Chapter Four #2
The Captain wore an unreadable frown, lips tugging against his scar and bleaching it a tense white.
He hadn’t – he couldn’t have – Had he seen, somehow?
The way he was watching me, his posture taut and still – it made my magic sing a low, crackling warning.
My heart was a wild thing in my chest, flailing against my ribs.
But the strange moment passed, and the Captain just sighed and glanced away, a hand scrubbed over his brow.
“Alright,” he said. “You win.”
“I – what?”
My thoughts had scattered, caught on a burning wind and shrivelled up to crisp black ashes. What had I won? A pair of manacles? A carriage ride to Kingsborough and a stay in the palace dungeons?
“You win,” he said again. “I can’t promise anything this side of Yule, but once things quiet down, I’ll arrange alternative accommodation for the newcomers.”
I blinked at him, my mind struggling to keep up.
“Where? We’re Stormsby’s one and only inn —”
“Do you want them gone or not?”
“I want you all gone.”
His lips twitched, though he didn’t seem particularly amused.
“Best I can do, I’m afraid.”
I didn’t move as the Captain backed away, as he strode slowly for the door.
Even as he crossed the threshold and paused, grabbing the doorway to halt his own momentum.
He glanced over one shoulder at me, intensely focused for a moment, almost poised to speak.
But then he just rapped his knuckles idly against the doorframe and disappeared.
My body remained a coiled spring, braced where I stood. It could have been five or fifteen minutes later that I sank to the bed and caught my breath.
The final kick in the teeth came later that afternoon.
I was checking in a sweet young newlywed couple who were passing through Stormsby to spend Yule with some of their family in Kingsborough.
While they stood at the desk mooning at each other, I scrabbled eagerly through the shelves for the keys to one of our last remaining rooms, and my hands closed around a scroll of parchment that someone had shoved into a pigeon hole.
A gold-sealed, crown-stamped parchment, requesting my bill for the second platoon of Kingsmen who would be arriving at the tavern ‘any day now’.
In the topmost corner was a chicken scratch note.
For your records,
Lieutenant Fischer
I read it again. And again. The letter was dated almost a week back. I balled it up in shaking hands, dropped it, and flattened it underfoot, then turned to find the newlyweds staring slack jawed at my blazing red face.
Though my lips trembled with effort, the smile I offered them was bright; perhaps alarmingly so.
“And how long will you be with us?”
???
I wanted the men gone and I was not subtle about it.
As much as I tried to avoid the Captain and his disconcerting effect on my magic, I was growing desperate enough that I’d taken to pestering him for brief, daily updates – always with the bar between us, and never with more than a few moments discussion.
That day was no exception; someone had spilled an entire bottle of stolen mead on their mattress and I’d had to heave the whole thing down the stairs and into the tavern to dry by the hearth, while the few soldiers seated at the bar looked passively on with bleary, hungover eyes.
I watched the door keenly, poised to spring the moment the Kingsmen returned from their day shift. When the door finally opened, I moved to the centre of the bar and steeled myself, watching the Captain kick the snow off his boots before he entered.
“Any luck with–”
“Oh, hullo.”
The Captain affected a startled air, wide-eyed and blinking as though he’d only just seen me.
Every bloody day.
“Hello,” I said curtly. I set down the glass I’d been polishing with slow, determined calm, and gave him a moment to cut in as he normally would. At his silence, I went on; “Your hunt today–”
“How are you?”
I broke off again, this time with an irrepressible huff of frustration.
The Captain had swaggered closer to the bar, and now propped an armoured elbow against it, leaning on one side and smiling pleasantly at me like we were old friends catching up at the Sunday market.
He was glowing with a slight damp sheen, dark waves plastered to his forehead by drying sweat, and a streak of what I hoped was dirt rather than old blood smeared across his cheek, neatly disrupted by the silvery line of his scar.
Behind him, his men were filing in looking similarly dishevelled, some of them collapsing in heaps at tables around the tavern while others half-crawled toward the door to the inn.
The polite one – Brennan – approached the bar with orders of ale and cider echoing at his back.
I held up a finger to let him know I’d be a moment, then turned wearily to the Captain.
His teeth flashed in a gleaming grin.
“Splendid weather, is it not? First day since I’ve arrived that it hasn’t snowed non-stop–”
“What are you doing, exactly?”
“Making a point.”
“Do you plan on approaching that point anytime soon?”
