Chapter 9: Morning Light, Bad Judgment
Morning came through the warped shutters in pale, freezing strips. Callis lay flat on his back on the lumpy mattress in Room Four, listening to the floorboards creak as the tavern woke up below. He knew before he tried to move that his body was going to punish him. His shoulders carried a deep, sandy ache from the previous day's road-clearing. A tight band of pain throbbed across his bruised ribs with every breath, and the contusion on his thigh had stiffened overnight into a heavy, sour heat. Beneath the catalog of frontier injuries was a different soreness in his hips and lower back, and the Green March could claim no credit for it.
He shut his eyes against the grey light. The air in the room still carried the faint, musty smell of damp straw, but his mind provided a much richer scent: wood ash, dried rosemary, and the salt of sweat on skin. He remembered the flush of Mara’s neck, the calloused drag of her hands at his waist, and the broken, ragged sound she had made against his collarbone. It was the sort of noise no court verse or whispered boasting back in the capital had prepared him for. He had known the ordinary, shallow infatuations of a drawn-out youth in Aurelion, but whatever had happened in the kitchen had stripped the courtly language right out of him.
Sitting up required a grim calculation of momentum. Pain flared through his ribs. His stiff thigh resisted bearing weight, and the blistered heel sent a sharp warning up his calf the moment his bare foot touched the floor. He braced his hands on his knees and breathed through the wave of complaints. Sleeping in a rented bed above the man whose wife he had spent the better part of the night with on a butcher’s block was poor strategy. If Derren discovered the timeline of events, there would be blood, not just raised voices. Worse, the danger had done almost nothing to cure him.
He crossed the small room to the washbasin. The water was cold enough to numb his fingers. He scrubbed his face, splashing the chill against his neck as though a sudden shock of temperature might wash away the memory of the ovens and leave him sensible. It failed. He dressed in his last clean shirt—a finely woven linen that belonged in a velvet coat rather than a drafty inn—and laced his stiff March boots with careful fingers. He needed to go downstairs and see her in daylight, if only to prove the kitchen had not been a fever dream.
The stairs groaned under his boots. In the flat morning light, the common room had lost its lantern glow and crowded warmth. It looked worn thin. The floorboards were permanently scarred. The tables had been wiped down but held a stubborn layer of grease, and the dark corners gathered the grime of yesterday’s heavy use. Derren sat at the far end of the long bar, nursing a thick clay mug containing a dark, steaming liquid. He pressed one hand firmly against his temple. His flushed skin had gone grey and waxy around the edges, the color of a man losing a private war with last night’s ale. Callis stopped on the final stair tread, bracing himself, but Derren did not bother to lift his head.
The kitchen door swung open. Mara emerged carrying a stack of scrubbed wooden trenchers braced against one hip. She wore the heavy wool dress with the sleeves rolled past the elbows, her stained canvas apron tied tight at the waist, and her chestnut hair pinned up. To the rest of the room, she was simply a woman beginning another fourteen-hour day of hauling and pouring. Callis knew the curve of her stomach beneath the canvas. He knew the weight of her body against his chest, the grip of her thighs, and the sound she made when her iron control broke in the dark.
Mara set the stack of trenchers onto a nearby table and turned her head. Her dark eyes found his across the wide room. The moment pulled taut between them. Her gaze dropped once, taking in his mouth, before rising to meet his eyes again. Callis felt his collar tighten. He crossed the floorboards, managing his stiff leg, focusing entirely on avoiding the urge to reach out and touch her right in front of Derren. He stopped a few feet from the edge of the bar.
Derren groaned into his mug. "Keep your boots quiet on the floorboards, boy," he muttered thickly. "My skull feels like someone dropped a ripe melon from a watchtower."
"My apologies for the disturbance," Callis said. His voice came out lower and rougher than he intended, scraped out by lack of sleep.
Mara moved down the length of the bar until she stood opposite him. She picked up a damp rag and began wiping a section of wood that did not require cleaning. "Do you require a bowl of porridge?" she asked in a brisk, ordinary tone.
"Please," Callis said.
