Honey, too, crouched to survey the mess, wrinkling her nose. “Sadly, I suspect that one of my guests must have gotten in here once when drunk. Or maybe a quikrol got in and messed everything up. Let me know if you find its skeleton.”
Ainsworth shuddered. Quikrols were notorious for consuming anything they found to quell their hunger and known to carry foul diseases. He began to feel nauseous.This will all be worth it,he convinced himself, even as he longed for the plush, clean carpets and warm rooms of the Skarrow Library. It occurred to him that perhaps a log of Artan’s stay would be among this mess, though the prospect did not lift his spirits as much as he’d hoped.
“In any case, I wish you luck with the cleanup,” Honey added.
He blinked at her. “But…this is your establishment! Surely you benefit from helping me clean this? Only then can I truly begin documenting this place’s history!”
“True, but I reckon this is all part of an archivist’s duty, right?” Her grin showed off glinting, pointed teeth.
“Not quite…”
“Oh well,” she said, standing up. “I have other things to clean, myself. Such as the small matter of your room, my esteemed guest. Shall I have a go at sorting any clothes that may have been damaged by travel? The nearby burn will wash them nicely, and Bren is a dab hand with a needle and thread.”
She did not wait for his reply before she skipped lightly down the steps, humming a bright tune all the way.
Despite another simple offering, breakfast the next day was something Ainsworth savored and lingered over.
For as soon as it was over, the dreaded attic awaited.
Another grueling day loomed over him, full of disintegrating scrolls, broken shelf brackets sending all manner of bric-a-brac tumbling everywhere, and yes, the remains of what Ainsworth presumed was once a scampering, paper-nibbling quikrol. Bren, upon inspecting the unnervingly clean skull, had confirmed it. “Haven’t seen one of these in a long time. We used to have a cat that kept them at bay.” The quikrol skull now sat nestled among the amber bottles atop the bar, a testament to Ainsworth’s failure.
But he was well and truly here now, having already spent weeks traveling in pursuit of this project. He was not long-lived like the elven scholars, the dwarves, who had the luxury of a prolonged existence to make their significant findings and discoveries. The minuscule gift from Ainsworth’s binneach grandmother might extend his life a decade or so beyond the average human’s, but it still was not much. He did not have the luxury of wasting time by letting his disdain for the inn and its staff push him away from the project. Hemust distinguish himself as an academic as soon as possible, so that his legacy kept him alive for as long as his almost immortal peers. He tried to envision the day he’d walk back through the Skarrow Library doors, triumphant, his trunk full of papers ready to be compiled into his new manuscript. He’d be welcomed back with awe and glee, he told himself, lauded to have found something so original to document in just his twenty-sixth year.
“You truly found nothing of use yesterday?” Honey asked as she buttered some bread, a slight lilt to her voice. Ainsworth gathered she wasn’t the kind of person to have a lot of smugness about her, but whatever emotion she radiated as she nibbled her breakfast, eyes wide and knowing, was close.
“You warned me as much, I know,” he said, hands in the air. “Today I’ll keep inspecting what might be salvageable before I try and organize it into any sort of order. I need to clear some space, too, so that when I do investigate the boxes and bound scripts, I might have somewhere to put them once I have finished.”
The bottom of his porridge bowl was sadly approaching. Quiddle had offered a selection of foraged brambles and a syrup tapped from the odd sweetfiodh trees in the nearby forest. It was unlike him, Ainsworth realized, to so thoroughly relish the simple sweetness offered by the dish. Enach would have bemoaned the lack of pastries, the lack of savory options, the absence of meat and fruit beyond what was gathered locally. But in that moment, Ainsworth could not relate to such feelings. He leaned back in his seat, a rare beam of sunlight setting the table aglow in all its laden glory, and felt almost relaxed.
As he, Honey, Quiddle, and Bren made idle chitchat over their meal, Ainsworth assumed the delicate bell announcing the front door’s opening was Ashe, finally come to join them for breakfast. In the two days he had been here, he had not seen her eat or rest.
But unfamiliar voices startled him instead.
“Hello, innkeeper?” called a deep, rhythmic voice. A tall figure strode into the room as though he owned it. Golden fur adorned the hands, neck, and face that peeked out from beneath his light, silkycloak. Cat ears flicked irritably as the hanging ivy reached gently for them, and a tail swished under the folds of his cloak. The smile that lit the catlike face was brighter than any day Ainsworth had experienced in this dreary mountain range. “Oh good, you do breakfast here!”
Honey promptly rose to her feet. “Good day, traveler! Have you need of a room?”
The feline figure nodded. “Indeed, and so does my sister. She is stabling the horses along with your guard. We require an arrangement to care for them, if you offer such services, but only a night’s stay,” he announced grandly, scanning each of the faces around the breakfast table as though they were a rapt audience. In a way, they were. Ainsworth could barely contain his glee. Dare he hope? Despite all Honey’s warnings, had fortune favored him with his first adventurer?
“Tomorrow,” the traveler continued, “we take on Mount Vengeance! Now, good innkeeper, how much for a night’s stay?”
Ainsworth quickly turned back to his porridge.
The sooner he finished it, the sooner he could get started.
Chapter 4
Finding the right momentto approach his first potential research participants proved tricky, however. Initially intending to make his swift introduction after Honey checked in the new guests, Ainsworth’s plan was foiled when the traveler insisted that Honey join him outside with Ashe and his sister to settle the horses. “I’d like you to get a good look at them and their temperament before deciding if you can keep and work them until we charge someone with collecting them after our journey.” With a wink at Ainsworth, who had somewhat awkwardly risen in his attempt to approach them, he swiftly vanished out the front door.
Honey raised a brow as Ainsworth lingered. “Don’t you have work to do, scholar?” Before he could reply and make his intentions known, she added, “Let them get settled in first before you make your research request. I know you don’t need my permission, but surely an academic such as yourself is well-versed in manners?”
“Very well,” Ainsworth said, throwing up his hands. But his heart was not in the task of tackling the attic chaos and slowly collecting the illegible, damp remains of scrolls and manuscripts. He needed to patch the window, at least, to stop more water creeping in, but until then he would make do by bringing some of the boxes down to his room before any further damage could be done. It would be more pleasant working through the contents in the warm, clean bedroom he resided in anyway.
And although normally the idea of working through such fragile documents near the heat of a fire would have him recoiling, there was no one here to supervise him, no one to tell him off for taking such a risk.
An hour later, he shivered in the cold, dank air of the attic as he clambered across the mess to grab another box. Ainsworth wrinkled his nose and placed a lace handkerchief over his mouth as he breathed in. He would surely catch some illness amid all the damp and mold. Yes, better indeed to work in his guest room until he could improve things up here.
Lazy. Weak-willed.
