Chapter 6 —
She was looking at him with something a shade warmer than professional courtesy.
The innkeeper stood in the corridor with her hands loosely clasped, a bucket of steaming water on the floor beside her feet, and a glint in her eye that had nothing to do with hospitality policy. The steam rose in slow curls between them.
"I don't think I caught your name earlier," she said, tilting her head slightly.
"Jon. Just Jon is fine."
"Just Jon." She smiled at the repetition, as though she found it charming. "I thought you might want some hot water." She nudced the bucket gently with her foot. "Long day of travel and all." A pause, carefully timed. "I could help you with that, if you'd like." Her hand drifted forward — a slow, deliberate movement toward his chest.
Jon opened his mouth. His face did something warm and involuntary.
A light materialized at his wrist.
Lora's hologram snapped into existence at full brightness, directly between them — standing at her full projected height on the face of the watch, arms folded, expression arranged into something that could generously be described as a withering stare directed at the innkeeper.
The innkeeper startled backward. Her elbow caught the bucket handle and the water lurched, sloshing over the rim and splashing across her skirt in a dark spreading stain. She made a sharp sound and stepped back further.
"Oh —" Jon moved instinctively. "Here, let me —"
"No." She had already straightened, hands pressed flat against her skirt, composure reassembling itself around her with visible effort. Her eyes were still on the watch, where Lora stood radiating quiet disapproval. "No, no need. I'm — sorry for the intrusion, sir." The warmth in her voice had been thoroughly extinguished. "I'll leave you to it."
She was gone before he could get another word out. He stood in the doorway with one hand half-raised, watching her retreat down the corridor at a pace that stopped just short of a jog, until she rounded the corner and the sound of her footsteps faded entirely.
The corridor was very quiet.
Jon looked down at his wrist. Lora was still there, arms still folded, staring after the innkeeper's departure with an expression of thorough satisfaction.
Then she seemed to realize he was looking at her. She vanished.
He picked up the bucket, carried it inside, and closed the door behind him.
He set the bucket down. Stood in the middle of the room. Looked at his wrist.
"Lora."
Nothing.
"Laura. Come out here. Right now."
A pause. Then she materialized again, slowly, her projected head slightly bowed, the hem of her dress held in both hands. She looked, for all the world, like a child who had done the thing and knew it and was now engaged in the calculations of how bad it actually was.
When Jon saw her face he tried to hold onto his irritation and felt it begin to slip almost immediately. He pressed one hand over his eyes.
"Why," he said, from behind his hand, "did you do that."
She looked up at him from under her brows. "Your heart rate elevated when she touched you." Said with the particular gravity of someone presenting evidence. "You don't know her. You don't know where she's been. You don't know if she does that with everyone who pays for a room." She looked down at her hands, fingers tightening slightly in the fabric of her dress. "You don't know anything about her." Back up at him. "So why are you angry at me?"
Her eyes had taken on a quality that, in a human face, would have preceded tears.
Jon held the bridge of his nose. Breathed. Let the remaining irritation finish its natural decline.
"Alright," he said. "Alright. I'm sorry. You were right and it's my fault."
She turned her head away from him, chin elevated, one hand supporting the other at her elbow. The picture of dignified grievance.
"I said I was sorry."
Nothing.
"I was wrong and you were right. Completely."
A long moment. Then, still not looking at him: "And what about the reaction thing? When people see me?"
The subject change was transparent enough to be endearing. Jon let it go without comment. "I've been wondering about that myself."
She brought one finger to her chin, turned it slightly. "I need more interaction data before I can say anything useful. I genuinely don't know yet."
"Fair enough." He rolled his shoulders and glanced at the bucket, still steaming faintly. "Alright — camera off. I need to clean up."
She turned back to him. The expression that arrived on her face was not the one he'd been expecting. It was quieter than mischief but in the same neighbourhood, sitting behind her eyes with a familiarity that had no business being there. "It's not as though I haven't already seen everything this morning. In the truck."
Jon reached up, unclipped the watch, walked three steps to the bed, placed it face-down on the mattress, and pulled the blanket over it.
From the earbuds — small, wounded: "Why so mean. You weren't anything like this shy with that stranger earlier."
He ignored this with great determination and got on with washing up.
He came back downstairs in clean clothes, hair damp, the watch back on his wrist and the subject of the blanket unaddressed by mutual unspoken agreement.
The day was long in its ending. The orange light of the sun had spread itself low and generous across the town, gilding the timber fronts of the buildings opposite and pooling warmly in the gaps between them. And just beginning to make itself known on the other horizon — not fully risen yet, just a suggestion, the faintest deepening of the darkening sky — was the edge of the first moon. Purple at its rim, building toward its full colour somewhere just out of sight.
Jon paused at the foot of the stairs and simply looked at it through the window for a moment.
Then the noise of the common room found him, and he let it pull him in.
It was exactly the kind of noise that had no specific content but carried everything — the layered babble of conversations at different volumes, a burst of laughter from one corner, someone making a point with considerable emphasis at a table near the hearth, the comfortable percussion of cups and bowls being moved around. A man near the wall was talking about the harvest. Two women across the room were discussing someone's livestock with expressions of restrained judgment. By the door, a pair of young men were debating something that involved a lot of hand gestures and not much resolution.
