The guide-currently dressed in faded jeans and a cheap T shirt grinned. “Me? Never. But I’d better update my wardrobe before I step through the Britannia Gate or I’ll look like an old fuddy-duddy.”
”You are an old fuddy-duddy,” Kit laughed, “and so am I. Let’s get this over with. Gad, but I hate shopping.”
”Only when you’re not stepping through the gate,” Malcolm smiled.
”Too true. Now, about what she’ll need-”
An animal scream lifted from Commons, high and piercing, followed an instant later by a woman’s shriek of terror. Kit and Malcolm jerked around, then ran for the door. Surely another new gate hadn’t opened? The warning klaxon hadn’t sounded and Kit hadn’t felt the telltale buzz in his skull bones. Someone started cursing. Then Kit rounded an ornamental garden plot and found a woman in medieval regalia staring at the ceiling and sobbing in rage.
”They killed her! Goddamn them, they killed her!”
The men with her, also dressed in medieval garb, were struggling to soothe terrified, hooded falcons on their arms. One bird had already sprained a wing trying to escape its jesses.
”Who killed whom?” Malcolm blurted.
A few spots of blood on the concrete and a couple of feathers gave Kit the clue. “I’d say those two bird things Sue couldn’t identify made lunch of this lady’s falcon.”
The lady in question affirmed Kit’s guess in most unladylike language. Malcolm coughed and turned aside to hide a grin. Pest Control came running, Sue Fritchey in the lead
”What happened?”
The woman whose valuable hunting falcon had just become a paleo-hawk’s dinner told her-scathingly.