Mischief lit his eyes an almost eerie shade of green, but he sighed and stared off into the middle distance. With a dramatic shrug, armour shifting at his shoulders, he began to trace doleful little shapes on my countertop.
“Just that it’s always Did you catch him? and When are you leaving?” he said, so morose it was almost convincing. “What happened to How was your morning, Captain? or My, you look especially handsome today?”
Despite myself, I rose to his dramatics, a hand splayed on my chest in false remorse; my Flame swirled curiously at my fingers, but mercifully made no attempt to breach my hold.
“Goodness, how callous of me. How about: My, you’re especially vexing today?”
His scar stretched taut with the breadth of his smile.
“I save my best for you, Rosie.”
“Rosaleen. Roz, if you must.”
“Oh, I must.”
My pulse gave an odd stutter, but I made sure he saw my eyes roll before I turned to take Brennan’s order.
The Captain didn’t move away, and as he clearly wasn’t planning on answering my question – or even letting me ask it – I could only assume he was not quite done with antagonising me.
Even with my back turned I could feel his eyes on me, the answering tightness in my chest that came with actively quelling my Flame, heart pulsing a half-beat faster with the effort.
I peered over my shoulder, and indeed, he watched me still.
Watched me as one might watch a bird in the garden, green eyes lit with detached interest. My magic twitched behind its too-tight cage.
Calm, I told it. Our new mantra, my endless plea.
I turned to Brennan with the brightest smile I was capable of, felt it light my face with a glow that warmed the apples of my cheeks.
“And how are you today, lovely?”
I poured the first pint of ale and slid it across the bar, shining the warmth of my smile his way. Brennan shot a stricken look between me and his Captain.
“H-how am I?”
I breathed a light little laugh and passed him the next two pints. “It’s not a trick question.”
“Oh, I’m–” He glanced at the Captain again. “I’m well?”
“Glad to hear it. You seem tired.”
A tilt of my head as I poured another pint, gaze soft and wide on his to channel Sorcha’s doe-eyed sweetness. I pulled out a wooden tray and helped him arrange the glasses upon it.
Brennan hesitated. “A bit.”
I gave a knowing hum. “Busy day?”
The Captain laughed his rough, fluid laugh, and I tried to ignore the weak glow in my chest.
“Here we go,” he chuckled.
Poor Brennan was flushed with confusion, his boyish cheeks burning a rosy bronze as he blinked down at the pints on his tray, then hesitantly up, first at me and then his Captain.
“Point made, Rosie, let the lad be.”
Brennan offered me a slight, apologetic smile and quickly backed away with his tray, ale sloshing a little over the sides of the pint glasses in his haste.
I waved him off with a flutter of my fingers, savouring the Captain’s expectant attention without returning it.
It felt good; ignoring him, my Flame calm in my chest even if my skin burned under his gaze.
Clearly it didn’t feel quite as good to him, and he finally gave in.
“So, Brennan gets the sunbeam smile and sweet manners?”
I cut him a sideways glare. Sunbeam smile, indeed. “Careful, Captain, or I’ll start to imagine you’re jealous.”
He ignored the jibe.
“Is it something I’ve done wrong?” He sounded genuinely curious. “Or something Brenann’s done right?”
“Brennan is polite. Brennan knows my name.”
“I know your name.”
“And yet you choose not to use it.”
He laughed, the sound rolling like water over river beaten rocks, smooth and light with a rough undercurrent.
Easy, pleasant laughter, like it was all just banter.
His eyes shone with that same ease, but the tightness in my chest returned, the restraint around my Flame trembling like an overworked muscle.
“Interestingly enough, I don’t think I’ve heard you say my name once in the four days we’ve been here.”
“You know what, Caelan? You’ve made this very simple conversation so painful that I’ve lost all interest in your hunt. I’ll just assume you’ve failed – again – and resign myself to another night of losing business to your all-important mission.”
He reeled, smirk slipping for the first time, a flicker and then a fall. The Captain straightened up, one hand flat on the bar as he cast a deliberate look around, green eyes flashing cold as steel as they took in the tavern.
Roy sat in a corner casting wistful looks out the window for Tanner – for anyone – and alternately sighing into his tankard of warmed cider.
The rest of the space was taken up by the Kingsmen.
They were scattered over several rickety tables, some of them playing cards, others accepting pints from Brennan’s tray or pulling out bags of coin while they collected further drink orders from their fellows.