found Hjordis, a red figure leaning against a wall, the tomcat curling around her legs, her breath coming in short gasps. Her borrowed face was pale under the moonlight.

She looked up at him. "Yer bleeding, all over."

Tryggve shrugged. "Come on. I'd strongly recommend we put considerable distance between ourselves and that particular establishment."

Hjordis sighed, weighed her options for a beat, then followed him as he ducked and weaved through the darkened streets at a steady pace. Then she stopped.

"I got a horse."

"You got a horse?" Tryggve grinned, amused, hand resting on the hilt of the Demon Slayer.

"Back at the tavern. Cold blood. Belongs to some Magistrate of Greenlake."

"Ah so you stole a Magistrate's horse in your eagerness to get rid of me?" Tryggve laughed, clapped his hands. "Lead on Poopsie!"

The horse was where Hjordis had left it, tied to a post just outside the Golden Dragon's front entrance, which was unfortunately also where the Golden Dragon's front entrance was currently depositing its entire population into the street.

Someone had thrown the fiddler through the door. The fiddler had taken the door with them. More patrons, more shouting, a stool, two of Bruno's men moving backwards in a fighting retreat, laughing loudly.

The black horse regarded all of this from its post with dead calm. Magistracy seal on the saddle. Fine breed indeed.

"There," Hjordis said.

"Marvellous," Tryggve said. "Simple matter of untying it and—"

Three men spilled out of the brawl and clocked them at the same time. One pointed.

"That's them! The Zyrellian and our Nell—"

They ran.

The horse watched them coming with mild interest and then, as Tryggve arrived at the post reaching for the reins, pinned her ears. Eyes flared, showing white.

"Easy," Tryggve told it. "Easy, good horse, excellent horse, we're friends, I have no food but I have tremendous respect for your—"

The horse tossed its head. Tryggve grabbed for the reins, got them, and the horse stepped sideways and he went with it and lost the reins and grabbed for the saddle and the horse stepped sideways again, moving him in a neat arc around its bulk while the men closed in behind them.

"Just untie it, ye useless sod!" Hjordis shouted from six feet away.

"I'm trying! It's not cooperating, there's clearly a misunderstanding—"

Tryggve lunged again, slipped, fell to his back, right behind the rear hooves. The horse lowered its head and glanced back at him. He looked back.

Shiin's nads.

"I respect you enormously," he told it.

She caught him square in the forehead with her hoof.

The world went briefly white. Then it went very interesting colours. Then it went away.

The cobblestones were moving.

This was unusual. He was confident cobblestones were a sedentary form of rock. And yet they moved in a lurching forward motion, and there was warmth against his face and chest and something was holding his thighs and the view was mostly cobblestones through red hair.

He blinked.

"Yer awake," Hjordis said, from directly behind his ear.

He was on her back.

She was carrying him. Down a dark side street in Graywell, piggyback, at a determined pace. Nellie's red hair and her dress glowed in the moonlight, her breath coming in short increments.

He looked back at the way they'd come. No horse. No tavern crowd. A distant sound of Bruno's men somewhere.

"The horse," he said.

"Gone."

"Right." He thought about this. "How long have you been carrying me."

"A while."

Tryggve let his hands hang over her shoulders.

Her voice remained flat. "Ye weigh nothing. It's horrible."

"Ten stone," he said. "I'm ten stone. That's— that's not nothing, that's—" He stopped. He'd spent a full decade in borrowed bodies and forgotten what ten stone of himself felt like.

"Ye're like carryin' a goat," Hjordis muttered.

"A very distinguished goat," Tryggve supplied.

"Hjordis," he said then. Voice lowered a notch.

"What."

"That's—" He paused. Cleared his throat. "Thank you. Carrying me around although I weigh no more than the massive ten-stone goats you must've kept hidden during my stay in Arable. That's genuinely—"

She dropped him.

Not accidentally. She let go of his legs and stepped forward and he hit the cobblestones with a thud that knocked the sentiment clean out of him.

"What was—"

"If ye can talk, ye can walk." She kept moving. "Stop being maudlin about it."

He got up. Caught up to her in four strides, rubbing his elbow, and they walked in silence through the dark streets, the sounds of the Golden Dragon fading behind them.

Then they didn't fade.

Voices. Getting louder.

"Still coming," Hjordis said.

Tryggve looked back. Torchlight at the far end of the street. No bluecoats — just patrons and the barmaid's henchmen by the volume.

"This way." He turned into a narrow alleyway, walls close on both sides. Things underfoot he chose not to identify.

"Where are ye goin'?"

"River." He was already moving. "I can smell it. Special talent of mine."

"That's not a talent." Her voice echoed off the walls behind him. "The river reeks. Entire town reeks."

The alley bent left, then dropped two steps down to a wooden walkway over black water. The river — more of a canal really, slow and thick and smelling of sewer — ran alongside the back of Graywell's southern quarter.

One barge sat intact, its rope gone slack, drifting a foot from the walkway, bumping the posts with soft irregular knocks.

"There." Tryggve started toward it.

"No." Hjordis stopped walking.

"Yes."

"I'm not getting in that."

"You're getting in that."

"It's dark and it's wet and I cannae swim—"

He put both hands on her shoulders and walked her forward until her toes were at the walkway's edge, the barge rocking gently below. Behind them the alley lit orange — torchlight getting closer.

"I know you can't swim," he said gently. "But I can. Please be a brave little Helmbane and board the ship. We'll be fine." He paused. "Probably."

He stepped onto the barge, rocked once, steadied, turned, and extended his hand. She looked at it. Looked at the water. Looked back at the alley where the torchlight was now accompanied by shouting.

"Ye know a wizard that could help me? That's no joke."

Tryggve nodded. Did not smile. Thinking of the "wizard" had that effect.

She stepped on. The barge dipped. She grabbed his arm for support, pulled her hand back, sat down.

He found the pole, used it to push off the bank, the barge scraping free of the post, and they began to move — slow, then steadier, the current grabbing hold of them as the canal opened where it met the old pier.

And there was the barmaid.

Standing on the pier end with an actual pitchfork and beside her two men — one with a chair leg, one with a torch.

"COME BACK HERE," she bellowed. "COME BACK AND EXPLAIN WHAT YER DOIN' WITH OUR NELL—"

A chair leg sailed past Tryggve's ear and hit the river. He found the rudder. Worked it. They drifted left, then corrected right, the barge turning its nose away from the pier and into the dark current.

"YOU ZYRELLIAN—" The barmaid's voice carried beautifully across the water. "YOU POTATO-SACK WEARING—"

He whistled a merry tune as he paddled. The pier receded. The torchlight shrank.

The canal widened into something approaching the actual river and Graywell's lights fell behind them. Ahead there was only dark water and the dark sky.

Hjordis sat in the middle of the barge on a coil of rope with her arms wrapped around herself, her stolen face turned toward the retreating town.

Tryggve rummaged by the rudder and found a large red fabric — a woollen cloak, ridden with holes and tears. He wrapped it around his shoulders elegantly, one foot propped against the rudder.

"How's that, lady red. Now we make a fine matching pair."

Hjordis just rolled her eyes, somewhere else in thought. Tryggve adjusted his new attire, reeking of river silt and dead fish.

Smelled of home a bit, he thought.