49. Liam

Chapter 49

Liam

I was beyond exhausted.

My day began, as it always did, long before the sun bothered to show its lazy face to the world. I helped my mother prep, cook, and serve breakfast to our guests, then rushed through a cursory cleaning so I could make it to the market before other Merchants gobbled up all the fresh produce.

The air was blessedly cool, almost crisp, with a light breeze blowing in from the ocean. I still returned to the inn sweaty and stinking from my day’s effort. Ma sent me upstairs with orders to make a quick bath so I could help cut vegetables and roll dough for pie crusts for dinner.

Such was the life of an innkeeper—and an innkeeper’s son.

That night, the common room overflowed.

Every major city in the Kingdom was holding qualifying rounds of the annual Tournament of Spires, the chief event of the year where men tried to poke other men with pointy things.

At least, that’s how I saw the games.

There was sword fighting, jousting, marksmanship . . . yeah, I was right—men and sharp, pointy things.

Whatever one thought of the games, the trials drew crowds from all over, and that was good for business.

I raced from table to table taking orders, delivering food, and slinging more mugs of ale than I thought possible. Three separate times, I was called to the kitchen for an emergency cleaning of piled-up tankards, only to immediately fill them for delivery to new patrons. The seasonal nature of the inn’s business could be maddening in slow times, but when things were good, they were very good.

The musicians started slower songs, the part of their set designed to calm the rambunctious, highly intoxicated guests before the staff shuffled them off to bed or on to other adventures around town. I shared an appreciative smile with the fiddle player as his bow caressed the strings with a sad, almost melancholy rapture. The guests quieted and sank into the emotional ballad. More than a few eyes were moist by the time the players struck their last chord. With that final note, the players began packing up their instruments and passing their very deep hat one last time to squeeze every drop of juice they could.

I began clearing and wiping tables as most of the patrons took the hint.

One pair of men remained at a table in the corner.

Something in their posture, the way they leaned a little too far and whispered a touch too low, made me uneasy.

I knew both men.

They were among the more successful business owners in town.

What are they scheming about? I wondered.

Unable to overhear any of their conversation, I continued about my work.

When the last of my tables was cleaned and the dishes in the kitchen were put away, I gave the common room one last scan. The two men were still there, still whispering, their eyes still darting around the room. They were definitely up to something.

I couldn’t resist and walked over to their table.

“Can I get you gentlemen anything else tonight? We’re about to close up.”

“Oh, no, Liam. We’re just finishing up. We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes,” one of the men said. The other stared at his hands and avoided looking up at me.

“In that case, mind if I wipe down your table real quick? I can leave you to your conversation once the table’s clean. Stay as long as you like.”

The talkative man smiled. “Go right ahead, and thank you.”

As I walked away, taking as much time as I could without looking obvious, I caught a tiny snippet of their conversation.

“. . . has to end. Tomorrow’s our best chance to take care of him. Are you with me?”

The other man, the hand starer, spoke. “Aye. Tomorrow.”

And with that, the pair stood, bade me goodnight, and left.

I blew out a long breath.

Nothing in what I heard made any sense, but it caused my stomach to do flips all the same. I didn’t like it one bit.

“Liam,” Ma’s voice called from the kitchen, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Yes, Ma. I’m wiping down the last table. Be there in a minute.”

The kitchen door swung wide, and Ma appeared in the doorway, her lips quirked to one side.

I knew that look. I was about to run yet another errand.

Amazing.

“Dear, I completely forgot Mrs. B. We were supposed to drop a dinner off at her place an hour ago. She’s been laid up with a terrible cold all week, and I told her we’d handle her cooking tonight. If she’s not miserable, she’ll be madder than . . . well, that doesn’t matter. Would you mind running this over to her place? I’ll finish up here.”

I knew both the common room and kitchen were finished but smiled at my mother as if she’d saved me days’ worth of cleaning. “Yes, ma’am. ’Course I will.”

I walked to Ma and exchanged my apron for the wrapped box in her hands, then gave her a peck on the cheek.

Mrs. Betner, known as Mrs. B. to anyone who’d ever set foot in Oliver, lived in a tiny wooden hut on the outskirts of town. At a leisurely pace, it took me forty minutes to make the trek. The widow was asleep and hadn’t even realized dinnertime had come and gone. She was one of Ma’s more talkative friends, but I got off easy. She called out for me to leave the box on her porch so I didn’t risk catching a fever.

If one could even catch a fever , I thought.

I was more relieved to have avoided what surely would’ve been an hour-long chat than any ailment. I could cope with the sniffles, but diarrhea of the mouth was incurable.

The night was chilly as winter battled spring for supremacy.

Clouds blanketed the sky.

I folded my arms and rubbed them for warmth.

I’d only made it a quarter mile from Mrs. B.’s house when I heard a muffled cry. I thought I recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place where I knew it from. I slowed my pace and crept toward the sound, stopping cold as I rounded the apothecary’s dull brick facade.

My mind struggled to process what I was seeing.

A man lay bleeding on the ground, his arms raised as if to ward off an attack and blood pooling beneath his head and chest. Towering above him with paws poised to strike was a massive brown bear.

I’d never seen a bear in person, but I was sure the sketches I’d seen didn’t mark bears at ten feet tall with claws as long as soldiers’ daggers. As I watched in horror, the bear flung its full weight down on the man, ramming its razor-sharp claws into his head and chest until only the meat of its paws was visible.

The mad didn’t twitch or moan.

He didn’t spasm.

He just died.

But the bear wasn’t finished.

As if it held some personal grudge against the poor man, the bear lunged again and again, digging and clawing until there was little recognizable left on the bloody street. I covered my mouth with a palm and told myself to breathe quietly. The bear’s back had been to me, but I didn’t want to give it any reason to turn.

Then, as strange as the mauling had been, something else happened.

The bear dropped to all fours and lumbered a few paces away. It reached down and picked something up off the ground and held it up to its muzzle.

Then the gigantic form shrank to average human proportions.

Its fur vanished, and a silky brown robe flowed with the breeze in its place. I ducked behind the building as the man turned toward where I stood.

If I was afraid before, I was terrified then.

I waited a long moment until I heard footfalls fading, then peered around the corner.

The man was gone.

I took a few tentative steps from my hiding place and strained to see the dead man in the darkness. I couldn’t recognize his face through all the blood and gore, but a piece of his shredded shirt caught my eye, and I realized where I’d known his voice.

He was the quiet man at the table in the corner.

The one who wouldn’t stop staring at his hands.