One Word in the Inn Register
October 7, 2026
The innkeeper turned the register around with two fingers and pushed the pen across. Ink pooled at the nib. It was Thalday, late in Dravemir, and the common room smelled of wet wool and onions frying in somebody's fat.
Hadna took the pen. Her fingers had stopped feeling like hers about a league back. The lute rode on her shoulder in its wrapped case, and it knocked against the doorframe as she leaned in. She winced for the wood before she winced for herself.
“Name?” the innkeeper said, though the book was right there.
“Drake.”
“Just Drake.”
“Just Drake.”
He looked at the lute. He looked at her boots, which were good boots and had been walked well past good. He'd kept this inn a long time, and he knew a name wasn't worth an argument at the end of a day like hers.
She wrote it. Five letters, the D a little too tall. The ink dried fast in the cold room.
“Bed's two coppers. Fire's extra.”
“Is the fire any good?”
“It's a fire.”
Upstairs the room had one window, and the shutters didn't quite meet. Through the gap she could see Vael hanging low and red over the stable roof, with Lunareth coming up pale behind it. She unwrapped Honey on the blanket and ran her thumb along the red-honey wood until the ache in her hand turned into something she could use.
She didn't play. Not tonight. The walls were thin, and a lute carries. She tuned instead. One string, then the next, listening for the place where each one settled. Down in the common room somebody laughed. Somebody dropped a pot. The fire, such as it was, popped twice.
Whispers of the Wyrm, Book One of The Bard and the Blade Saga.