'You can clear a chamber for our use.'
The man took in an angry breath. 'That I can't, Magister. I can't turn out those guests who've already made their arrangements and paid in advance. I'm not able to collect tithes from my neighbors as the House inn did, with the threat of House retribution backing up 'their demands should any not pay the tax. Anyway, Magister, even besides the attic room, we've only four sleeping rooms, none of them to your liking, I am sure.'
'You are deliberately insulting me.'
'I am telling you the cold truth, Magister. Maybe you choose to take it as an insult, if you're not accustomed to hearing the truth spoken to you.' The man's knuckles were clenched to a pallor around the tray. It took a courageous man to speak so frankly to a cold mage.
The fire sighed to embers. The hilt of the ghost sword grew cold against my palm.
'We'll take the attic room,' I said, too loudly, because I did not intend to see the innkeeper's pewter cups shattered in a fit of rage. 'We'll need extra blankets, as many as you have, if you don't mind, maester. But the principles of convection suggest that hot air rises, so up in the attic we should be warm enough even with no brazier to heat the room.'
The man had expressive eyebrows; one quirked now, cocking up as he examined me. He looked again at Andevai to identify what possible relation we might have, and nodded. 'Supper is served in the supper room, maestra. Or must I also address you as Magister?'
'No. Thank you.'
His eyebrows lifted again before he recovered his composure. 'I'll send my niece to show you up when we're done serving supper, but you'll have to have your own people carry up your cases or what have you, as we're shorthanded tonight what with the wedding of my wife's cousin's nephew in Londun. I would have shut up the inn and gone over the river myself for the wedding feast if not for-'
A trill of laughter-humanlike but not human-lilted out of the supper room.
The man nodded at me, pointedly not looking at Andevai. 'Business is business, maestra. We serve any who pay with hard currency and comport themselves like decent folk. If you're wanting a wash, there's a trough out by the stable where you can fill a pitcher. There'll be a basin up in the room to pour in and wash you of.'
'We will recieve a tray of food in our private chamber,' said Andevai abruply.
The man's lips thinned. 'As I said, Magister, tonight we haven't the means for private service no matter what I might wish one way or another, for besides the lad out in the stables, it's just me and my brother's daughter. She's tending the kitchen, and I'm running food into the supper room, and soon enough I'll have customers here in the common room as well to pull drinks for, the usual locals with their music and talk.'
'Even if I were to eat in a public room, you can scarcely wish me to eat in your supper room, since I will extinguish your fire and then all your other customers will be cold.'
'Even if you sit at the very farthest table from the hearth, Magister? I just want to make clear I've nothing to be ashamed of in my inn. We're a respectable establishment well known for our savory suppers, our excellent brew, and clean beds. Yet I'll tell you truly, we've never had a cold mage set foot in this establishment, not a Housed mage, not once, just hedge mages and bards and jellies and such.'
'This corruption is absurd,' Andevai said with a glance at me, contempt trembling like unspoken words on his lips. Yet he would go on speaking. 'Jelly is a substance congealed or, in its manner, frozen. A djeli'-he pronounced it more like 'jay-lee'-'possesses the ability to channel, to weave, the essence that binds and underlies the universe. Like bards, they are the guardians of the ancient speech. I wish you people would use the word correctly to show proper respect.'
A throaty, somewhat monotone voice called from the supper room with a request for more wine.
The innkeeper's mouth had pinched tight. 'I'll tell you this,' he began in a low, passionate voice, 'you in the Houses may stand high, and you may look down on us who crawl beneath you, but there rises a tide of sentiment-'
I saw my supper and my hope for a night's sleep sliding away. 'Maester,' I cut in, 'what if I fetch a tray myself from the kitchens and take it up to the attic?'
Checked, the innkeeper stiffened, maybe not sure whether I was being respectful or derisory.
Andevai broke in. 'Catherine, you are not a servant to fetch and carry what others are obligated to bring.'
'I want to eat. I'm very hungry. If I fetch the tray, then I know we'll eat.'
'Furthermore,' my husband went on inexorably, 'the Houses are the bringers of plenty, not of want. People should be grateful to us, who have spared them from the tyranny of princes many times over, who have saved them from the wars of monsters like Camjiata who meant to crush all beneath his boot.'
'Get out of my house,' said the innkeeper so quietly that Andevai did not react, and after a moment I began to think he
had not heard because there was no sound at all; even the conversation in the supper room dropped into a lull.
For a moment.
Then the sword hilt burned against my palm like ice.
The fire whoofed out with a billow of ash like a cough. I felt as if a glacier loomed, ready to calve and bury me.
'Catherine,' Andevai said in a low voice, 'go outside. Now.'
My skin was chapped from the cold, and my stomach was grumbling, and the soup smelled so good, and it was sleeting outside, and in only three days the end of the year would arrive and with it, on that cusp between the dying of the old year and the birth of the new, would rise my own natal day, my birthday, when I would welcome a full round of twenty years and therefore become an adult. Only now I was severed by magic from my beloved family and standing here cold and exhausted and hungry and far from the home I could never return to and meanwhile about to be kicked out into the night. And the worst of it was, Andevai was probably going to do something stupid and awful, because he was the arrogant child of a powerful House unused to being spoken to by a common innkeeper far below him in birth and wealth and without any cold magic to protect himself, and all I could think of was snuggling into a warm bed and sipping hot soup, because I was the most selfish, miserable person alive.
To my horror, I began to cry hot, silent tears.
'Excuse me, maester,' said the throaty voice. A personage loomed behind the innkeeper at the door of the supper room, its blight crest startling in the drab surroundings.
Andevai looked over, no doubt surprised to hear himself again improperly addressed by a stranger, and then doubly surprised to see a troll who was, after all, not speaking to him but to the innkeeper. 1 sucked back my tears as the prickling anticipation of destruction abruptly eased: He was too startled to be angry.
'You are quite run off your feet, maester-we can see that- but we have run out of wine, I am sorry to say, which comes about only because you offered us such an excellent vintage.' From a distance, trolls' smooth, small feathers were easy to mistake for strangely textured skin, but this close, the drab brown feathers of this troll's face stood in contrast to a crested mane of yellow feathers flaring over its head and down its neck. 'If we might get more when you are able to fetch it. Our thanks.'
'I'll bring it at once.' The innkeeper bolted across the common room to an opening hung with a curtain.
'And plates for the new guests,' called the troll as the curtain slashed down behind the innkeeper. The creature turned an eye toward me. It wrinkled its muzzle to expose teeth, a gesture perhaps meant to be a grin recognizable by humans as a friendly smile, but overall the effect was of a big, sleek, feathered lizard displaying its incisors as a threat. 'We'd be honored to guest you. If you wish to sit with us, of course. My companions are good company, so they assure me. Witty, well read, and willing to put up with me, so that may be a point in their favor. Or it may not be. You will have to determine that for yourselves. I'm Chartji. I won't trouble you with my full name, which you would not understand in any case. I'm a solicitor currently employed by the firm of Godwik and Clutch, which has offices in Havery and Camlun, although I'm originally from Expedition. I've been employed in Havery for the past four years, but we're setting up new offices in Adurnam.'
It thrust out a hand, if one could call it a hand, what with its shiny claws curving from the ends of what might be fingers or talons, offering to shake in the style of the radicals and laboring classes. Andevai actually took a step back, and the troll's head tilted, marking the movement.
'So it's true what they say about trolls,' he said.
Fiery Shemesh! Could he never stop offending people?
