“We need to stay but a night,” Cellester said. “We can pay our way.”
“Glad to hear it!” The huge fellow snorted. “Let ’em pass, Strang. Rookstack’s seen far stranger flotsam and jetsam.”
Cellester led the two youths along the quayside. Behind them they heard crude mutterings about the Church of the Silver Flame and the vermin that ran it.
“There are a number of inns,” Cellester said. “I suggest we get food and rest and then leave at dawn.”
Menneath nodded, but his face was pale. “I can’t say as I’ll be sleeping this night.”
Cellester led them up the narrowest of side streets, its rock-hewn buildings leaning over them, almost smothering them. A number of torches already glowed in cressets overhead. The cleric seemed to know what he was about, for he stopped at the gnarled oak door of a small inn and motioned his companions inside.
There were a few men in here, hunched over steaming plates, others sitting back, swigging at their laniards. They eyed the visitors but kept their focus on their meals. Several sleek-coated hounds stirred beneath tables, uttering low growls, but the men stilled them with a quick dig of their nails or tossed morsels to them.
At the bar, the keeper turned from a conversation with two other men. “If your coin is good, I won’t ask your names or the nature of your business,” he said. “I take it you want food and drink? The ale’s good.”
“I hear it’s the best in Rookstack,” said Cellester.
The innkeeper snorted.
Cellester put some coins down on the scarred wooden bar. “Enough?”
“Generous.”
“To include a room.”
“Now you’re insulting my hospitality.”
Cellester added two more coins.
“Less of an insult.”
“I’d also heard that the innkeepers of Rookstack were the biggest pirates of all. Obviously my informant spoke from experience.”
The innkeeper straightened up, inflating his not inconsiderable chest. A look of annoyance crossed his dark features. Behind Cellester the two youths stiffened. Vaddi felt suddenly naked, surrounded by dangerous strangers. A false move in here would mean a gruesome death. What was Cellester playing at? The freebooters seemed frozen in time for a moment, silence falling as they all eyed the cleric, waiting his next move.
The innkeeper let out his stored breath in a huge guffaw. His immense fist banged down an the bar, making the coins leap into the air. “You’ve spirit, I’ll give ya that! Siddown and I’ll bring you something. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll fill yer belly. And as it happens, I do have a room.”
Cellester smiled, though thinly, and ushered the two youths to a table in a corner, where they could set their hacks to the wall and watch the door. Already the occupants of the inn had gone back to their own meals, ignoring the strangers.
“You’ve been here before?” Menneath asked, leaning over the table like a conspirator at the plotting of a murder.
Cellester shook his head. “He’d have taken all our money if I’d let him. If I hadn’t stood up to him, we’d have been marked.”
Vaddi frowned. “We may be safe enough for the night, but how exactly are we to find our way to Thrane?”
“I’m not so sure we’re safe,” said Menneath. He clutched the pendant that he wore around his neck, fingers pressing it to his chest.
Vaddi looked at Cellester. “What do you say to that?”
“I warned you we would he watched, Karrnath has become a melting pot of strife, deceit, and treachery—especially these northern shores. We’re as safe here as anywhere else, but we remain here at our peril.”
They fell into a brooding silence, each lost in his own thoughts, until three huge bowls of thick soup arrived. Floating in the steaming liquid, chunks of cooked meat vied for space with vegetables, and the three visitors ate hungrily. The innkeeper brought them a tankard of foaming ale each, grinning at the youths but not tarrying to gossip.
As they ate, another figure entered the inn. He was dressed in voluminous clothes—three times as many as any normal man would require—and wore a wide-brimmed hat stuffed with dowdy feathers. Over his shoulder he carried a sack big enough to hide a small wardrobe. He paused in the center of the room, struggling for breath, as if the sack indeed weighed heavily. Bony fingers clawed away the preposterous hat to reveal the face of an aging man, multi-lined and craggy and with a matted beard. Numerous rings gleamed on the man’s fingers, and from his ears hung pendulous rings that even the most bombastic of privateers would have thought extravagant. He gazed about the room like a bird of prey, and to Vaddi he seemed to be looking either for a perch or a victim. The man’s glance took him in for a moment, his hawklike head bobbed, and he dragged his sack across to a nearby table, where he sat down, wheeling until he had got his breath back.
“Business is slack this day,” he said, dropping his hat down on top of the sack and palling if as though it were a pet. He had spoken to no one in particular, but Cellester put down his tankard and eyed the newcomer with evident interest.
“I take it you’re a mendicant,” said the cleric.
The man’s eyes widened. “Indeed I am not, lord! I am Nyam Hordath, reputable trader. In all of Khorvaire, there is none as widely travelled or with access to such varied resources.”
He stopped and looked about. Some of the freebooters were looking at him, grinning as if humoring a simpleton. Clearly some of them knew him. He shuffled his chair closer to Cellester’s and leaned forward, voice dropping.
“I am no beggar, I give a fair price for everything, and I ask a fair price for the things I sell. You have only to look at the treasures that, by sheer good fortune, I have with me in this very bag. In this very bag! Wait only one moment while I—”
“Hold!” Cellester said. “I am sure you are right.”
Vaddi and Menneath exchanged amused glances, trying not to laugh.
“Everyone seeks something, lord,” said the trader. “My purpose in life is to provide it.”
“I doubt you can help us,” Cellester muttered, not amused.
“Surely I can. What is it you desire?”
“That is my business,” said the cleric.
“Of course it is, of course. I meant no offense, but I beg you to reconsider. Nothing is too trivial. Clothes, arms, spells, information—”
“Information?”
“Ah, I have tempted you, lord.”
Before the trader could say more, the innkeeper loomed over him. “Hordath, I told you last time your credit has tun out. If you want food and drink, find another inn. Either put coin in my palm or go and ply your trade elsewhere.”
“Run out? My credit run out? You jest! There is nowhere in all Khorvaire where Nyam Hordath cannot rely—”
“Then use it in Karrnath or Thrane, but if you’ve no coin—and I’ll not take that heap of old rags and corpse-hauled trinkets as coin—then go and annoy other travellers.”
Nyam’s face screwed itself into a mask of utter horror. “Corpse-hauled! By the Rings of Siberys, I have never been so insulted—”
“I’m sure you have, many times,” growled the innkeeper, whose body movements suggested that he was about to turn his verbal objections into physical ones.
Cellester interposed. “This matter can be easily enough resolved.”
Both the trader and the innkeeper favored him with looks of passing amazement .
Cellester held out some coins for the innkeeper. “Will these pay for the trader’s fare this night?”
The innkeeper looked taken aback, but he took the coins and pocketed them. “Very well,” he said. “None of my business, of course, but I know this trader. I check his coins very carefully.” So saying, he muscled his way back to the bar.