Chapter 24: The Inn by the River
They left House Cavell two days later.
Lord Ferris saw them off at the gate personally, which Jin understood was not a small gesture from a man whose time was worth its weight in cold Iron.
"Young master Encrid," The old baron stood with his hands clasped behind his back, breath white in the morning air.
"It had been an unexpectedly interesting visit. I confess that when your pastry arrived at my gate, I prepared myself for a very different kind of guest."
"You must have prepared yourself for a drunk who would insult your cooks and set something on fire."
"I would never say such a thing," Lord Ferris said serenely. "I had the good wine locked away, of course. But I would never say such a thing."
Jin laughed despite himself.
The baron’s eyes crinkled, and then, briefly turned serious.
"The road along the Maren ridge is not what it once was, young master. Merchant caravans have been disappearing on it since spring - four of ours have also gone missing." He let that sit for a moment. "Travel in daylight and keep your knights close."
"I’ll remember it, Lord Ferris. Thank you - for the hospitality, and the warning."
"Thank the warning by surviving it." The old man stepped back and bowed, precisely as deep as the courtesy required for the son of the Lord he served and one inch deeper. "The north is a dull place. Do come back and disturb my dinners again."
"Of course, I will - If I survive the wall that is."
Jin said - half as a joke, half as a matter of fact.
"Though I would prefer if you don’t throw dinnerware at my sons the next time."
Jin almost choked on his breath at the casual comment, but he didn’t promise that back to the Lord.
Beside the gate, the younger son stood with a book under his arm. As Jin passed, the young man looked up, and for the first time in the entire visit, spoke to him directly.
"It was a pleasure to meet you, young master."
"Likewise..."
Jin wasn’t aware of his name, and he didn’t bother to ask it now for fear of looking disrespectful.
The younger son nodded slowly and wrote something in the margin of his book.
Jin stared at him, and then back at the baron.
’What a deeply strange family,’ he thought, and rode out through the gates with his knights and a free servant.
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The land changed as they moved north.
The farms started thinning first. Then the trees changed, oaks and elms giving way to dark pine and grey birch, and the soil turned poor and stony.
The cold, of course, was getting worse.
This far north, it seemed the growing season was too short and the frost too deep for any proper crops.
What the land refused to give to the people, the river provided instead.
The Serpentine came down from the eastern ridge in a wide, iron-colored band, and everything human in the region clung to it. The villages they passed were fishing villages - during racks by the water hung with splayed silver bodies, nets strung between poles, the smell of smoke and fish oil carried for a mile in every direction.
Between the villages, Jin saw the workshops.
Wood carvers, a tannery, boatwrights planing pale ribs of timber, and the things those hands made traveled south by the same road Jin was travelling north.
’Which is why the caravans matter here,’ Jin thought, watching a cart loaded with carved chests rattle past under guard.
On the night day since they departed, with the light falling and the Maren ridge a black line against the sky, Harun pointed ahead.
"There, young master. The Riverside rest - it’s the last decent roof before the ridge - I’ve stopped there on escort runs. There is a clean house and a good kitchen maintained by a widow. I would suggest we stay the night there."
The inn sat where the road bent towards the water - a long, two-storied building of river stone and dark timber, lamplight was already glowing amber in the windows, smoke standing straight up from two chimneys in the still cold air.
Jin agreed with Harun.
Although he had gotten better, riding a horse was still a pain in the ass.
The party decided to rest for the night, and they entered the inn.
The widow met them at the door. She was a broad-shouldered woman in her forties with grey coming in at her temples and the forearms of someone who had carried her own firewood for years.
Her eyes went to the White Griffin on the knights’ breastplates, then to Jin, and she immediately recognised how to act.
"My lords, welcome."
She politely led them in while turning into the warm interior, "Senna! Lords at the door - see to the table by the hearth!"
Jin looked at her.
’Appraise.’
It had become a reflex somewhere along the journey. Using his skill on every passerby he came across. Every ferryman, every carter, every village elder who came out to bow at the ducal banner - Jin had read them all, and the skill had rewarded the spadework in stingy little increments, two percent here, one percent there, like a miser paying wages.
[ Skill Proficiency: F(11%) ]
That’s what the panel said now, and Jin had begun to suspect the fastest way to raise a five-star skill was to be incurably nosy.
[ Name: Marla ]
[ Age: 41 ]
[ Realm: None ]
[ Star-level: Unopened ]
[ Talent: Common ]
A girl of perhaps seventeen appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. She had her mother’s dark hair and none of her weathering yet, and she moved through the crowded common room with the quick, practiced economy of someone who had been raised between its tables.
Jin looked at her.
[ Name: Senna ]
[ Age: 16 ]
[ Realm: None ]
[ Star-level: Unopened ]
[ Talent: Common ]
They were both ordinary people, at least that’s how the system judged them - but from Jin’s perspective, it was wrong, because the kind of spine it took for a widow to keep an inn alive on a frontier road was not something that could be called common.
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