Page 2

One

Lira glanced over her shoulder as the mud squelched under her boots, but there was nothing in the darkness behind her aside from the winding road and the forest in the distance. No one following her. No one hunting her. At least, no one she could see.

“You’re being paranoid,” she whispered as she made her way through the village, the sliver of a moon shining only enough to put the thatched roof, cross-hatched buildings in shadow. She pulled her hood lower to rebuff the relentless rain and keep her face obscured. Not that being recognized was a problem here, but old habits died hard, and Lira had become very accustomed to moving through the world with stealth .

She passed the village stables, the scent of horse muck twitching her nose before she recognized the building hunched against the storm. Just past it were the shuttered market stalls, rain sluicing off folded awnings huddled tight.

It had been two years since she’d last passed through Wayside, but five years since she’d left her hometown to make it in the wider world. The village felt more changed than she’d expected. Or maybe it was just her and everything she’d seen and done in the years since that colored her memories.

“Or maybe it’s this hells-cursed storm.”

She cut her gaze to the castle on the high hill in the distance, sheets of rain lashing the gray stone. That had not changed, nor had the weathered stone monument standing sentry in the middle of the town square, or the apothecary with its weary black awning.

Lightning licked the sky behind the clouds, followed by a roll of thunder like a hundred trolls pounding barefoot across a wooden bridge. She allowed her gaze to linger on the darkened windows of the apothecary, her gut tightening at the memories. With a jerk of her head, she turned away from the shop and reminded herself to keep emotion out of it.

Emotion had little place in a rogue’s life. She had to focus on the lock to pick and ignore the fight around her. It was her task to creep silently along a rooftop without being distracted by the guards pursuing her. Things simply went smoother if she let logic and reason take charge. They’d kept her alive this long, after all.

Not that logic was what had brought her home.

Lira passed a pair of guardsmen with swords strapped on their backs, and pulled her woolen cloak tighter around her, both to keep out the damp and to hide the fact that she wore leather armor strapped to her shoulders and arms and boasted blades hooked to her waist.

Now that she no longer traveled with a crew, she didn’t want to advertise the fact that she made her way in the world with her wits, her cunning, and often her blades. Not everyone welcomed rogues with open arms. Especially not ones traveling solo .

She gritted her teeth and tried not to think about why she was alone or how her last mission had gone so wrong. There was no use dwelling on the past. It would only dull her senses, and Lira needed those to be on high alert. That is, if she didn’t want to end up like Malek.

Giving her head a shake to banish traitorous thoughts from her mind, she released a breath when she spotted the tavern in the distance. The wooden sign over the door clung desperately by a single hook as it was battered by the rain and wind, but Lira would recognize The Tusk & Tail even without the weathered sign, though music no longer spilled from the windows and the savory scent of stew didn’t greet her as she approached.

Lira didn’t slow her pace as she shouldered open the heavy door and ducked inside the building, grateful to escape the cold, though it took her only moments to realize that being inside wasn’t much warmer. She stood dripping in the doorway for a moment before scanning the interior of the tavern and sensing the hope inside her wither.

Instead of a crackling hearth and long tables filled with patrons raising tankards of ale and gnawing on crusty bread, the fire was little more than a neglected heap of smoldering ash and the tables held only a few customers. Customers who looked as sad and abandoned as the rest of the shabby place.

The floor was dirty, strewn with dried mud and bits of straw, and cobwebs clung to the corners. She wouldn’t have been shocked to learn the wooden tables, smeared with grease and dusted with crumbs, hadn’t been cleaned since her last visit.

“What happened here?” Lira said under her breath as she stomped her feet to rid them of any remaining dirt and damp before continuing inside and sliding into a seat at an empty table.

The last time she’d been inside The Tusk & Tail had been on the eve of her first campaign with Malek, Vaskel, Rog, Cali, and Pirrin. The six of them had enjoyed bowls of hearty stew and toasted with cold ale as they were warmed by a roaring fire and surrounded by the raucous laughter and conversation of a bustling crowd. They’d been brash and confident as they’d anticipated their success and future riches. And they’d been right—up until their last campaign.

“You drinking?”

The hard-edged voice snatched her from her memories, and she looked up from beneath her hood to the figure behind the bar. Much had changed at The Tusk & Tail, but the burly tavernkeeper was the same one she remembered. Same bald head. Same thick, black mustache that was now unkempt and peppered with gray.

“No loitering!” he barked at her, the good humor she recalled from her last visit gone. “You drink or you leave.” The few heads in the tavern swiveled wearily to her. “So I’ll ask you again. You drinking?”

Lira cleared her throat. She hadn’t uttered more than a few words since she’d started walking that morning. “I’m drinking.”

He grunted and proceeded to fill a pewter tankard with something suspiciously thick and murky. He thunked it onto the long bar then turned his attention to polishing the top of it with a grimy rag that was no doubt leaving behind more dirt than it was taking.

The rest of the patrons had returned their gazes to their own drinks, which was just as Lira liked it. The less notice she attracted the better.

Lira kept her hood up as she made her way to the bar to retrieve her drink, careful not to get caught surveying the large, open room. The walls were a mix of stone and thick wooden beams, but the ceiling was vaulted with a pair of wrought iron chandeliers dangling from the crossbeams. A cursory glance overhead told her the candles slumped over in the chandeliers hadn’t been lit in a good while, and it was clear the tavern relied on the squat, tallow-veined candles on tables and the meager fire for light. Even without craning her neck, she clocked the door to the cellar and the swinging half-doors leading into a back kitchen. A kitchen that was clearly not in use any longer.

