by Pam Uphoff
She'd met Harry before; her parents regularly had 'Dinner out' at the Tavern, so she supposed they'd be by to check on her regularly. It was hell being the only non-magical member in a family like hers, even her twin brother, who wasn't really Dad's kid either, was a wizard. And Val and Drei, twins of course, had evinced power at the tender age of eleven and no doubt the younger swarm would as well when they reached puberty. But Flare hadn't, and she was sick of getting teased about it by three brothers. Her youngest brothers—two more sets of twins, of course—were all old enough to go to school now, and Flare was escaping right now.
She'd even decided to go the long way to the Tavern from Ash, four easy or three long day's ride away, for a really good horse. She'd made it four, and spent the long evenings playing her little guitar by a tiny fire until she'd played the horse's rhythmic hoof beats out of her mind and she could sleep.
She topped a hill and spotted the Tavern, a pretty, compact structure that looked like it had been built to cope with very snowy winters. She sat back and Cat dropped to a walk. She could sort of see the gates too, foggy white spots clustered here along a stretch of the Old North Road. They were about a mile apart, a little back from the road, some with soldiers guarding them, some without.
The road turned here, to run roughly north-south, and Flare could see two gates on her left and four on her right before the Tavern. She supposed the other two were beyond the Tavern.
Some of the guards looked at her curiously, but didn't say anything or approach the road. She gave the Tavern a good long look as she rode past the front, then turned into the stable yard behind.
It was clean swept and brick paved, big enough to turn a six-horse hitch and coach. A man leaned out of the barn to look, and then got up and came out. Young, with shaggy brown hair, cute. Flare dropped to the ground and added tall to her list, as she looked up at him. Not as tall as Dad, but unusually close.
"Afternoon, Miss. Here for the night?"
He blinked a bit at her hair. Like most people. It wasn't her fault. And it wasn't really purple, just sort of . . . brown with a tint.
"Um, actually I'm going to be working here." She hadn't thought about Cat. She supposed she ought to have left her at home . . .
"Ah, you get the Family Special, then." He flashed her a grin, then addressed the horse. "Hi sweetie, aren't you a pretty one?"
Flare blinked in surprise. Most people didn't look beyond the dull dun coloring and obvious work horse ancestry to really see her. "Her name's Cat, after some extinct animal. My Mom says . . ." Flare looked around in surprise at the big dun horse walking into the yard, all by himself. A huge ancient draft horse. "My Mom said she was sired by this huge old dun from the Tavern . . . "
"Really?" The boy beamed. "This is him, then. She's your daughter, Dun. We've talked about this, right?"
The old dun nodded, whiffing at Cat, and then at her. "He is an old sweetie, isn't he? I'm Flare Valadaut."
"Xen Wolfson. Do you want Cat stabled or out on the hills? Dun here keeps track of everyone for us, and brings them in when we need them." An indignant snort from beyond the dun, and an elegant chestnut gelding, equally as free as the old dun pushed in to blow at Cat, and then Flare.
"This is Pyrite. He's the Dun's understudy in pasture management."
Pyrite was spectacular. The sort of horse a prince should be riding.
"And Spooky behind him." The big black mare reminded her of a lot of her mother's horses.
"I think she'd as soon be out on the hills." Flare turned to unbuckle the cinch on the saddle.
"May I?" Xen grinned. "I'm supposed to be earning my keep." He lifted the saddle off, handed her the stuffed saddle bags, and led Cat over to the barn. "How about some oats and a brushing, then you can run the hills, eh?"
Flare left the mare in his obviously competent hands and carried her bags through the back door. There were three groups of diners, and a harried looking Harry talking to them.
Well, she'd eaten here often enough to know the routine. There were some chickens roasting on a spit, dough rising in a bowl, and some unwashed green beans in the sink. She checked the chickens—almost done, and devoid of any spice. Harry very definitely needed some help. She dumped her bags in the corner, pumped water in the sink and scrubbed first herself and then the veggies. Added wood to the oven. Formed the dough into rolls and placed them in the oven. Muttering, she threw together a basting sauce, and coated the birds, raising the spits a bit to slow the cooking. Snipped the beans while frying some bacon and onions, added the beans, stirring to coat. Basted the chickens.
