This story is set within the world of P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath Saga, with latest entry in the series By Demons Possessed out in May, 2019. P.C. Hodgell earned her doctorate at the University of Minnesota with a dissertation on Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and is a graduate of both the Clarion and the Milford Writers Workshops. Now retired, she was a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in modern British literature and composition, and taught an on-line course on science fiction and fantasy for the University of Minnesota. Hodgell lives in her family’s ancestral nineteenth-century wood-framed house in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Every morning cook and housekeeper Cleppetania (“Call-me-Cleppetty”) scrubbed the kitchen floor of the Res aB’tyrr, then the tiles of the great hall, then the floor of the side room where those too drunk to leave the night before had been dragged. These latter she also rousted.
“Is it really safe to go out?” one old regular quavered, glancing in apprehension at the side windows through which, indeed, early sun light streamed.
“All safe, Gunter,” said Cleppetty, propelling him toward the front door. “Nothing will eat you on the way home.”
“Promise?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, these days, but better you leave before your wife comes looking for you.”
Alarmed, he scurried out.
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