The tavern of Garam’s inn was having a slow night. He liked it slow.

Garam polished a glass behind the bar. A bar he’d cut and sanded himself. He’d built this place up from nothing since coming to Katarn. Back then, Blade Street had been rotted out slums, just another, wider, alley to add to the maze.

It was still no Copper River Ave. But he liked it that way. If he’d wanted all that mess he’d have found a lady.

Yes. It was good out here on the fringe, where nobles didn’t roam, and the people he served were rooted in the work of the land.

The baker’s boy, pudgy and always silent even when he laughed, and the ever-chatty postman for the seventh district, and the fishmonger, who always had the sense to bathe before coming in for a bite and a drink.

It was a warm place, his inn. Especially the tavern that took up the ground floor. He didn’t have the coin nor care for aether lights—flickering candles and a crackling hearth did the same job better by his measure.

He looked at the walls, at the mud brick he’d laid himself after deciding there were too many ‘windows’. At the rounded door frames that the building had inherited from its previous inhabitants when such things were in fashion.

Yes, this wa—

Thunder boomed and candles flickered as the door swung inward, the rain laden storm winds swirling past the newcomers and splattering the fishmonger and his friends.

“Oi,” he shouted, “Close the damn door!”

The two newcomers stumbled in and pressed the door back against the gale.

Ah, not newcomers after all. The tall lady from the master suite was being practically dragged by some street rat. He was gaunt and paler than he shoulda been. Looked about to collapse.

“Pardon, Master Innkeeper, Sir,” the wet vagrant said, pulling the guest closer to the bar. “I believe the lady has a room here?”

His voice was brittle and thin, hollow like a spoon scraping a bowl that had held soup all its life and now found itself devoid of even crumbs.

*******

The Innkeeper narrowed his eyes at Ren and the boy gulped. A big man with a squashed nose and hard jaw.

“Sit her down right there, boy,” the big man ordered, and the boy, the wet street rat—for that was how the man no doubt saw him—complied, unable to help from collapsing into a nearby chair himself.

He wasn’t sure if he could stand even if he tried.

“You wait right there,” said the Innkeeper. He walked around the bar, picked up the floppy, soggy lady, and stomped up the stairs while calling out, “Norn! You watch the boy till I’m back.”

Norn, a young woman who was still definitely more of an adult than Ren, set her eyes on him. Her face was round and her eyes shone cleverly from under a mop of mousy brown hair.

His empty gut clenched. What could the man want with him? If he had the strength, he’d have run, storm be damned, instead he just cradled his head and listened to the drip-dropping of the puddle that was forming beneath him as it battled against the silence.

Then chatter resumed. Talk of flour shipments and the best way to skin a codfish replaced the quiet, and the pressure of curious gazes lifted.

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There was a thump on the table and he looked up to see Norn walking away, a steaming cup on the table the only evidence that she’d visited. He smiled, or his face tried to, but it was too tired, so it gave up. Then he cradled the mug and drank. It was hot tea, and it traveled into all the little corners of him. The hint of honey was like a kiss, a gentle sweetness that hit him like a battering ram, and something in him tried to break under the pressure of it. He fought back tears and took another sip.

Norn was behind the bar again. Her round face still somehow steely, clever eyes clinical. If he didn’t have this mug in his hands as proof to the contrary, he’d have believed her heart was as hard as the look she was giving him.

*******

Well, he’d be damned. The rat hadn’t stolen anything from his guest. Looking at the boy, the innkeeper wouldn’t have blamed him. Hell, if he’d looked like that, he certainly would’ve taken something for his trouble. But that didn’t change anything. Had the boy been a thief, he’d have gotten a thief’s treatment.

Garam closed the door to the master suite behind him. The woman had been slipped the root. Amazing she’d made it back at all. Cultivators.

At the bottom of the stairs he took another look at the boy. He supposed the kid was more of a lost puppy than a rat. A gaunt, wet, filthy puppy.

“Norn, see the lady into something dry. Boy, come with me.” Garam started making his way to the back, calling over his shoulder to the baker’s boy, “Fennick, give a holler if anyone else comes in.”

*******

Ren had been savoring the warmth of the mug, and, following the big man, he looked mournfully back to where it sat, still half full.

Past the kitchen was a little office with a big stuffed chair and a stool that looked well used—as a footrest, based on the scuff marks. The innkeeper pushed the stool towards him and he sat.

Plopping down into his own chair, the big man squared a gaze at the boy.

“What’s your name kid?”

Ren finally noticed the man’s accent, the sharp curl at the end of some words that carried the flavor of the southeastern peninsula, the ‘spice lands’ as uncle Irah liked to call them.

“My name is Ren, sir.” He stared at his shoes trying to steady his breath. Losing composure could only worsen whatever was to come.

“Family name?”

“Don’t have one, sir.” Ren gulped, then continued in a whisper. “Not anymore.”

“Hmmmm,” the Innkeeper hummed to himself. “So you’re all alone out there then?

The man paused, then continued, “How old are you then? Hard to tell the age of a walking skeleton.”

Ren’s cheeks burned with shame as he quailed under the slight. For the first time, he was glad for the cake of filth that perpetually coated his face and now hid his embarrassment. “Sixteen and a season, sir.”

“You kids.” The man chuckled, shaking his head. “Always adding on a season to be older, while us old folks are always shaving them off.”

The man stood and left the room. He wasn’t gone long enough for Ren to decide if he should run though, and when he returned he had a drinking bowl in each hand, offering one to Ren as he sat and swallowed a mouthful from his own.

Ren looked up and took the bowl in shaky hands.

The man smiled at him and pressed his vessel against Ren’s, sweet golden liquid sloshing from one to the other.

“Have a drink, kid. You look like you could use it. This here is called mead.”

Ren took a sip. Warmth and sweetness and a bite that cut through his nerves leaked into him as the mead made it to his stomach. His shoulders slumped and he took a bigger gulp.

“I’m Garam, Garam Sunsole. I ain’t your family, but I’m here and I know what it is to be alone in a place. Tell me what happened. You did right by that guest of mine when you didn’t have to. Maybe I can do right by you.”

A dam broke in him, and out poured words and tears—a story of debts and illness, of a life lost and a family taken, of the horrors of a soft kid cast out to the hard streets. The story went on and on, until Ren was empty and his lids were heavy and drooping.

Garam stroked his stubbled chin and leaned back in his chair. “There is a bedroll in the attic you can use tonight. You’ll be dry and warm, and we can talk more in the morning about what’s to come.”

Ren was in too much of a daze to thank the innkeeper. His chin was nodding toward his chest even as Norn led him upstairs and showed him how to open the attic hatch and set up the bedroll for him.

Then he was asleep. A dreamless, deep, black, cozy sleep, undisturbed by the pounding rain or the sky-splitting cracks of thunder.