Harry bustled through the door and stopped, blinking at her.
"Hi. I'm Flare. You looked busy so, I figured I'd go straight to work."
"Of course. You represent a return to normality." The old man grinned. "I got so used to witches just showing up and taking over the cooking that I was a bit at a loss when they stopped. Not to mention running out of waitresses. I've talked myself hoarse, and fed them crackers and cheese and wine, but they're starting to look like they expect real food sometime soon."
Flare poked the chickens. The ones over the center of the fire were done. "Ten people?"
"Yes." He hustled over to the cupboards and pulled out plates, and she loaded them as fast as he could take them out. She picked through some beautiful juicy apples, obviously this year's crop, and peeled them and rolled out pie crusts. Then more green beans . . .
Sometime around midnight Harry told her to stop making more food and just use up what she had on hand. "The troops heard I had acquired a cook again, and started coming back. I told them you'd just got here hours ago, and they said that was good enough." Harry shook his head. "Makes you wonder what the Army feeds them."
"Goodness, I hadn't thought about where they all stayed."
"They've built a fort about ten miles south of here." Harry sighed. "The grapevine being what it is, you can expect to be pretty busy for the next few days."
She was.
***
Harry'd put her in a nice little room off the kitchen, through a door she hadn't noticed, but she spent her small amount of free time up the hill with Cat, and getting to know the other two horses resident to the Inn.
Xen had a habit of disappearing . . . and never talking about where he'd been. Not that it was any of her business. And Harry didn't seem to mind having to occasionally stable horses.
It wasn't until she caught him in dress uniform that she realized he was in the army, and assigned here to watch the gates. She'd been embarrassed, and he'd laughed, and said he mostly attended incredibly boring parties, or danced with foreign agents. With his dimples showing.
"Right. That sounds like the usual duties of an officer stationed right by a bunch of trans-dimensional gates."
Which set off his laughing again.
***
The hardest part of running the kitchen was trying to guess how many people would come, and getting the right amounts of everything cooked. Some of the food disappearing every time her back was turned didn't help. When she came out short on fresh rolls she finally lost her temper and stomped out to the barn. "Damn it all, if you want food, ask! Don't just randomly mess up my calculations on meals for the paying customers!"
Xen blinked. "Uh . . . hmmm." He got up and walked past her toward the kitchen, and pounced suddenly into the bushes against the fence. He pulled out two squirming, yelling bundles of rags.
"Let me go you whoreson! You . . . "
Xen raised his voice. "Yep. Disappearing food is a sure sign that the God of the Crossroads is about to acquire some more kids." He held them at arms length and sniffed. "Harry has one rule, though. No lice allowed. Come with me."
"Eat dog shit, you overripe offal. Your mother fucked a skunk."
Flare followed along, appalled by both the language the rags were emitting, and the thinness of the kicking legs.
"Let me go, you fag, you touch my brother and I'll cook up and eat your pizzle."
At
Xen's direction she collected a crock of herbal soap, and four coarse feed sacks. She followed him back to the stable yard's stone trough, where he proceeded to dunk and scrub the foul mouthed, half starved boy and girl that emerged from under the rags. Clean and rinsed, they were dried with two sacks, and Xen cut head and arm holes in the other two and stuffed the children into them.
"There. Now you can come inside." Xen nodded in satisfaction, then had to chase the girl down.
The boy hobbled the other direction, and Flare blocked his path. "What's wrong with your leg, boy? Let me see." He shied off and tried to run.
"Leave it for now, Flare. He'll show Harry." Xen had the girl over his shoulder, and scooped up the boy in passing.
"Pervert! Maggot-eaten offal! Sheep fucker!"
Flare hustled ahead of him and opened the kitchen door. The girl shut up with a whimper. Xen dumped the kids on the bench behind the kitchen table, and Flare hustled up some food for them. And then for the paying diners, still patiently waiting for their pork ribs.
