She went over to the far fire and sat near it at a wooden table with her back to it and the wall. Looking at the door and the far end where the owner came out of the kitchen and handed the bags to those coming in or went to the tables to refill the glasses. Two other men sitting near her and one nodding at her as she sat and then turning back to talk of something she could not hear.
The innkeeper nodded to her also and went back to the kitchen and she watched the door and then he came out again and walked over to her. Standing before her in plain brown clothes with something on them that suggested he was both cook and innkeep and maybe many other things besides. A large man going bald on the top of his head and looking at her pleasantly without smiling as a man, perhaps the only one in this town, who saw many new faces and spoke to many he didn't know and never really would for the string of them was endless and proceeded in only one direction.
“Just to eat or you need a room?”
“A room as well.”
He nodded. “We have coffee and eggs and ham.”
“That'll be fine.”
“How long?”
“For the room?”
“For the room.”
“I guess that depends. I need to get to Erihon.”
“You want to get from here to Erihon?”
“Or as close as I can.”
He sighed and looked out the window toward the river and behind him two more men came in and stood by the bar and he didn't look at them but she could see that he knew they were there. He looked back at her. “I don't know but I'll ask. How soon do you need to go?”
“Soon.”
“Yesterday then.”
She smiled.
“I'll tell you when I hear but I can tell you now you won't get all the way there from here. Might be someone's coming through can take you to Kraeg or up to the Arristone. And you can find someone else there. You don't want to buy a horse?”
He'd given her money before leaving with the parchment with her name on it, but not that much money. She shook her head. “I'd rather not.”
“All right. Well, I'll tell you.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
He turned and went back and the men waiting nodded to him and he went into the kitchen to get what it was he had for them and she looked also out at the river and waited for her food. That waterway a thin black thing here by the town, with rocks and moss in it and a drifted log caught and turned and the wood very bright with the water.
She'd known she'd not get to Erihon but Kraeg was farther than she'd hoped. From there she could take any number of merchant ships across the Gray Sea and to harbor towns like Raggorie or Calipse or the Whitecrest, the only watchtower the Erihon had built two thousand years ago when they fought the Whispermen and which they still manned. Now the tower more a lighthouse than a fortress, but at least one company on the grounds at all times. Protecting at once the traders' road and the inland portion of the sea.
The Arristone would work as well, but she had no desire to travel on the River of Blood unless she had no other choice. Many would laugh at her for that but it was who she was and she knew that would not change.
Let them laugh.
He came back with the food and the coffee and set them down and nodded when she thanked him and then walked back to the kitchen. She ate and the food was very hot and good and she had to tell herself to eat slowly and could not and finally just gave in and ate it all even though he was watching her do it and she didn't know what he'd make of it. He came back once to fill the coffee and she drank both. It was stronger than she would have liked—she who had been raised on milk and sugar that you drank in the courts or on a terrace as you looked out at the countryside, lounging on pillows in the warm sun hours after those who drank the meaner black variety had already consumed theirs in the darkness for the heat and wakefulness alone and then trod in that dank first light to toil as they would—but it was hot and good and she'd had it like this many times on the campaigns and that was enough to make her fond of it.
When she had eaten she paid for the food and room both and he came back and gave her the key and nodded toward the stairs. She thanked him again and finished the coffee. The main room was still just as empty as it had been but many people had come and gone and no one who had seen her come in was still there. Or at least she thought not. But she kept looking again and again to be sure and knowing it had been too long since she'd played these games. In the end the real risk was of course the one she couldn't avoid and he was carrying her plates back to the kitchen so she stood up and went to the stairs and went up.
The room was small and looked out at the river. The walls and ceiling and floor all of planks sanded and oiled. A lantern sitting on the bedside table and light coming in from the window. The sound of the river moving over tree and stone. A small basin with water in it and no mirror. She went to the water and washed her face and arms and dried them and stood looking out at the river.
She felt that at any moment she would die. She had felt this way every time on the campaigns and at first it was horrifying and eventually it fell to the background and became as much a part of the world as light and sound and all else.
Riding through some dark escarpment once she'd felt it again returning in full and drawn her horse up and heard the yells as they came over the far cliff, a swarming mass of them with their faces painted and behind them the captains on the kralons, great beasts that they rode with claws sharper than any sword since the fall of the Ringed City and some of them mutated with two heads and the armored plates down their spines split up each neck.
But it was always around her. She felt it when they camped on a snowcovered field beneath a starswept sky with the air cold and silent. She felt it when they stood inside the city gates and clasped hands with men she knew and trusted and the whole of the army surrounded them and offered protection from everything the world had to kill them. At least now with the dragons gone. She felt it always in this life she lived and she felt it now.
What she did not know was whether her time underground had stripped her of what she needed to live despite it. Bleeding it away a little at a time so that now she would crumble and cower and die when it grew stronger, rather than wheeling her horse and drawing her sword and riding with it raised over her head for the hills where they thundered down on her like the reckoning of some long-forgotten god of war.
She woke and she knew they were already inside. She could not identify that which told her, but still she knew. Perhaps she'd woken to the sound of the horses in the road, or perhaps it had been boots in the hall or on the stairs. Maybe a voice that sounded as if it were from the city and not this quiet mountain town. She lay in the darkness listening and the moonlight fell slanting across from the window onto the far wall and she heard nothing more.
She'd slept in her clothes and with the dagger he'd given her lying on her chest and she stood. The bed still neatly made beneath her. Just the imprint in the wool blankets were she'd lain. She pulled one corner to smooth it and went to the window and looked out.
The river moved darkly in the starlight and she could not see anyone. Had there been enough of them they would have put a man down along the bank or at least on the back of the building to watch the windows, but they had not. That told her either that there weren't many or that they were too confident that they'd be on her before she could run.