"You okay?"

Ana was behind me. She'd learned the hard way not to tap me too hard on the back. I'd apologised to her, and offered to cover her shifts for the next few days, but she waved me off. "It's just an elbow," she had said, laughing as she tilted her head back to catch the blood dripping down her nose. "I startled you. Could have happened—would have happened to anyone. Besides, that shriek you gave was worth it. I never get to hear anything that high-pitched from you."

"Yeah," I had said. "Thank you. I'm alright."

"Did you see that guest with the red hair?" she asked, bringing me back to the present. "Ugh, he's cute."

I twirled a towel in my hands. My eyes were fixed on a speck on the floor.

"Xera?" She whacked me in the arm with a wooden spoon.

I looked up, startled out of my trance. Even though she was standing well off to the side for the safety of her nose, I was a bit proud of my reaction. There was a relaxation in my muscles, and after so long, I could be slapped with a spoon and not instinctively respond with violence.

"Just lost in your thoughts," she mused. "Like always. It's a schedule. I know, I understand. You get lost in your thoughts. Every. Single. Time."

I flushed. "Sorry, I'll—"

"No, no, you go ahead, you rest and get lost in your thoughts while I finish this," she insisted, gesturing to the pile of dishes in front of her. "I'll just have to change the water, oh... twenty times? Alone. The pump to the well is only in the basement, it's not like I have to walk outside. It's not like I have to go and get the other dishes from the inn and bring them back here, across the road, to the tavern to clean them. No, you rest Xera, you take your time being lost in your thoughts, and you—"

"I'll do them," I said, covering her mouth with my hand. She muffled out a startled protest for a moment, then realised what I said. She raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, I will."

She raised it higher.

"All of them. Myself. Go on, take the rest of the night off."

She tried to say something, but I kept my hand on her mouth.

"I'm going to do all of this myself, tonight. Okay? AH!" I pulled my hand back, wiping it against my trousers. Ana stuck her tongue out at me, gave me a wide closed-lip smile, then bolted off to her room.

She hadn't been kidding. The stack of dishes was as tall as she was. Normally, we did them throughout the day, but there were only three of us to manage two buildings, and Lucian had felt too ill to work.

We went through our entire stock of pots, bowls, clay plates, knives, and cups. Nothing was left to use. I didn't even know if I had enough towels to dry it all, and I knew I had no space to wait for them all to dry, but I worked at it anyway.

The sun had long since set, even with earlier hours for the tavern in the spring. It wasn't quite the dead of the night, not yet. That hour when everything is quiet and not even a whisper of the wind would break the imposed silence, had not come yet. For now, it was still early, at the time of day when the dark sky looked over parties and events and lights in the cities. In Senvia, the night market would have been in full march just then. Of course, out there, at the inn at the crossroads, there wasn't much more than the horses in the stables to make a sound. Sometimes we'd hear the coyotes laughing and the foxes screaming, and there was always the river in the distance, but most of the time, it was quiet.

When I was finally finished my work, it was proper night, closer to the early morning and the dawn. The witching hour, some called it. The time of night when nothing really existed, and everything did at the same time. The hour when legends of the Witchgiver and her witchskin sunflowers haunted the abandoned crop fields.

It was black out, veiled by an uncertain light and clouds hiding the moon and stars. Outside, the air was crisp. The early hours marked only the fifth morning of spring, after all. Snow still speckled the ground, and puddles gathered in potholes on the road. I couldn't yet see them all that clearly in this light, but the warm weather had hit long before spring this year, and I knew where they would be.

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It was still a challenge to not muck my boots in the mud.

I had walked twenty three careful steps across the road — I had counted, a small habit I had developed. The forests around the tavern and the inn were thick, and even in winter, watching the sun and counting steps were invaluable practices in ensuring that I didn't get lost under the canopy.

Twenty three was more than usual. I had reached only halfway between the two structures, many steps consumed by dodging puddles and chunks of snow still left in the shadows cast by the buildings where we had been piling the snow throughout the season.

That was when I saw him. Standing there, in the middle of the road. It was a disturbing sight, a lone traveller, barely visible against the night, just... watching me. Only when I saw him did he react.

"Hello," said the stranger.

"Hello," I said in reply. My rock crystal ring hummed against my finger, ready for whatever might happen next.

"What is this place?" he asked, pointing to the inn.

