The Cannon Law—ARC(32)

"What's that, I wonder?" Sharon asked.



"Trouble," Ruy said, and then, after a moment, smiled wryly. "I predict it will be futile of me to suggest that I am loath to take my lady to a place where there may be trouble, however curious she may be to see the cause of it."



Sharon grinned right back. "Ruy Sanchez, you have got precisely no room to talk about people who don't take care to avoid trouble."



Ruy sketched a small bow. "The chastisement of my intended, however mild, suffices to reform me forever. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, shall henceforth be the very model of circumspection. Come, my lady," he said, offering her his arm, "let us go by way of some more refined quarter of the city, even if we are on our way to the Borgo to meet a pack of revolutionary firebrands."



"Oh, phooey, Ruy," she said. "You don't get around me that way. Since we're heading this way anyway, let's go see what's happening. We don't have to go close, but if it's real trouble we ought to take a look firsthand to go with whatever our informants give us to send back to Magdeburg. Besides, we're heading for a worse neighborhood than this one."



Ruy dropped the smile. "Permit me a moment of gravity, my heart. I do not doubt that your Señor Stearns and Don Francisco have spies and informants enough. If I judge the sound of this aright, it is trouble that might well become a brawl, if not a riot, and in such anything might happen. We are heading into the Borgo, a rough quarter, and even I may be overwhelmed by a sufficient multitude. For that matter, a blade is scant defense if cobblestones are being hurled."



Sharon heard the concern in his tone, and realized that if Ruy, a superbly skilled soldier, was concerned, then things might just be a bit too rough for comfort. She'd seen him in action, once. Six armed assailants had only just been enough to take him down that time—and he'd faced those odds with a smile and a stream of witty remarks. If he thought going to take a look at the street theatre was risky, it was probably suicidally dangerous by anyone else's standards. Or could be, at any rate.



Or, and this piqued her a little, he was still operating on that hidalgo spinal reflex that reacted to women as—reality be damned!—frail creatures to be cosseted from even the chance of harm. Strange how a man who had been raised by tough Catalan peasant women could have internalized that damned myth so well.



A moment's reflection, and she decided to try compromise. "Okay. Close enough to get a sense of what's happening. The other end of the nearest street, maybe. We can always skedaddle if it looks like it's coming our way."



Ruy nodded. "My lady's desire is my command." He held up an admonitory finger. "But I shall decide what is a safe distance, and I shall hear no argument about when to withdraw, Sharon. I shall one day be your husband: cultivate now the habit of obedience."



Sharon was quite proud of her Old-Fashioned Looks. On her personal scale, the one she gave Ruy was about an eight, edging up to nine. Even that took thirty seconds to crack him up.



Five minutes' walk brought them to a corner where they could look down the street. It didn't look like much, Sharon thought. A smallish crowd, at most a hundred or so, gathered outside a building she didn't recognize and shouting. "Can you tell what they're saying?" she asked.



"That they are angry?" Ruy hazarded. "Actually, probably more like that they have been paid to come there and shout, or at least some of them have."



"You reckon? I don't know that I could tell a rented mob from the real thing."



"I do not see the kind of thing that real mobs do—you may recall I have been the recipient of the attention of street ruffians before. They are not pressing forward, for one thing, just standing around and shouting. And all shouting the same thing, what is more. Someone has told them what to chant."



Sharon looked again at the crowd. There did seem to be a distinct lack of unruliness about it, although as she watched a fistfight broke out on the fringes, distracting a couple of dozen of the protesters to watch the fun. "You're right, it doesn't look like their hearts are really in it. They're getting distract—Oooh," she said, as one of the combatants took a kick where it counted, "his heart's not going to be in anything for a while."



"Truly not," Ruy said, smiling. "Ah, we spoke too soon—"



Sharon nodded. It looked like the guy hadn't been caught square in the family jewels, and had come back up holding a knife. Not a big one, but enough to raise the stakes. The ring around the two who were fighting finally closed up, hiding the action, but jeers and shouting followed the action.