Bree-land at last, though it did not feel like relief. Ambling south through the sloping city streets, guided by lamplight, she let her gaze drift above. The tall, sharply angled rooftops stood starkly black against their backdrop of stars. She could not pretend she was elsewhere, under a tunnel of trees or else crossing open fields. The cobbles were too hard, and she was alone.
The caravan had continued on without her. She knew it would, but she’d grown used to their company. Too used to it, she reminded herself. She’d almost made friends—an easy trap to fall into after the three months she’d signed on with them. Three months that had sustained her, but she needed more than that. Bree might offer more, and so there she was. She’d stay six months, maybe a year if the work was good. By then other towns might have forgotten her, and she’d be free to return. There were other places, she remembered with a shiver, that would never forget her, roads she knew led right to ruin. She’d avoided those when she could. She’d be safe in Bree, for now.
He had been so confident—the white-haired man in the inn. Her skill for hiding in plain sight was unsurpassed in some parts, but he’d somehow drawn her out. Staggering past the Armsmaster’s workshop, she mused, the whiskey oiling her thoughts. He was cunning, mercurial, seeming calm...but she knew rip currents in shallow waters to be sudden, invisible, and dangerous. She sensed the flows beneath his surface did not mirror the gentle, lapping moods that made his company so comfortable.
He was unpretentious—a quality she trusted. In a world they appeared to share, hubris could get you killed.
A chill shook her as she turned towards the Gaol Gate. The hungry courtyard lured a wind down from the higher streets and alleyways that crested the hill. He’d threatened her, hadn’t he? He’d spoken so gently, his words dark and effortless. She’d had feelings well before she’d managed to form thoughts. They eluded her still, and the bottle he’d made her buy didn’t help. Not made her...she’d offered, despite visiting the tavern that night with no intention of spending her own coin. That was money she didn’t have. She’d make up the coin soon, though, if he kept his word.
Her shoulder thudded bodily against treated oak as she stumbled into the gate post. Lost in thoughts and darkness, she’d not seen it. Even if she had, her reflexes were not her own, but the whiskey's. A few steps later, and it took her ten minutes of standing in the road to puzzle which way were her lodgings. The clothier’s house where she’d rented a spare mattress was cheaper than the inn and safer than a tent in the south skirmish camp. Rogues and wayfarers, the lot of them. There was no telling who might recognize her or how much they could add up the scattered bounties on her head, weregilds long unpaid.
She found it, at last, and staggered to the back of the house to pry open the cellar door. She climbed inside, a hand bearing the weight of it as she lowered herself into the dark. She took her time guiding it closed until it purred quietly against the frame. Eleven steps she counted, one at a time, and she was careful to find her footing when she’d reached the last. She’d faced stairs before and lost. She couldn’t afford another broken rib or a fractured wrist, not if she was going to make her way in a new town.
Fumbling along the walls and shelves, she nudged a crate by accident, sparking a chorus of glass chimes as the bottles jostled each other. She held her breath, but there was no creak from the sleeping cottage above. She moved more slowly, and at last she made it to her corner of the cold room and felt with her boot for the edge of the mattress.
“Shh…” she scolded when she heard a whine. Something lumbered in the dark and the mattress shifted, lightened of a heavy load. Belfry settled herself on its edge and bent to unstrap her boots as a hungry sniffing filled her ears. She felt a cold nose and then a rough tongue against her earring before it found her cheek and lapped dutifully. She chuckled.
“I missed you, too, Cloven,” she slurred as she finally yanked her boots off and leaned against the furry mass beside her. She loosened the buckles and laces of her wire-decked jerkin and sank into the mattress, too tired to bother further. The menschenretter settled its stocky frame beside her, and she looped one arm across it, scrunching her nose as it wiggled its head between her neck and shoulder.
Belfry stroked the dog’s double coat as she felt her thoughts slosh and settle like liquid in an upturned jar. She’d met other curious people in the few days she’d been in Bree—kind and foreign. Thoughts for the morning, she relented as she drifted, beaten to sleep by the beast gently snoring beside her. Her thoughts framed the one good look she’d given that man in the tavern when he’d chanced to face the fire, his gaze breaking from her for the moment. A year, she thought again, or longer...if the work was good. She smiled and felt herself open to be filled inside with sleep.
