The goblin began wriggling out of her own soggy coat, revealing a moth-eaten nightshirt underneath. Zyll calmly wrung out the coat onto the floor, enlarging the puddle already soaking into the wood at her feet.
Fern joined them in disrobing, hanging her cloak and satchel on pegs to dry. Then she remembered Breadlee, and retrieved him from the interior pocket.
“Gah, thank the Eight. That cloak’s wet all the way through. Aww, am I getting tarnished? I am, aren’t I? And on my good side, too! Could you just give me a little buff? But not the kind where you breathe on me, that’s disgusting.”
“You’re drier than the rest of us. Besides, I don’t think Nigeleverhas to be polished,” replied Fern. “But maybe he’s just especially well-crafted.”
“That’s not how—didhetell you that?”
“Mm,” said Fern, noncommittal. She cast around for something to do with him, then deposited him on the mantel above the fireplace.
There was already wood in the grate, and a clay jar of long matches beside the hearth.
“I can startthisfire,” she muttered to herself, crouching. She fiddled with the logs and stuffed some splinters of kindling beneath them, before rasping a match alight on a sandpaper-wrapped brick and touching it to the tinder.
As the first tongues of flame crawled to life, a long sigh made her turn around.
Astryx finished lacing up her shirt, then sat cross-legged on one of the beds with her eyes closed. She breathed in through her nostrils, then out her mouth in a slow, meditative rhythm.
“You okay?” ventured Fern. “You seemed a little . . . put out.”
The Oathmaiden opened her eyes and stared at her very seriously. “There is one thing that I have never gotten used to in a thousand years, and that is being soaking wet. It never, ever gets any less objectionable. Ever.”
Clad only in her dirty nightshirt, Zyll bounced on the other bed alongside Nigel. The Elder Blade jounced up and down with every enthusiastic jump, and Fern could only imagine what he would have to say about the matter if he were unsheathed.
Fern and Astryx both chose to ignore her.
“Thank you for starting the fire.” The elf let her exhaustion show as if she’d shed a cloak obscuring it. “Now, I’m going to lie down and sleep until I can’t sleep anymore.”
Astryx dug around in her wet trousers where they were hung over the footboard and withdrew the small brass key to the room. She tossed it to Fern. “It’s best if she doesn’t leave this room. If you go out, lock her in.”
Snagging the key out of the air, Fern replied, “Um. All right. You’re not worried she’ll . . .” but the Blademistress was already flat on her back, her hands folded over her belly.
Her breath deepened, evened, and she was asleep.
“How do youdothat?” muttered Fern, who had never been as envious of another person as she was in that moment.
“Sleepy sleep!” cried Zyll, going limp mid-bounce and falling to the bed like a rock next to the longsword, whereupon she instantly began to snore.
“Godsdammit.”
Fern rubbed her eyes, seized Breadlee from the mantel and her satchel from the peg, and made for the door and the great room downstairs.
19
“This is gods-damned embarrassing,” moaned Breadlee as Fern used him to sharpen one of her pencils. The growl of the storm seemed distant amidst the plink of rainwater in the tin pots and the pop of the hearthfire.
“It’s a perfectly ordinary use for a knife. Stop complaining.”
“Aknife? Kid, there’s no call to be disrespectful.”
“That’s what you are,” replied Fern, serene.
“I’m agreatswordthat has experienced adiminishment.”
She snorted, shaving away another curl of wood.
“I don’t see you selling any books these days, but you still call yourself a bookseller. That’s rank hypocrisy, is what that is.Oh shit, here he comes—” The knife broke off as the innkeeper ducked his head into the great room. Fern was the only occupant, her fur slowly steaming dry before the fire, pencils and parchment on the table before her.
