Talking to Jenny felt comfortable. Her voice, her tone, her accent blended together in just the right way so that every word she spoke sounded like home. It was like I'd stumbled through the Kvass Flats alongside the western Cinian mountains and glimpsed the Inner Sea. I could picture was the snow in her hair and her footprints trailing behind her.

It wasn't her as a person, nor her looks. Her voice just felt like... home.

It wasn't just her voice. She was friendly too, if wary. My being Kindred set her ill at ease, but she played that part off well enough.

The servers avoided her with odd, hesitant glances, so I ordered her a bottle of wintergreen.

"So," I asked as another server skirted around her, "why are they all avoiding you? An innkeep turning someone away in a storm..."

"I'm not from around here," she said. Her boots were broken in and worn down. I enhanced my eyes only for a moment to glance at them, and I could see the leather beginning to peel away from the heel. Rough hand stitching bound it back together, but if she kept using them, they would soon fall apart more than a basic set of sewing skills would allow. Magic would be needed to repair them, or a new pair, perhaps one more designed for walking.

But to wear out shoes to that extent was unusual. There were more elegant methods of transportation. Our guidance charm, for one. More costly, though less reliable, were automated movement charms, which abandoned the need for horses in favour of a self-steering, self-propelling wagon charm.

Empress Lyana had relied on human drivers and well-fed, well-trained horses. They were more predictable. Though she did keep arcane alternatives on-hand.

Still, the act of walking between provinces was unimaginable. Most of them were former nations, massive stretches of country that would take days to months to pass through. Most humans spent their entire lives without ever leaving their own little corner of the world, and the ones who did leave did not often do so on foot.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"I'm going to need you a bit more drunk before I tell you that," she laughed. "What if you turn me away?"

"I would never!" I exclaimed in mock aghast.

"In that case, where are you from, Kindred?"

I nearly said Senvia, but Eskir grabbed my arm. Jenny eyed his hand curiously.

I shrugged him off, trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal to tell her where I'd spent my life. "There's a nameless inn at the crossroads three days west of here."

Her eyes lit up. "I know the one!" she exclaimed. "I didn't come from that way, but I've stayed there before, when Senvia was still around. I used it a few times. The owner was really friendly. I never saw you there though."

I struggled out a grin. "Coincidence?" I lied.

"Why did you leave? Must be quite the story for a Kindred to end up in an inn in the first place."

"Quite the story," I agreed. "But I just left. We've only been on the road a few days." The look she gave me in return was something like longing. "You've been travelling for longer?" I suggested.

"Awhile. Listen, I hate to bother you with this, but... I'm cold. I'm wet. I'm drenched by the rain. I've heard the rooms here have wood stoves in them."

"Oh, I'll bet they do," I said in disgust. "Sorry, it's a rivalry thing. Come on. We already have a room. Eskir, we're going upstairs. In your shoes, I'd come too."

He glared at me, then looked down at his drink with an exaggerated frown.

"Five more minutes," he pleaded.

"I'm not your mother. Take as long as you want. Just be careful."

"Be careful?" asked Jenny.

"He gets into trouble," I said.

"Why did you leave?" she asked again as we climbed a thin, creaking staircase. The staining on the wood had been touched up, but the inn was well-used. She followed behind, so I had to speak up to be heard.

"You're a very curious person," I noted.

"And you're still a Kindred," she said. "You'll forgive me if I want to figure out what sort of person is hiding under all that."

I stopped at the midway point between floors and turned back to her. "I'm the same as anyone else."

She laughed in a dark, disbelieving tone. "No, you're not. You might be human under whatever nature did to you, but having human parents doesn't mean you're the same as the rest of us. You weren't raised like we were. You don't value life like we do."

My lips parted in shock. "All my days. Where did you get that impression?"

She sneered. "Your entire people are mercenaries. Where do you think?"

"Not all of them," I whispered. "And the ones that are... that's how we were raised. That's all we were ever taught we could be."

"Exactly," she hissed, jabbing my chest with a finger. "But it's not just how you're raised. You're born that way. It's inevitable. You're natural killers who turn a profit from war."

A moment of silence hit us both. Her words send me reeling. It wasn't from shock. This perception wasn't new to me. It wasn't even entirely inaccurate. This is how Kindred were raised.

But this was the first time anyone had spoken so brazenly and so directly of the notion.

