Should’ve brought the truncheon, Rowena thought as she ran down the stairs, but she came to a halt when she saw a bunch of faces, some familiar, some not, staring at her as she panted.

Kieran was standing over a small table with his hands clenched in triumph. The two henchmen of the sickly looking man Rowena had noticed earlier sat on either side of him, glum looks on their very similar looking faces. Behind all of them, the group of a few rowdier adventurers who had been singing the bawdy song earlier cheered.

Rowena recognized the triumphant look on Kieran’s face and sighed.

“Ro!” He called out, gesturing for her to come over. “I won our night’s lodging!”

“At dice?” she asked skeptically, eyeballing the two men he’d been playing with. They looked like they played a lot of dice, and she doubted Kieran’s rounds with the gamblers of Tunehlan (frequent though they may have been) would be enough to give him such an advantage.

“Don’t look too happy about it,” he said, dismayed.

Rowena peered curiously at the beads of sweat on Kieran’s forehead– it wasn’t that hot in the room, and surely dice wasn’t much effort at all. She remembered what he’d said about feeling exhausted before, and began to worry that there was something more to his tiredness than she’d known.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a hand sneaked out from behind Kieran and grabbed his left arm, twisting it sharply.

“Ow!” Kieran cried out.

The bright light of the moon through the window on the far wall put them all in shadow, making it hard to see who Kieran’s assailant was, but Rowena was sure it was the sickly man. Her suspicion was confirmed when she saw his long nose peeking out from his hood as he pulled back Kieran’s sleeve and stared at his forearm. She was distracted for a moment by the soft but intense glow that was coming from around his left hip, probably underneath the cloak. A secret, she thought, realizing that her Detect Secret Ability was still active. She’d grown so used to the now very dim glow of the entire Inn that she hadn’t noticed it was still in use.

“MAGIC USER? But I don’t recognize this Subclass,” the man said. His voice was soft and slick and the words lingered, like oil dripping off a lamp and staining the floor below.

“Shame for you, then, isn’t it?” Kieran snapped, yanking his arm back and rubbing it where the man had gripped.

The man had apparently lost his interest in Kieran and picked up the dice on the table. He looked at them thoughtfully and tossed them up into the air a few times. “Not enchanted. Looks like you fools simply lost to a boy too young to even have a Gambler’s Sigil.”

“Hey!” Kieran said defensively.

One of the henchmen looked morose, but the other pulled out his dagger and stabbed it into the table with a fierce, uncontrolled gesture.

Rowena drew back and opened her mouth to shout for help, but the sickly man was faster. With surprising speed for someone who looked on the brink of death, his fist shot out and nailed the angry henchman in the eye.

“Don’t be a sore loser, Gerald,” he hissed.

Suddenly, the doors at the back of the bar area swung open, and Finnegan came through them with a large bowl in each hand. “Dinner is served!”

He came out into the dining room and paused, looking around warily. “I see you’ve met our other guests.” He addressed the statement to Rowena, but glared sharply at the sickly man.

“Sort of,” she said, and reached around the henchman not named Gerald to grab Kieran by his arm and tug him towards her.

“Delighted,” the sickly man said. She finally got a good look at him– he had a thin, pinched face with delicate skin that was so pale it was nearly translucent and sharp, intelligent eyes of such a light blue they were nearly white. A light sweat covered his face. “We were just getting acquainted.

Finnegan put the two bowls of stew down on the table in front of the henchmen, who immediately seemed distracted by the delicious smelling food. “Better take your seats so I can bring you your meals,” he finally said. Then, he pointed at the dagger. “And don’t let Thea see that or she’ll have you for dinner.”

“We’d be happy to pay for the scuff to the table,” the pale man said graciously, then inclined his head to Rowena. “Would you care to join us?”

“No,” she said stiffly, and pulled Kieran toward the table furthest from the other guests.

“Suit yourself,” the man shrugged, though she thought she saw a flash of annoyance in his face.

“What were you thinking?” Rowena hissed as she yanked Kieran into a chair. They were very close to the fire now, which Rowena usually appreciated, but the excitement of the last few minutes had already gotten her blood pumping and she felt overly warm.

Sorel and Mattie were coming down the stairs, though lured by all the commotion or the smell of dinner, she couldn’t tell.

“I was thinking,” Kieran snapped back, “that we have very limited funds and probably don’t need to be using them for Inns on the road when we don’t know what’s ahead.”

He had a point, Rowena realized, but she still didn’t like the attention he’d drawn to them. “What were you betting with, anyway?”

Kieran gave a little grin and tugged at Leo’s necklace that he wore around his neck.

“What is wrong with you?” Rowena couldn’t believe his audacity. “You’re sworn to complete a quest with that thing!”

“Okay, first of all, maybe the quest obligation gets negated if I lose the necklace fairly,” Kieran pointed out, and Rowena couldn’t deny that the suggestion had some appeal. “Secondly, though, you really think I had any chance of losing?”

“Losing what?” Mattie asked as she and Sorel sat down. They both looked considerably happier and more refreshed.

“Nothing,” Rowena said darkly, but she felt troubled. Those men looked dangerous, and Kieran was overly arrogant if he really thought he could manipulate them so easily, Manipulator or not.

“I won our night’s stay at the Inn,” Kieran said triumphantly. “Cause I’m Lucky.”

