Chapter 14.3

Author's Notes: 1,009 notes.  Ugh, this better be mysterious enough.

The innkeeper, half-asleep and engrossed in staring at the floorboards, did not worry about the man in the brown hood who strode through the door and requested a room. She accepted the few bronze coins slipped into her outstretched palm, vaguely gestured to one of the rooms upstairs, and handed the man a skeleton key. He, nodding, walked carelessly up the oaken steps of the quiet, weathered hotel, slipping the key between his fingers and humming a brief tune.

His room was about as well-kept as the rest of the hotel. First choosing to sit on the small bed tucked away in the far corner, he then jumped up and brushed the straw off of his back. The shelves were empty, save for a cracked mirror, and he stared at it in contemplation. Night already covered his face, though the light of one of the moons began to poke through the open window.

Stroking his chin, he finally lowered his arm and walked over to the candle on the nightstand beside the bed. He glared at it, envisioning a lit wick. It soon burned gently, adding color and light to the room. The man was proud of himself; he had grown proficient enough at magic that his body and mind demanded to use more of their strength, but his restraint proved true. With little else to do, he stood in front of the window, poked his head outside, and whistled loudly.

In only a few minutes, there was a loud scratching sound from the wood beneath him. The man stepped back as claws gripped the edges of the windows, shifting into hands. A lady in a red coat pulled herself smoothly into the room, stomping her shoes onto the wood to remove the mud and dust.

“Edana,” said the man, bowing.

“Are you here to give the order?” Edana asked, sitting on the edge of the window. “It’s much later than I was expecting.”

The man sat gently down on the floor opposite Edana, crossing his legs. “This is something she can’t handle anymore.”

Edana laughed. “You mean to tell me that she could handle anything to begin with? With her bravado, if what you’ve told me is true, only chance and her friends have kept her alive this long.”

“You forget her power,” said the man, wagging a finger before desisting and sighing. “She always relies upon it as a last resort. However, after the past few days, she has lost her supports and the spirit behind her strength.”

“So,” said Edana, standing up and walking around the man, “You fear that she won’t survive whatever comes next. I can understand, because she can’t. But you can say the same of when she started, when she didn’t have the slightest idea of what she was going to do, or how she was going to fight?”

The man balled his fists. “She needed to learn,” he growled. “Now she’s learned more about this world than she deserves to, and I can see no reason to keep her from him any longer.”

Edana grabbed him roughly by his shoulders and pulled him to the windowsill, shoving his head out of the window. He tried to shout in alarm, but she covered his mouth. “You are lucky that our King and Queen agreed with you when she left, or I would happily carry you from here and throw you into their jail. This is only mercy after a long cruelty, and I expect her to return a broken shell.”

“She is stronger than that,” hissed the man after Edana momentarily pulled her hand away. “All that matter is that she will return and accept her position. Had we kept her in place, she would’ve taken far more lives than she did. Which, to my recollection, is none.”

Flinging the man into a wall, Edana propped a foot on the windowsill and pulled her head out. “She is more valuable than a thousand lives. You, and our leaders, have taken a dangerous chance. What if she only comes back in fury? How many lives will she take then?”

The man, breathing deeply, groaned and pushed himself from the wall, rubbing the back of his head and observing the blood on his hand. “You have a duty,” he shouted, rising to his feet. “Complete it, and then we’ll see who’s right.”

“So be it,” said Edana, jumping into the air. She vanished in a blinding flash.

“Always a charmer,” said the man, brushing off his clothes and blinking. He would have to tell them it was an accident in his sleep. Perhaps he could use the dagger that he kept under the bed. They had bought all the other stories before, so it would be simple to wash the blood from his head, wrap the dagger in the towel, and leave the dagger in the middle of his tent.

Of course, he first had to return to them. Rubbing his hands together, the man in the brown coat pulled the skeleton key from his pocket. He unlocked the door, placing the skeleton key outside of the room before he closed it again. The man then went to the window, pulling and readjusting himself so that he was hanging outside of the inn. From there, it was easy enough to climb down the hotel’s side, grasping footholds left by the decay of the wood.

As he walked some distance from the road, staying parallel to it, he pulled another knife from his pocket. There were too few locals for a highwayman or band of robbers to be roaming the countryside, but it never hurt him to be sure. It had been a night, he reasoned, and he didn’t want another issue. Fortunately, only the moons graced his travels, leaving his mind free to think of the excuse he could create for The Doves. True, he hated lying, because it was so unnatural for him; he especially hated lying to good people for a good cause.

Fortunately, he guessed, it would all be over soon.