Page 57 of The Blight of Hollowmire

We leave our packs upstairs and return to the common room for food. The stew is thick with mushrooms, barley, and root vegetables, served with coarse brown bread studded with chestnuts. Vireth eats with the fixed purpose of someone who has spent too many recent meals cold, frightened, or both.

I try not to watch, but it’s difficult. I enjoy the way she tucks into her food, the way her elegant neck moves when she swallows, and gods, the way her tongue darts out every now and then to lick a spare drop of broth that begins to escape. After a few moments, she notices my attention.

“It’s impolite to stare, especially at a lady eating. Were you not brought up to be a knight? Have your manners been buried in your fields along with your crops?”

I chuckle at that, but do not immediately reply.

“By the gods, what?”

“Nothing. You eat with admirable focus, is all.” Despite my best efforts, I cannot fight the tide of lust rising in my body. The way she devotes herself to this pleasure gives rise to the thought of her devoting herself to other pleasures with equal verve.

“I am hungry,” she practically growls, teeth tearing into a chunk of brown bread as though it will sprout legs and run away from her plate.

“As am I, but you devour with an enjoyment that I have only seen on some of the most dedicated gluttons.”

“And you feel compelled to observe this… why?”

“I observe many things, ’tis my nature.”

“Hmph,” she grunts, swiping a chunk of the craggy bread through the remnants of her stew. “Perhaps you should observe your own meal, or I shall bid Nibblebones to steal it for her and I to share.”

I hide a smile in my cup, and do as she suggests—though I save a chunk of gristly meat for the corpse weasel, who squeaks with delight.

When we finish filling our bellies, I am revived enough to ask the innkeeper about the seer. His face closes in the smallest way, reticent to offer any initial information. I have spent enough years watching men lie badly to recognize someone deciding which truth to withhold.

“What business have you with her?”

“That business is our own,” Vireth says.

“That’s not very helpful,” I murmur to her, but she shrugs.

The innkeeper looks between us again, slower this time. “She doesn’t see visitors.”

Vireth’s lips purse at that. “Does she see anyone?”

“When she must.”

“And where might she be found when she must?”

The man sighs. “Depends who’s asking.”

Vireth smiles, and it isn’t a comforting expression. Thin trails of powdery yellow spores start to leak from her fingertips where they rest against the counter. The innkeeper’s expression goes from surprise to burgeoning anger in a heartbeat. Gods, if I don’t get a handle on this situation, we’ll never find the seer.

“I am asking, and I must see her, do you understand?” Vireth says, her fangs glinting in the firelight.

His gaze flicks to her hood, and something changes in his face, though I cannot quite name it. It’s not quite fear but more… resignation. I wonder how many come to this inn asking after the woman if this is the usual reply.

“Try the western ridge,” he says. “Past the tanner’s lane. If she wants you lost, you’ll end up lost. If she decides to see you, you won’t.”

This is remarkably less useful than I hoped, but Vireth seems unsurprised.

We step out into the chilly afternoon, agreeing to remain together rather than split up to cover more ground. It’s difficult to feel at ease in this place with hungry gazes and distrust leaking from every person we stop. The streets get narrower as we search, and the directions we receive are increasingly contradictory—or confusing altogether. Down one alleyway, a girl selling chestnuts tells us the seer lives near the old shrine, which we later discover was demolished in an avalanche twenty winters prior. After wandering in circles for another hour, an elderly man sitting outside a tavern insists he knows her well, but says she moved last winter. When the shadows of early evening begin to lengthen, an older woman stirring dye in a steaming vat refuses to answer until Vireth compliments the color—a rather hideous brown—then points us toward the wrong bridge entirely.

Nibblebones attempts to assassinate several chickens near the lower market and has to be removed from beneath a cart while their owner shouts at us in a dialect I cannot begin to follow.

By late afternoon, both Vireth and I are exhausted, irritated, and no closer to finding the woman.

“I think,” I say as we climb a slick stairway cut between two leaning houses, “the people in this wretched village of fae enjoy tormenting outsiders.”