Page 69 of The Isles of the Gods
“Hey, you’re the one who leaped intomyarms,andyou were trying to illegally stow away on a boat, innocent girl. Anyway, the lessons were pretty inadequate, but I remember the best way to make sure people won’t recall anything about you is to do nothing to draw their attention. But we can’t do that, because we’re going to be taking a room, paying, and someone at the inn will know about that. So the second-best option is to give them one big thing to notice, and they won’t notice anything else. Have an outrageous accent, and they’ll forget your hair color. Make sense?”
She looks back at me, considering this. “All right. I know how we can give them two people to remember who’ll seem like anything but shipwrecked sailors.” Her teeth glint as she grins, and for a moment I wonder if this is how other people feel when I tell them I have a plan.
“Do we need to worry about our Alinorish accents?”
“Look around you,” she replies, one hand lifting to take in the chaos swirling past us. “You’re in a port. Come on.”
Before I have time to protest, she grabs hold of my hand, pulling me with her through the open door.
The front office for the inn is tiny, a woman with a friendly face and wiry gray hair crammed in behind the counter, rows of keys hanging on hooks behind her. A wooden staircase leads to the upper floors, and narrow hallways away to the rooms on this floor.
“Looking for rooms?” she asks, setting aside her newspaper to inspect the pair of us.
With a laugh and a quick tug on my hand, Selly brings me stumbling in to land against her. “One room,” she says, practically waggling her eyebrows. “Onebed,and a bath, please, ma’am. I heard you have them attached to the room, so we can have itallllto ourselves?”
I nearly choke on my own tongue, mostly because her acting is so over the top that there’s no way this woman will buy it, and a little because it would have taken her ten seconds to bring me in on this plan, which means she didn’t because she thought it was funnier not to. Still, here we are, so I sling my arm around her shoulder and let myself grin.
“It’s extra for two people in it,” the woman cautions, reaching behind her to snag a key without looking. “Twenty-five dollars a night. Running water, but it’s cold. One night’s coal up there, and a pot to heat the water if you want. Stay another night, it’s another twenty-five dollars, plus two for more coal.”
“No problem,” Selly replies, leaning into me.
“And that’s Mellacean dollars,” the woman says firmly. “I don’t take Alinorish crowns, or whatever else you picked up at your last port.”
“Yes ma’am,” Selly says, then squeaks loudly, as if my hands have just done something outrageous below the woman’s eyeline, and somehowI’mthe one who blushes when she looks across at me speculatively.
“Can you send up dinner for two?” Selly asks demurely.
“You want the two-dollar dinner or the five-dollar dinner?”
“Five.” Selly digs in her pocket to produce some gold Mellacean dollars. “We’re going to need our energy. And the bed’s good? I’mdonewith hammocks for a night or two.” She leans in to confide in the woman in a far-too-loud whisper: “No privacy. Very easy to fall out of, if you’re not concentrating.”
“So I’m told,” the innkeeper replies blandly, clearly trying not to laugh at us. She takes the thirty dollars from Selly and hands over the key, gesturing toward the stairs. “Up one flight, second door to your right. Food’ll be along soon.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Selly chirps, and takes off trotting up the stairs.
“Better hurry,” the woman says to me as I stare after her. “Might change her mind.”
The tips of my ears are hot, and I mumble something that’s not even words as I start up after her, tripping over the bottom step. What am I, twelve again, suffering through a first crush?
“Really?” I mutter to Selly as I catch up with her.
“What?” The look she shoots me is pure innocence. “I was doing my best impression of you. I thought you’d be a fan.”
The hallway runs along the back of the building, with a door leading out to those metal ladders we saw in the alleyway. Selly trots ahead of me again and opens it, sticking out her head to whisper-shout to Keegan. “Up here, Scholar!”
I can’t help grinning as I watch him climb up to joinus—Selly’s already unlocking the door to our room, and when she holds it open, Keegan and I pile in through it.
Her mood is infectious, and it’s like the turning of the tide. Just this small win—we’ve got a safe place in this big city—changes everything. And despite all we’ve left behind us, the realization that tomorrow morning I can hand this whole disaster off to a responsible adult is starting to catch up with me.
Our room is dark, but I can see it has a big bed, as promised, and a couple of chairs by a window that looks out on the square, with an awning beneath it.
“Where’s the light switch?” Keegan asks softly in the dark, groping around near the door. The bright lights of the square below provide the only illumination in here.
“There’s a fireplace opposite the foot of the bed,” Selly replies. “Probably candles, too. Would you be so kind, L— uh, Maxim?”
There’s barely room to squeeze past the edges of the bed. I’ve complained plenty of times about the tiny country inns I’ve had to stay in when we were on the road, and I’m only now realizing how I might have sounded to the servants. This place makes those places look like palaces.
“I need something to give them,” I mutter, patting my pockets.
