It was a sword-cane, with the emphasis more on the cane than sword. If you were following the solitary figure down the muddy track alongside the wood you might notice the depth of the indent left by the narrow gold tip. She didn’t seem to walk with difficulty, though. Her carmine-red travelling cloak fluttered in the slight breeze.
When she came to the crest of the shallow slope she had been ascending, she stopped to look at the walled town set into the base of the rock face ahead. The stone walls rose and blended into the jagged cliff that gave the town its name – Agony Ridge rose so high above her that its geological layers seemed to roll on into the grim sky without end.
The track joined a larger carriage road and the lone figure continued to trudge along. There were few travellers to Agony Ridge. Even she was only stopping there on her way elsewhere. But she had a long way to go yet. Eventually she was passed by a single carriage: a rickety messenger’s coach piloted by a grey-bearded man in a faded uniform. As it passed, a stone kicked up from the back wheel pinged towards her head.
From above, she was the only splash of colour in the landscape, which turned from earthy brown to the cold blue-grey of the granite stone as she drew nearer to the city.
As the walls loomed over her, tall and impenetrable, she let the pebble fall from her gloved hand onto the path.

“Halt!” said one of the yellow-jerkined guards as she approached. “State your business, stranger!”
“I have no business with you,” said the woman haughtily, her voice betraying a past life spent in the Markhland to the south, aristocratic (which counted positive with the guards) but obviously foreign (a distinct negative).
“Hold your horses, spy,” said the other guard, spitting on the dusty stone pavement that rose out of the natural stone a few meters before the gate. “How do we know you ’int here to hasshassinate our civic leaders and send us spiralling into disarray?”
The woman’s voice took on a more agreeable tone as she said: “Would you believe me if I told you that I really don’t want to?”
The guards seemed to consider for a moment. They looked at each other.
“Well,” said one. “You’ll have to go straight to the Keep to get some papers.”
“Of course.”
They seemed unsure of how to respond to this strange woman. One shot another nervous look to the other, a look that seemed to say: she’s agreeing with us too much.

One of the guards led her to the Keep, on her own suggestion, and she was furnished with a scrap of rough pulp paper bearing a stamp of the local lord’s arms – her badge of honour as a traveller in the town. She pinned it to her cloak as if it were a precious brooch, to the confusion of the guards and the bespectacled little man who wrote her name down in a book that was bigger than she was.
The slightly blue ink read, in carefully sloped script: Ila Duet.

The Thistle was a compact building that was nearly all the way back to the city gates, pressed between two others in a narrow street. It was the classic kind of inn: Rooms up above, beer down below, and a fight in between. As Duet walked with her careful sloping gait up to the entrance, a mighty thump came from the wooden door that rattled the hinges. The door didn’t budge in response to her pushing, and a faint groaning from the other side told her that a semi-conscious combatant was the cause. She knocked forcefully, but somehow delicately on the worn pine door.
“Who is it?” said a gruff voice from within.
“A customer,” said Duet clearly.
There was a brief hurried conversation among the assorted scoundrels inside the tavern. Duet drew particular amusement from She’s a toff! Ah, but she’s a woman. She waited patiently, a small smile developing on her face, until the door creaked open under significant protest and a man with the build and complexion of a hog greeted her.
“Please, entray, madame,” he said, the words as unfamiliar in his mouth as the words “thermonuclear” or “detergent”. Duet smiled sweetly.
“I’m honoured,” she said, “to be invited into your lovely establishment.”
If a man had said that to Thyng Brewere, the red-faced publican, he would have socked him in the jaw. Hell, if some condescending blue-blood tart came around here and tried it she’d probably be taking her teeth home in a silk purse. But something about this little woman disconcerted him. She meant it. Something about her manner sidestepped his overdeveloped fight-or-fight reflex and made her difficult to say no to.
“She looks like trouble,” commented one of the patrons, suddenly on his best behaviour.
“What d’you mean? She’s just smiling.”
“Aye. That’s what worries me.”