“At dice,” Rowena added. She was relieved– she’d forgotten that Kieran had chosen a proficiency in Lucky, which must be why he had done so well at the dice game. That Proficiency choice had been a good one, especially for Kieran.

Sorel, at least, looked impressed, and nodded at him in appreciation. “So what’s for dinner?”

“Stew,” Thea called out as she and Finnegan both came out of the kitchen carrying bowls.

Colin was at their feet holding a large loaf of bread. He was trying to help, but only succeeded in almost tripping his father.

“Whoops!” Finnegan managed a little dance and salvaged the bowl of stew. “Careful, Colin!”

The couple placed the four bowls down in front of them carefully, and Rowena couldn’t help but smile and relax at the reassuring, delicious smell of stew. It looked thick and rich, with large chunks of carrot and potato, and not a little bit of meat.

“I told you Finnegan’s night wasn’t the night to miss dinner,” Thea said with a grin, and turned to go back to the kitchen for the rest of the bowls, but Finnegan held up a hand to stop her. “I use the same ingredients but somehow mine doesn’t taste as good,” she added.

“Love, you should stay and chat with them,” Finnegan said. “They’re from Tunehlan.”

“How did you know that?” Rowena asked warily.

“They know Artemesia,” Finnegan patted his wife on the shoulder, and then went back into the kitchen. Colin tossed the loaf at the table and ran along behind him.

Thea sighed, but pulled up a chair from another table and turned it around so that when she sat on it, she could fold her arms at the top and rest her chin on her clasped hands.

“You know Artemesia?” Mattie asked, helping herself to her stew. “Is that… do all Innkeepers know each other?”

Thea gave a little laugh and shook her head. “Sometimes we know of each other, but there’s usually little time for an Innkeeper to leave her Inn. But I know Artemesia better than that. She’s my sister.”

Kieran gaped openly. Thea seemed much younger than Artemesia, perhaps only nine or ten years older than Eleanora, Artemesia’s eldest child. “But you– you’re so–” he trailed off. Even he had limits to his rudeness, Rowena thought with amusement.

Thea shrugged and leaned back, tapping her fingers on the top of the back of her chair. “Sometimes last minute miracles happen.”

“Why do you never come to visit?” Mattie asked, accepting a piece of bread from Sorel, who was tearing up the loaf and handing it out to everyone at the table. “You’re not so far from Tunehlan.”

A frown tugged at Thea’s mouth. “Artemesia and I don’t necessarily see eye to eye on everything. But I do care. How’s little Eleanora?”

Kieran blushed a little at the mention of his long-time crush and suddenly looked very interested in his stew. Rowena decided to rescue her friend. “Not so little. Eleanora is nineteen, and practically runs the Inn now so Artemesia can look after Jack.”

“Who is Jack?” Thea looked very confused, but accepted her own chunk of bread from Sorel and tore off a small piece.

Mattie looked at her curiously. “Why, he’s Artemesia’s son!”

They weren’t in any contact at all? Rowena wondered what could possibly have happened that Artemesia wouldn’t even inform her sister of the birth of her last child. She made a mental note to send Calla a message as soon as possible.

“He’d have to be– oh, seven? Eight?” Thea inquired.

That probably meant that was the last contact they’d had. How strange.

“Six, actually,” Mattie said between bites of soup. “He’s very cute!”

“A late child,” Thea said thoughtfully. “Just like mother.”

With that, she stood. Rowena thought she might have seen a little wetness forming in Thea’s eyes, but the woman seemed too proud to want to show it.

“Well, I’d best get my own dinner, and mind the other guests,” Thea said with a toss of her red head. “They might need some extra dessert since I heard you diced them into covering your room stay for the night.”

Sorel laughed and shook her head, rolling her eyes at Kieran.

“A thank you might be in order,” he said with a shrug and and impish grin.

“Who are those people?” Rowena asked Thea as the woman stood up to go.

She frowned and raised an eyebrow, pausing for a moment before continuing. “I can’t really go telling you things about my other guests,” she said. “But just mind your own business and keep away from them, and it’ll bring no trouble.”

This non-answer disturbed Rowena, but she tried to put it out of her mind. She trusted Thea, and didn’t think they could be in any real danger here.

Rowena ate the rest of her stew in silence, truly appreciating the taste of home-cooked food in a way she probably never had before. A few days in the wilderness would do that to a person, she realized. She half-listened to her friends aimless conversation with pleasure, Kieran’s incessant chattering; Mattie’s pointed questions and assessments; Sorel’s infrequent but always thoughtful observations.

When Rowena finally excused herself to go up to bed, Kieran was dazzling the room with displays of shining colored orbs that flashed and moved around in intricate and beautiful patterns like some kind of magical juggler before calling the sounds of a fiddle into the room seemingly from air. The sickly man and his henchmen had left shortly after dinner, but the bawdy, singing group, now quite tipsy on Thea’s ale, were entranced and gave Kieran all of the attention she knew her friend craved.

She didn’t really think it was a good idea to work such magic in front of people– how long until someone realized that Kieran was performing feats that would normally constitute several Abilities, the number of which someone his age should not be able to do? Still… she supposed they deserved something of a break, and Thea smiled appreciatively as her son Colin ran around the room trying to catch the glowing lights.

Rowena smiled. She wasn’t sure how she would have managed this adventure without them, she realized, and sent up a prayer of gratitude to whomever might be listening.