Mari slowly regained consciousness, her head pounding. She blinked her eyes open to find herself lying on a worn-out, velvet couch pushed against the wall in a dimly lit room filled with scattered tables and chairs. The air smelled of roasted meat and the yeasty scent of ale.
It took her a moment to collect her thoughts and remember what had happened. Her carpetbag was laid carefully across her chest, and her arms had been placed across it.
"Ah, you're awake," a deep voice said from across the room. Mari's gaze shifted toward the source, and she saw a tall, broad young man with disheveled blonde hair and tired eyes standing behind the worn wooden bar.
He was wiping his hands on a dirty apron.
"Hamish, I presume?" Mari rasped, her voice barely audible.
The man chuckled sheepishly. "Guilty as charged. I'm sorry about that little incident at the door. Didn't know there was someone on the other side." He extended a hand toward Mari. "Name's Hamish Dunn, owner of the Mystic Moon Inn. Mindy! Your friend's up."
The young bard, Miranda, bounded in from the back room, lute strapped to her back.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "The constables hauled off that thief Hamish flattened you with, but we had the devil of a time getting you in here."
"Why?" Mari asked, still pushing the remaining cobwebs from her rattled brain as she sat upright.
"Your bag," Hamish said, pointing at her midsection. "That's some ward you've got on it. Neither Mindy nor I could lift it an inch off the cobbles. Or open it. And when I picked you up, I couldn't take two steps. Like you're tethered to it? We had to roll it onto you, then pick both up at once."
"I told you she was a yarn witch!" said Miranda. "And a good one!"
"And I told you, a hedge witch can't make a ward that strong," he shot back. "I've seen dwarven vaults in elvish gaming halls that weren't locked down as tightly as that bag!"
"You're both right," Mari said. "A sorceress cast the enchantment. But Miranda - Mindy? - will tell you I am a capable ward-crafter, in my own right."
Mindy nodded eagerly, her eyes wide with excitement. "She's not lying, Hamish. I've seen her weave a spell that halted a hundred people in their tracks, down at the docks this morning. She can help you keep out the riffraff. Maybe even help draw in some customers who actually pay their bill. That's why I was bringing her by."
Hamish scratched his scruffy chin, a mixture of skepticism and curiosity evident on his face. "Well, then, I suppose I owe you an apology. But that thing?" He pointed at the carpetbag. "You have to admit it's a little suspicious. And I can't afford to have some thief come in with a magic bag to steal what little I have."
Mari smiled, appreciating his candor. She couldn't afford to lose the bag, but to a stranger it probably did seem like the sort of thing a burglar would carry. Or a dungeoneer - and some of those would happily steal anything that wasn't nailed down, even in a city or town.
"No harm done. I understand the need for caution, in fact I share it. I'm on a long journey alone. If I were separated from this?" She squeezed the bag in her arms. "Well, it'd be catastrophic."
The innkeeper nodded. He was probably imagining a catastrophe in the vein of a humble merchant losing all her traveling funds and being dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Which would be bad, but not the kind of disaster that would happen if someone managed to bypass all the wards protecting her bag and take possession of the cloak inside it. For a second, her mind flashed back twenty years to an army of ghouls and zombies shambling toward Riverbend under Kalifax's command.
"Yep. Can't let this out of my sight." She patted the bag gingerly. "But I promise there's nothing in here I didn't earn."
Mari looked at Hamish and Mindy, their expressions a mix of curiosity and concern. She knew she had to tread carefully, revealing only what was necessary while keeping her secrets guarded. After all, she had always been an independent soul, reluctant to share the weight of her burdens with others.
Her gifts, however, were another story.
"Mindy tells me you're trying to make a go of this place?" She looked around. It was clean - maybe a little too clean, for a tavern that stayed busy with paying customers.
"Aye," said Hamish. "I used to work security for some of the entertainment establishments around town. There's lots of 'em, what with the bard college in town, so there's plenty of that kind of work if you want it."
Ah. That explained the flying pirate. He did seem unusually sturdy for an innkeeper.
"But it's not really very fulfilling work. So when this place went up on the auction block, I bid on it." The big man chuckled. "I didn't actually expect to get it. Which probably should have told me what a fool's errand it was to take it over."
