Chapter 11
The ale room beneath the Keep is exactly as unpleasant as Evran imagined it would be.
Stone walls and low timber ceilings, close enough to make a tall man duck.
Wooden tables scarred by years of cups and knife points and the occasional fist. Barrels repurposed as seats, their flat tops covered with cushions that have seen better days and are not shy about advertising it.
The air is thick with the smell of hops and woodsmoke and the musk of too many bodies in too small a space, and the whole room is cast in a reddish-orange glow by hanging lanterns that sway gently on their chains, throwing restless shadows across every surface.
Evran stands at the bottom of the stairs and feels the walls press in.
It is immediate and visceral, the constriction, the heaviness, the breathlessness that comes from being underground in a room with one exit.
For a single, ugly moment he is back in Lord Galen's estate, the door locked behind him, the dark closing in, and his vision narrows and his chest tightens and the air turns thick and unbreathable.
Then he hears laughter from a far table, bright, genuine, the laughter of people enjoying themselves, and he recognizes a face.
One of the Rendari warriors he met on the first day, the scarred man with the kind eyes who asked about the mountain crossing.
He is seated near the bar with two others, cups raised, grinning, and he catches Evran's eye and lifts his cup in greeting.
The cellar dissolves. The ale room reasserts itself, loud and full of people who are drinking and talking and playing cards because the summit is stressful and this is how clans blow off steam. Evran breathes in, breathes out, and lets his shoulders drop.
He has barely taken three steps into the room when Torsten is there.
"You came." The delight in his voice is barely concealed, bright and sharp. His hand finds Evran's elbow, guiding, steering, proprietary, and Evran allows himself to be led. "I wasn't sure you would."
"I almost didn't," Evran says, and this is true in ways Torsten cannot fathom. "I've never been to a place like this."
"There's nothing to worry about. I know everyone here.
" Torsten weaves them through the tables, nodding to people as he passes, comfortable on territory he has claimed through many evenings spent here.
His hand stays on Evran's elbow the entire time, a constant, unwelcome point of contact that Evran endures with a patience that costs him more than Torsten will ever know. "Come. We're in the back."
The back table is tucked against the far wall, half-hidden by a support pillar and the angle of the staircase above. It is private in the way that back tables in ale rooms are always private, positioned so that the rest of the room has to make an effort to see you, and most people do not bother.
There are two men already seated. Evran recognizes neither of them, but they have the look of Windfar, pale coloring, northern features, the lean muscularity of men raised in a harsh climate.
One is broad through the shoulders with close-cropped dark hair and a jaw that could split firewood.
The other is thinner, sharper, with a narrow face and restless eyes that move over Evran with quick assessment and apparent disinterest.
Cards are spread on the table between them, drinks beside the cards, the game already underway.
Torsten deposits Evran on the bench against the wall and slides in beside him, effectively blocking Evran's view of the rest of the room.
Whether this is deliberate or instinctual, the result is the same: Evran can see the table, the two men, Torsten's profile, and the stone wall behind them, and nothing else.
It is probably for the best, Evran thinks.
The last thing he needs is for the entire Keep to know he is down here.
Word will spread, because it always does in a place where gossip moves faster than ale, and then he will have to explain himself to Vaike.
The thought sends a cold thread through his stomach.
Vaike, who is just as likely to tell him and Bran they are overreaching as he is to agree.
Vaike, whose first instinct is always to handle threats himself, with his own hands, and who would not take kindly to learning that his husband is sitting in an ale room with the man who might be trying to kill him.
He pushes the thought aside.
"Evran, this is Dane," Torsten says, gesturing to the broad-shouldered man. "And Mikkel." The thin one. Neither offers a hand. Dane gives a curt nod, and Mikkel does not even do that, just glances at Evran, grunts, and returns to his cards.
"Evran is with the Drakkari delegation," Torsten says, settling back on the bench with his arm stretched along the wall behind Evran's shoulders, close enough to touch but holding just short of it.