I nearly opened my mouth to speak, but Jenny raised her arms in surrender. "I give," she said. "You're giving me a warm place to sleep. Thank you. I can't trust you, not really. But I'd be fucked without your help. You are what you are, and you can't change that."

I took a step into her, placing my foot between her legs and forcing her back. She was so much shorter than me, and I could have rested my chin on her head if I wanted to. "I wouldn't want to change it," I stated bluntly, staring down at her.

I stepped back and turned back up the stairs, wordlessly motioning for her to follow.

We sat in a tense silence until Eskir stumbled in much later, barely managing to close the door behind him. Our lights were still on, the room illuminated by arcane lanterns, and he fell into the door to force it closed, collapsing his body against it.

"Did you know?" he started, still facing the wall and pointing at his boots, "These are steep stairs. I hate these stairs. I hate most stairs, frankly. Do you hate stairs, Xera? I bet this new girl hates stairs." A low chuckle set into his throat, and a fit of giggling randomly fell over him. He clutched at his sides and nearly fell over before turning back towards us. His laughter died. "Oh."

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"Oh?" asked Jenny.

I rolled my eyes.

"I thought you were kidding," he said with a lost expression on his face.

I gave him an awkward, flat smile. "Nope."

"Why were you not joking?"

"You know I worked at an inn, right? I don't like turning people away."

He was still drunk, and the apparent revelation about Jenny did little to sober him up. "Xera!" he said, suddenly shouting. "How about this rare delicacy of a wine, a mere five avens? That's vennies to a Kindred like you." He propped up the bottle of bean wine, still almost entirely full. The cork had been clumsily forced back in.

"I was there when you tasted that, Eskir."

He frowned. "Oh. Oh, Jenny! How about this rare delicacy of a wine, a mere seven avens? It's worth every venny!"

She raised her eyebrows.

He frowned, pointed at her, then clasped his hands on the left side of his mouth, blocking view of it from Jenny, and whispered very loudly, "Does she know people are trying to kill me?"

He was standing halfway between the two of us.

Jenny's ears perked up. "Um."

"Fuck," he cursed. "How did you find out?"

I pressed my face into my hands. "Eskir, please shut up and go to bed."

He squinted for a moment as if dazzled by light, stumbled, and shoved a finger at me. "I don't have a bed. She stole it."

"You gave it up," I reminded him.

"She stole it." He turned to her. "You stole it. I'm not sleeping with you."

Jenny grimaced. "No thanks."

"You stole it. And next you're gonna murder me."

Jenny turned to me. "Who's trying to kill him?"

"Anyone who finds him annoying," I chuckled.

"So... everyone?"

"It seems that way, doesn't it?"

Eskir gaped. "Hey!"

"You're drunk," I said. "Go to sleep."

His head sank down to stare at the floor and he fell silent for awhile. Long enough that I even started to wonder if he'd fallen asleep standing.

Jenny crawled over to sit beside me. "Where are you from?" she asked again. "Really, this time. Why did you leave the inn?"

I looked at her with a question in my eyes. Where was she from? She looked like she might be from the north.

Jenny understood, and sighed at the ask. "I was born in Espara."

The province wasn't north. It lay south of Carrack Bay, itself south of Lower Eckshire, near Dengal and Ibolan. Straight south from the inn at the crossroads.

But Espara was a place of nobility, and the wealthy had flocked to it for centuries, regardless of the colour of their skin.

She had been worried earlier, that I'd take the news of her origins poorly, but Espara wasn't deserving of such a reaction.

"That explains why you hate Kindred so much," I noted. "Most people treat us like brutes, but Esparans think of us more like jewellery than people. Those... arranged marriages. Maximising the chances of having Kindred children. Kindred, and people with Kindred ancestry, all trained up to wear pretty clothes and act noble."

Jenny laughed. "Yeah, Esparans are... well, not totally wrong. More Kindred are born there relative to their population than almost anywhere else. But no, I'm not from Espara. I was born there, but see, I'm human." Her voice turned to malice. "My brothers were Kindred. My sister was Kindred. A great match, my parents were. Four kids, and only one was born human. So they gave up after me, to avoid pushing their luck."

"Did your family move?" I asked, wondering if it would be appropriate to attempt to comfort her.

