“Service!” she called, and banged a fist on the bar, which only reminded her of all the bruises she had accumulated. “Anyone here?” Because Enth was hovering intrusively at her shoulder she pointed at the main table and told him to go sit down.

At last a thin weasel of a man oiled his way up the cellar stairs and slunk behind the bar. Cyrene trusted fat innkeepers, whose bellies tended to mark their success and the quality of their stock in trade. This man seemed hunched around the lack of that paunch, holding his thinness in against his ribs as though it were precious to him. His smile was narrow-lipped and furtive, and his hands trembled. “Good morning, good morning,” he wheezed. “Welcome, welcome to my humble establishment. I am Visler, Visler the Vintner I am. Please, I have rooms, I have board, I have all that you need.” His manner was that of a man flinching from an anticipated blow.

“You’ll have to do,” Cyrene told him. “Food, for two people. Nothing fancy. And get us something to drink. If you’ve anything to keep a person awake, that’ll get you extra.”

The innkeeper’s eyes twitched between her and the hooded form of Enth. “Pilgrims? Business in the Holy City, hmm, hmm?”

“No and no,” she told him, too tired to start spinning stories about who they were or where they were going. “Just travelers. Now, how about that service?”

“Yes, yes,” and he was bustling away behind the bar, and Enth was staring from his cowl, but only down at his gray, long-fingered hands.

“I want beer,” said the creature.

Cyrene stared at it. “You what?”

“I want beer. Lief gave me beer. I want beer.”

She opened her mouth to say, “Just because you conned him into it, doesn’t mean that… ,” but the words would not come out, and she just looked at him, and wondered if it felt, and, if so, what feelings could survive in that hostile environment. Does it want to raise a tankard in the thief’s memory? It can’t, can it? It can’t have thoughts and feelings like that.

And then Visler the Vintner was weaseling his way to them again, and he had two mugs of what was probably beer, and his wheedling voice was saying, “… and there’s something special, something to perk you up, in it, yes there is, yes there is.”

Her eyes never left Enth as they both drank. Her suspicion of him was what she later blamed for her lack of caution elsewhere.

She took one long draft, went to wipe her mouth, and discovered that she could move no part of herself except her eyes.

For a long time, nothing happened. She was fixed looking at Enth. He was fixed staring at his hands. Then she heard a movement from out of eyeshot, so furtive it could only be Visler.