IWOKE IN A BED. In a room. In an inn. More than that was not immediately clear to me. It felt exactly like someone had hit me in the head with a church.
I had been cleaned and bandaged. Very thoroughly bandaged. Someone had seen fit to treat all my recent injuries no manner how minor. I had white linen around my head, my chest, my knee, and one of my feet. Someone had even cleaned and wrapped the mild abrasions on my hands and the knife wound from three days ago when Ambrose’s thugs had tried to kill me.
The lump on my head seemed to be the worst of the lot. It throbbed and left me dizzy when I lifted my head. Moving was a lesson in punitive anatomy. I swung my feet off the edge of the bed and grimaced: deep tissue trauma to the medial-poloni in the right leg. I sat up: oblique strain to the cartilage between the lower ribs. I got to my feet: minor spraining of the sub…trans…damn, what was that called? I pictured Arwyl’s face, frowning behind his round spectacles.
My clothes had been washed and mended. I put them on, moving slowly to savor all the exciting messages my body was sending me. I was glad there wasn’t a mirror in the room, knowing I must look completely battered. The bandage around my head was rather irritating, but I decided to leave it on. From the way things felt, it might be the only thing keeping my head from falling into several different pieces.
I went to the window. It was overcast, and in the grey light the town looked awful, soot and ash everywhere. The shop across the street had been smashed like a dollhouse under a soldier’s boot. People moved about slowly, sifting through the wreckage. The clouds were thick enough that I couldn’t tell what time it was.
I heard a faint rush of air as the door opened, and I turned to see a young woman standing in the doorway. Young, pretty, unassuming, the sort of girl that always worked at little inns like this: a Nellie. Nell. The sort of girl who spent her life in a perpetual flinch because the innkeeper had a temper and a sharp tongue and wasn’t afraid to show her the back of his hand. She gaped at me, obviously surprised that I was out of bed.
“Was anyone killed?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The Liram boy got his arm broke pretty bad. And some folk got burned and such…” I felt my whole body relax. “You shouldn’t be up, sir. Doctor said you weren’t likely to wake up at all. You should rest.”
“Is…has my cousin come back to town?” I asked. “The girl who was out at the Mauthen farm. Is she here too?”
The young woman shook her head. “It’s just you, sir.”
“What time is it?”
“Supper’s not quite ready, sir. But I can bring you something if you like.”
My travelsack had been left by the side of the bed. I lifted it up onto my shoulder, it felt odd with nothing inside except the scale and loden-stone. I looked around for my boots until I remembered I’d kicked them off to get better traction running around the rooftops last night.
I left the room with the girl trailing behind me and headed down to the common room. It was the same fellow behind the bar as before, still wearing his scowl.
I walked up to him. “My cousin,” I said. “Is she in town?”
The barman turned the scowl toward the doorway behind me as the young girl emerged. “Nell, what in God’s hell are you doing letting him up? I swear you haven’t got the sense God gave a dog.”
So her name really was Nell. I would have found that amusing under different circumstances.
He turned to me and gave a smile that was really just a different sort of scowl. “Lord boy, does your face hurt? It’s killing me.” He chortled at his own joke.
I glared at him. “I asked about my cousin.”
He shook his head. “She hasn’t come back. Good riddance to bad luck, I say.”
“Bring me bread, fruit, and whatever meat you have ready in the back,” I said. “And a bottle of Avennish fruit wine. Strawberry if you have it.”
He leaned up against the bar and raised an eyebrow at me. His scowl reshaped itself into a small, patronizing smile. “No sense rushing about, son. The constable will be wanting to talk to you now that you’re up.”
I clenched my teeth against my first choice of words and took a deep breath. “Listen, I’ve had an exceptionally irritating couple of days, my head hurts in ways you don’t have the full wit to understand, and I have a friend who might be in trouble.” I stared at him, icy in my calm. “I have no desire to have things turn unpleasant. So I am asking you, kindly, to get me what I asked for.” I brought out my purse. “Please.”
He looked at me, anger slowly bubbling up onto his face. “You mouthy little swaggercock. If you don’t show me a little respect, I’ll sit you down and tie you to a chair until the constable comes.”
I tossed an iron drab onto the bar, keeping another clenched tight in my fist.
He scowled at it. “What’s that?”
I concentrated and felt a chill begin to bleed up my arm. “That is your tip,” I said as a thin curl of smoke began to curl up from the drab. “For your quick and courteous service.”
The varnish around the drab began to bubble and char in a black ring around the piece of iron. The man stared at it, mute and horrified.
“Now fetch me what I asked for,” I said, looking him in the eye. “And a skin of water too. Or I will burn this place down around your ears and dance among the ashes and your charred, sticky bones.”
I came to the top of the greystone hill with my travelsack full. I was barefoot, out of breath, and my head was throbbing. Denna was nowhere to be seen.
Making a quick search of the area, I found all my scattered possessions where I’d left them. Both blankets. The waterskin was mostly empty but other than that, everything was here. Denna might have just stepped away for a call of nature.
I waited. I waited for longer than was entirely sensible. Then I called for her, softly at first, then louder, though my head throbbed when I shouted. Finally I just sat. All I could think about was Denna waking alone, aching, thirsty, and disoriented. What must she have thought?
I ate a little then, trying to think of what I could do next. I considered opening the bottle of wine, but knew it was a bad idea, as I undoubtedly had a mild concussion. I fought off the irrational worry that Denna might have wandered into the woods in a delirium, and that I should go look for her. I considered lighting a fire, so she would see it and come back….
But no. I knew she was simply gone. She woke, saw that I wasn’t there, and left. She had said it herself when we left the inn in Trebon. I leave where I’m not wanted. The rest I can make up as I go. Did she think I had abandoned her?
Regardless, I knew in my bones that she was long gone from here. I packed up my travelsack. Then, just in case I was wrong, I wrote a note explaining what had happened and that I would wait for her in Trebon for a day. I used a piece of coal to write her name on one of the greystones, then drew an arrow down to where I left all the food I had brought, a bottle of water, and one of the blankets.
Then I left. My mood was not a pleasant one. My thoughts were not gentle or kind.