We walked back to the inn at a pace that wasn't a run, because running was how you became memorable, and we couldn't afford to be. Nicco set the pace, and I matched it. The streets of Bloomreach passed by, the amber windows, the ordinary life of a town that didn't know what had just happened in its square.
I didn't speak, and neither did he.
At the inn door, he stopped and turned to me.
"Upstairs," he said. "Pack. Quickly. We don’t have time. I'll explain to them."
"Are you going to explain tome?" I asked.
He held my gaze. Something in his expression, not the blankness, not the careful calculation, but something beneath them, older than them, something I'd been almost seeing for months and was now seeing clearly for the first time.
"Yes," he said. "I will."
He went inside.
I stood at the inn door in the cold Florlunia night, thinking about what happened at a fountain square, a dead man in the moonlight, and the words,I know your secret, directed at a man who hadn't flinched when he heard them. He’d killed.
He'd said he would explain.
Something had just changed, and I didn't know what happened next.
I took a deep breath, and I followed him inside.
Chapter 39
I wasat the top of the inn's stairs when the sounds downstairs quieted down.
The common room, which had been at a normal level of late-evening noise, quieted. Conversations didn't stop. They just became careful and muted.
I hesitated. What had happened? Then I heard the telltale clip of a guard’s boot.
Shit.
He’d told me to pack, and I hurried to the room. The door was locked. Larana and Baxley must still be downstairs. Where was Nicco? I hadn’t looked around when I came in. I’d headed straight for the stairs and gone up.
“Fuck.” I looked over my shoulder, biting my lip. My cloak was inside, my money. My pack.
I tried the door to the room they were in, but it was locked too.
“Shit, shit,shit.”
Larana appeared at the top of the stairs, her expression doing the flat, alert thing. She looked at me. I looked at her. She was at our door within moments and unlocked it, so both of uscould grab our stuff. My cloak settled around my shoulders with familiarity, and I relaxed slightly.
“Let’s move.”
Baxley was at the bottom, talking to the innkeeper in a low, unhurried voice. The innkeeper was a broad woman who looked like someone who valued a quiet establishment and was reassessing the guests who had threatened that peace. She glanced at us, then at the common room, where the two guards were talking to a table of men, their backs to us.
"Back door," Baxley said, without looking at us. He jerked his head slightly toward the corridor that ran alongside the common room. "Kitchen."
"What happened?" Larana asked, very quietly.
"Later," Baxley said. "Go."
“Move, Amarya,” she whispered quickly.
I moved toward the kitchen, with Larana at my back.
“You there, stop.”
