The first hints of winter came to Breeland with the last of the autumn rains. It beat the last fading scraps of leave from branches and churned roads into mud. Cold seeped under doorframes and through windows, defying both roaring fires and drawn curtains. It settled about shoulders like scarves retrieved from chests with the winter quilts and last year’s knitting. People walked hunched over with their hoods up and cloaks drawn tightly about their bodies. It was as though the clear blue skies and nipping cold of the previous week never existed at all, just a long weary stretch of slate grey skies and the persistent tap of raindrops against the windows. A long winter was coming, the old folk prophesied, a long snowy winter and a late spring.
Siofran turned away from the window and absently wished for snow. Anything except the perpetual damp which even seemed to have pervaded the Prancing Pony. At least, the common room was warm and the fire roared brightly in the hearth. The place hummed and bustled with people. Dishes rattled in the kitchen. Tankards clicked together. Pipe smoke curled around the rafters and floorboards creaked underfoot. Most people, she noted were local, with the exception of a southern merchant in burgundy robes, a small party of Blue Mountain dwarves arguing in a corner, a weather-beaten tinker curled about a mug of mulled ale, and her own companion, a Gondorian hunter come up from the South. A good number of Watchers sat scattered about the room. Off duty, she supposed. Then again, any halfway decent Watcher kept an eye out for trouble at any waking moment.
A small knot of people clustered about the counter, talking. Of course one the former Watchers was there, drinking away his sorrows. Self-inflicted, Siofran thought uncharitably. Perhaps if he spent more time sober and less time chasing skirt; he would still be a Watcher and not be here complaining loudly to anyone who would listen. And then, at the very end of the bar, hunched a very familiar figure. Granted that the last time she’d seen him he was bleeding in an infirmary bed, barely coherent.
The figure, despite the heat of the room, wore his cloak (battered, faded, and slightly bloodstained. It had once been navy blue, but had faded to an odd off-white color.). His nose, what could be seen from under the hood, was crooked as though recently broken. A plate in the kitchen tumbled to the ground with a crash. The man twitched and hunched in on himself further. The tankard before him sat untouched in a puddle of foam dissolving into ale.
Siofran tapped her companion on the arm, “Recognize him?”
“Hmmm?” He looked up from his careful study of table scratches. “Clara” one of them read in blocky scratches.
“Him,” Siofran whispered, pointing to a figure hunched on the far end of the bar. “The newcomer.”
“He’s got a bump in his nose,” Siofran noted, touching the bridge of her own nose. “As though someone broke it not long ago. And he seems… injured.”
The figure hunched over, coughing violently. Her companion nodded. “Aye, seems familiar. Perhaps, I think, you may have your answers.”
Siofran rose to her feet and followed the figure, which had paused at one of the doors at the end of the hall, far from the bustle of the common room. “It’s a relief to see you up and about,” she said.
The figure slowly raised his head and looked up at the pair with undisguised disinterest and perhaps a good deal of suspicion. His face could have been called handsome, if not for an ugly scar running diagonally from under his left eye to his ear. “Can I help you?"
“You don’t remember us?” she asked cheerfully. “This is Edrastel of Linhir and I am Siofran Breckenridge. The last time we met, you nearly died in a garden.”
The man opened the door and stepped inside. He looked the pair up and down once more and then hissed, “Come inside and close the door.”
