She had found the notice lying torn away from the side of a building, crumpled in the spaces between the cobblestones, nearly unreadable. The fact she had watched the boy tearing it, trampling it, then fleeing as though pursued, made the notice interesting to her. She bent over it, when the boy was gone and no one was watching; the words “gold” and “payment” caught her eye, and she picked up the paper, shook it out. She glanced at the fraying cuffs of her shirt and cloak hem, the wear creeping up the toes of her boots, before she turned her attention to the notice. Gold. Payment. Those were nice words. Particularly when they were words no longer, but something real in your hand.

She picked out a few words between the soiled folds, but she could make little sense of it. She needed a local to recognize it, to explain it. She found a local a few blocks away.

“Morning!” she exclaimed.

“Morning,” said the old woman, not looking up from the pail over which she stooped.

“Could you please tell me what this is?” Amaranthine Lodwick asked, flourishing the paper.

The woman glanced at it. Glanced away.

Amaranth knew this game. She took several coppers—real ones, just in case the woman was one of those suspicious characters who tested every coin they were given with a bite—from a drawstring purse and extended both coins and paper.

“That’s the Jagets,” said the woman reluctantly, taking the coins, biting them, glancing at the notice as she bit. “Theys be lookin’ for escorts out of the city.”

“Why so?”

“’Cause of the Lady Mesulaine.”

“Whose the Lady Mesulaine?”

The woman grappled with something at the bottom of the pail; she did not appear to have heard the question. "She's declared 'em outlaws," she continued.

"Why?"

"What's it to you?" the woman asked, and she swiped at the yellowed hair brushing her forehead with a hand that dripped half-frozen brine down her face.

Amaranth shrugged. "I'm curious," she said. "And it's all very... new to me."

The woman eyed her. “You from down south?" she asked. "They never know nothin' down there." She bent again over her pail of brine; she had been peeling shrimp, and Amaranth saw slivers of ice and shell glinting on her thin arms, trapped in the hair that sprouted like grass from the skin.

“Maybe,” she said, kneeling before the old woman, turning her head so that she looked up into the woman’s shadowed face. “Or maybe I’m a bard, come lookin’ faer stories. Or a... mercenary, come lookin’ for work. You said the Jagets are hiring, lookin’ faer someone or another protect them from—what was it?” She trailed invitingly.

The woman scoffed. “You ain’ no mercenary,” she said.

“How come?”

“Too thin. No sword.”

“I could be another kind. Are they really lookin’ tae hire?”

“What other kind is there? And aye, they’re lookin’ tae hire.”

“You were telling me, earlier, what they’re lookin’ for protection from…”

“I was, wasn’t I?” The woman shook her head as though she mused upon the memory with disbelief. She seemed disinclined to further explanation.

“I gave you a bit of coin,” Amaranth prompted. “Do you want more?”

The woman watched her, eyes carefully blank, as Amaranth fished double the coins she had at first paid from the drawstring bag.

“That’s a fancy bag,” the woman said, taking the coins. “The mouth’s strung with gilt thread.”

“I’m a fancy mercenary,” said Amaranth cheerfully, and wondered that the woman did not note the fraying cuffs of her sleeves. “Have you ever heard of the pirates from the west? I might be one of them.”

“And no sword?”

“Who’s to say I don’ have one hidden up my sleeve?”

The woman looked at the sleeves, big enough to hide several children in, and conceded to the possibility.

“But you’re still too thin,” she said, returning to her peeling. “I’ve heard it told the Jagets’ve hired themselves a great big man, who fought in a thousand wars and slew a thousand men. He’s weapons ye’ve never dreamt of afore.”

“So they’ve hired someone?” Amaranth’s face fell.

“I didn’t say they did. I said I only heard it told they did. There’s a difference, girl, learn it. They’re payin’ a good price, those Jagets, for an escort.”

“And you were going to tell me where…?”

The woman considered. “They’re on their way to the desert,” she said, at last. “And between here and that great waste, there’re bandits and highwaymen and things with big teeth.”

“Why’re they leaving again?” Amaranth rolled to her heels, rubbed at the ache moving through the soles of her feet.

“Oh.” The woman smiled to herself. “’Tis the dogs.”

Amaranth suppressed a shudder. “Dogs?”

“Aye. Their dogs’ve set up a frenzy since the Lady Mesulaine declared ‘em all outlaws, and people say as when the dogs start their howling, there’s a bitter end waitin’ faer their masters.”

“And they believe that?”

The woman shrugged. “They’re all movin’ out.”

“The entire family?”

“Aye. The master and his wife and their children—though one of ‘ems a cousin, I’m thinking.”

“Because of the dogs? Or the Lady?”

“Both. No one stays in the shadow of the Lady when she’s called them outlaw. They’ve been lookin’ faer an escort since last week, but they ain’ gonna find one from us." She smirked into her pail. "No one in this town’s gonna help them now they’ve got the Lady for an enemy. Nor before, neither, but the before don't matter much now, now does it?” And the woman lapsed into silence, and bent low over her pail.

“Well.” Amaranth stood. “Do you know where they’re hiring from?”

The woman glanced to her left. Amaranth took this for an answer.

“Thank you,” she said. The woman ignored her.

Perhaps it was the idea of gold—real gold, and not coppers—that drew her, Amaranth thought, as she started away down the street. But she could not forget the look on the boy’s face, the violence in his movements, as he had torn the notice from the wall and trampled it into the street.

OoC: Hope this isn't too long, >> I'll edit it down as soon as I can.