“Hey! Cara! More beer over here!” The drunkard paused, swaying. “Harr, made a rhyme, I did!”

His companion smacked him upside the head, though the effort almost sent him spinning into the nearest hightop table.

“Shuttup, y’idjit. Next thing y’know, you’ll be singin’ songs for supper and then we’ll never get nothin’ to eat around here!”

He glared at Cara as she approached with their mug. “Not that we’d been orderin’ much before now. Where’ve you been, then?”

Cara kept her eyes low and her clenched fist hidden in the folds of her skirt. “Been about the room—you’re not the only ones here tonight, you know.”

It was even true. Every table hosted a body or three and at least as many dirty mugs, waiting for the barmaid to pick them up.

Waiting for her.

Cara stifled a sigh and snagged the handle of the closest mug. “Would you like to order anything while I’m here?”

“I’ll take the pie and another beer.”

Cara eyed the nearly full pint clutched in his meaty fist.

“Darn thing’ll be dry by the time you make it back here.” The guest took a hearty swing while staring her in the eye, daring her to contradict him.

Her tongue would be worn to a nub by the end of the evening. “The shepherd’s pie and another beer it is, then. Anything for your friend?”

The man turned and slapped the drunk one on the back just as he was taking a drink, resulting in a fit of coughs. “What about it? Anything you want?”

The drunkard hiccuped. “Nothing that comes in a bowl,” he said, then giggled like a toddler sneaking a frog into bed.

Cara felt her cheeks tingle. Drat.

“None of that here unless you head to the stables, which is where you’ll end up with your head in a barrel if you keep drinking at this rate,” she said. Cara turned on her heel, stalking back to the bar and the door to the kitchen beyond.

Of course, her dramatic exit would be ruined by tripping over another drunk’s foot, which had her flying to displaying her skirt-clad bum to the entire room. The drunkard clapped and hooted at the free show.

Her palms sang with pain. Cara cursed under her breath when she spotted the dots of crimson swelling through the scabs. Her fall at the blacksmith had only just healed over before her shift, and now they’d open back up.

Quickly, Cara picked herself up and—ignoring the catcalls of what must’ve been half the village—ducked beneath the bar to escape into the kitchen.

It was hot and crowded with counter space, but it was mercifully free of alcohol. Jeffrey wouldn’t let a drop pass while there were still patrons to be served and catered to in the common room.

The only exception was drink for medicinal purposes—and that required furniture to be broken.

The innkeep-of-all-trades faced away from the door, humming as he stirred a pot that simmered and spat in the main hearth at the back. His braid of iron grey hair swung to the rhythm of some internal beat.

Cara smiled absently as she headed to a pile of kitchen rags, kept in a basket by the row of buckets that hosted scores of soaking crockery and flatware.

“Busy out there tonight, then?” Jeffrey half-sang as he spotted her rooting in the rags.

“Yes, but not too bad. They’ve started singing Wolf in the Weeds, and they're only on the second verse, I think.” She didn’t add that they’d be on the third by now, if they hadn’t been distracted by her trip to the floor. “The pie’s good tonight, Jeff.”

Jeffery’s barrel chest swelled further with pride, threatening to snap his apron straps like so much string. “It better be! Was Molly’s own recipe, once upon a time. I don’t make it near as well as she did, but a body makes do with what he can.”

He eyed Cara as she quickly wound strips of cloth around her palms. “Get into a scrape again, did you?”

“Not exactly.” Cara used her teeth to hold one of the straps as she tied a knot. It gave her a moment before she had to respond. “Just fell this afternoon, is all, and the cuts opened up again.”

“Oh, really now?” Jeffrey leaned against the outermost edge of the wide mantelpiece that served as a warming station for the prepared food. He ignored the heat that flushed his left side. “Anything you’ll be wanting to tell me?”

“Yes, really.” Cara grunted a bit as she tightened the cloth. She looked up, hands neatly tidied, and found herself flushing a bit under the almost fatherly gaze. “I promise, it was an accident. I tripped over something while visiting the blacksmith.”

Jeffrey relaxed. “Ah, well, he’s always been a bit of a slob. What were you doing down that way, anyhow?”

“I…” Cara cleared her throat. It wasn’t like she could tell her current employer that she was applying for another job, even if it were just a temporary freelancing gig.

“I just thought I’d ask for a favor from him, that’s all. The latch on the chicken coop’s not been closing right,” she improvised, then shrugged. “He was in one of his moods, so after a bit of chitchat, I didn’t think I’d ask about it after all.”

“That was right thoughtful of you, Cara, and no mistake.” He started to say something else, but the kitchen door swung open again. The other two barmaids crammed into the doorway so fast, they nearly popped from the threshold.

