It was becoming increasingly clear that Alayne craved company that didn’t particularly make her want to schedule a botched lobotomy with the local executioner. People were such headaches, and just when she thought she was done with the muss, she seemed to have the continuous ill-luck of colliding into a southern breed of witless ladies.

In fact, they were a menagerie most often inundated with birds; peacocks would be the socially correct term, strutting their proud fan-tailed idiocy. Of course, she could no more disregard the few birds of prey spreading their wings of influence, black-eyed and ready to feast on those who were the perfect host to gorge and render useless. Had Alayne been tender-footed and malleable to manipulation, she might have been easy bait. But she remained a paragon of the true hardiness of the East, and what resolve she possessed in spades separated her from the naive quarry dressed in their pretty jewels and their virginal whites.