"That's the inn," I said. "And that over there is the tavern. You'll want the inn for the night though. Tavern's closed."

He nodded, a movement I could barely make out at this distance. "Yes," he said. "I think I ought to."

I waited, but he didn't continue. He didn't move either. He just looked at me.

"Off you go, then," I said. "We have an arcane stone, so just leave your handprint and we'll deal with the check-in in the morning. It'll give you your key."

"Yes," said the stranger. "Yes, okay. I will."

But he didn't move. He just stared at me.

"Are you..." he continued, then changed questions. "No, what is this place?"

"I told you," I said, getting annoyed. Was he drunk? Or high on tafra leaves? "This is the inn."

"You did tell me that, yes. But which inn? What's it called?"

"It doesn't have a name."

"The Nameless Inn?"

"No," I said. "Not The Nameless Inn. Just the inn. Just an inn and a tavern at the crossroads."

"Why wouldn't you name your inn?"

"It's not mine, it's not up to me. And lots of places don't have names."

"There are many inns in the world. Why shouldn't yours be unique?"

"It is unique. It doesn't have a name. Of all the inns in the world, why should they all have names?"

The stranger took a step towards me. "It's just odd," he said. "Suspicious, even. Your inn should have a name. Your tavern should have a name."

I took a small step back. I couldn't see the man well enough to know what he was capable of. My ring was pulsing on my finger, and my arm was braced to let it do what it was so ready to do. "We serve travellers. Vagabonds. Merchants."

"Kindred," he said, taking another step.

"Yes," I said. "And Kindred. And none of them ever stay very long, so there's no need to name it. We aren't renowned. We're not a destination. We're a crossroads."

"You are Kindred," he said with a gleam in his voice that I only imagined was reflected in his eyes. "Yes, I was right about that. It's not always easy to tell, you know. Not for the rest of us. We're not all scouters. Only Kindred can just innately tell at a glance, and not everyone is trained to see the magic running in your veins. Sometimes I can tell, sometimes... less. That way you look around, where you hold your hands, the steady resolve of your breath."

As subtly as I could, I shifted my back foot straight, facing him dead on, and my front leg at an angle. My hands didn't quite come up, as that would have been telling, but I readied myself to strike, should I need to. He was still too far away to make out properly, and it would take several seconds for a regular human to close this distance.

A fraction of that for a Kindred.

"Yes, even now, as you take that stance. It really is hard to tell. But you... I know you."

I stopped. The tension in my arms slacked for just a moment.

"I know you," he repeated. "I've seen you before, so many times."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Eskir," he said. "I don't expect you to remember it. You never have before."

The man claimed he knew me. A total stranger who could not have been able to see me clearly at this distance and at this hour, claimed to know who I was.

"I'm so glad I found you."

That bit caught me off guard. Who was this man, this Eskir? Was he the sort that believed that the moon was a hole in the sky, and that the fragment had fallen into the Inner Sea? Or that sunflowers could kill you with their smiles, if they so chose? Or that birds had plans for world domination?

"You survived," he said. "You're still here, despite everything. An entire city, lost to the waves. Where were you when it happened?"

Oh.

"I was there," I said.

"In the city itself?"

"No," I whispered. "I left. Just before it happened."

Eskir was close now, close enough to see properly. He was lean, and had black hair that hung to his neck in waves. He was older than me, though not by much. He was probably still in the latter end of his twenties. He wore decent clothes, but dressed poorly, with open buttons and an oversized lightweight coat. His fingers were long and slender, and told me clearly that he had spent more time holding a writing quill than a sword, and more time still holding a book. I knew this man. I couldn't quite place where, but I knew him.

"You are Xera," he said, "of the Emperor's Guard."

No.

"Leave."

"I need your help."

"Leave," I repeated. My voice wasn't quite working properly. It was rigid and mechanical.

"You are the only one who can help me."

"Leave!" I shouted. The word echoed through the forest and came back to us.

"I know what happened to Senvia," he said.

I flung myself at him. I didn't bother with my rock crystal. I didn't need it. He was only human.

My left hand went to his throat, my elbow knocking his right arm away, and my other hand went to his chest. My right leg stepped behind him, then swung back, bringing him down to the ground. I kept his head from injury, but I grounded that man in less time than it took his heart to beat.

My long weariness, my longing for an eternal end, vanished all in that moment.

"Talk."