Chapter Six #2
a bedside table with a single candle in a brass candleholder, and a threadbare rug that might have once been yellow.
“Breakfast at sunrise,” the innkeeper says. “Then we’ll talk about how you’ll earn your keep.” He shuts the door behind him.
I feel Titus’s eyes on me. “You can have the cot,” he says.
“Oh, I’ll be fine on the floor. I can sleep any—”
“I’ll sleep in front of the door,” he says. “The window is high, so we probably don’t need to worry about it.”
I dump my saddlebag onto the foot of the cot. “You really do think they’ll rob us, don’t you?”
“I think they’ll try.”
I unlace my boots and yank them off. I wriggle my toes, enjoying the burning stretch. A small hole in my stocking winks at
me from the little toe of my right foot. Maybe someone at the inn has darning needles I can borrow.
As I shove the boots beneath the cot, I say, “You’re fearless when we camp in the open. You don’t even keep watch. But when
we’re safe inside a reputable inn, you turn into a hand-wringing fishwife.”
He flips out his bedroll before the door. “People are unpredictable. Even the ones you think you can trust. You’d do well
to remember.”
“If you say so.” My cot has a single blanket, so I flip out my own bedroll for extra warmth and crawl underneath. The straw
mattress is thin and a bit pokey—the innkeeper in me is outraged at the poor quality—but compared to the hard ground I’ve
been sleeping on, it’s paradise.
Wind whistles against the pane of our single high window, but beyond that is a familiar blizzard sound, a noise so deep and steady that it’s almost like silence—until you realize you’re shouting to be heard. We got here just in time.
I bring up the blanket and bedroll to tuck under my shoulders. Lying here, the warmest and fullest I’ve been in days, I can
almost pretend I’m home in the bedroom I shared with Anja. My mother used to say that drifting off to sleep was when she got
her best ideas. This world is too hard, she said, and a woman must be on the strange border of wakefulness and sleep to escape the binds of daily sensibility and find the truest
things. And it’s now, just as I’m losing consciousness, that I worry the blizzard will blow itself out quick, that I’ll have to say
goodbye to Titus too soon.
The blizzard rages all the next day. Snow drifts against the walls of the inn and covers the windows. Titus spends most of
the day with a shovel, helping to keep paths to the barn and woodshed clear. He and the stable boy run ropes between buildings
to use as guides; then they take turns tending the small hearth in the barn. In weather like this, the horses are as likely
to die in a fire as freeze to death.
I get to work cleaning the common room. I toss the old rushes out the back door, telling myself I’ll sweep them away when
the weather clears. Using snowmelt water, rags, and scouring sand, I scrub the entire floor. One wood plank in the corner
is so badly rotted with old urine that I get permission from the innkeeper—his name is Arguld—to pry it up. I replace it temporarily
with one of the flatter pieces of firewood, which still leaves a gap in the corner, but at least doesn’t stink. Titus grabs
an armload of fresh straw from the barn and helps me spread it around.
I offer to boil all the sheets—my skin itches for thinking of how long it’s been since their last boiling—but we’re short on firewood, with no idea of how long the blizzard will last. Arguld tells me we’ll discuss it again when the storm passes.
He’s so impressed with our work for the day that he pulls a barrel of honey mead from the cellar and lets us drink our fill.
My injured shoulder is sore, but I have that happy-tired feeling from good hard work, and I’m warm and woolly with mead when
the stable boy asks for a dance.
I accept. If I’m going to be stuck here for a few months, I might as well make some friends.
The others scoot the tables back to make space in the center of the room. We are a small group: the stable boy, two servants,
three paying customers besides Titus and me—winter trappers by the look of their gnarled hands, unkempt beards, and worn buckskins.
One servant leaves and returns with a lute. He strums a few chords, then launches into a ditty about a heartbroken whore who
kills herself by leaping over the Edge of the World. The song is supposed to be funny, but it’s not, and the servant plays
badly and sings even worse. Still, the stable boy and I swing around the room like he’s a godsblessed collegiate minstrel.
As we dance, one of the servants circles his forefinger in the air, and smoke from the hearth follows it in a steady stream.
He makes the smoke dance whirligigs to the music, and everyone claps as though it’s the cleverest Gift we’ve ever seen.
“Where did your brother get that horse?” the stable boy asks mid-twirl, and I’m so startled that I recoil and wrench my shoulder.
“He did some work for a lord,” I say smoothly. “A lord with too many horses and not enough sons.” I glance over at Titus,
who sits near the hearth quietly sipping another flagon of mead. He watches us closely, and I can’t tell if he’s glowering
or if his face is just stuck that way.
“He told me he won it playing three moons,” the boy says. He’s half a head shorter than I am, and I have a sudden urge to
cuff his ears.
“Ah well, it’s possible he didn’t give his sister the real story. Mother would kill him if she knew he was gambling.”
“He said your mother died.”
“I expect her killing rage could extend to this life even from the hallowed halls of Barathrum.”
“It’s a fine horse,” he says. “Finest I ever saw.”
“You and me both! Can hardly believe my brother got his giant paws on one.”
He spins me again, and my shoulder twinges. “You’ve a quick tongue. Too quick. And you have prison marks on your wrists. Some
people here think you’re not really brother and sister. They say you’re really a lord and his . . . kept lady.”
“What?”
“If you and your brother wanted to earn some coin, good coin, you could—”
I yank out of his grip, and my elbow knocks against something hard as my shoulder tears and pain shoots into my neck. The
statue of Morvinrog clatters across the floor and comes to rest against a table leg, its frowning “curse” side facing upward.
The lute goes silent. The dancing smoke dissolves into the air.
Everyone stares as I stand gasping, cradling my elbow.
Their eyes are hungry. Expectant. As though they’ve been privy to the entire conversation.
Or at least expected it. That’s why the stable boy asked me to dance.
They put him up to it. They wanted to know if Titus brought me here to sell me.
“So what do you think?” the stable boy presses. His gaze travels the length of my body from head to toe. “Once we get some
food in you, you’ll fill out and—”
A bench scrapes behind me. The stable boy’s eyes flare wide, and he takes a step backward. A rough hand grips my elbow.
“My sister has had a long day and will retire for the night,” Titus says.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him to back off, that I can take care of myself, but he pulls at my elbow, and I cry
out as my shoulder joint turns to fire. He quickly shifts his grip and hustles me away.
Once we’re safely in our room with the door closed, I plunk down on the cot to avoid him, still cradling the elbow of my bad
arm.
After a moment, he says, “If I leave you here, they will violate you.” His forehead is furrowed, his fists clenched.
“They will try,” I admit.
“I can’t take you with me.”
“I know.”
“But I shouldn’t leave you here.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t.”
Surely he will say something placating like “Don’t worry, Bria, I’d never leave you alone with these ruffians.” But in typical
fashion, he says nothing at all.