Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
The Three Moons was the opposite of that. Large windows let in plenty of light, the wooden floor had been scrubbed clean, the tables had actual chairs instead of a wooden plank propped up on a couple of barrels, and the clientele skewed, if not affluent, then at least comfortable. The patrons had good clothes, groomed hair and beards, clean faces, and decent shoes. The sign outside, a carved wooden board with a stylized depiction of the planet’s three moons, had three circles of colored glass hanging from it on thin chains: green, amber, and red, meaning they served green ale, mead, and wine.
This early in the evening the place was only a third full. I walked to an empty table about midway between the bar and the door and sat down.
This was a terrible idea.
A young man with light brown skin and jet-black hair delivered two wooden beer tankards to the neighboring table, stopped by mine, and offered me a smile. “What will it be, tress?”
“Favonian red mead,” I told him. “Cold, please.”
The smile gained a forced quality. “I’m afraid we’re all out.”
“Then I’ll take the Denavi ale. But I want to try it before I order.”
“Yes, tress.”
He turned and walked away, making sure to look casual. I watched him make his way to the bartender, a large man in his mid-thirties with blond hair and a deep tan. The bartender glanced at me. I smiled at him. A hurried discussion occurred in hushed voices, and then my waiter slipped through the door to the right of the bar into the back rooms.
They had a dilemma on their hands. I had given them the passphrase, but neither of them recognized me. They would have to run it up their chain of command.
Seeing that dead man had shaken me to the core. By the time I had gotten to the next rental, I was ready to take it no matter what. Anything to find a hole to hide in.
The room belonged to a young family of bakers who had clearly fallen on hard times. The man’s name was Ert, the woman’s name was Hille. They had two kids, a boy and a girl, in clean, worn clothes, about seven and five years old. Ert and Hille baked handpies and bread in their small kitchen, and then Ert would go out to sell them on the street.
Their house was narrow and shoddy. The communal bathroom on the first floor stank like the sewers, and I’d nearly gagged from the reek when they showed it to me. There wasn’t anything to be done about the stench.
The room they wanted to lease was all the way on the third floor, up a rickety old staircase that groaned under my feet. It was cramped, old, and grimy with a coffin-size bed that had no mattress, only a quilt over wooden boards. The flimsy door featured wooden bars on both sides.
Ert and Hille were clearly desperate. They didn’t care about my lack of papers, but they wanted a week’s rent in advance and informed me that they would lock me in at night. As the man of the house had put it, It’s not that we think you’ll murder us while we sleep. It’s just safer that way.
I paid them seven dens for one week. The room wasn’t worth half of that, but I didn’t have the heart or the will to argue. As soon as the money exchanged hands, the bakers left me to “settle in.” I took my shoes off my hurting feet, lay down on my new, awful bed, wrapped in a threadbare blanket and instant buyer’s regret, and thought about my options.
Saving Galiene and her daughter was an impulsive decision. It was probably a mistake, but I didn’t regret it. The memory of the dead man’s battered face haunted me like a ghost, but if I had a chance to do it over, I would save them again. Even if this world turned out to be just a book and she and her daughter were only characters, I didn’t want them to suffer and die. That asshole Hreban wouldn’t get to kill them. It was in my power to warn her, I did it, and it was done and over with.
But I couldn’t afford any more impulsive decisions. Not dying was great, but could I come back if my killer dismembered my body? Could I regenerate a cutoff head? What if they killed me, weighed my body down, and threw it into the river like that poor corpse whose cloak I took? Would I just keep coming back to life and drowning over and over, unable to swim to the surface?
What if I were buried? If I was buried in loose soil, I could probably dig myself out. I would likely die a few times from suffocation, but eventually I would claw my way to the surface. But what if they buried me in a coffin? How would I get out? Also, Kair Toren cremated their dead. What if I was cremated?