Get up!
Bruidda’s voice, in her head.
The memory of lying in cold sloppy mud on a spring day, rain pattering her eyelids and all the wind knocked out of her from a hard throw—Bruidda’s damn favorite hip-toss that she liked to employ just to remind Fionn that being taller didn’t mean Bruidda couldn’t sling her around. She had just enough time to open her eyes and see the grey sky churning over her, to feel frustrated at her own foolishness for falling for the same perfectly obvious feint she’d fallen for last time, before Bruidda dropped on her like a rockslide, planted a chunky knee on her chest, and, in lieu of a dirk, drew her dirty thumbnail across Fionn’s throat. Fine, then. You’re dead.
I slipped! The ground here’s all muck!
No one’s going to give you a moment to get your feet out of fair play, Lady. Now come on—
Then the weight would lift from her chest. Bruidda’s warm square hand would clap in her own. She’d peel her from the puddle and they’d start again.
The most vivid part of the memory was the mud, so cold that it might have been snow.
She was cold now: skin tight with gooseflesh and nipples shriveled to knots, shivering even as the summer air pressed down like a wet wool blanket. Her skin tingled, sensibility rapid returning to her extremities, but she still felt stunned clear down to the waist, unable even to rake her wild sunburst of frizzy hair out of her face to see what came next. There was enough strength in her good left arm to push herself to her elbow before the limb went numb and stupid and spilled her onto the alley’s floor again. Dagger on her calf and she could bend one leg enough to bring it in reach, but her fingers wouldn’t close. She wallowed, a mermaid caught in the net of her own hair.
The vibration of footsteps in the stone, growing louder, coming nearer, gave her enough strength for a final heave before the foot rocked her onto her back.
Not human. That was clear enough, and possibly all Gloria would need to see. Broad, brown, heart-shaped face with jutting cheekbones that looked as if they should slice through the skin, a stubborn cleft knob of a chin. Lips so dark they were nearly violet. Elongated ears to frame the face. Long limbs like a good racehorse, broad shoulders like a young hostler’s, a tiny muscular pot belly flexing beneath the green silk as even now she struggled to rise, anything better than dying on her back like a damn trapped turtle.
But nothing human had those eyes.