“Help you, er. miss?” said a big man in a stained leather apron. He looked like he could hump those beer barrels around on his back without losing his breath.

I scowled at him.

“Bitter,” I managed. “Pint.”

His eyes narrowed. I flashed a ladylike smile and straightened my wig.

“Right you are, my lady,” he said, still a little uncertainly, and began to pump a tankard full. I turned away, so that I wouldn’t die of thirst watching him.

“Two bits.”

“Cheers,” I said, pushing a couple of copper pieces across the bar at him.

“Good health, miss,” he said as I drank. “Looks like you need it.”

I gave a thin and lame-sounding laugh and fled into a dark corner by the fireplace.

At the next table a couple of old men were playing dominoes in absolute silence. I tried to think of nothing while my heartbeat and breathing returned to something like normal. After a couple of minutes like this I drained my glass and instantly wanted to find the toilet. Under the strain, I was amazed that my bladder had held out this long. Hell’s teeth, I was a fugitive from the Empire! How could I have been so stupid? I had to get out of this dress and out of town, and perhaps a good deal farther. It was a sickening thought. For all the tales of distant lands I’d acted in, I knew nothing about life outside Cresdon, and there was a part of me that found the idea of ven-turing beyond the city walls almost as terrifying as what the Empire would do to me if they caught me.

Almost. I had been accused of sedition, and then resisted arrest and made the Empire-a small part of it, at least-look silly. I would be proclaimed a rebel, and after that, all bets were off. There was only one punishment for rebels. Actually there were lots of punishments for rebels, many of them inventive and colorful. They just all ended up the same way.