'Remind me to mind my own business! Next time I wants to know the story behind the gossip that is. I've just spent the night answering daft questions in the barracks. Like I was a common criminal, if you please.
I'd just settled down for an after dinner nap when the door gets the sort of pounding that threatened to have it off its hinges. I levers myself out of the chair and before I've got it open more than a crack, two guards are pushing their way in and both shouting at me at once. My head swivels from one to t'other, no idea which one to answer first. They grabs me arms and I'm frog marched - why do they call it that?- out of the house, down the alley and towards the barracks. In me slippers and indoor shawl! Bloody cheek.
At the barracks some bloke with a weepy eye barks at them and we hustle up stairs, down stairs and I swear along the same corridor twice until I'm shoved in a room and left alone. Well, you can imagine how I felt. Chuffing mad I'll tell you. How would they like it if someone did that to their mother or granny. By the time someone came to talk to me I'd built up a right head of steam I can tell you.
You'll never guess who it was? The fella with the eye patch from the riverside tavern! Turns out he's one of the Guardian's spies, watching for 'undesirable elements'. Well, I know I'm past me prime but that's just plain rude. I told him he's no looker himself and he bangs his fists on the the table and glares at me. Now a lesser woman would've backed down at this point. He had a great glare, really menacing but I've been glared at by experts in the mountains so I just leaned back in me chair and asked if an old lady might have a cushion.
Storms out he does, yells at someone outside, comes back banging doors and stamping about.
'What were you doing consorting with Crafty Nick?'
I snorted and told him my consorting days were over. He's not amused, tells me he's got all the time in the world and stomps out. So I sits there until someone brings a cushion - tatty, smelly old thing which I chucks on the floor - and I waits. Every now and then he pops back, barks more questions which I refuse to answer and storms out again. Loads of energy these guards, must be all the square bashing they do. At one point he takes the torches away and sneers 'see how you like the dark'. No problem. I leans back in the chair and has a doze. He really don't know much about old women.
Eventually some bloke in a fancy coat and polished boots arrives, sits opposite me and asks the same questions only more polite like. He's bought tea too so I guess he was properly raised. I tells him I was passing a message from Crafty Nick's mother, I'd never met him before nor likely to again and could I go home now coz I'm stiffening up in this bloody chair. He smiles the way a lizard doesn't, taps the table and nods. Before I know it I'm getting the bum's rush and am standing outside the barracks in me slippers.
Thinking about it now, although I'm still steaming, they must have checked me out and found out I was a harmless old healer woken suddenly from a nap who didn't know anything she shouldn't. If only they knew. I've forgotten more than most of them will ever know and that's a fact.
More importantly, I think there must be something more going on than I imagined. And I hate not knowing. But first I need to lower these aching bones into a hot herbal bath and ruminate with a few large gins.'
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