Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

I should not have been particularly surprised, going by its name, to find it where we did. When I confirmed Erdwud’s (as usual, poor) directions to it, the guard who answered me glanced at my companions with a wiggle of his mustache.

“You sure that’s the spot you’re looking for?”

Never a good sign to hear that when one is after lodgings, but we were only going to be staying a night or two if I had my druthers. In fact, Weltyr willing, we might not even have to deal with that much. If I could speak to Father Fortisto—in my mind, foremost among Weltyr’s Temple priests—I might get the information I sought without receiving much remonstration for failing at my first attempt to retrieve the Scepter. There were those among the brotherhood who would have had more than a few harsh words for me, and a few who would have even taken the task from my hands altogether. That would have been a disaster. I was not interested in having to choose between my duty to the Church and my affection for the women whom I had agreed to help, and to whom I now had a responsibility as their escort outside of the Nightlands.

I could not help but notice how protective I had become of them. They did not need protection, of course—had any man attempted to interfere with them, he would have walked away, at best, with a broken hand or nose. But I nonetheless marveled at my own internal protective urge: as if I walked with Elishta-bet, a certain childhood friend of mine. Wild animals in the countryside were of no concern to me, nor were nighttime monsters. The ladies could all handle themselves. Yet, I suppose because I wanted them to think well of humans and of Skythorn, I was on such high alert and so poised for something to happen that the last problem I expected to have was with the innkeeper, Sharp.

The Poisoned Mongoose was aptly-named. The working class quarter where it was located was full of ash and smoke and other artifacts of manufacture that were no doubt responsible for rotting the lungs and temperaments of all the people about it. We found the inn and its dingy tavern squeezed between a cobbler and a fish market, and the scent was so foul that Odile looked up at the sign with a curled lip.

“Are you sure there isn’t somewhere better we can stay? I’ll pay for it from my own purse.”

“It’ll be fairly quick…and anyplace so ill-managed in appearance should be liable to have some empty rooms for us.”

With the inn located, we hitched our horses at the nearest (and most trustworthy-looking) paid stables, made our way back through the busy streets to the Mongoose, and soon enough interrupted the gaunt innkeeper in the middle of counting his money behind the bar.

“Welcome to the Mongoose,” he said without looking up from the coins he stacked. “What’ll it be for you?”

“Are you the friend of Erdwud of Soot? Sharp?”

He glanced up at me briefly from the coin sorting, his pale eyes then drawn away and, as was inevitable, to the elves with their heads covered. Sharp’s attention lowered coolly to his till again, his hand resuming its motion. “What’s it to you?”

Politely as I could manage, I set the sealed letter on the counter and slid it across to the weaselly man. “I was told you could provide us fair and discreet lodgings.”

Sniffing lightly, the man set down the remaining handful of his coins, wiggled his mustache, and tore open the letter without bothering to look too closely at the seal. He unfolded the vellum within, his eyes darting back and forth across the lines of text. I leaned against the counter, hands patiently at rest. He continued on. I had just caught myself wondering how versed he was in the task of reading when he folded the letter up again, tucked it into his apron and nodded in the direction of the women.

“You some kind of pimp?”

With a light, quite shocked laugh, I glanced back toward the women and found that, luckily, the durrow weren’t familiar with the term. Praise Weltyr! Branwen’s face, however, was bright red with hateful displeasure, and she narrowed her eyes at the man. A haughty scowl contorted her lovely features into something that exuded utter loathing.

“I will have you know that I am the descendant of Klexian nobility,” she told him coolly, earning little more than a brisk glance. “You’d ought not to make such crude presumptions about someone you have never met.”

“Twelve ounces of silver a night per room,” he said, adding, “and we don’t do food.”

With a scoff of outrage, Odile pushed back her hood to look the man in the eyes. “Twelve, without food! Erdwud gave us room and board for—”

But she stopped. The innkeeper had recoiled a step and looked at me with dark shock.

“Bloody durrow,” said the man. “Now I understand what that letter meant about safe haven. What’s your game? Slavers? Spies?”

His motions so quick I did not have time to draw Strife before he had reached beneath the bar, the innkeeper drew a dwarvish pistol and clicked back the hammer.

“Whatever it is you’re angling for, you’ll have to find it someplace other than Skythorn.”

THE TEMPLE OF WELTYR

I WAS BEGINNING to regret following Erdwud’s advice, but the experience of meeting Sharp was ultimately invaluable. It showed the durrow the importance of concealing their identities in surface cities, for instance. While Odile looked wide-eyed with shock, not so much at the gun as at the realization of what she had done by failing to think in a moment of irritation, I stepped between the innkeeper and the women with my hands patiently raised.

“Now, sir, there’s no need for any of that—I assure you, we’re not slavers or spies. I am a humble servant of Weltyr”—I gestured toward the tattoo upon my neck, and to Sharp’s credit his arm began to