She laughed again, this time her tone filled with a cruel sarcasm. "My family? My family were street vendors on the spice road in Dengal. My family could barely afford the cart they sold their masala from. The people who gave birth to me were never my family, they were just the group I had the displeasure of being with for the first seven years of my life, until they pawned their family shame off to the people who would become my real parents, with a sum of money that seemed insignificant to nobility."

I motioned to Eskir. "His father too, apparently. Same boat as you." I placed my arm around her. She shivered, and leapt away, returning to her own bed and keeping her eyes locked on the floor. A small twitch in her hand betrayed the fact that she had nearly gone for the knife I had given her.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That's a valid reason to resent my kind."

She looked up, an expression of halfway relief, halfway insulted. "That's not why I hate Kindred."

"Then why?"

She turned her head away, as if to shake it, but stopped mid-motion, her face quivering in anger. A twitch came to her upper lip, curling a thin smile into an expression of distaste.

Don't, was the warning.

Don't ask.

Eskir clued back into consciousness. "Fine," he said, bordering on a shout. "I'll sleep." He sagged, collapsed, face pressed against floor, and immediately began snoring.

"We're leaving at dawn," I said. "Be up before then."

He didn't stop snoring, but a low wail of complaint sprouted from his lips.

"You're strict," noted Jenny.

"I used to be military," I said.

"Naturally. Not a mercenary?"

I shook my head. I had never been a mercenary. That was the standard employment for Kindred. Had I gone into mercenary work after Senvia vanished, any guild would have taken me. An Emperor's Guard? I would have been valued equal to the champions in Eaden Helm, at least three thousand avens per season. With the strangers that kept coming to the inn at the crossroads, though I would have turned them all down anyway, I had decided at some point to value myself at four thousand avens per season.

Lucian paid me and Ana one aven each per day. Something modestly closer to a normal wage.

Of course, innkeeps and servers didn't need to spend most of what they earned on equipment that could tolerate a Kindred's strength. But I hadn't really cared about the money anyway.

"I was in the Imperial Senvian military," I said. It wasn't a total lie.

"Not much better," remarked Jenny. "Where are you heading now?"

"To Bell Haven."

"Why?"

I paused for a moment, trying to think of some excuse. "I have no idea," I said honestly. "I suppose we'll find out when we get there. You?"

"Same," she said. "And then down south to Heldren, probably."

"We could travel together," I suggested.

Without a word in response, Jenny turned over and waved her hand through the air to motion 'off' to the arcane lantern on her side of the room. It dimmed, yellow lights seeping back into the confines of the red square, and finally extinguishing entirely.

I did the same with mine, but it flickered for a moment before turning off.

"Cheap lights," I muttered. We mostly used candles at the inn at the crossroads. The wax wasn't as expensive, and fire was always reliable. It was predictable. It didn't depend on the musings of the magic in the earth, or the presence of water in Ghost Lake. It flickered as it should, not randomly when you didn't want it to.

I pressed my head into the pillow and nearly closed my eyes when a thought occurred to me. I lifted the blankets, waved the light back on, and stood up from bed to walk over to the door. It was well-built, but the latch on it was unreliable, and it could be bypassed by anyone who had a key. I had known it from the moment I'd used the door the first time, and heard the clunk of the bolt falling into the strike plate at an angle. Heavy, yes. But any flexible and firm piece of material would lift it right up. A carved piece of willow branch would do it, or even a thin piece of leather.

I picked up one of the room's cabinets. It was heavy, though light to someone with my strength, and I propped it against the door at an angle, fixing it below the knob.

It wouldn't come close to stopping a Kindred, but it would at least force them to make some noise when they crashed open the door.

I hadn't been planning on sleeping anyway. Jenny was there, her hand gripped on the hilt of my knife hidden under her pillow in a way that she thought was clever, and there was always the chance of someone breaking in from the outside. I hadn't slept in days. I didn't need it. I could power through this for weeks, if I needed to.

But I couldn't count on not sleeping. There was always the chance that I would, and in that event, I needed some measure of a plan.

The windows were sealed shut. My guess was, there was too much fog from Ghost Lake to allow patrons to open them in the middle of the night. It had the potential to cause havoc to the wood. In this case, it meant I had one less thing to worry about.

I heard a shift behind me. Jenny. She was watching me, trying to stay unnoticed herself.

I checked the door twice more, then returned to my bed, propped the pillow up, and stared at the door.

"Okay," I heard her whisper. "I'll travel with you."

And then she was asleep.