“Cutter?”
He turned at the sound of the voice to see the others watching him. Chall and the lad with curious expressions on their faces, as if wondering what he was about, and Maeve with a small, humorless smirk, as if she knew all too well. Probably she did. Anyone, seeing their group, the group he had led, in the past, might have thought he’d kept Maeve around for her skills with the knives she’d once carried or her ability to seemingly talk anyone into doing nearly anything, but they would have been wrong. Maeve’s greatest asset—one which, likely, even she was unaware of—was her ability to see past the superfluous to the heart of things, the heart of people. It was what made her great, what had, once upon a time, made her terrible as well.
“Are you…okay?” Chall asked, his voice tenuous, uncertain.
Cutter grunted. “I’m fine. Come on.”
He led them toward the bar where a few stools—those currently not being used by the “healers” scattered about the room—were left empty. He looked around for whoever was manning the bar but the space behind the counter was empty, the shelves where liquor was no doubt normally kept in clean rows mostly empty save for a few bottles lying on their sides, the rest, he suspected, carried away to be used as makeshift disinfectant.
“Might as well have a seat,” he said to the others. “This might be a minute.”
Chall didn’t hesitate, half-sitting, half-collapsing wearily into one of the stools which creaked threateningly under his not inconsiderable weight. Maeve frowned at the mage as he let out a heavy sigh of relief then she, too, slid quietly into another stool, somehow imbuing the simple gesture with a dignity, as she always seemed to do.
The boy, though, looked at the stool guiltily before glancing back at the wounded and those ministering to them. “Sit, lad,” Cutter said. “What can be done for them is being done already.”
“But…but they’re dying,” he said, and Cutter winced at the volume of his tone as some of the would-be healers glanced their direction.
“People die, lad,” he said softly. “It’s what they’re best at.”
“We’re,” Maeve said.
Cutter frowned. “What?”
“It’s what we’re best at,” she answered, meeting his gaze with a challenge in her own.
Cutter grunted. “Right. Anyway, what I mean, lad, is that we all have our own journeys and never mind that they end up in the same place. And the fact that others are suffering does not diminish your own. Now, sit. You have had a long journey—you refusing to rest will do nothing to help those you pity.”
The boy opened his mouth as if he might argue but something—his own weariness, most likely—decided him and in another moment he sat. Cutter waited another few minutes, watching the lad seem to sink further and further into the stool, as if he were dissolving before his eyes like a snowman in the heat, then he reached out and clapped one of his hands onto the wooden counter.
A moment later, a figure stepped around the counter, scowling at them and wiping bloody hands on a rag that was little better. Cutter was unsurprised to see that it was the hunched old woman who had been commanding those inside the common room moments before. A general among her army and in her command tent no less. “Ain’t got time to be pourin’ drinks just now,” she said. “In case you all hadn’t noticed, we’re a bit busy at the moment.”
“No drinks,” Cutter said. “We only need rooms.”
The woman stared at him as if he were insane. “Rooms? Here? What is it, you got a death wish? Like those mad bastards go chasin’ after hurricanes and the gods alone know what else?”
“No,” Cutter said. “Not that. Though I’ve heard that lightning can’t strike in the same place twice.”
The woman grunted, glancing over his shoulder at the wounded. “Maybe it can and maybe it can’t, though I don’t see as it makes much difference either way. You ask me, once is pretty well enough to get the job done. More than. Anyway,” she went on, bringing her attention back to him, “I wouldn’t hang around here, if I were you. I’m afraid Ferrimore’s hospitality ain’t up to what it usually is just now. Better you go to Valaidra. A big city, plenty of rooms there, no doubt.”
“We won’t make it to Valaidra,” he persisted, not bothering to share that even if they did, they had Feledias and the gods alone knew how many others waiting on them. “We’ve had a long journey. We’re weary, and we need rooms.”
“A long journey, is it?” the woman asked. “Well, last night I watched my husband get torn apart and eaten—at least parts of him—by creatures most folk think are just bedtime stories for when mommy and daddy want their little ‘uns to wake up in the night screamin’. We all got problems. So forgive me if I’m not as sympathetic as I might be when you tell me you’re tired, maybe a little foot sore, and lookin’ for a room.”
She watched him, waiting for what he would say, but Cutter said nothing, only watching her back, and after a moment she glanced over at Matt, the boy barely more than a puddle in the stool now, and some of the hardness left her features. She sighed. “Alright. Might be