Duet sat down at one of the rough round tables and asked Brewere if he could recommend anything.
“There’s beer,” he said.
“Is that a red or a white?” she said innocently. “It’s, um, brown. I can water it down if you want. There’s a tank on the roof.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Duet with a laugh. “And may I ask if you have a room available?
”Oh, certainly,” said Brewere. Behind him, a man in a scribe’s uniform began to protest, only to be silenced by a swift kick. “One just opened up, isn’t that right Brakenib?”
“That’s right,” said the scribe Brakenib. “I’ll be finding lodgings elsewhere for… personal reasons.”
Duet took her beer and sipped it as though it were wine from the king’s own cellar, and she listened:
Something wrong with ’er, thinks she’s at court with all ladies and waiting and such. She better pay up. Why’d you kick me? Band won’t like ’er, ’e ’ates Markhlanders. Band ain’t paying me to keep ’er out.
So much to say! She finished her beer, paid Brewere for the night, and serenely walked up the stained steps to her room.

Duet was awoken a few hours later by the sound of breaking crockery. She closed her eyes again, this not seeming like the kind of establishment where such an occurrence was at all out of the ordinary. But when it was followed by another, then another, then the rumbling voice of Brewere shouting “For Gods’ sake, stop!”, she found it rather difficult not to sit up and take notice.
“I’m paid up, aren’t I?” Brewere said as she crept down the stairs in her nightshirt, sword-cane in hand. Organised crime! Thought Duet. She was mostly opposed to Organised anything, and particularly as far as it intersected with her new friend Mr. Brewere. So when she came down the stairs, cane raised high, she was surprised to see her two old acquaintances, the guards.
“If you want to make money, you has to spend money,” said one of them. “I read that in a book.”
“You can read?” said his partner.
“Well, Brother Wasteditch at the Cloister read it. I looked at the picture.”
“Anyway,” said his partner, a gnarled man with a piratical beard. The older of the two was a born negotiator, as long as the negotiations took place with fist or steel. Young Hawker, however, frightened him. The boy had ambition. Usually that got beaten out pretty fast at the training level. “Since you paid up last, I’m afraid the tarriffs have gone up.
”More fines?” said Brewere.
“Don’t think of it as a fine, think of it as payment for a service,” the guard replied. “The service being, your teef all get to stay where they are.”
“That’s threats that is! That’s threatening behaviour!” said Brewere. The guard closer to him, the kid, grabbed him and shoved him up against the wall.
“You’re damn right it is-” he broke off at a tap on the shoulder.
“You again,” said the older guard, placing his hand conspicuously on the hilt of his sword.
“Funny.Took the words out of my mouth,” said Duet.
“This is nothing,” said the guard, “Just a little friendly business between old mates, right?”
Brewere nodded a forced nod. “Put the cane down, milady. Let them go about their business.”
The younger one patted Brewere on the shoulder. “Being as there’s a Lady Present we’ll let you another night,” he said mock-reassuringly. “Have the money ready by tomorrow at noon, or…” he grimaced toothily. “Say goodbye to these!” He laughed obsequiously, positioning himself behind the older guard’s elbow.

When the two of them had gone Brewere poured Duet a drink from his private stash (beer), and then one for himself.
“I know a shakedown when I see one,” said Duet. “The guards in this town are running a protection racket?”
“That and everything else besides. But nobody can touch them. Everybody knows their orders come down from the top.”
Duet’s brow furrowed. “And just who is that?”
Brewere spat on the floor behind the old oak bar. “Sir Alder Band. The lord of Agony Ridge.”

Alder Band… the name cast a long shadow over the man’s face.
“He inherited the town from his uncle years ago,” said the publican Brewere. “But he hates it. He wants more, and he’s been squeezing the town for every drop of blood he can get from it in the hopes of going on to greater things. Spends all his time at court usually, though I hear he’s on his way back to town. That would explain the guards’ urgency, to be certain.”
Duet watched his face carefully as she remarked:
“Do most of the people think as you do?”
Brewere nodded. “Band doesn’t care what we think of him, as long as we pay up. Well I’m done rolling over for the likes of him. He’ll have to kill me first.”
Let’s see if we stop it coming to that, thought Duet. This place is in need of a reckoning. She went upstairs without another word, opened her travelling pack, and spread it out on her bed.