Dreamspinner by Lynn Kurland Read Free Book Online

surroundings were the same: smelly and empty of her pack.
    She scrambled to her feet and spun around, looking for the rucksack that contained everything she owned save her book, which she had kept tucked into the waistband of her trousers. She could scarce believe her eyes. All her food, her spare clothes, her gold, everything gifted her by the peddler was gone.
    One of the lads gestured back over his shoulder. “He went that way with your gear,” he said helpfully. “Don’t think you’ll catch him, but you might try.”
    Or words to that effect. Aisling realized that her life—however long that life might be—was going to be made substantially more difficult by the fact that it was a struggle to make out what was being said. Perhaps Bruadair was less provincial than she’d imagined, for the speech there was rather more refined than what she was hearing at present. The accented common tongue she was listening to currently sounded as if the speakers were attempting it with pebbles in their mouths. Then again, they were a rough-looking lot, so perhaps they simply didn’t know any better.
    She pushed through the small crowd gathered there, then realized immediately there was no point in attempting to run after what was rightly hers. The press of humanity, some of whom smelled even worse than she did, was too thick. She pulled her cloak more closely around her and looked at one of the least grinning of the lads standing there.
    “Docks?” she asked.
    He waved expansively. “You’re there, my lad. You might be overdressed, though. Perhaps we can relieve you of your very fine cloak—”
    “Oy, there’ll be none of that,” said a loud voice from behind her.
    Aisling found herself taken by the scruff of her neck. She didn’t have time to protest that before the possessor of that gruff voice had dealt out several hearty shoves and a cuff or two. Lads dispersed without hesitation. She opened her mouth to offer thanks, then got a good look at the man who had rescued her. Her jaw continued on its way to her chest.
    She had never seen anyone that large before in the entirety of her life. Perhaps her life that consisted of the society of women at the Guild and the odd lad down at the pub had ill prepared her for anything else. The Guildmistress might have been almost as tall as the man before her, but she was half his weight. Aisling was profoundly grateful he seemed to be friendly.
    “Where’re you off to, la—” He paused, then frowned. “I mean, er…lad?”
    Aisling shut her mouth before untoward substances found their way inside. “Sgioba,” she mumbled.
    Then she froze. Aye, she had business in Sgioba that consisted of getting off her ship and beginning a frantic run to Gobhann, but given that all her funds had just been stolen from her along with every other item of value she possessed save the book of Scrymgeour Weger’s strictures hiding in her trousers, she wasn’t going to be indulging in that journey as quickly as she would have liked. She didn’t even have anything to sell. She couldn’t imagine anyone would even care about her book.
    She was beginning to wonder, not for the first time, if she’d made a terrible mistake leaving her homeland.
    She was currently friendless, fund-less, and covered in the muck of scores of horses and heaven only knew what else. Even if she could find work she was capable of doing—which would consist of weaving cloth and sewing the most rudimentary of straight seams—it would likely take her several fortnights to earn enough for her passage. She didn’t have that much time. In fact, she had less than a se’nnight before she was dead.
    And at the moment, she realized she wasn’t feeling very well, so perhaps the peddler had overestimated the time left her.
    “Sgioba, eh?” her rescuer said, looking at her with a thoughtful frown. “Nothing sails there but cargo ships and ruffians.”
    Aisling wasn’t a very good weaver, all her years at it aside, but she was