"We know," Dane says, his voice flat, uninterested, already decided on how much Evran matters, which is not much. "You going to play or just decorate the bench?"
Torsten laughs. "He's watching tonight. Learning the game."
"Suit yourself." Dane turns a card. Mikkel counters. The game resumes.
Evran settles in. He keeps his back against the wall and his hands in his lap and his expression mildly curious, present but not participating, interested but not invested.
He watches the cards move across the table, the game unfamiliar, something with numbered tiles and a pattern of play he cannot quite follow, and makes a point of looking slightly lost.
"I'm better at watching than participating," he says when Torsten glances at him expectantly.
"You'll pick it up," Torsten says, and his knee shifts under the table, pressing against Evran's. Evran does not move away.
The room buzzes around them. Laughter from the front tables, the clink of cups, the low, steady hum of conversation that rises and falls. A barmaid circulates, a sturdy woman with her sleeves rolled up and a tray balanced on one hand, and she stops at their table on her first pass.
Torsten orders without consulting Evran. "Two Fire Wines."
Evran does not argue. The barmaid returns with two cups of something that is a deep, unsettling red and smells of scorched honey and something that might be turpentine. Torsten pushes a cup into Evran's hands without comment, and Evran takes it because refusing would draw attention.
He takes a deep drink.
The wine hits the back of his throat and keeps burning all the way down. His eyes water, his face floods with color, entirely involuntary this time, and he coughs once into his fist, as quietly as he can manage, while his sinuses stage a revolt.
Torsten leans in, closer than necessary, his breath against Evran's ear. "Fire Wine. A delicacy at Heldrin's End."
Evran makes a mental note to never drink it again for as long as he lives and says, his voice slightly hoarse, "I should probably stick to water for the rest of the night."
Torsten laughs but does not argue. He signals the barmaid for water, which arrives in a clay cup that Evran takes with gratitude and drinks half of immediately.
The fire in his throat subsides to a smolder, but his face is still pink, and the warmth spreading through his chest and stomach tells him that whatever Fire Wine is made of, it has no interest in being subtle.
He sets the wine aside and drinks water and watches the table play cards.
The evening wears on. Torsten plays and drinks and plays some more, and between rounds he tosses comments to Evran, about the game, about the players, about the quality of the ale and Mikkel's incompetent strategy.
The comments are playful, light, designed to include Evran in the conversation without requiring him to participate, and Evran responds with small laughs and nods and the occasional question about the rules, performing the role of the quiet, amiable companion.
But the Fire Wine is doing its work. He took barely three sips, but it is strong, stronger than anything he has had since the southern wines at Lord Galen's table, and his tolerance has been worn down by months of Drakkari mead, which is honey-sweet and mild by comparison.
His face stays pink, the warmth in his chest does not fade, and he feels it in his limbs, a looseness, a heaviness, the subtle erosion of the sharp edges of his awareness.
He is not drunk, and he is not close to drunk, but he is slower, and he notices it, and the noticing brings with it a flicker of alarm that he tamps down before it can reach his face.
He drinks more water, eats a piece of bread from the board on the table, and focuses on keeping his mind clear while his body tries to go soft at the edges.
The barmaid makes her second pass, then her third.
The room thins as the evening wears on, people drifting out in pairs and small groups, the noise level dropping from a roar to a murmur.
The lanterns seem dimmer, though that might be Evran's imagination, and the shadows in the corners of the room have deepened.
Evran is about to call it a night, to make his excuses, to stand up and walk out and wash this evening off in the basin in their room, when the table changes.
Mikkel leaves first, pushing back from the bench with a yawn and a muttered farewell. Then a man Evran did not notice from a neighboring table drifts over, sits for one round, and leaves. The room empties further. The barmaid wipes down the far tables and disappears into the kitchen.
And then it is just the four of them. Torsten, Dane, one other man who is stocky with a ruddy complexion and Windfar blues and who Evran realizes drifted over from the bar at some point, and Evran, pressed against the wall with a cup of water and a head that is less clear than he wants it to be.