Chapter Twelve. In Which There Is Only One Bed
CHAPTER TWELVE
In Which There Is Only One Bed
Having discovered the inn next to the saloon, Risa glowered at the sign nailed to the door.
NO OUTLAWS ALLOWED, it read, which could have saved them from narrowly avoiding an outright tavern brawl if she’d bothered to properly explore the town and hadn’t ducked into the first building she saw.
The clear outline of a stray bullet hole with wood splintered around the wound did not inspire confidence, but at least they wouldn’t have met Mustache.
The inn, much like the saloon, was old and run-down.
It boasted some hints of its former glory—fancy but faded wallpaper, gaslight sconces, a beautifully stained wood counter—but it had long ago fallen into disrepair and neglect, the upkeep no doubt impossible when the clientele was more prone to violence than the average population.
Still, Risa would much rather sleep there than in the Cairn mayor’s study-dungeon or a dwarf’s rickety cart.
A man with slicked-back hair stood behind the counter, shuffling through an assortment of mail and wanted posters. He paused at their arrival and raised his head to take them in. Before they could reach the counter, he held up a hand to stop them in their tracks.
“We don’t serve outlaws.”
Javi scoffed, clearly insulted at the suggestion. “My good man, could an outlaw look like this?”
“Yes,” the innkeeper said simply. He considered Risa with narrowed eyes.
“We’re not,” Risa assured him, though he didn’t look convinced.
“Prove it.”
Javi’s offense dissipated. “How?”
The innkeeper’s face turned serious. “Dance.”
Javi nodded, but Risa took a step back, her hold around Brunie tightening. “Dance?” she asked.
“Have you ever heard of an outlaw who could dance?”
“He has a point,” the prince confirmed.
Risa guffawed at the words, the sound turning into a full-on squeal when Javi took her free hand and pulled her close, slipping his other hand around her waist. She had no time to pull away or give him a proper scolding as he swept her into a twirl that stole her breath.
The moves were incomprehensible to her; she tripped over her own feet as he guided them in an effortless whirl over the scuffed wooden floors of the inn, each step in time with the increasing pitch of Brunie’s yowling.
When they stopped, the innkeeper’s leathery face broke into an impish smile, the brackets around his mouth deepened, and his brown eyes twinkled with uncontained mirth. Before Risa could say a word, his bushy brows and matching mustache wiggled.
“There’s only one room.”
“I am a promised man,” Javi said in mock affront.
Risa glanced at the room rates scribbled on the back of an old wanted poster, the red X faintly visible.
“Your virtue is safe with me,” she told Javi, reaching into her pack for the pouch of reales she’d taken from her family’s safe.
She handed a silver real to the man, who pocketed it instead of placing it in the wooden till.
“I’ve been known to be irresistible,” Javi told the innkeeper with a suggestive eyebrow.
Risa took the key from the sniggering innkeeper. Turning to Javi, she leveled him with a narrowed gaze and ignored the shaky breath he took in response.
“You needn’t worry. Your wiles have no effect.”
He gave her a faint, spluttering laugh. “I’ve noticed.”
The innkeeper rattled off the advantages of staying at the only inn in Spearbelly.
There were but a few robberies a week. A measly dozen a month, which was, at the very least, four times less than outside its walls.
Plus, the inn provided free breakfast ale made from grapes, which Risa suspected was just wine.
After the unconvincing spiel, the pair made their way up the cramped, rickety stairs, wood groaning with every step.
Antique brass sconces cast shadows on the faded yellow wallpaper, though a few were missing, remnants of their existence left in the nails still hammered in the wall.
Every few feet, a rectangle of less-faded wallpaper stood out, where a painting once hung before it’d been carried off by a thief or ripped to shreds by a wayward knife.
Their room was in the middle of the hallway, boding either well for them or not well at all. Risa jiggled the key in the lock before it gave a loud creak in protest and opened. It would make a good alert if anyone bothered to come in that way.
It was a small chamber—stuffy with warm, stagnant air—and had barely enough room for a solitary cot.
A moth-eaten armchair was tucked into a corner where the wallpaper had been slashed.
The window was barred with iron to deter thieves and murderous ruffians, though that meant it blocked their only exit besides the door.
The floor was littered with scuffs and drag marks, while vague brown spots suggested that many violent events had occurred within the four walls.
Seeing the room in its bare, ramshackle splendor made Risa miss her childhood bedroom.
