“Come in. Come in.”
Faret, the portly proprietor, waved cheerfully at the growing crowd from his place behind the long wooden bar that dominated one side of the room.
When Shura pulled back the hood of her cloak, revealing her face, Faret’s eyes widened briefly and his smile tightened. His gaze swept the people behind them before he waved again. “Come. I have a table for you,” he called, switching to common tongue as he rushed around the bar.
After more than ten years of missions, both Daks and Shura were quite fluent in Rassan, but no one else needed to know that, so they never corrected him.
The two men seated at the table Faret led them to in the far back corner of the room moved off without comment after he whispered in the ear of one of them. And once Shura and Daks were seated, he said, “I’ll bring food and drink,” and hurried off to tend to the other newcomers.
They tucked their heavy, sodden packs safely under the table and draped their cloaks over the backs of their chairs to dry out as much as possible. The common room was crowded, noisy, and overly warm. The odors of unwashed bodies, wet wool, fish, ale, and pipe smoke were heavy and overwhelming after the gusting salt-and-sea air of their crossing from Samet. Shura’s small round nose scrunched and her scowl deepened, but since her face seemed set in a perpetual scowl, only someone who knew her well would be able to tell the difference.
“The smell never gets any better either,” Daks groused under his breath, and her full downturned lips twitched.
Though from vastly different backgrounds, both of them preferred the open air, fields, and forests of their childhoods to the tightly packed press of humanity and buildings of a city, but duty and conscience called… at least one more time anyway.
Feeling his mood sour even further at the thought, Daks expelled a breath and tried not to let his face show the seething anger that had churned inside him since their last meeting with the powers that be in Scholoveld. A small, forbidding scowl was enough for the role he played; anything more than that and he risked having the guard called on him by some nervous local.
One of Faret’s daughters—Ilia, if he remembered correctly—arrived with a tray of stew, coarse bread, and tankards of ale, and Daks handed over a small pile of coins. Though he’d paid much more than the meal was worth, the girl pocketed the money with a solemn nod and hurried off to see to the other patrons.
“You better be careful with that,” Shura murmured behind her tankard. “Those cheap bastards didn’t give us much to work with this time. We can’t afford to be quite as generous as before.”
He reluctantly set his tankard back down after a taking a big, much-needed gulp. “I know,” he replied, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “But it may be a while before we’re back, if ever, and Faret and his family have been kind to us. They do a lot of good here when they can.”
Her perpetual scowl softened as she threw him a concerned glance. “I know it’s killing you that we won’t be able to hit the market, that we only have enough to pay for information and leave, but we’re still doing good here and back home too.”
Daks grunted and took up his tankard again, as he scanned the room while trying not to make it look like he was scanning the room. He’d been in the spy business for more than twelve years now, and the mantle still didn’t sit comfortably on his shoulders. It itched like the cheap, low-grade wool Rassan merchants sold to travelers too stupid or greedy to know the difference.
“Your heart’s always been too big for this,” she continued quietly, startling him with both her sudden loquaciousness and the uncharacteristic sentimentality.
He snorted and shot her a look before turning his eyes back to the room. “I think you might need to slow down a little on that ale. Heartless scoundrel happens to be my middle name. Just ask anyone.”
He threw her his best cocky grin, and she sniffed. “Only for someone who doesn’t know you.”
This time he set his tankard down and focused all his attention on her, their cover be damned. The wisps of black hair the rain had plastered to her face had dried a bit, so they framed her high cheekbones and firm jaw rather than clinging to them. Her straight black brows had drawn down enough they almost touched the bridge of her nose, and her dark brown eyes studied him right back, more somber than their usual wary sharpness.
“Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “Maybe you should drink more. Don’t get sentimental on me now, Shur. You’ll scare the shit out of me.”
Her answering scowl was all he needed to settle the small tremor of unease in his belly. “Ass,” she growled under her breath. “All I’m saying is that it might be a good thing we’re being forced to move on to something else, because this is sucking the life out of you. I see it every time you set foot in this city. You can’t save them all.”
The “and Josel is long past saving” hung in the air between them, but thankfully she didn’t say it out loud. They both couldn’t get all weepy and emotional. They still had work to do.
When he only grunted, she angled her body away from him again, and they drank and ate together in silence for a while, trying to catch snippets of the conversations around them.
The heavy wood door to the inn opened and closed. People came and went. Luckily, no one seemed to be paying
