On the first day of spring, I managed to pour only fourteen pints before the first stranger approached me. The sort of stranger who could recognise what I was. He would not be the last. He spoke with a mottled voice, and he carried a sealed letter in his left hand, which he lay on the counter for me.

"One hundred avens," he said. "As an advance."

I smiled, and turned to my fifteenth customer. He scurried around the bar, following me.

"Look at you! I'd bet a hundred avens you could take on a direwolf with your bare hands. Fight for the former province of Heldren," he said. "A thousand per season, and help the old government be restored, before Senvia's interference. You will not see a better offer!"

I smiled again, with less enthusiasm this time, and turned to my sixteenth.

The man would not be broken by a smile. None of them ever were. Nor would he be satisfied with a simple answer. He would wait, and wait, and wait. Eventually, I might pour him a pint, and mix in something stronger. He would get drunk quicker than expected, and finally leave. A lack of patience was what wore them out, never my answers or lack of them.

"You would be a wealthy woman if you did," he said. "By the twin gods, one of the finest specimens I have ever seen! A true Kindred, if any of them are! Fight for me! Fight for Heldren!"

I poured him a drink. The shittiest whiskey we had. Even if I had wanted to fight, a thousand avens a season was a terrible offer for someone like me, even without including the advance. Not that he would have ever known that, no more than he could tell the quality of his drink. It was reasonable for most Kindred. Of course, he had no idea who I was.

I barely even knew that myself anymore.

Plus, he was no Stonekeeper, the demonym for the citizens of Heldren. The province had no gods. Worshipping any deity was still illegal there. Atheists were allowed, and as far as legal religions went, Pathoticism was... encouraged, to say the least. But the open worship of Duun and Laog would have him imprisoned and eventually exiled.

This man was from Lysina. They were the only ones left who prayed to the twins. I had met some of the Lys before, when I was very young. A few of their nobles had come to court to appease Empress Lyana with their silks and a siqlatin sundress. It was a custom among neighbouring nations, to deter the threat of immediate invasion. It was a practice adopted even by Cinia and Eaden Helm, the very few neighbours unafraid of any attempted invasion. Senvia would never have dared.

But Lysina was also under no threat, for entirely different reasons. They were across the world, on the other side of the Inner Sea. The easiest way to get there was to sail across it, and that sea was suicide. To them, the silks were not a deterrent. They were a gift. That made it all the more special to me, back then. I was a gift too, from another part of the world, given at the age of six by the lord who had trained me, to foster into Lyana's care and be her shield.

I don't know who gave me. She never told me, and even now, I don't remember. I don't really care.

I was an expensive gift. More expensive than those silks. I was Kindred.

It was the same reason these strangers continued to pursue me.

I did not ask him why a Lys was scouting for Heldren. It would be nightfall before I strengthened his drink to make him leave, and further conversation risked inviting him to drink less and stay longer. The bar at the inn always opened too early and closed too late. There were many drinkers, these days. Since Senvia's fall, and since the Empire crumbled. Some revelled in the chaos. Others just wanted to forget.

Fortunately, he did not stay. Once the day dimmed, he gave his promise to return tomorrow, took back his sealed envelope, and left.

He did not return.

"Are you alright to close tonight?" asked Lucian.

"Yes," I said.

On the second day of spring, I poured nine drinks before a new stranger came.

"One hundred fifty avens, as an advance! Come fight for Durn, and you will be rich beyond your dreams. Seven hundred avens for a season."

I smiled, and poured her a drink. She was not from Durn either. She didn't have the right look about her. It was curious — Durn was a military stronghold. It had joined the empire for trade, out of its own free will. The three prior attempted annexations had failed.

I tried not to listen to the news and gossip, and speculations like that came to my mind without any intentions for it. The collapse of the empire was not something I wanted to think about.

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Ana came by, offering a fabulous distraction. This stranger was not Kindred herself, only a human trained in recognising us. Still, she clearly worked out.

"My, what big arms you have," said Ana, and I nearly choked on my own tongue in reflex. It was such a terrible, awful line, but just like all her others, it somehow worked. The stranger turned to Ana and immediately locked eyes with her in a suddenly intense conversation long enough for me to get away.

The stranger was not attracted to women, but it didn't matter. Ana drew her eye all the same, and with it, her unwitting platonic interest.

Hours later, the day dimmed, and she finally shook Ana off and gave her promise to return tomorrow. She picked up her sealed envelope and left, somewhat stumbling through the doors.

She did not return.

"Can you close tonight?"

At my answer, Lucian walked off into the night, leaving me to my duty.

This was my life now. I admit, I did not hate it. Six months had passed since my failures. It had given me time to reflect and resign myself to what had happened.

Mostly, it gave me time to breathe. Every day now, at least twice, my heart would race, and I would lean over the bar to catch myself. A heavy breath, one my lungs had to work to take in. Two Emperors dead. Lyana was my responsibility. Alaric was my fault. It took time to breathe, after my body reminded me of my sins.

