Late, But Not Late Enough

"I'm not your skivvy!" Astra retorted angrily.

"Hey, you're everybody's skivvy now. You're no longer a princess but the lowest of the low, and don't you forget it."

Astra couldn't afford a scene, as she didn't want to draw attention to herself. "All right," she muttered. "I'll get your ale."

Luckily she could see that there was a bar set up at the other end of the hall through which she had been passing, so that fetching the ale did not take long.

The next drunken reveller to accost her was not so easily dealt with. Grabbing her by the arm, he slurred: "Hey, 'tica, I always fancied you, but could never do anything about it. But that's all changed now. Come with me to my room. I'll give you a gold piece for your trouble. That must be a month's wages for a dungeon master's assistant."

"I'm not a whore!"

"That's not what Tudor told me. And he reckoned that he only paid you half what I am offering."

Astra was appalled. Could Exotica really have been reduced to prostituting herself?

1. "Tudor was lying," she said firmly. Which was most probably true. No doubt claiming to have bedded the ex-princess would have conveyed some status with his peers.
2. Not wanting to cause a scene, she agreed to go with the young man. He was so drunk, that she reckoned that she could deal with him when they got to his room, even allowing for Exotica's far weaker body.
3. "Where's your room?" she asked. When he told her, her memory of the map indicated that it was quite close to Fred's. Going with him would give her a pretext to reach the right area without raising anyone's suspiciions.

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