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The tavern door opened and Clare turned, a smile on her lips in case a smile should prove useful. The newcomer wore the blue and white uniform of the city guard and his gaze alighted on Clare with a cruel brightness indicating fate had proffered him a particularly delightful amusement. His eyes traveled over her, malice lurking in their depths.
Clare had seen the look before—in other guardsmen on the journey here, in waste-street things, in embittered souls who blamed everyone but themselves for problems of their own making—and knew the guardsman did not see her. He saw the traveling clothes laden with ingrained dirt, their quality one step up from rags. He saw the beggar-thinness of her figure, the sun-tanned skin and the loose fall of deep brown curls.
In short, he saw a poor girl from one of the poverty-stricken holdings in the outer reaches of the Faelhorn Provinces, and likely thought she ought to have had the sense to stay in the outer reaches. If she had come from such a place, perhaps she would have. But Renault County was worse than any Faelhorn holding, and no one would ever believe she’d escaped from there.
Clare forced her smile wider. “Afternoon, sir.”
He did not return her smile. The severity of his expression deepened, as did the dark enjoyment at the corners of his eyes. He walked to her.
“Papers.”
It was no small miracle that Clare’s papers had survived her foray into madness, and the miracle was one she did not examine too closely. She simply pulled them from the outer pocket of her coat, instinct more than conscious thought causing her to reach slowly, deliberately. As her fingers brushed the folded edges, a half-forgotten memory surfaced of a guardsman’s fist striking her cheekbone. It wasn’t her memory, and it wasn’t the farmer’s daughter’s memory either. It was as if her thoughts of holdings girls had summoned one from the aether for her, sending her the memory to gather stray thoughts and reasonings in her mind, linking them together so she would know that you moved slowly because it was safer.
Clare clamped down tighter on the Song—it needed to stay the hell out of her head. To stop sending her all of these helpful thoughts. She didn’t think guardsmen took kindly to poor women who couldn’t remember their own name, much less if they were a farmer’s daughter, or a poor holdings girl, or something else altogether.
Clare let him look over her information several times before asking, voice mild, “Is there a problem?”
The papers were real. They weren’t hers but they were real, and they shouldn’t have even mattered. Ever since El-Dennon had fallen under the relentless onslaught of the Jackal King’s armies, every pocket of civilization belonged to Faelhorn. What was her place of birth meant to prove, now that they all belonged—in theory—to the same kingdom?
The guard grunted. “Shop across the street had a break-in last night. You know anything about it?”
“No, sir. I only arrived in Veralna this morning.” Her papers were clearly stamped to that effect.
“What brings you to the city?”
“I sing.” Clare indicated the guitar case propped underneath the bar.
“And you just got here this morning?”
It was an effort not to grind her teeth, to keep her smile in place. “That’s correct.”
“’Cause bystanders say they saw someone matching your description fleeing the shop last night.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” She tried to coax her voice into the timid obsequiousness he no doubt expected, needed, but the best she could manage was a bored indifference. The Song strained against her, trying to make her palms dampen, make a nervous panic flutter in her stomach to remind her that it didn’t matter whether she had or hadn’t done anything wrong—it wouldn’t stop the guardsman from arresting her if he felt like it. When it all came down to it, it wasn’t her gender or her looks or her clothes that gave him the ability to mistreat her. Those things only made it easier. It came down to power and means, and the fact that Clare had neither.
But she had survived far worse than him, and though she recognized she should fear him, she was still too disconnected from her emotions to take him seriously.
He scanned her papers yet again, then tapped them carelessly against his palm as he raised his gaze. “You staying with family in the city?”
She wanted to say yes and be done with him. But the very fact he’d offered her an easy answer, instead of asking her what she was doing in the city, made it clear he wanted her to take it. She thought of giving him the names Verol and Marquin, the two men who had let her travel in their wagon the last two weeks, and who were the only reason she’d reached Veralna City before true winter hit. They had obviously had money and, having money, their word might count for something on her behalf. And they were kind enough that if a guardsman dragged her to their door and demanded to know if she was staying with them, they would invite her in with a smile and demand to know where she’d been.
The only problem was, she had no idea where they lived. She didn’t even know their last names, or if they openly lived together, and the very reason she had felt safe traveling with two male strangers would likely be a reason for the city guard to cause the men trouble if he did manage to find them. They had been kind to her, at a time when kindness had seemed many lifetimes off.
She might be cold-hearted and ruthless and all but dead inside, but Clare Brighton didn’t repay generosity in unlike kind.
She responded to his query with a simple, “No.”
Irritation sparked in his eyes at her reply. At the lack of explanation. “Where are you staying?”
She set her teeth, knowing precisely where he was going with this line of inquiry. The guards at the city’s gate had made it very clear that Veralna had strict laws on vagrancy. “Here.”
“I’m going to need to see your room key.”
Ferrian’s hells. “As soon as the innkeeper returns and rents me the room, I would be delighted to show it to you.”
Where was the damn innkeeper, anyway?
That cruel, dark amusement kindled in the depths of his eyes again. “You are aware that vagrancy is punishable by imprisonment, and anyone without a room once the afternoon bell tolls is considered a vagrant?”
