Time for the first untruth. “I was part of a planned theft, from a sanctuary. One of us drank too much the day of. Then talked too much, like the Jad-cursed fool he is. Or was. Probably hanged by now. The serjeants got word. Made him talk in the Châtelet. They were hunting the rest of us down. I got a warning just in time, left in the dark.”

He paused. And leaped. As if from a high cliff into deep water, it felt.

“Heladikos did not die,” he said quietly.

He could be killed right now, he thought, if the phrase was wrong.

The black eyebrows levelled. The benign inquiries ended. The innkeeper stared at him for what seemed a long time. Then said, slowly, also quietly, “What happened to the god’s son?”

Thierry felt so much relief. Tried not to show it. “Fishermen saved him. Carried him ashore.”

“And where is he now?”

“No man knows. He might he a fisherman, a farmer, a noble lord somewhere in the world.” So far, all were words given him by a man in Orane years ago. But he was what he was, Thierry Villar, and he added, “Or a poet, I like to think.”

A frozen moment, like ice on the rivers in the winter now past. Then the big, scarred man behind the counter burst into laughter. He reached over, poured Thierry wine in a dented tin cup, still laughing.

“I’d best go easy,” Thierry said. “I really am not well. Need sleep in a decent bed.”

“Decent enough upstairs,” the man said. “You want a girl?”

“Not now,” Thierry said fervently. “I’m sure they are lovely.”

The innkeeper made a face. “Not especially, but they serve for what’s needed.” He paused. “You became one of us in Orane?”

“I did. But I’ve never been outside the city before.”

Another lie, not an important one, he thought.

“Born there?”

“Came as a child. Managed to survive, in the ways one uses to survive.”

The innkeeper nodded. “Old story.”

Not for the first time, Thierry gave thanks that he seemed to be able to tell stories…appeal to people. Even here, he thought. A gift. Could keep you alive sometimes.

The man said, “I’m Rogier. I’ll give you a key. Third room on the right upstairs. Best bed here, and you’ll have it to yourself. We can talk after. I’ll want to know more about Mercier of Aurage.”

“Can we kill him?” Thierry asked.

He hadn’t intended to ask that, but it was an intense desire suddenly.

“Talk later, I said. You look like death is at your elbow, waiting to pull you into his dance. Go upstairs.” He handed Thierry a heavy key, pointed to the stairway.

He never did go upstairs. Life intervened. Our intentions matter, and they don’t.

—