The years she’d spent turning it into the one place where she could be herself, away from the prying eyes of her town and her parents, a monster playing the part of a lonely girl.
The green walls, the plush bed, the collection of witchtraps kept hidden beneath a floorboard in case her mother walked in.
For seventeen years, she’d considered it a comfortable cage, but there were worse things.
Fatigue dulled the edges of her vision and settled over her. She wanted to crawl under the thin quilt, lie down on the narrow cot, and sleep for a hundred years.
She opened the window as far as it would go, sending dust motes dancing in the midafternoon light.
Outside, she had a good view of the stables behind the inn, where a few snorting horses sniffed at their troughs.
Otherwise, the back alley was empty, and their conversation would go unheard by nosy outlaws eager to make a few reales from Javi’s pretty head.
“The Wolf asked us to meet her at midnight,” she informed the prince, hip against the windowsill.
He frowned at that. “Should we? She is an outlaw…” Javi settled in the armchair, Brunie following after him.
The cat climbed into Javi’s lap, tail twitching as the prince stroked his back in idle contemplation.
“Though she can’t be any older than, what—seven?
How does one become an outlaw at that age? ”
Risa blinked at him. “You’re joking. She’s my age.”
He shrugged. “I suppose you’re right that gallivanting around a lawless town seems more appropriate for a nine-year-old, but she’s definitely still a child.”
“She’s at least sixteen.”
Javi’s hand paused over Brunie’s tail, his nose wrinkling. “No. She’s maybe ten.”
“Are you blind?”
“I’ll settle for twelve.”
She eyed him with curiosity, leaning forward to get a better look at his face. “You must have noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“She’s beautiful.” At least, she thought so. Trying to recall the outlaw’s face made the hairs on her arms rise.
“I didn’t notice. I was distracted.”
“By the possibility of being murdered? Again?”
His eyes flashed, and then he shrugged, returning to Brunie’s wriggling demands. “That’s right.”
For a moment, she recalled the feeling of his chest against her back there in the saloon. The grip of his fingers around her arms, holding her still. The way his breath had stirred the hair around her ears.
Expecting some teasing words from him, Risa readied a retort on her tongue (something about how women weren’t for his ogling pleasure), but his face was all serious angles. Mouth pinched, a wrinkle between his brows. Elbows on his thighs, hands cradled under his chin, gold eyes narrowed.
“I don’t remember her face at all,” he finally admitted.
She swallowed around the knot in her throat. “Well, the Wolf is going to either kidnap you or kill you for the reward money. I think we should pay her more than you’re worth to alleviate the desire. How many hearts have you broken to warrant a wanted poster?”
Javi didn’t seem perturbed by the existence of his bounty. “Many. But those were weeks ago.”
“Could it be political?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. Very few people know about the betrothal. Unless someone in my father’s circle—or the general’s—talked?” He wet his lips to whisper, “Or perhaps one of my guards survived?”
He sounded so hopeful that Risa’s heart plummeted into her stomach. She couldn’t imagine how he must feel about the massacre; he’d steered clear of it. She’d figured he hated unpleasant topics, but now she realized he might have blamed himself.
“Perhaps,” she said, because it seemed a kindness she could provide.
He nodded, though he didn’t look convinced.
“Why would anyone be so bloodthirsty?” she asked, eager to move away from the massacre, unwilling to interrogate her own feelings about what her curse had inflicted on people she didn’t even know.
“I’m not sure. It’s not like anyone needs me. I’m too lowly to be considered a valuable asset. I’m just another one of the Kheadish king’s sons in a long line of sons. I’m not a tool. I’m not a message.”
“The people love you,” she said, unable to keep jealousy from coloring her voice.
“Yes,” Javi agreed, the word laced in bitterness. “Until they don’t.”
That hung between them, a dangling truth he refused to elaborate on and she refused to accept, because doing so would mean allowing vulnerability.
It would mean that her impressions were wrong, that there might be more to Javi than being “el principito.” Worse, she didn’t want to find out he was more like her than she cared to admit—just a boy, forced to wear a mask that didn’t fit, play a role he didn’t want.
Risa didn’t know how to lay down her arms, how to bring down the walls—not so someone else could climb through, but so she could climb out and meet them on the other side.
She pushed off from the window and settled on the corner of the bed, testing its weight. If a plank of wood with some straw sprinkled atop it was meant to be luxury in Spearbelly, well then, they were living in the lap of it.