Ludo glanced at Bryony, whose lips were pursed, her face scrunched not in anger but in concentration. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Now tell us about this forest of flames you saw us in.”

“Black flames,” the girl reiterated. “The dragon’s breath rises from the water, but even it is no match for the claws of the flames, the fangs of the smoke. There is no way out. How could there be? The Fire Eater must have his fill. He’s so hungry…ravenous.”

“That’s enough!” came a voice that was clearly trying to be commanding but which had all the air of a deflated bladder.

Ludo rose to find Guard Crandon staggering into the room clutching his head. “We haven’t hurt her,” Ludo said.

“Aye, and it’ll only stay that way if you allow us to continue questioning her,” Bryony interjected.

“My daughter is unwell,” the guard said. “She has nightmares. Her own mother was scared of her. That’s why she left for Hern.”

“These nightmares…they’re about the Fire Eater?”

“They’ve been getting worse ever since he escaped from Comman Dur. But they don’t mean anything. How could they? She’s just a girl.”

“We can agree on that much,” Bryony said. “It’s all a bunch of nonsense.”

Ludo wasn’t so sure about that, and he suspected Bryony was trying to gloss over her own discomfort, but there was clearly nothing else that could be gleaned from this girl’s mind. Whatever she had seen, the details were too lacking to be truly helpful. But still, she’d been so forceful in naming the color of the flames. Not red or orange or yellow. Black. That was the hue she’d insisted upon.

“Listen, we’re leaving your city. Tonight. I won’t speak a word about your…treasury…so long as you pretend you’ve never seen us. That goes for your guards as well. Do we have a deal?”

“No,” Bryony said.

Ludo closed his eyes. Opened them. “What do you mean, no?”

“We’re not leaving tonight. We’re going to go back to the inn, climb into our lumpy beds, and get a good night’s rest. And if you, Guard Crandon, or any of your painfully inept cronies so much as breathe in our direction I’ll cut you into pieces and feed you to my pet wolf. Understood?”

Ludo’s eye widened and he cut toward Crandon to watch his reaction. “I—I can work with that,” the man said after a moment’s hesitation. There was resignation in his tone, but also a healthy tremor of fear.

“Good. Now please escort us to our destination. Despite the hour, I suspect the streets will be rather crowded.”