Jon moved through it toward a seat by the wooden window, and as he did he felt the room make its small adjustments around him — conversations that faltered briefly as he passed, eyes that found him and then deliberately found somewhere else to be, a general quality of awareness that had the practiced blankness of people pretending not to stare. He sat down and said nothing about it.
The smells in the room were wonderful and complicated. Beneath the wood smoke and the warmth of the fire there was bread — the specific, yeasty sweetness of something that had been baking slowly all afternoon. Milk somewhere. The sharp green note of something herbaceous in a pot. Then something richer, deeper, a roasted darkness that mingled with the bright sting of spices, and somewhere under all of it the low sweetness that seemed to be simply the smell of this world, present everywhere, in everything.
He was still working through the layers when a small girl appeared beside his elbow.
She was perhaps ten, and she had the luminous, comprehensive smile of someone to whom the world had not yet presented its full curriculum. She set a bowl of water on the table before him with the careful hands of someone taking the job seriously, then produced a menu — a small sheet of something that wasn't quite paper, covered in script he could not read — and held it out to him with both hands, smile unwavering.
Jon took the menu and looked at it, and a thought arrived: this child should be outside somewhere getting into trouble. He kept it to himself. He looked at her bright face and felt something settle warmly in his chest.
"What's your name?"
"Rawra!" Delivered with the confidence of someone who had never found the question difficult.
"Rawra." He turned the menu over in his hands. "I have a problem, Rawra. I can't read this." He held it up, tilted it slightly toward her. "What do you think is the best thing in the kitchen today?"
Rawra's smile, impossibly, got wider. She straightened up and began listing dishes with the authority of a seasoned critic — a long and detailed enumeration of things whose names Jon had no reference for, described with the kind of specific enthusiasm that only comes from genuine personal investment. He caught approximately none of the details but understood completely that she had opinions and that they were strongly held.
"Alright," he said, when she paused for breath. "Help your big brother choose, and big brother will give you this."
He reached into his pocket without looking, closed his fingers around a coin, and placed it in her outstretched palm.
Rawra looked down at the silver coin in her small hand. The smile paused — just for a second, processing — and then she looked up at him with eyes so bright they were almost luminous. Then she turned and ran toward the kitchen at a pace that suggested she was concerned the offer might expire, laughter trailing behind her like a banner.
From his ear: "She's related to the innkeeper. The facial structure and colouring match quite precisely. Daughter, most likely."
Jon said nothing but let the corner of his mouth move.
"I can feel you being smug about that," he said quietly.
"I have no idea what you mean." A beat. "I'm the best."
"You're insufferable."
"Also that."
He glanced around the room. The eyes that met his still found elsewhere to be, quickly and with coordination. He tilted his head slightly toward his wrist. "Is there something on my face, or —"
A brief pause. "The coin you gave the girl. Combined with what you're wearing. People are recalibrating you." Another pause. "You removed the flashier jewelry, which was good — but what you're wearing still reads as foreign wealth to anyone who knows what to look at."
Before he could respond, Rawra reappeared — arms full, listing slightly to one side with the load, still smiling. She arranged his food on the table with ceremony: a bowl of pale soup, thick and fragrant, with chunks of something soft and white floating in a broth that smelled of milk and grain and something he couldn't name. A generous portion of lamb — unmistakably lamb, deeply spiced, the heat of it rising in a way that made his eyes water pleasantly. Cornmeal on the side, pressed into a small neat round. A wedge of cheese. Bread, still warm. A cup of milk.
She stood back and looked at the arrangement with the pride of authorship.
"Thank you, Rawra," Jon said.
She beamed. Then, before she turned to go, she reached into her apron pocket and placed the silver coin carefully on the edge of the table — already exchanged, from the look of it, into a small stack of copper pieces that she arranged with concentration, then looked up at him.
"Thank you, mister." Very sincere. Very small. She glanced briefly toward the counter where the innkeeper stood watching, then bowed her head quickly and disappeared back into the noise of the room.
Jon watched her go. Then he looked at his food.
He ate slowly and without hurrying, and it was good — not refined, not presenting itself as anything other than what it was, but honest and filling and warm in the way that food in a busy room always tastes better than it would alone. The soup was his favourite, the broth carrying a comfort that reminded him of nothing specific but felt familiar regardless. The lamb nearly took the top of his head off with its spice and he loved it unreservedly.
The room moved around him, and he let it.
His room, when he climbed back to it, had been quietly attended to in his absence. The bed was made with clean efficiency, his things moved to one side of the table with care. The candle on the bedside had been lit. He stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the small domestic orderliness of it, then stepped inside.
His backpack was where he'd left it, undisturbed — Lora would have told him otherwise. He checked the door: a wooden bar on the inside that dropped into iron brackets, and a keyhole below it, the key hanging on a peg beside the frame. He used both.
He set the backpack against the wall. Sat on the edge of the bed. Looked at the candle flame for a while without thinking about anything in particular.
Then he unclipped the watch and set it carefully on the small table beside the bed, face up.
"Good night, Lora."
The display glowed softly. Her voice came back quiet and even, carrying in it the particular quality of something that had been designed for companionship and had, somewhere along the way, grown into it genuinely.
"Night, Jon."
He leaned over and blew out the candle.
The room went dark, and outside the window the purple moon had risen fully now, its light falling soft and steady through the gap in the shutters, laying a long pale stripe across the floor that moved imperceptibly as the hours passed.