She turned away, crossed to the hearth, and ladled thick oats from an iron pot into a wooden bowl. Callis watched the line of her shoulders, admiring the practiced confidence of her hands. When she returned and set the hot bowl down, the side of her thumb brushed his bruised knuckles. The contact lasted less than a second. It left a sudden, sharp heat in its wake. Callis looked up at her face. She had already turned back toward the hearth, but he caught the faintest curve forming at one corner of her mouth. He sat down on the stool. The oats steamed heavily in the chill air, and his stomach remembered itself.
"Why in the hell are you humming?" Derren’s voice carried a dull, suspicious edge from further down the bar.
Callis’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. Mara went still by the hearth, a stack of clean mugs in her arms. "I am not humming," she said evenly.
"You most certainly are." Derren squinted at her, looking as though he were forcing his vision through a layer of pain. "The sound is irritating. Stop doing it."
Callis’s mouth twitched into a faint smile.
Mara looked at Derren over her shoulder, her face composed and bland. "Perhaps the high-pitched ringing is located inside your own skull."
Derren rubbed his temple. "And why exactly do you look like that?"
"Like what?"
Derren groped for the words with the sluggish suspicion of a hungover man. "You look smug," he decided.
Mara’s eyebrows rose a fraction. "I look busy," she corrected him. "You should perhaps attempt the activity yourself. It may help clear the congestion in your head."
Under ordinary circumstances, the exchange would have curdled into the familiar bitterness of their marriage. Derren would needle her, she would parry, and both would remain trapped in the exhaustion of the tavern. Today, the insult rolled off her shoulders. Something private and warm sat behind her eyes, and Derren could not reach it. Callis lowered his eyes to his porridge before his face could betray him. He ate the oats mechanically, his mind already committing treason against his survival instincts by searching for the next locked door.
The thought had no survival value whatsoever, which did nothing to weaken it. He needed to leave the inn. Remaining seated at the bar without touching her was becoming an intolerable exercise in restraint. Callis finished the last of the porridge and set the wooden spoon beside the bowl.
"I need to venture into the forge district," he said to the room.
Derren made a dismissive sound into his clay mug. "What for? Are you going to purchase a brighter sword so the beasts can admire themselves while chewing on your bones?"
Callis ignored him. "My heavy riding cloak was ruined by the Mud-Borrower," he said, keeping his eyes on Mara. "Rhett Hollow advised me that if I intend to continue accepting Guild contracts, I require proper, reinforced leather armor and a better outer coat before I earn a shallow grave."
Mara stopped wiping the scarred wood. Her gaze moved over him, assessing the words for substance. Proper armor. A better outer coat. Advice taken seriously. A fierce, quiet pride flashed through her expression before slipping behind the mask she wore for the tavern floor.
"The Ash Forge," she instructed. "Take the third narrow alley down from the main bellows. Look for a cracked iron anvil hanging from chains above the wooden door. Make sure you ask for Yselle Harrow." She rested her weight against the bar. "If you do not tell her I sent you, she will sell you thin tourist leather, charge you double, and laugh while you walk out. If you do tell her, she will only laugh at you a little bit."
Callis’s mouth softened into a genuine smile. "That information is reassuring."
"It is the closest thing to a guarantee you will receive in this town."
He stood up from the stool. His damaged leg and bruised ribs objected to the motion, and his ruptured heel sent a sharp lance of pain up his calf, but he kept his expression neutral.
"Thank you," Callis said.
Her eyes met his. Not innkeeper to customer. Not guide to fool. Something warmer, more dangerous, and impossible to name with Derren ten feet away. Callis turned and walked for the heavy oak door. He did not look back over his shoulder, but he felt her gaze between his shoulder blades all the way to the street.
Outside, the freezing air of Hartsgate hit him like icy water. The main street was already loud, with deep mud churning under the wheels of merchant wagons. Thick smoke rose from dozens of chimneys in greasy, dark ribbons. Someone standing near the corner shouted about the price of axle grease, and a heavy bell tolled toward the center of town. The sky hung low over the settlement, the color of beaten iron. Callis drew his remaining cloak tighter around his shoulders and started toward the Ash Forge.
He had survived the March twice. Now he had to survive wanting something in Hartsgate badly enough to be stupid about it.