“And we’re trapped, if we need to get out in a hurry,” Jade said, pointing to the iron bars covering the windows. “Are we guests or prisoners?”
“They probably don’t want people running off without paying,” Cat said. “Emily? What do you think?”
Emily looked around the room. Two wooden beds–she rather suspected the innkeeper had thought she would be sharing with one of the men–covered in sheets that looked decidedly unclean. Chamberpots under the bed, as she’d expected; a bucket of water in the corner, clearly an afterthought. The New Learning included plenty of warnings about how diseases spread, and how even something as simple as boiling water or washing one’s hands could keep them from spreading, but not everyone believed it. There were places on the Nameless World–particularly near cities–where drinking the water was a good way to commit suicide.
“It will have to do,” she said, as she put her bag down. There was no point in complaining about it. The innkeeper had no reason to think they needed a better room, assuming one was available. They might have been given the best room in the inn. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah,” Cat said. He winked at her. “Shall we go down for dinner?”
“We can’t go together,” Jade reminded him. His expression darkened. “I don’t like leaving our stuff here.”
“Put up a very basic ward,” Cat suggested. “We should be able to get away with it.”
Emily had her doubts. No one would think twice about a mercenary carrying a wand, or a handful of protective amulets, but a ward would be far too revealing. If, of course, someone dared try to search the room. A thief would be risking everything if he were caught. No one would bat an eyelid if a would-be thief was killed by his victim. She’d seen mutilated criminals wandering around towns in the past. None of them had any hope of a better life.
“Rig the door, instead,” she suggested. “A charm to keep it closed unless one of us is turning the key should be workable.”
“Good thought,” Jade said. “Give me a moment.”
Emily watched as he set up a handful of tells to alert them if someone managed to enter and search the room anyway, then hurried back down the stairs to the upper hall. It was bigger than she’d expected, given that women wouldn’t be that common on the roads; women crammed the tables, while a grim-faced waitress moved from table to table, taking orders and bringing food from the kitchen. Emily felt her stomach churn–she knew how grimy inn kitchens could be–but there was no alternative. The only consolation was that the men wouldn’t be having anything better.
A middle-aged woman waved to her. “Just passing through?”
“Yes,” Emily said, taking the implied invitation and sitting down. She would have preferred to eat alone, but that wasn’t a possibility either. “We’re going to Alexis.”
“I hear the roads are clogged there,” the woman said. “We’re heading away from Alexis.”
Emily ordered food–rabbit stew and bread–then leaned back in her chair and listened to her dining companions as they talked. Sharing stories and rumors was a tradition, she’d heard, but it wasn’t something she’d done before. The last time she’d been to an inn, it had been with Lady Barb, deep in the Cairngorms. There just hadn’t been enough people traveling to keep the tradition alive. Here, it was different. She said as little as she could as they talked.
“The king is supposed to have locked up the princess,” one woman said, when the conversation turned to politics. She looked to be a merchant’s wife, although she could easily have been the merchant herself. “She’s somewhere in the castle.”
“Rubbish,” another woman said. “She’s dead.”
“Or leading an army against the king,” a third woman said. “The rumors keep growing.”
“I heard she was caught in bed with a footman,” the second woman said. “Or even a maid.”
The women giggled. Emily felt a hot flash of anger on Alassa’s behalf, even as she tried to work out who might be spreading the rumors and why. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard awful stories about Alassa, stories that would make her seem unsuitable for the throne…the mere suggestion that Jade might not have fathered Alassa’s child would call the baby’s legitimacy into question. But there were plenty of paternity spells to make sure the child was truly his…
“Baron Gaillard has been taxing all caravans that pass through his territory,” the merchant woman said. “He’s even been putting the squeeze on the free towns.”
“He isn’t the only one,” the second woman said. Emily had no idea what she did. Her clothes suggested a middle-class life, but they were curiously bland. “Baroness Winter Flower has demanded more taxes too.”
Emily frowned. Alicia? King Randor’s former mistress? Or had her husband taken control of the barony? Lord Burrows wouldn’t have been married off to a baroness if the king hadn’t been sure of his loyalty. Who was really in charge? And why were they raising taxes?
They want a fighting fund, she thought, grimly. And who knows what side they’ll take?
“I hear there’s trouble in Cockatrice,” the merchant woman said. “We were hoping to go there, after visiting Callable.”
“Cockatrice?” Emily leaned forward, interested. “What’s happening there?”
“It depends who you believe,” the merchant woman said. “But most of the stories agree that the king’s man in the castle is shitty.”
“The baroness should go back,” the second woman grumbled. “My husband isn’t going to invest any monies if he doesn’t trust the baron to repay him.”
So your husband is a banker, then, Emily thought. Or a loan shark.
The third woman looked at Emily. “What is it like, traveling with two sellswords?”
Emily lifted her eyebrows in surprise, then realized the woman must have seen Jade and Cat when they’d walked her down to the hall. Their forelocks made them instantly recognizable as mercenaries. And…she met the woman’s eyes, reading the challenge there. She wanted to put Emily down, to put her right at the bottom of the table hierarchy…Emily almost laughed at just how petty it was. It wasn’t as if any of them were in school.
And if you knew who you were talking to, she thought wryly, you’d throw yourself on the ground so fast you’d crack your head against the stone.
“It’s never boring,” she said, choosing to pretend she wasn’t supposed to be ashamed of herself. Most of the kept women she’d seen in Farrakhan had looked downtrodden, all too aware that they could be replaced at any moment. “And I’ve seen things you would not believe.”
The merchant woman smiled, a little weakly. “Why don’t you tell us about them?”
Emily shrugged and launched into a story about the battles in and around Farrakhan. She had been there, after all. And even if they doubted her, they’d never be able to prove she was lying. Halfway through the story, her meal arrived. She picked at the rabbit stew and bread as she talked, enjoying their attention. It might make them see the world a little differently.
“So you won the war,” the merchant woman said, finally.
That was truer than she knew, Emily reflected. “Yeah,” she said. “And then we were told to move out of the city before the end of the month.”
“Because sellswords are unpopular,” the third woman said. “No one wants you around when there’s no risk of war.”
Emily nodded. No one liked mercenaries, not even the noblemen who hired them. And a mercenary who was badly wounded would be lucky if he received anything in the way of medical attention. Even a chirurgeon would be reluctant to treat a mercenary.
“Which is why you’re going to Alexis,” the banker woman said. “What do you think will happen there?”
“We’ll find work, of course,” Emily said. “I’ll spend my days washing their clothes and shining their swords, then we’ll move on.”
“And they call you Emily,” the merchant woman said.
Emily had to fight to keep the surprise off her face. The woman must have overhead Jade or Cat addressing her by name.
“My name is Millie,” she said. “They just like the sound of Emily.”