Xen ducked back out to the stable yard, and Harry popped in for plates, taking the presence of two strange children for granted.
His next trip, his arms were loaded with blankets. "I'll put them in the room next to you, Flare."
She was quite certain there hadn't been any such until he needed it, but now there was a door next to hers.
The boy was asleep, head down on the table, and Harry scooped him up. The girl looked halfway to panic, eyes darting from Harry to the back door.
"You and your brother are safe here, in my place." Harry looked at her calmly, and she followed meekly when he carried her brother to the new room.
Flare shivered. "The language! If that's the sort of stuff they grew up hearing, it's no wonder they ran away."
***
Flare was pulling the pastries out of the oven the next morning when she realized the second door was open just a crack. "Why don't you visit the privy, and then scrub up while these are cooling?"
The door opened a little more, then the girl sidled out. "Is he your Da?"
"No, I just work here." Flare got a pan out and started slicing bacon.
The back door rattled, and Xen handed in a bucket of milk and a basket of eggs. "Morning," he yawned, and disappeared.
The boy finally emerged, looking pretty shabby in the feed sack. He limped after the girl, silent and half hidden in his sister's shadow. They managed to get out the door without ever taking their wary eyes off her.
There weren't many guests, and the troops tended to save their money for dinner, so Flare decided against pancake batter.
" . . . don't know what they'll do!" the girl's voice was urgent, worried.
She couldn't hear the boy's reply, but he limped in first, and the girl a long moment later, casting wishful looks back at the door. They were dressed in yesterday's rags. It looked like Xen had scrubbed them, and hung them up to dry. "Clean" and "better than feed sacks" were the nicest thing that could be said about them.
Flare poured two cups of warm milk and put a collection of pastries on the kitchen table. "Help yourself. Bacon and eggs in a minute, if you like big breakfasts. My name's Flare."
The girl seemed to think it over suspiciously. "I'm Bug and m'brother's Nick."
There was a faint thumping, and Flare walked out into the main room, and over to unbolt the door. The chill damp air swept in, smelling like rain.
"Sorry to rouse you so early." The man pulled himself up straight, an obvious attempt to look less exhausted. The circles under his eyes were dark enough to look like bruises. His voice was high, soft and beautiful, with an accent giving it a faint lilt.
"Oh, I was up fixing breakfast pastries, come in." Flare stood aside and closed the door behind him, eyeing the odd shaped package slung over his back. Guitar, perhaps?
The man looked around the dim, empty room. "I'm going to have a hard time playing for my breakfast, aren't I?"
"Hmm, come on back to the kitchen then, charming the cook will probably work just as well."
In the short time she'd been gone the waifs had disappeared, with a sizable selection of the pastries. She shook her head and assembled a plate for the man. "Have a seat. Tea? Milk? Coffee?"
He eyed her hair. "You have coffee?"
"Some of our regular customers seem to consider it a necessity of life."
He hesitated. "Umm, a bit too rich for my pockets. Tea." He snagged an apricot tart.
". . . to make up their own minds to stay." Xen's voice floated in from the stable yard. He walked through the door looking well scrubbed, damp and cold.
"You know, at some point it's going to get cold enough that you come inside to scrub." Flare told him.
"Inside the barn. My mother would skin me if she ever learned I'd tracked stable muck into any kitchen, let alone Harry's."
No one was following him in. "Who were you talking to out there?"
"Pyrite. He was worried about the kids. They're hiding in a ditch, munching their loot." He shot an enquiring look at the stranger.
"Or sorry, I just dragged a new arrival in to feed him, and we hadn't even gotten as far as introductions."
The man got to his feet and extended a hand. "Kipp Hasty."
"Xen Wolfson." Xen shook his hand. "And Flare Valadaut."
Flare extended a hand, and the man gave a flourishing bow and kissed it. She snorted. "The usual, Xen?"
"Yes, I'm a poor starving waif myself."
She started bacon frying, and running an eye over the pastries, decided there were enough for the few guests.
She started measuring out flour for bread when Harry yawned his way in.