"Why? It's not a bad location - or at least, it didn't seem like one." Till I got hit with 200 pounds of airborne ne'er do well.
"It's close to the docks - which is easy for legitimate travelers, but also for brigands. And one tends to be willing to walk a little farther to avoid the other. Plus it's just tucked away enough that the folks that might be willing to take a chance don't even see it."
"I thought if I had decent food and music, I could make a go of it, even if the tourists didn't find me. I've got a good cook, and Mindy here was willing to play most evenings. I might be able to attract some locals, if the place didn't have a reputation for also attracting pickpockets. The constables tend to stick closer to the warehouses full of big, valuable piles of stuff. Getting their attention to protect a place like this is tough. And I can't run the bar, and the kitchen, and toss petty thieves out all at once."
"I'm sorry, I know Mindy brought you here thinking we could work out some sort of trade." He shrugged. "But I just don't see what good a hedge witch is going to be - and a yarn witch, at that! Blankets that ward off travel cough and stain-resistant napkins aren't going to be much help with no customers to use them."
Mari frowned. She'd wanted a simple job that could pay her way to Sunhaven - and this was not that. Getting buried in solving other people's problems was exactly what she'd left behind in Riverbend. But there was something about the way Hamish had utterly dismissed the idea that she could be of real help that irked her.
Pressing her lips together, she hoisted herself off the velvet couch and wandered over to the big picture window facing the alley. A cheap swath of red cotton gingham was draped over a pole above it. She reached up and rubbed the fabric between her fingers, and dropped it as the spark of a lingering ward popped against her skin.
Someone - the prior owner, most likely - had warded those curtains to discourage anyone from looking inside. This had never been a real tavern. It had been a front.
"Hmm..." she muttered. Then wandered to the front door. A doormat of heavy jute lay on the threshold just outside. She shivered a bit. Jute was her least favorite fiber to enchant. It left a nasty aftertaste in her mouth once the spell was done. But the "move along" ward on it would have to be stripped away and replaced with a welcome ward.
As she stepped into the alley, Alistair fluttered down from the eaves of a nearby building, landing on the metal arm holding the Mystic Moon Inn sign.
"Good to see you haven't abandoned me," she said, cocking an eyebrow at the raven.
"Good to see you haven't gotten yourself murdered," the bird replied.
She nudged the cheap, heavy doormat with the toe of her boot, then looked down the alley. There was a street lamp where the alley met the bustling street that connected the riverfront quay to the main thoroughfare of Menefer. A large bow made of bunting was tied near the top, in the city's colors of purple, green and gold.
"Mindy, does that decoration stay up all year?" she asked, pointing to the bunting.
"No. I think it gets changed out every season," the bard replied. "The damp starts to mildew the ribbons."
"How long has that one been up?"
"Maybe two weeks? I'm not sure."
It was a bit of a stretch. The distance between the street light and the door mat was too far to connect the wards. She'd need to place something else in between them. But the brick wall along the alleyway had several metal spikes hammered into it, probably for holding up flyers and news sheets. She could hang something small and inobtrusive from one - a plant hanger or a wind chime?
Mari nodded, tapping a finger against her lips, then tapping her shoulder. Alistair took the hint, and dropped heavily onto her shawl as she turned back into the sham of an inn.
"Do you think you could make a success of this place with two months of steady business?" she asked Hamish.
"At this point, I'd settle for two steady weeks," he grumbled.
"Do you think you could find some rugs? Enough that it'd be hard to cross the room without stepping on one?"
"Why would I want to do that? The food and drink would fall on them, and I'd be stuck beating them clean every week. It's enough work sweeping and mopping."
"Because I can bring in customers without them, but if I can't get rid of the pickpockets those folks will never come back," she said sharply. "And I need those rugs to thwart the pickpockets."
At that, Hamish's eyebrows shot up into his sandy blond hair. He cast a quick look at Mindy, who was grinning and bouncing on her toes.
"I'm going to need to hear what you have in mind, witch." The hint of a smile began playing at the tavernkeeper's lips.
"And I'm going to need a plate of whatever your cook has been simmering back there all this time," Mari replied firmly. "Planning a grand opening while concussed is hungry work."