The last time she’d been there, a heavy-set woman with unruly gray curls had been in the back dishing up stew and brown bread. There was no sign of the woman now, or her bellowing voice, as she’d playfully scolded the tavernkeeper .

His wife, she thought as she took her drink and stole another look at the surly man with heavy lines tugging at his jaundiced skin. She might have more scars than she’d had five years ago, but the passage of time had been crueler to him. And to The Tusk & Tail.

Lira plunked a few copper bits on the bar before she made her way back to her table. She pushed back the hood of her cloak, careful not to disturb her dark red hair too much and reveal her slightly pointed ears. Folks could be quick to judge, and she preferred to keep the fact that she had some elvish blood under wraps for as long as possible—even in the village where she’d once lived. Not that anyone in the place seemed to care—or remember her.

Wasn’t that what she’d wanted—to sneak in, get what she came for, and leave without being noticed? But now that she was here, could she walk away again? Or had she been drawn back for something more?

She eyed the ale in her tankard, wary of taking a sip. Instead of drinking, she slid her gaze around the room to the other brave souls who must have had nowhere else to go.

Quietly observing others was a talent she’d honed, and one that had become as natural to her as breathing. Without moving her head, she observed an old drunk slumped at the far end of the bar, his words slurred as he griped to himself. A creature she suspected was at least part troll hunched near the fire and let out the occasional startling snore. Then there was a female dwarf who appeared surprisingly tall for her kind, with light brown skin and darker brown hair that she wore in a frayed plait over one shoulder. Her clothes were well-made but worn thin and smudged with dirt. Leather armor clung to her shoulders, and Lira suspected the woman was well-armed, although she couldn’t spot an axe. Lira also had a feeling that the dwarf was sizing her up, even though she hadn’t caught her glancing her way.

There was that paranoia again. Her profession had made her naturally cautious, but that had bloomed into something darker lately. Her usual confidence—buoyed by the crew who’d surrounded her—had been shaken, and the comfort she’d expected by returning to someplace familiar was scant .

Observing others without drawing attention to herself had always been one of her strengths, but as she took in the lonely patrons gathered in the sad tavern Lira’s heart squeezed for those who were cast out, ignored, overlooked. Perhaps it was because she was half-elf and half-human—and didn’t feel fully accepted by either race—that she felt a kinship with outsiders. And anyone who’d braved the storm to take refuge in the dreary tavern clearly had no welcoming fireside to call their own.

When the door blew open, she followed everyone’s gaze to track the new arrival, curious by the instant stiffening of spines and hunching of shoulders, as eyes dropped to the floor and even the faintest snippets of conversation died.

Lira instinctively flipped her hood back up as the wyvern strode into the tavern. His velvety black wings were tucked close to his body but peeked from beneath the hem of a dark green cloak that was fastened at his throat by an ornamental jeweled pin. He swiveled his long face, gold eyes narrowed and ears folded flat against the scaled skin of his head.

He didn’t break stride as he headed for the bar, his arrival making even the surly tavernkeeper shrink away.

“Durn.” The wyvern’s voice started as a hiss but descended into a growl. “You’re late again.”

The tavernkeeper’s cheeks reddened as his scraggly mustache drooped further down his face. “I told you already. I paid as much as I can.”

The wyvern tipped his snout into the air, the nostrils flaring as he inhaled. “And I told you that I know you have gold here.”

Lira sucked in a breath then went still, hoping that the wyvern’s hearing wasn’t as sharp as rumors held it was.

Durn barked out a laugh. “You think if I had gold, I’d still be here?”

The wyvern tilted his head and rested both clawed hands on the edge of the bar. “The laird appointed me to be Wayside’s reeve, which means I collect the taxes. Taxes you haven’t fully paid. ”

Durn’s expression darkened. “Not even you can get blood from a stone, Rygor.”

Rygor rapped his claws along the wood. “It isn’t blood I want.”

Lira had encountered enough wyvern to know that, while not as violent as their dragon ancestors, their desire for gold and treasure was almost as acute.

The tavernkeeper shook his head and resumed his task of reapplying grime to the top of the bar. “Like I’ve told you before, there’s no gold here.”

The wyvern reeve straightened. “That’s too bad. I would hate for you to lose all of…” He turned to the grim interior and his thin lips curled, “this.”

Then he stomped from the great room and out the door, treating patrons to a blast of frigid air in his wake. Durn muttered to himself and kept his gaze down, but a few folks whispered to each other and even more shifted in their seats.

Lira reminded herself to breathe as she sat rigid and unmoving. Since when was the village reeve a wyvern? Her stomach snarled, a cruel reminder that it had been a day since she’d eaten, but another glance at the ale made her think better of taking a drink.

She shouldn’t have come here. She shouldn’t have come back.

Lira swallowed hard and attempted to push aside the guilt that had been clawing at her since their party disbanded. There were a lot of things she shouldn’t have done.

“ Stop it ,” she scolded herself furiously.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She didn’t have time for regret. Not until she got what she came for. She’d returned to Wayside because she’d felt drawn back to the place, but she was also there to retrieve what she’d hidden in The Tusk & Tail.

Then she thought of the wyvern. She might have arrived just in time.

Lira’s gaze flitted to the cellar door, and she jiggled her leg under the table. Biding her time had never been one of her talents.