The voice of Lady Brenner. “What is the meaning of this?” the woman thundered.

Perfidy didn’t look back, grabbing the doorknob with her free hand and flinging it open, forgetting about the small porch, her feet tangling on the steps as she dived to the ground, the stick twisting and torquing itself erratically while she clung to it with both hands now.

The sounds she was making weren’t the only ones now, the whole of New Dawn coming alive as doors were shoved open and feet hurried outside. Murmurs fell from shocked lips. In one case, gruff laughter carried to her ears on the wind.

A dwarf’s laughter.

Which, of course, was the precise moment that she knew she’d been had.

Not that she had time to be angry about that, because Lady Brenner’s magic stick (she had no problem thinking about it as ‘magic’ anymore, because there was no doubt it was magic, or enchanted, or something, not that she knew the difference between those terms) wasn’t done with her yet. As she fought back to her feet, the stick managed to twist itself in such a way that her arms were twined like two ropes being wound together, and then it…well, it hit her.

Hard.

In the face.

She was so shocked by the turn of events that she didn’t even register the warmth of the blood trickling from her nostrils until the stick had hit her again, this time in the ear. It left a ringing sound in her head and a stinging sensation to boot. Cringing and yelping, she jumped back, simultaneously dropping the stick.

Where it landed at her feet, unmoving. The picture of innocence.

“Serves you right, you thieving imp of a girl,” Lady Brenner scolded, marching past her and snatching the stick where it lay, cradling it as one might a baby, running a soothing finger along its length. Her eyes were a molten brown now, a far cry from the green and blue hues they’d boasted the last two times she’d looked upon the woman’s face.

“What happened?” said Jereb, arriving on the scene, eyes switching every few seconds between Lady Brenner, her stick, and Perfidy, who withered under his accusatory stare.

“Isn’t it obvious, Master Jereb?” Lady Brenner said. “This whip of an urchin broke into my house—”

“The door was unlocked, ma’am,” Perfidy interjected.

“—invaded the privacy of my humble home—”

“I did see her underclothes hangin’ in her wardrobe,” Perfidy admitted.

“—and stole Erma while I slept.”

“That part is true,” Perfidy conceded. “Though I didn’t know she called the stick ‘Erma’. Whut sort o’ name is that anyway?”

“Why under Lostwood’s green canopy would you do such a thing?” Jereb asked, looking more tired than she’d ever seen him look, and she suspected it wasn’t because she’d roused him from sleep in the middle of the night. At least not only because of that.