"Seventy-five avens, as an advance! Two thousand avens per season, should you survive! Dengal needs you for its defence! Come, fight alongside the great guild, Warriors of Ashbane!"

And Lucian left me to close.

The strangers were becoming more frequent. For the first month, I saw only one in a week. For the second, they came twice, or even three times. Now they were coming daily, pouring in with their offers in an attempt to convince me. They didn't know who I was, and they wouldn't have cared. I was Kindred. I was faster, stronger, and trained to kill from the moment I could walk.

But my hands ached now. They had ached since Senvia. Not in the way you might expect, with blisters and cramps, but a dull, longing ache. I found myself gripping the countertops with a little too much force, and there was now a subtle wave all along the length of the single beam of wood that made up the main section, carved out by my fingers. I needed something to hold, but whenever I bent to pick up an axe to split logs for the fire in the inn, the ache only became worse. It was a weariness about them, and one I could not escape.

This is why I stayed at the tavern. The cups. The pints. The bottles. Gripping them eased the ache. Sometimes, I still needed to remind myself that I wasn't holding a hammer, or a spear, or a sword. I did keep them, though. I slept in one of the staff rooms in the attic of the inn, and I had a sword stashed over my bed, a spear beneath it, and a dagger by the door. Of course, my crystal ring never left my finger. I didn't need it, of course. Against almost anyone, my hands were enough. I was Kindred. But if I needed to, in an instant, I could be brandishing that ring as a fully-formed and transformed weapon, destroying anyone who stood in front of me.

I almost had, nearly a month into my self-imposed exile. A drunken man had become a little too rough with Lucian, tossing him around and laughing about his height. I picked him up with one hand and shoved him into a wall. His eyes immediately went wide at the shock of a woman flinging him around with such ease, and I saw the moment he realised what I was.

"Let go of me, and I'll see you're rewarded."

That was when I nearly crushed his skull in with my free hand.

He hadn't even been armed. It was an instinct I had worked since to hold back; I was too ready to fight, too ready to kill, even someone who had no part in any war.

Every day now, I reminded myself of my truth. There were no Kindred here anymore. They were all off to war. They. I did not count myself among them. I refused to. This was my truth. Whether I was or not, I didn't care. My truth left me out of it, left me alone in that tavern, in that inn at the crossroads. So I stuck to it, however false it may have been.

The third day of spring, I served only three drinks before the next stranger came. He promised me gold and jewels, and a grand title. No avens though. It was almost funny, that he promised more than most others in worth, but not a single coin of actual currency. He brandished a string of pearls like it was nothing, but the only coin he mentioned was what he used to pay for his bed for the night after I refused him. Word of my presence here had long since spread, I knew. An unclaimed Kindred. Someone still available to hire. Clearly, the offers made hadn't even topped my wage at an unnamed inn. Surely if they only offered me enough to supplant it, I would accept. How much money could this inn possibly be making?

On the fourth day of spring, there was no offer. Six months, and days that went by without a pile of gold on the table, or a substitute for it, had become rare. It was enough to annoy Lucian after the first few weeks of my stay. Well, "annoy" wasn't quite the right word. He wasn't annoyed at the offers. I attracted customers. He was annoyed by the brandishing of sacks of avens. Those brought attention and nasty looks. The sort of people who would start a fight over that gold, didn't quite have it in themselves to realise that it wasn't the establishment's money. All they saw was the leather pouch.

It didn't really matter. They picked a fight, I stepped in, and they had a good nap.

Kindred were rare enough in these parts, but we did see the occasional one. Street smarts, humans called it. Knowing when to not do something stupid. We had that drilled into our minds from an early age — you wouldn't find many Kindred stooping to petty thievery or drunken brawls. Oh sure, I'd known a few who enjoyed a good old fashioned fight down at the pub, a cracked rib or two, maybe a broken jaw, but those were all under well controlled circumstances. Humans were never too close, and each pub in Eaden Helm had a healer.

That was the city of Kinded. Eaden Helm. I'd only been twice in my life, though Lyana had promised to take me again this year, so we could see the arena.

Lyana. Always, my thoughts wandered back to Lyana. It didn't matter if I was listening to festival music, because I'd think back to the festivals in Senvia, and how Lyana and I would disguise ourselves as street urchins just to attend them and swipe a few salt crackers. It didn't matter if I was tending to customers, serving them drinks in the tavern and seeing them to their rooms upstairs in the inn, because that would just remind me of the many times I had escorted Lyana on her travels, and shared an anonymous drink with her in places just like this. I couldn't even chop the wood out back without thinking about how, if she'd been there, she'd have been sitting on that stump, just eating an apple and watching me with a grin.

It was a trap, thinking about it. Anything at all. It was always the same.

Everything led back to her.