Book Two Chapter 4: Good Company

Book Two Chapter 4

Good Company

The evening was already loud and generous on the ale when Velan came back from the south.

The Compass was always busy on cold nights now that the harvest was mostly done. Tonight the common room was packed, every stool taken, the fire burning high, the last of Bess’s stew going round before she left for home and her children. Torben and Hilde argued about whether the north road would stay open after the first frosts. Garren sat with his back to the wall, cane resting against the bar, already on his second ale, unusual before the fight, but lately he seemed to let himself relax a bit more. Kael was telling a story to anyone who would listen, which was most of the room tonight. He was at the best part, describing how he, heroically of course, killed a grey wolf as big as a cow with a single swing of his blade. Milo, clearing bowls between tables, stopped to listen so closely that he nearly dropped everything when Kael swung his imaginary sword.

Roen worked the bar, kept the Aether calm, and watched the door. Through his mind, the wheel was turning, and with it all the scenarios of what he might do to answer the scholar’s eventual question, if it came.

The door opened, letting in the evening’s chill, and through it Velan came out of the dusk, her satchel hung at her side and a few notebooks tucked under her arm. The room seemed to make space for her, and Torben, whom she had met in passing last night over her food, asked if she’d found her glass. She said she had, and that it was the most interesting thing she’d seen in a year, and the room laughed, and that was that. She was in.

• • •

Hilde was on her case within a few minutes. This was not a thing Roen could have prevented, and not a thing he wanted to, as she had a way of getting whatever she needed out of a person. He watched her settle in beside Velan with two cups and the warmth she saved for people she meant to learn the whole of.

“You’ll have heard about our innkeeper,” Hilde said, comfortable, conspiratorial, loud enough to carry. “Half the road has, by now.”

“Everyone I talked with in town recommended the food and drink.”

“That’s a given, yes. But the man…” Hilde leaned in as though sharing something she shouldn’t. “He was in the guard, far up north, before any of us knew him. One of those units they don’t put on the rolls and papers. He came south to us, bought the worst-run inn in the district, and made it the best. He won’t say a word about the north, and we’ve all stopped asking. The man’s allowed his quiet.”

Velan nodded and made the sound a person makes when a story is good. “Oh, a specialist unit, up north.”

“That’s the size of it.”

“It would explain the wards.” Velan turned her cup toward the doorway, pointing with it. “I felt them coming in last night. They are good, very good. You don’t find this complexity at an inn this far out.” She smiled at Hilde. “He looks after his people, his building, your innkeeper. You can tell.” The smile shifted to Roen, who returned a nod and went on with his apparent business, setting a clean mug on the shelf without letting his hand pause on the way down.

He thought it was beautifully done. She had accepted Hilde’s gift of an explanation, agreed, thanked her, and used it to say she had noticed his wards and found them the work of someone skilled, which was no surprise for the man Hilde described. The story he wanted told was out in the open. Beneath it, hidden from everyone else, was the fact that she had walked into his inn and sensed his defences before she had crossed the room.

She is good. Too good.

• • •

Brick had been left in the yard for the evening, which the goat took as both an insult and a challenge. He solved it the only way a goat knew how, by using his head, literally. The first sign of trouble was the back door banging open and a greyish shape racing through the room, a bunch of stolen frostmint dangling from his mouth like a green beard.

“Brick!” Milo shouted, far too late to matter.

The goat darted under one of the long tables, came out the other side with a napkin trailing behind, and bumped, gently, into the leg of Torben’s stool. Torben, in the middle of explaining how much a wagon could carry on soft roads, toppled sideways, and the two full mugs in front of him flew up into the air.

Roen was at the far end of the bar, too slow to catch them, and had already accepted that the ale, the floor, and half an hour of mopping were lost.

Velan had not accepted any such thing. She lifted one hand off her cup without rising and the mugs stopped. A foot above the boards, upright, the ale rocking inside them and not a drop over the lip, they hung there long enough for everyone to understand what they were seeing. Then they came down soft and stood on the table side by side, full, as if Torben had set them there and dreamed the rest.

The room broke into surprise and cheers and a pinch of uncertainty. Torben picked one of the mugs up, drank from it with the greatest seriousness anyone had ever seen from the man, and announced that it was, thankfully, unharmed, which got a second roar. Milo had both arms around the goat’s neck and was hauling him toward the yard while Brick chewed his frostmint slowly and regarded the cheering room as a performer regards an audience.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“That,” Bess called from the kitchen door, pointing a wooden spoon at the retreating goat, “is why he does not come inside. Somebody write it down.”

“He learned the latch,” Milo said, breathless, dragging.

“Then put a better latch on.”

The room was still laughing when Velan lifted her other rescued mug to Torben. “A generous house,” she said. “Most places I do that, somebody reaches for a dagger.”