The raven woke her ridiculously early and someone in a uniform spotted her coming down from the roof. Fortunately they seemed only to want to ask her if she wanted to get herself killed. She kept stretching her great dumb brown eyes wider and wider, as if she had never before heard that falling from great heights could be fatal, until at last he let her go with a warning that he'd better not catch her up there again. Since she could not foresee any circumstances in which that would ever happen, she agreed that he would not. There had been a lovely silver chain upon his belt, but she refrained, feeling that to be an appropriate sacrifice for being stupid enough to get caught in the first place.
By the time she paid a second day for her horse's board, it was still early and she was starving. In anticipation of gorging on party food, she had gone without dinner the evening before, and since party food had never actually happened, she ended up dazzled by street vendors offering steamed eggs and mysterious, savory things on skewers and chewy, glutinous buns full of what was promised as beef, though any fool who'd ever eaten horse could have told them straight away that it was horse. The raven preferred his eggs raw, but accepted the shredded horse-beef, twitching and complaining about some people's dawdling all the while. She had a feeling he suspected she really had fucked Glenn Burnie, or killed him, or possibly even eaten him, and was anxious to make sure his friend was still intact this morning. She hastened to snap that if she had eaten Glenn Burnie, she'd be too full to stuff herself now.
Last night was slowly catching up to her. In hindsight she could see a hundred holes, a thousand spots where he could easily jab in a blade if he chose. She wondered what he was waking up to now, how he was feeling, if he'd gotten any rest at all. She should have checked on him anyway. She wondered how much he remembered. If he was going to be angry with her. If he would realize just how badly he had been violated. She tried to anticipate the worst of what questions he could ask.
He said we were friends now, though, she thought plaintively. He said it. He's like as not going to be cross, there's nothing to be done for that, but surely he won't be vindictive. The worst thing he can do will be the questions, and if he asks anything I don't want to answer, I can just lie, and if he won't let me lie, I'll just leave.
Which was cheating and she knew it. But it was a plan. She always felt better with a plan.
By the time she figured where she'd left him, she was hungry again, though the hour was still early and the tavern below practically empty. There were pegs after all. Even the morning maid was called Peg. Peg objected strenuously to allowing pets into her tavern, particularly filthy jackdaws. She gazed with deep suspicion on Fionn's wrinkled green gown as it was both far too fine for a tavern of this quality and far too disheveled for her to have been up to any good in it. Fionn did not feel up to defending her attire, or to explain that it was the only article she currently possessed that would neither show her knees nor melt into nothing if she happened to brush against a nailhead. Nor would it be found favorable to object that the raven was not a pet, or filthy, or a jackdaw. Tultharian did love to scold for no reason.
Reluctantly, but without a word, the raven stationed himself on an awning across the street, the better to peer into windows. Fionn settled herself in a corner table with a commanding view of the entire common and ordered herself the largest second breakfast she could acquire at this hour: black sausage and brown bread and last night's lukewarm vegetable soup. Before she could even dip her bread, some lout with a brow studded with greasy blackheads was blistering the side of her neck with his hot garlic breath and asking for her name.
Slowly her fist tightened around an implement she had recently discovered was called a "fork."