Dreamspinner Read Online Free

run that way again. She clutched the wood behind her and told herself that there was indeed still an hour before dark, ample time to decide what she was going to do. No one would be looking for her.
    Not yet.
    She searched through the crowd to see who might be lurking there. It wouldn’t have surprised her to find the keeping room full of armed guards looking for her. Fortunately, it was simply full of the usual suspects—working-class lads and lassies who had gathered to eat and drink the cheapest fare the kitchen had to offer. It was Beul, after all, and even a full six days of labor didn’t provide much in the way of funds to splash out on fancy foodstuffs.
    She looked across the large gathering room to the table where her usual companions were wont to hold forth. To her very great relief, she saw just her usual mates there. Or rather, two of them. A thrill of fear went through her at the thought that any of the other four might have been detained in order to tell those who might want to find her where she might be found—
    She pushed aside the thought as a perfectly ridiculous one. She was one of hundreds of weavers who made up the Guild, and she was the least of those who sat before their rickety looms, turning out ream after ream of dull, grey cloth. No one would come looking for her, at least not until her precious few hours of weekly liberty were over and she wasn’t to be found where she was supposed to be.
    No one, perhaps, save someone who might have a vested financial interest in her presenting herself at her loom at dawn on the first day of the following week. Or perhaps two someones—
    She realized she was wheezing, but she blamed that on the smoke in the air. It had nothing to do with having seen not a quarter hour ago a very well-dressed man and woman exiting an extremely expensive restaurant, then pausing to allow themselves to be admired before continuing on toward their carriage. She had gaped at them, convinced she was imagining things, only to hear them instruct the driver of that fine carriage to take them immediately to the weaver’s guild. The woman had paused before she’d entered the conveyance and turned to look over her shoulder, as if she felt something untoward looking at her.
    Aisling supposed that untoward thing would have been she herself, the woman’s daughter.
    Her first instinct had been to step forward, but she’d found herway suddenly blocked by a tall, well-dressed gentleman who had paused to ask her directions. If he had thereafter arrived safely at his destination, she would have been surprised. She wasn’t sure she’d said anything that made any sense at all, but who could blame her for her alarm? She had just seen her parents, parents she had been separated from at the tender age of eight and not seen but thrice since—
    The door next to her opened, startling her so badly she jumped. She put her hand over her heart, nodded to the entering patron, then pushed away from the wall. She still had time to decide what to do, though the sands were falling rapidly through the hourglass. If she returned to the Guild, she would surely find that her parents had come not to rescue her from her last possible months of indenture, but to secure another seven years of her labor for which they would take a hefty advance.
    But if she didn’t return to the Guild, it would mean consequences so dire she couldn’t think on them without horror.
    She walked unsteadily across the common room, then collapsed onto the bench set against the wall, thankful it was in the darkest corner of the pub. Perhaps if she could simply sit and think, a solution would come to her.
    She looked at the man across the table from her who was cradling his empty mug between his hands and speaking in a low, angry voice. Quinn was the leader of their little band, primarily because he was the loudest. He was not now a handsome man, nor had he been, she suspected, before he’d spent years brawling over his very loud