his hands that might have come from a war axe or broadsword.
The innkeeper stopped four or five steps above the main floor, leaving his captive in plain view. Unnoticed in his position near the back of the room, a little behind the stairs, Tier faced the growing certainty that he was not going to get a hot meal and a soft bed tonight.
The distinctive silver-ash hair that hung in sleep-frayed braids almost to her waist told Tier that she was a Traveler, a relative, he supposed, of the dead young man roasting outside.
He thought her a child at first, but her loose night rail caught on a rounded hip that made him add a year or two to her age. When she looked up at the crowd, he could see that her eyes were clear amber green and older than her face.
The men in the inn were mostly farmers; one or two carried a long knife in their belt. He had seen such men in the army, and respected them. They were probably good men, most of them, with wives and mothers waiting for them at home, uncomfortable with the violence their fear had led them to.
The girl would be all right, Tier told himself. These men would not hurt a child as easily as they'd killed the man. A man, a Traveler, was a threat to their safety. A child, a girl-child, was something these men protected. Tier looked around the room, seeing the softening in several faces as they took in her bewildered alarm.
His assessing gaze fell upon a bearded man who sat eating stew from a pot. Finely tailored noblemen's garments set the man apart from the natives. Such clothes had been sewn in Taela or some other large city.
Something about the absorbed, precise movements the man made as he ate warned Tier that this man might be the most dangerous person in the room - then he looked back at the girl and reconsidered.
In the few seconds that Tier had spent appraising the room, she'd shed her initial shock and fright as cleanly as a snake sheds its skin.
The young Traveler drew herself up like a queen, her face quiet and composed. The innkeeper was a foot taller, but he no longer looked an adequate guard. The ice in the girl's cool eyes brought a chill born of childhood stories to creep down Tier's spine. Instincts honed in years of battle told him that he wasn't the only one she unnerved.
Stupid girl, Tier thought.
A smart girl would have been sobbing softly in terror and shrinking to make herself look smaller and even younger, appealing to the sympathies of the mob. These weren't mercenaries or hardened fighters; they were farmers and merchants.
If he could have left then, he would have - or at least that's what he told himself; but any movement on his part now would draw attention. No sense in setting himself up for the same treatment received by the dead man in the square.
"Where's the priest? I need him to witness my account." asked the innkeeper, sounding smug and nervous at the same time. If he had looked at the girl he held, he would have sounded more nervous than smug.
The crowd shuffled and spat out a thin young man who looked around in somewhat bleary surprise to find himself the center of attention. Someone brought out a stool and a rickety table no bigger than a dinner plate. When a rough sheet of skin, an ink pot, and a quill were unearthed, the priest seated himself with a bit more confidence.
"Now then," said the innkeeper. "Three days' lodging, four coppers each day. Three meals each day at a copper each."
Tier's eyebrows crept up cynically. He saw no signs that the inn had been transported to Taela, where such charges might be justified. For this inn, two coppers a day with meals was more likely.
"Twenty-one coppers," announced the priest finally. Silence followed.
"A copper a day for storing the cart," said the nobleman Tier had noticed, without looking up from his meal. By his accent he was from more eastern regions, maybe even the coast. "That makes three more coppers, twenty-four coppers in total: one silver."
The innkeeper smiled smugly, "Ah yes, thank you, Lord Wresen. According to the law, when a debt of a silver is incurred and not remanded" - from the way the word was emphasized, it was obvious to Tier that remanded was a word that seldom left the lips of the