By the time I finished grooming, feeding and watering the horses, an extensive meal was being laid out in the inn’s common room.Mary, Grant and Ben were nowhere to be seen, but the innwife directed me to a bathing room—already damp and showing signs of use—and pressed a banyan and a men’s long shirt into my arms.
“Get warm and dry, then come and eat,” she instructed with maternal firmness, then left me be.
By the time I finished and returned to the common room, my companions were already there, the air full of the scent of thick, hot meat pie, bread and a fruity wine spiced with cardamom, drowning out the perpetual damp and nip of the cold.
Mary smiled at me across the table, her skin pinked with warmth and cleanliness instead of chill.Her hair was in a drying knot, and she wore a Mereish wrapped gown of modest colors.
I smiled back, hiding my raw nerves.I almost told her about Hae’s connection to my headaches right then, but the contentedness in her eyes stopped me.
Just an hour.She deserved an hour of peace.We all did.Hae, if my senses were to be trusted, was still trapped on the other side of the river.We had time.
I self-consciously ran my thumb across my opposite forearm, where I had pinned my Mereish coin to my skin with a handkerchief, hidden under my sleeve.While it remained there my connection tothe Other remained smothered, my head did not ache so fiercely, and, I prayed, the other Sooth could not actively track me.My coin was not the same as Mary’s and Ben’s, but it was all we had.
Such constant use would, however, corrupt me all the faster.
Mary’s smile dimmed, and she shot me a lingering glance, but either she marked my expression as harmless or she granted me my silence.
“Eat,” the innwife said as she made for the door.“I’m for my bed, pious children.”
Ben smirked slightly at the name.He and Grant wore clothes as eclectic as Mary and I did, but they were clean and dry and he seemed unbothered.
Mary stole a bread roll and ate it while she shook out her hair beside the fire, then claimed the chair beside Grant, who had filled our cups.Tane, for her part, slipped to the window to keep watch.To my surprise, the indigo-grey light of Grant’s ghisting, in the form of a mangy hound—very much like the one we had seen back at the farmhouse—separated from the highwayman and joined her, sitting patiently at her side.
Grant watched him with a proprietary kind of distrust.
Beneath the table, Mary’s sock-clad foot wedged between my calves.This time my smile was genuine.
“This is wonderful,” she said, reaching for her cup.“Thank you for seeing to the horses.Are you all right?”
“I am very well,” I placated.
“How long can we stay here?”Grant inquired, still watching his manifest ghisting.It had taken the form of an overlarge crab now, and was crawling inexorably up the wall.
“Until dawn,” I said.
“Well, then,” Grant rallied and looked to his plate, “let us make the most of it.”
Over the course of the meal, some of my tension ebbed, soothed by Mary’s apparent contentedness and her sock-clad feet, leechingwarmth off my legs.Grant carried the conversation, speaking of everything save our situation.Benedict seemed content just to eat, occasionally staring between us but otherwise keeping to himself.
“They have a proper summer there, you know, in the Mereish South Isles,” Grant said, though every child of the Winter Sea knew of the fabled southern climate.He was into his third cup of wine and showed uncommon restraint in taking this one slowly.“A full six months without snow, can you imagine that?No fear of your face freezing off your skull.No being snow-stayed with your mother’s second cousin in Jurry because even the sleigh coaches cannot manage the drifts.”
“Very specific,” Mary commented, using bread to mop gravy from her plate.
“It happened not once, not twice, but three times,” Grant said with an air of conspiracy, leaning forward.The light of the oil lamp on the table gave his blond beard, newly growing in, a reddish glow.“Have I mentioned I hate Jurry?Parties and perfume shops, and pastries so sweet one needs a gallon of coffee to wash them down.”
“As much as I enjoy pastries,” Mary said, “perhaps it is best I never made it there.”
Discreetly, I tried to gauge whether this turn in conversation was one she wanted to take.Mary’s first venture away from home had been to Jurry, but her coach had been attacked on the road by highwaymen and she had been set adrift in the world.It was the first step that brought her to Whallum and into my path.It was also a topic Mary steadfastly avoided, and she had only shared the account with me once.
Mary caught my eye.She must have seen my concern, because her expression softened into a wry smile, and she gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
“I am quite sure it was the Tumblers who took your coach,” Grant continued tactlessly.He swished his wine in its red-glazed clay cup.“I do keep my ear to the ground when it comes to these things, ifthe opportunity arises.They are a foul lot, Saint knows it.I know it.Did I tell you about the time they robbedme?I suffered theftandunnecessary depontication.My wig was ruined.”
“Indeed,” I said with finality.“Speaking of wigs.We need new clothes, disguises, before we reach Ostchen.We should search the next village.”
“You mean steal?”Ben clarified.
The word riled me, as did his voice and the memory of all that had passed between us in the stables.“Yes.Our situation, I fear, has grown worse.”
