Chapter 27: The Innkeeper

Chapter 27

The Innkeeper

Roen dressed in the dark.

Again, sleep had managed to escape him this night. He had tried, yet failed to receive the bliss it offered. Across the hall, Sera was asleep after sitting with him at the bar until after midnight. He moved slowly, finding each piece of clothing by touch and lifting it carefully so the floorboards would not answer under him.

Barefoot, he made his way downstairs with his boots in one hand. At the front door, he sat long enough to pull them on, then crossed to the bar and wrote a note. Will be back by mid-morning. Scout only. Do not follow. He placed it where Sera would find it first, and Bess would find it second. From above the kitchen lintel, he took down the decorative sword a travelling bronze-rank adventurer had traded for two nights’ sleep at the inn months ago for the first time and slid it through the loop on his belt. He used to carry a sword to the battlefield for when his reserves would run low, but feeling the weight of it at his side felt unnatural. He put those thoughts away and took a heel of yesterday’s bread from the counter, went into his coat pocket before he stepped outside.

The sky over the eastern rooftops had only just begun to pale. The haze on the southern horizon glowed faintly in the dawn dark, holding its lower note.

Behind the inn, Roen went to the stables and saddled the bay mare Torben kept there. Once the straps were checked, he led her out into the square.

He passed Josser’s shop, where a single window was lit.

Brenner was at it.

The two men looked at each other across the dark for a long second. Neither of them moved. The window stayed lit while Roen mounted, turned the mare south, and rode.

The light in Brenner’s window went out a minute later.

• • •

The south road was empty.

The lanterns at the edge of town had not been lit, and the farms stood silent. No smoke coming out of the chimneys, no morning cattle… just nothing. Garren had not yet given the order, but the south side had begun evacuating itself. Families had felt the tremor two days ago. They had seen the haze. They had drawn their own conclusions.

Roen kept the horse walking slowly as he knew, when riding into battle, an untrained animal, specifically for that would carry him until the corruption boundary and not a step beyond.

He could feel Brenner behind him. Not the footsteps, the man was too good for that. Just the pressure of a second mind keeping pace, holding the same distance, half a mile back along the road. Roen did not turn. Whatever Brenner had decided to do this morning, it was his business, and Roen was not going to ruin it by acknowledging it.

The road took him past the Aldham fields, grey in the weak light, past Torben’s western pasture, empty now, no cows left grazing.

Then the dead zone came into view.

The grass had turned white in a line so straight a surveyor could have used it. Beyond it, the ground was the colour of old bone, dry and brittle, refusing to support anything green. Roen dismounted at the line, tied the mare to a fence post that was still alive on his side of the boundary, and continued on foot along the edge.

The hole where Milo’s farm had been was visible from the boundary. A round shaft in the ground about thirty feet across. The bottom of it shone, glassy and faintly luminous. Roen did not approach it. He walked the perimeter, looking south into the treeline, and started counting.

He counted eight shapes, double what Kael had seen.

Seven of them were what Kael had described. Half-pulled out of the corruption field, stuck at the legs, eyes open, watching him. The fourth was further back, deeper in the trees, larger, two of its limbs were already fully formed, long and thin like a spider’s legs. Its head, a bubble of folded up darkness with a single central eye, slowly turning and then snapping back in place.

He stood at the boundary for a long time.

Then the ground beneath his feet churned.

He felt it the way he had felt it the night of Harwick. That vast, slow turning underneath. The colossal sightless awareness turned to face him. The lower aether rose half a step, as the eight watching shapes in the treeline turned their heads in unison toward him. The haze thickened slightly in his direction.

A single Wisp drifted out of the haze.

It came toward him slowly, almost casually, not yet sure he was the target. Pale gray at the edges, a core of compressed wrong-light at the centre. Twenty feet away. Fifteen.

Roen did not draw the sword. He raised one hand. He shot a needle of Aether at the Wisp’s core, which flared white, folded in on itself and went out.

The shapes in the treeline tilted their heads further, a ticking sound was coming from their joints. They pulled themselves forcefully from the ground as if trying to take a step forward.

Not today, the town is not safe. Everyone will wake AND see if I try to destroy them now. Roen thought. Tomorrow.. tomorrow, when everyone is evacuated.

He turned, walked back to the mare, untied her, mounted, and rode north. He could feel the ticking eyes on him the whole way to the bend. He could feel them stop watching him as soon as he passed it, the way a man steps out of a beam of light.

A hundred paces past the bend, he passed Brenner.

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The man was crouched behind a hedgerow with his sword still sheathed. He had seen everything. He did not stand up as Roen rode by.

Their eyes met. That was all.

• • •

Sera was at the bar when he came in.

She was still in last night’s clothes, with the kettle on and his note in her hand. She looked at him standing in the doorway, boots dusty, sword on his hip, eyes tired, alive, and for a long moment she said nothing.

Then she put the note down on the bar, very precisely, and said, “Mid-morning.”

“It’s mid-morning.”

“It is.”

She poured him tea, and he drank it standing at the bar. Bess came out of the kitchen, saw him, swore once with great precision, and went back in. From the stairs, Milo’s voice called, “Is that Roen? Is he back?”

“It’s Roen, yes, come down.”

Milo hurried down with Nyx on his shoulder and the one single, quick look at Roen was enough. He looked at him from top to bottom, smiled, nodded, turned and went back upstairs, which was either trust or terror or a quiet acknowledgement that questions could wait.

Roen sat at the bar, with Sera beside him. He told her what he had seen.