The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III by Mercedes Lackey

heard of the gangs who haunted the back streets of Lyonarie by night; she was a tough fighter, but she couldn’t take on a dozen men with knives and clubs.
    The child turned to make certain that she was still following, and waved at her to hurry. Nightingale wished powerfully then for that rapport with animals that Peregrine and Lark seemed to share; if only she could convince the donkey that it was in his best interest to pick up his feet a little!
    But he was just as tired as she was, and surely he was far more confused. He’d never been inside a city at all, much less had to cope with this kind of foot-traffic, poor thing.
    The child slipped back to her side, moving like an eel in the crowd. “Tisn’t but three streets up, mum, just t’other side uv where ye met me,” she said, looking up into Nightingale’s face anxiously. “Oh, I swan, ye’ll like the place!”
    “I hope so,” the Gypsy replied honestly. “I can promise you, at least I won’t dislike it as much as I did the last!”
    The little girl giggled. “La, mum, ye’re furrin, an’ the Freehold, it’s got more furriners than I ken! Got Mintaks, got Larads, got Kentars, got a couple ’a Ospers, even! Half the folk come there be furrin, too!”
    Now that certainly made Nightingale stand up a bit straighten “Why all the—” She sought for a polite word for the nonhumans.
    “Why they got all the Fuzzballs?” the child asked innocently. “Well, ’cause other places, they don’ like Fuzzballs, they don’ like furriners, they even looks at ye down the nose if ye got yeller skin or sompin'. Not Freehold, no, they figger Fuzzball money spends as good nor better’n a Churcher. I like Freehold. I’d’a taken ye there fust, but I thunk ye wanted a place where ye wouldn’—ah—”
    “Where I wouldn’t have any competition?” Nightingale replied, laughing at the child’s chagrin. “Oh, my girl, I promise you I am sure enough of my own songs that I don’t have anything to fear from other musicians!”
    The child grinned her gap-toothed grin again and shrugged. “Ye’ll see,” she only said. “Ye’ll see if I be takin’ ye wrong. Freehold—it’s a fine place! Look—’tis right there, crost the street!”
    But the building the girl pointed to was not what Nightingale expected—
    The Gypsy blinked, wondering if the child was afflicted with some sort of mental disorder. This wasn’t a tavern or an inn building—it was a warehouse!
    It was one of the old, pre-Cataclysm buildings, four tall stories high, with a flat roof and black metal stairs running up the side of it from the second story to the rooftop, and more black metal bridges linking it and the buildings nearest it from roof to roof. She narrowed her eyes and tried to see if someone had partitioned off a little corner of it at ground level as a tavern, but there was no sign of any partitioning whatsoever. Whoever owned this building owned the whole thing. Set into the blank face of the wall was a huge sliding door, and a smaller entry-door was inset in it. This was a warehouse!
    But there was a sign above the entry door, and the sign did say The Freehold . . .
    The child scampered on ahead and pounded enthusiastically at the door. It opened, and she spoke quickly to someone Nightingale couldn’t see. By the time she managed to coax her willfully lagging donkey to the doorway, whoever had been there was gone, and the child was dancing from one foot to the other with impatience.
    “He’s gone t’ git the boss,” the child told her. “Ye wait here wit me, an’ the boss’ll be here in a short bit.”
    Nightingale looked up at the sign above her head, just to be sure. It did say The Freehold, that much hadn’t changed. But how could anyone ever make any kind of profit running a tavern in a place this size? The cost of fuel and candles alone would eat up all the profits!
    She tried to make a quick estimate of just how much it would cost to heat this huge cavern of a place