Werelord Thal: A Renaissance Werewolf Tale Read Free

rather nicely ushered her forward with his walking
stick. “May I have the privilege of walking you home, Miss?” he
said with smiling eyes.
    The presumption of the stranger was shocking
even if his daring proposal tantalized Altea.
    “We can manage, Sir,” she replied brusquely
and brushed by him.
    Even if his roguish attention tickled her
curiosity, she relished her power to deny and disappoint.
    “Can you believe him?” Cynthia muttered. “As
if a decent lady would walk the streets with a stranger.”
    “Of course not, Cyn,” Altea agreed.
    Cynthia glanced over her shoulder. She
flashed with disapproval but deep down wanted one more look at the
handsome bachelor. “Probably some baron’s bastard who just fleeced
a tailor for that set of clothes,” she said.
    Altea smiled. Cynthia was a good judge of the
occupants of Prague’s streets.
    The crowd thinned after they left the Knights
of the Cross square and its adjoining river docks where various
provisions were being constantly unloaded. Riders and wagons went
both ways down the center of Karlova Street. Altea and her maid
kept to the side. The street jogged to the left and then Altea
reached her house. A workman was installing a new sign by the front
door. Its red and silver paint displayed a racing hound jumping
over a hammer. Below the image in ornate letters was the name
Fridrich. She did not understand the symbolism of her stepfather’s
new house sign, but she supposed it was not embarrassing. Some
people’s signs made even less sense with pictures taken from books
about exotic places that Altea was not sure existed. The world
offered up so many wild tales these days.
    Without a glance at the new sign, Cynthia
trotted up the front steps, but Altea paused. She still had to
prepare herself to enter her home since her mother had died. Her
mother’s absence was like a choking smoke that would not clear.
Father Refhold had advised her that time would lessen the pain.
Until then she was to pray for her mother’s soul and speed her out
of Purgatory. Although Altea believed the advice to be good, she
resented that her mother had not gone straight to Heaven. She did
not intend to confess that thought.
    Altea looked away when Cynthia opened the
door. The dark gate to the fortress of loss repulsed her. She
needed to gather courage a moment longer to tackle the sharp
feelings within.
    Looking up the street, she thought about her
stepfather who would be in his office at the Court by the Town
Hall. It was not far. In her mother’s final year, she had often
sent Altea with messages to her stepfather. Altea had come to
realize that it was her mother’s way of giving her a break from her
bedside care. She had enjoyed the little breaths of freedom. Her
stepfather had not necessarily appreciated the needless
interruptions, but he had seemed to enjoy letting his associates
have a look at his fetching stepdaughter.
    But Altea had no reason to bother him today,
and she disliked going near the Old Town Square since the dreadful
executions that spring. She still could hardly believe that
Gretchen had met such a grisly fate. Unlike most of her neighbors,
Altea had not gone to witness the event. She could not imagine
seeing that kindly old woman, who her mother had depended upon so
much, dragged to the stake with her head shorn.
    A haunted shudder shook Altea. She did not
want to believe the crimes the old midwife had committed, even if
her stepfather had insisted they were all true.
    “Altea!”
    Yiri’s piping voice tweeted her name with
delight. The seven-year-old boy ran down the steps and grabbed her
arm. Hauling her inside, he blathered about a dead bird.
    “Mind the eggs,” Altea scolded as her basket
swung.
    “Come see. We’re going to do a funeral,” Yiri
said.
    “Don’t say it’s in the house,” Altea
said.
    Cynthia’s shriek from the kitchen revealed
the maid’s discovery of the avian body. Her shrill scolding put an
end to the boys’ elaborate