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“What woman?” Aislinn asked.
“The one next to that red building,” she said.
"No,” I whispered.
“That means she’s a light crafter,” Lady Cara said. “We can’t use this path.”
“We can take the street we passed before,” Aislinn offered. “We’ll have to take a right once we reach... I think there was a monument there.”
“I remember that!” I whispered. “I know what you’re talking about.”
“Good,” Lady Cara said, and in a split second, she pulled us away from the red building, keeping us in the shadows as we traced our footsteps back to the street Aislinn had mentioned.
There were soldiers here as well, but we avoided them easily since we were invisible. We reached the monument after a short walk and took the street to the right. We only had to walk for a while longer before we reached Igraine’s inn.
“It looks abandoned,” Lady Cara said.
“It’s usually very lively,” I said. “There might be a problem.”
The windows were shut down, the door bolted as though the owner had no intention of ever coming back to reopen the inn. No sounds came from the inside, and in the upper floors where the rooms were, no light seeped through the curtains to suggest they had guests in there.
“It’s late,” Aislinn said. “Perhaps everyone is asleep.”
“Or this is a trap,” I whispered.
“Could be,” Lady Cara replied. “We should slip inside unnoticed.”
I nodded.
“Yes,” Aislinn replied.
We could not use the door to enter, lest we risk notifying whomever inside of our arrival. Upon Aislinn’s suggestion, we circled the building to find a window we could use to break in. But when we walked to the back of the building, we found a door instead. It wasn’t bolted shut like the front door.
“Do you have a hairpin?” Aislinn asked Lady Cara.
“Sure,” Lady Cara said. I heard nothing for a second but she pulled her arm away from me. “Here you go.”
Nothing happened. At least, from my perspective, it seemed like nothing happened. But after only a few more seconds, I heard the clicking of the lock, and the door cracked open as Aislinn let out a breath of relief.
“It’s been a while,” Aislinn said. “But I can still do it, apparently.”
Lady Cara grabbed my arm again and pulled us into the inn. We remained silent as we found ourselves in the kitchen. There were no ingredients lying around, nor did I pick up the lingering scent of food having been cooked recently. I became more and more convinced that the inn was closed for good.
“There is no one in here,” Lady Cara announced after a while.
“Igraine’s room was upstairs,” I whispered. “We should check it out.”
“No need,” we heard a woman’s voice from up the stairs. “I’m coming down!”
We had no time to react. The loud sounds of footsteps joined the flickering of a lamplight as I felt Lady Cara’s hand clutching my arm.
Igraine came down the stairs.
“What are you doing here, at this time of night?” She asked to the darkness, holding up her lamp to shine it on us. She did not seem bothered by the fact that there was no one inside her inn despite the sounds she had heard. “Make yourselves visible so that I can look you in the eye.”
Beside me, Lady Cara and Aislinn appeared out of thin air. Igraine didn’t even jolt in surprise to see the three of us standing before her.
“Feremir,” she said, her lips cornering with a little smile. “How have you been?”