Xen waved casually, "Harry, Kipp Hasty."
"Kipp." Harry grabbed a danish, looking around.
"They're eating a stolen breakfast in a ditch." Xen said. "It'll be raining in an hour. They'll be right back."
Harry shook his head. "I'll give them until lunch, the girl looked pretty scared."
"It's the first big storm of winter, come a bit early. They need to be inside." Xen grinned at Kipp's baffled look. "Two other street orphans, quite a bit younger than you."
"They dodged out with a load of pastries while I was letting you in the front door." Flare told him, handing around plates of bacon and eggs and sitting down with her own. "Harry, have you got any spare clothing hanging about anywhere? They need something other than feed sacks and rags."
"Umm, most likely. Xen, that red chest in the attic. Humph. I didn't realize it had been so long since I had some small children around." He cocked an ear at the door to the door to the main room. "It sounds like some of the guests want to get an early start." He wiped his mouth and stepped out.
Flare loaded plates with bacon and eggs, a platter with pastries, poured steaming water into the big teapot, measured in leaves and had everything ready to go when Harry stepped back in.
"You've got the knack, girl. Xen, they're in a hurry."
"Righto." The bottomless pit finished his eggs and walked out munching his last piece of bacon.
"Do they want anything else?" Flare asked.
"Cold lunch and dinner."
"Yeah, they're not going to get much of a fire going tonight." Flare sliced eight of yesterday's rolls and loaded them with cheese and ham. She added apples and cookies, split it all up into flour sacks and took it out to Harry as Xen brought the four men's horses around to the front door.
"Well, we can all relax for a few hours. We'll have a full house tonight, though. I think half of Horseshoe's merchants are trying to get to the Old Road before the rain hits and turns that road into a quagmire, and there are some new officers headed for Fort Stag who will no doubt decide to stop here as soon as the rain hits them. You staying, Kipp?" Harry gave his odd shaped package a glance. "You might pick up some money from the officers, but these merchants are a tight fisted lot. We've plenty of room."
"Thank you, sir." He yawned and looked like he'd like to put his head down on the table and snooz
e like little Nick.
Harry tossed him a key. "Number two, first on the right."
Kipp blinked at it in surprise. "Right, umm, I think I'll catch up on sleep, get ready for tonight."
Xen swooped in and polished off another pastry, disappeared briefly and reappeared with a sizable red footlocker he left in a corner.
"If the kids don't show up pretty quick when it starts raining I'll go fetch them," he promised, and headed back to the barn.
The first drops hit about an hour later, and Xen hustled extra wood in for her stove and also the big fireplace in the main room.
The big drops were followed by more. Within a few minutes it was pouring.
". . . other was a sow and your father was a . . . " the girl's diatribe cut off at the door. Flare didn't want to know how she'd been disciplined to never curse inside. It was bound to be worse than how she'd happened to pick up such foul language.
"Look! They come already washed this time." Xen had the shivering girl over one shoulder, and the boy under his coat, supported by his other arm.
"Very funny. Okay, let's get you two warm and dry." Flare pulled fresh rolls out of the oven, then turned her attention to the red chest.
Xen turned his head abruptly. "Ah, horses. Here come the first guests."
Chapter Ten
Fall Equinox 1390
Crossroads, Foothills Province
Colonel Tanner Trick shook off a bit of the dampness before he stepped through the open door of the inn. A dark old man was just poking up a fire in a large stone fireplace, the room was otherwise empty and looked swept and clean. He hung his hat on the large rack by the door and shed his coat, checking pockets before leaving it on a hook.
He eyed the big polished table in front of the fire but decided it was a bit exposed. Prince Garit might be the King's fourth son, but that still put him close enough to the succession to make Tanner nervous. The boy didn't even have a curb to watch his back and take care of everything. Tanner took a smaller table to the side, and his two new captains were both canny enough to maneuver the prince into sitting with his back to the wall, and the two curbs took a table between them and the door. He'd sent his own curb around with the horses. Remi would not only see that the horses were well taken care of, he'd check for anything that might turn out to be a problem for Tanner.