“It’s a madhouse out there!” one gasped. She fanned herself with the apron over her skirt. “They’ve gone absolutely insane! What’d you put in that pie, Jeff?”

“’Twasn’t the pie that did for ‘em, Liza, and you know it.” The second maid glared at Cara. “That little stunt riled the whole room up something fierce.”

“Stunt?” Jeffrey echoed. He raised one eyebrow at Cara, whose cheeks burned again.

“Oh, gods all bless!” Hurriedly, she picked up an empty mug and sloshed some water in it. “That wasn’t on purpose, Emily, and you know it. The man tripped me up!”

“Right. Of course.” Emily sniffed and shook out her skirts. “And now that you’ve flashed your bum at all the men, you’ll be getting all the tips.”

And all the squeezes, and all the pats, and all the offers and orders to come by their rooms after work.

Cara rubbed her temples, feeling the makeshift bandage on her palms scrape her forehead. “You want the tips so bad, you take ‘em tonight.”

Emily narrowed her eyes. “You funnin’ me?”

“No, it’s fine.” Cara rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a dry towel that looked reasonably clean. “Someone should help Jeffrey with the dishes, anyway. I’ll stay back here for a while, I think, if you two can handle the crowd.”

“Sure and we can handle the main room, if you’d rather stay back here.” Emily tugged her bodice lower. “We’ll need some bread and three orders of that pie before we go back out on that floor, though.”

Liza nodded as she dipped mugs of beer out of the barrel.

Cara opened her mouth to scold the girl for not using the dipper and getting the whole mug sticky before the patron got it, but sighed. They were probably too drunk to know any different, anyway.

Instead, she turned her attention to the tub of plates and grabbed the topmost one lurking just beneath the suds as the two girls gathered their dishes and left.

“That was right kind of you, Cara.”

Jeffrey’s voice was casual, but Cara felt her spine stiffen.

She kept her voice light and her eyes on the pewter plate in her hands as she polished it dry. “It was self-defense. I don’t much care to go back out and be manhandled, and you know that’s what would happen.”

“Do I need to knock some heads about?”

The gruff offer shocked her, even as it warmed her belly. “No, no!”

Even as she said it, she winced. That sounded too panicked, she thought. Jeffrey’ll think something’s wrong.

Cara cleared her throat and tried again. This time, her voice didn’t crack. “No, thanks. They’re just being drunk, that’s all. And Emily will appreciate the extra money that comes of a bit of riling.”

“No doubt.” A pause. “Perhaps you’d care to learn to cook, stay back here all the time.”

Cara couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Me? After I burned an entire week’s baking the last time I tried, and me staring at them rising in the oven, too! I’d burn the inn down in a fortnight.”

“Well, maybe not cooking,” Jeffrey allowed. “But maybe the rooms? They’ve not had a good scrubbing since my Molly…” He coughed. “Since spring, anyway. They could use with some tidying, and it’d get you out of the main room.”

Cara hesitated.

She hated being down around all the folks in the common room, it was true. She hadn’t grown up in the village, hadn’t toddled about with the men’s sons and daughters.

She was a stranger, and a woman, and that made her safe for… suggestion… in a way that Liza and Emily never could be.

Emily fussed about it, thinking Cara courted the attention on purpose, but Cara’s personal experience with that side of life was limited to flirtation with the local farm hands and apprentices.

Let her try being a barmaid in the next town over, Cara thought with grim satisfaction. Then, she’ll see just how hard she’ll have to work to avoid the grabbing!

But working as a barmaid let her get more money than an inn’s maid would get, and that money was being saved for—

Her thoughts were interrupted by a warm, callused hand on her shoulder. Cara tilted her head back to look Jeffrey in his open, honest eyes. “You’re a hard worker, girl, and fact is, I’d like to keep you on, permanent-like. So whatever we need to do to make that happen, well, you just tell me and we’ll see what we can do.”

Cara’s mouth lifted at the corner. “Even with my two left feet?”

“Even then.” Jeffrey’s smile was whole and untarnished. “You just need some new dancing lessons, that’s all.”

----------------------------------------

Dancing lessons, Cara thought later that night, turning the offer over in her mind as she crouched in the undergrowth, watching the flock of cockatrice bob and duck and weave through brambles.

She already knew a dance or two, in a manner of speaking, and the Dance Of The Spiffiest Maid In All Grunwood didn’t exactly appeal to a body after running through the patterns of a Warrior’s Waltz.

Her palms ached as she clutched the leather strap of her sling tighter, waiting for the cockatrice to settle in after a night spent foraging for beetles and small scurrying things.

She might not get paid for the gig, but she’d not pass up the chance to practice at the tune she loved best.