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Clare’s smile thinned, but she held it in place. The afternoon bell couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes off. She didn’t have a single coin to her name. If the innkeeper didn’t let her sing for her room tonight, she had no doubt the guard would take great delight in hauling her out of here.
Prison. A cage. Trapped again, her life once more in someone else’s hands. Bile rose in her throat. She wouldn’t do it.
She forced her mouth to open. “I assure you, I will have a room here before then.”
The guardsman smiled, a sick twisting of his lips that sent waves of revulsion down Clare’s spine. “Now that, I very much doubt. But I’ll be sure to wait for Crenn to get back, so you can ask him.”
So the guard knew the innkeeper, then. Knew him well enough to think he wouldn’t give Clare a room.
The inn’s door banged open and she turned at the unexpected noise. A middle-aged white man stood in the doorway. He was well-dressed and possessed of enough money to allow him to age well, despite the salt-and-pepper color of his hair. His gaze landed on the guardsman and his lips compressed into a thin, angry line.
“Moretz.”
The guardsman straightened. “Master Guire.”
Master Guire’s eyes narrowed. “See here, when my daughter said she saw you coming in here, I told her that certainly the guardsman in charge of the safety of this quarter wouldn’t be in his friend’s inn, waiting for a pint when our shop’s been broken into for the fourth time this month.”
Moretz reddened. Clare observed the change in color—it wasn’t the flush of embarrassment, but that of anger. He wasn’t chastened, he was angry that this man held power over him. That the shopkeeper had enough clout or money that it mattered how Moretz responded to him. “I was questioning a suspect in your case, Master Guire.”
“Yeah?” The shopkeeper’s gaze flicked over Clare, dismissing her. “She doesn’t exactly look like an athletic blond man. Pretty sure that was the description my clerk gave.”
“Master Guire, I assure you?—”
“Your assurances haven’t recovered my wares or secured an arrest. They haven’t made my wife feel safe enough to sleep for more than two hours a night. I’ve half a mind to take my complaints to the Guardsman’s Council.”
Moretz gave Clare a look clearly intended to make her stay put, and walked over to the shopkeeper. If they took the conversation outside, she could slip around the counter, through the kitchens and out the back door. Her gaze locked on Moretz’s left hand, where her papers carelessly dangled from his fingers, and her teeth clenched. She couldn’t run without those. Not that it mattered, because Moretz never went outside, only pulled the man over near one of the windows, his gaze flicking to her every couple of seconds.
The innkeeper chose that moment to return to the bar, his expression dark. When his gaze landed on her, Clare thought that expression turned just a shade darker. She didn’t let it deter her from smiling and asking, her voice bright, “Do you have any music this evening?”
The innkeeper grunted. “I did, only the Musicians Guild tells me the girl I hired’s sick and they’ve no one to replace her. As if I give a damn she’s got the sniffles when the Duke of Merlain’s nephew’s staying at my inn tonight, and everyone knows how he likes his music.”
The tightness in Clare’s chest eased a fraction. This might be the first good luck she’d had since leaving Verol and Marquin. The singer the man had hired was ill, and he desperately needed a new one. Clare racked her brain, forcing old knowledge to surface. Knowledge she had never wanted to gain, but had done so anyway. Merlain was a small holding within Trin Province, but to an inn like this one, clearly trying to gain some manner of prestige, the duke’s nephew would be a fine catch.
Almost too fine a one. It didn’t make a great deal of sense for the duke’s nephew to travel all the way to Veralna City only to stay at this inn, of all places. She tucked the oddity away in her memory in case it should prove useful later—for now, it didn’t matter.
“I sing, and I play the guitar and the piano.” The inn didn’t have a piano but she hoped her knowledge of the instrument would boost her respectability, and if the innkeeper managed to produce one out of thin air, she could play it. She could play any instrument he cared to drop before her, but she doubted he wanted a recitation of them.
“I had intended to rent a room for the night,” she continued, careful to keep desperation from her voice. That voice that wasn’t quite hers whispered that nothing turned a potential employer away like desperation. “But I should be happy to save the coin and cover the evening’s entertainment in exchange for the room, if you like.”
The innkeeper’s expression shifted and, for a moment, Clare thought he was considering her offer. In the second before he spoke, Clare recognized she had misjudged the emotion on his face. What she’d thought was consideration was actually derision.
“You?” He gave a short bark of laughter. “I’d sooner lose the Duke of Merlain’s favor than have an outer holdings whore on my stage.”
Sick heat pooled in Clare’s belly, followed by a flush of anger in her cheeks. She was so, so tired of people thinking they knew her. So tired of men looking at her and proclaiming her anything, as if their words and their judgment were the culmination of her worth. The Song answered the rising tide of her anger, flooding her chest and limbs and demanding release.
Clare closed her eyes. She would be damned to Ferrian’s hells before she would allow that she had survived Renault County only to rot in prison or be brought low by someone as insignificant as this man. She didn’t stop to think as she unspooled the thinnest tendril of the Song, letting a fraction of the power escape from its cage. She told herself that she had no choice, that it was the Song or jail, but part of her—and not a small part—felt a fierce elation as the Song’s power lit her veins.
She grasped the innkeeper’s forearm and locked his gaze, her heart pounding with the clamor of a barely contained storm. When she spoke, she spoke not only with her voice, but with the Song’s soft contralto as well. “You would be honored to have me sing for your guests tonight.”
The innkeeper gasped, his eyes slipping out of focus. “I…would be honored to have you sing here this evening, Miss…”
“Brighton,” she supplied. “Clare Brighton. You would be honored, and you will pay me the fee that was to have gone to the Musicians Guild, along with supplying me with a room for the evening.”
“I—of course, Miss Brighton.” He pulled two silver coins from his pocket and handed them to her. “Your fee. And your room. Please be down by eight.” He handed her a brass key on a ribbon, the number twenty-one embroidered on the red cloth.
She took the key, her hand trembling as the Song inundated her, pulsing in her veins and demanding out, out, out. Such a dangerous thing, this taste of freedom she’d given it, and she struggled to put it aside as it battered at her will. With a grunt of effort she sucked the tendril of power back down and let the innkeeper go. He stumbled a little but didn’t fall, looking blearily around as if he didn’t quite know where he was.
Too late, Clare remembered the drunk three seats down. A quick glance confirmed he still slept, oblivious to the world around him. Her shoulders eased a fraction, and yet…something about him bothered her.
