'Patrig?' Tika looked around. A pair of familiar boots stuck out from under the main table, toes spread. 'Loriel, he spoke this morning?'
'For a while. Then he fell back asleep.' Her eyes shone. 'He sang so beautifully last night-'
'I remember,' Tika said flatly. She couldn't imagine anyone admiring his singing, and Loriel was musical. 'Walk with me, and tell me about it.'
They ran down the stairs together.
After that, painfully, the patrons gathered their belongings-in some cases their clothes-and paid up. Some had to walk quite a distance to find everything. Purses and buskins and jerkins lay throughout the room, and knapsacks hung from all points andpegs- one, incredibly, from a loose side-peg in a ceiling cross beam. For a while Otik watched, attempting to prevent thievery. Eventually he gave up.
Reger the Trader slapped the bar with a snake-embossed foreign coin and said, 'This will cover my lodgings, and could I buy a marketing supply of that ale? In this weather it would keep for the road-'
Otik bit the coin and rejected it, dropping it with a dull clank. 'Not for sale.'
'Oh. Yes, well-' Reger fumbled for real money. 'If you change your mind, I'll be back. There.' He counted the change, then added a copper. 'And give breakfast to my friend there. He may not feel too well.' He gestured at Farmer Mort, who had a huge lump behind his right ear.
'I see that. Good day, sir.' Otik watched with approval as Reger took the stairs lightly and quickly. On instinct, as when a kender left, he checked the spoons. Some were missing.
Patrig woke healthy and whole, as the young will, and left singing-badly. He asked after Loriel on his way out. Kugel the Elder and his wife tiptoed out bickering, hand in hand. They turned in the door and frowned disapprovingly at the other couples.
The couple that had fought, or whatever, under the tables, left separately. A man whom Otik had barely noticed the night before paid for a room-'so that my friend can sleep if she wishes.' When Otik asked when his friend wished to wake up, he blushed and said, 'Oh, don't wake her. Not for half a day. Longer, in fact.' Otik noticed, as innkeepers will, the circular groove on the man's third finger, where he usually wore a ring.
The rest were sitting up, looking around embar-rassedly, testing their heads and tongues. Otik stepped to the center of the common room and said diffidently, 'If the company believes it is ready for breakfast-' he looked through the stained glass to the long-risen sun-'or early lunch-' He nodded at the murmur of assent and put the skillet of eggs back on the fire. At the kitchen door he called to Riga the cook for potatoes, but not too loudly.
By mid-moming he had assessed the night's damage and its profit. After re-hammering the tankards and replacing the mugs, he would still have the greatest profit he had ever made from one night, and not half the lodgings paid up yet. He lifted the pile of coins. It took two hands, and shone in the light from a broken rose windowpane.
All the same, when the man with the eye-patch croaked that he wanted a farewell mug 'to guard against road dust,' Otik laid hands on the final keg and said firmly, 'No, sir. I will never sell this ale full strength again.' He added, 'You may have a mug of the regular stock.'
The man grunted. 'All right. Not that I blame you. But it's a shame and a crime, if you intend to water that batch. How can you water ale and not kill the flavor?'
He drained the mug and staggered out. Otik marveled that such a seasoned drinker didn't know the secret of watering ale. You watered ale with ale, of course.
He looked back at his last cask of the only magical brew he had ever made and, gods willing, the only batch he ever would make.
He took his corkscrew in one hand and the pitcher in the other, and he carried the funnel looped by the handle over his belt. Each cask, one by one, he un-stoppered, tapped a pint to make room, and poured in a pint of the new ale. It took most of the morning, and almost all of his last fresh cask.
When he finished at midday, every last barrel was forty or fifty parts ale to one part liquid love, and he had one-half pint of the new ale left. He was sweating, and his biceps ached from drawing stoppers and pounding them back. He slumped on the stool back of the bar and turned around to look at the casks.
The store-room was floor to ceiling with barrels. For as long as the barrels lasted, the Inn of the Last Home would hardly have a fight, or a grudge, or a broken heart.
Otik smiled, but he was too tired to maintain it. He wiped his hands on the bar-rag and said hoarsely, 'I could use a drink.'
The last half-pint sat on the bar, droplets coursing down its sides. Circular ripples pulsed across it as the wind moved the tree branches below the floor.
He could offer it to any woman in the world, and she would love him. He could have a goddess, or a young girl, or a plump helpmate his own age who would steal the covers and tease him about his weight and mull cider for him on the cold late nights. All these years, and he had barely had time to feel lonely.
All these years.
Otik looked around the Inn of the Last Home. He had grown up polishing this bar and scrubbing that uneven, age-smoothed floor. Most of the folk here were friends, and strangers whom he tried to make welcome. He heard the echo of himself saying to Tika, 'In all the world no place else can ever be home for them.'
He smiled around at the wood, at the stained glass, at the friends he had, and at the friends he hadn't met yet. He raised his glass. 'Your health, ladies and gentlemen.'
He drank it in one pull.
Wayward Children
'A fool's errand, that's what this is!'
Though the words were little more than a hiss, B'rak heard them all too well. He also agreed with them, but it was not his place to say so-especially as he was captain of this patrol.
Others heard the complaint as well. 'If you cannot keep your warriors in line, captain, I will be glad to do so for you!'
B'rak hissed angrily at the tall figure wrapped in black cloth. If there was one point on which B'rak agreed with humans, it was that magic-users were not to be trusted, much less liked. But he had no choice:
they were assigned to all patrols. He unfurled his wings to emphasize his displeasure at having a mage along on this scouting mission. His metallic silver skin glistened in the light as he pointed a talon at the other.
'The Dragon Highlord commanded that you accompany us, Vergrim, not that you lead us. I will deal with my men as I see fit.'
Vergrim's answering smile made even draconians uneasy. Nevertheless, he nodded acceptance of B'rak's words and turned his attention back to the wilderness around them.
They had been wandering for days among the rich woodland just north of the New Sea. Their mission was to assure headquarters that this region was empty of resistance, something that even now made B'rak question the leadership of the Dragon Highlord. He and his men should be fighting for the glory of the Queen. Of what use were his tactical skills against a random elk, several birds, and trees as far as the eye could see?
Sith, his lieutenant, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the right. Reptilian eyes narrowed as the patrol captain studied the woods. They widened equally as quickly. Was that an upright figure he saw in the distance? Eagerly, he studied it. That was no animal. An elf or, more likely, a human. Elves were generally more difficult to notice. Secretly, he would prefer a human. Elves were sly, more prone to use tricks than face a warrior one-on-one. Humans knew how to fight. With humans, B'rak could generally assure himself of an entertaining battle.
Some of the warriors in back muttered quietly, their wings rustling. He waved them to silence, though he could well understand their eagerness. This was the first sign of activity they had come across. B'rak fairly quivered with excitement. Had the Highlord known more than the orders had stated? The captain glared at Vergrim, but the draconian magic-user's attention was focused completely on the shadowy figure moving through the trees. If the mage knew something, he was hiding it well. That was not at all like Vergrim.
