The Shape of the Trap

Heat struck Rishi first. Noise followed.

The Battlescarred Bard did not welcome travelers so much as admit them under protest. Smoke banked beneath the low rafters. Grease snapped beyond a serving hatch. Wet wool, horse sweat, spilled ale, and old rushes thickened the air.

Every table seemed to have been pushed too close to the next. Merchants guarded ledgers beneath their elbows. Drovers bent over steaming bowls. Caravan guards ate with one hand and kept the other near their belts.

Two muleteers quarreled over dice. Three women in road cloaks shared a pot by the hearth. A thin man had placed his lute case on a chair and was protecting it more carefully than his supper.

Near the door, two house guards watched the crowd with the worn patience of men paid to stop arguments before the furniture became expensive. They wore leather jerkins and carried cudgels. Nothing else made them a pair except the hard, practical set of their faces.

One guard considered Teren’s sling, Rishi’s combat staff, then Maeril’s horns, circlet, and pale wooden staff.

Trouble, perhaps, his expression said. Not yet.

A woman swept near the hearth, a plain scarf over her hair and her shoulders rounded with work. She nudged a crate aside, bent to gather loose rushes, and disappeared behind a serving girl’s crowded tray.

Rishi forgot her at once.

A serving boy found them a table against the side wall. It offered Teren’s injured arm some shelter and Maeril a view of the door. Teren lowered himself carefully onto the bench and propped his walking staff beside him. Rishi set his own staff against the wall, close to his right hand.

“What passes for supper?” Maeril asked.

“Plate-of-gold, ham, stew, chopforest, warrior’s head, bread,” the boy recited.

Maeril regarded him. “Warrior’s head?”

“Pickles and garlic.”

“Of course. Why should words mean anything?”

Teren adjusted the sling where it crossed his ribs. “I would not order it by mistake.”

“I am tempted to order it on purpose.”

Rishi looked at her.

She sighed. “Ale, hot stew, and bread.”

The boy turned to Rishi.

“The same. Water instead of ale.”

Maeril looked wounded. “We are in an inn, Rish. You are allowed to ask for ale.”

“I asked for water.”

“Yes. I heard the tragedy.”

Teren said, “Sherry, if the house has any that still remembers grapes.”

The boy vanished into the room.

Their food arrived hot, thick, and sooner than expected. The boy placed Maeril’s ale and Teren’s sherry without error, then handed Rishi his water.

For a little while after that, the common room was only a common room.

Maeril tasted the stew and continued watching the door over the rim of her spoon.

“A peculiar place,” Teren said. “Too costly for its manners.”

“That describes half the Sword Coast.”

“And too useful to avoid.”

“That describes the other half.”

Amusement tightened his mouth. “You speak as if roads have offended you personally.”

“They have. Frequently. With mud.”

Rishi heard them without answering.

Then his hand stopped beside his cup.

Across the common room, laughter rose from a dice table. It came too readily and ended too neatly around a red-faced man in a travel coat too fine for the dust ground into its hem.

A merchant. The proofs were small and careless: soft hands, good buttons, a visible weight in his purse. Drink had raised his voice and loosened his posture. He bent toward the dice as if one kinder throw might redeem every cruel one before it.

Four men arranged the space around him.

The first sat at his right with an easy smile and possession of the dice. Friend. Guide. Generous companion. He laughed when the merchant laughed and leaned close whenever the merchant lowered his voice. Each movement kept the merchant turned toward him.

Two more held the ways out. One crowded the merchant’s left elbow. The other stood behind his bench. Road clothes, broad shoulders, cups barely touched.

The fourth man kept apart. He held a drink and watched the door, the guards, and the gaps between tables.

Rishi’s fingers curled against the wood.

Dice clicked across the distant table.

The smiling man swept them up before anyone else could reach them. He rolled them in his palm, shook, and cast. They flashed beneath the lamps. The merchant groaned, laughed, and drank.

The dice returned to the smiling man’s hand.

Too quick. Too controlled.

No one else touched them.

“Rish?” Maeril asked.

He did not look at her. “Dice.”

Teren followed Maeril’s gaze across the room.

The merchant raised his cup. His companion said something too low to carry, touched two fingers to his lips, and tapped the table once.

Lightly. Playfully.

The sounds around Rishi receded. Bowls still struck tables. Chairs scraped. Someone near the serving hatch called for more ale. None of it entered the shape forming before him.

“Lips,” he said. “Table.”

Behind the merchant’s left shoulder, one of the men turned a ring around his finger with his thumb. His eyes remained on the merchant’s cup.

“Ring.”

Maeril set down her spoon.

The merchant drank.

The four men lifted their cups and did not.

“Are you all right?” Maeril asked.

“Back to the room,” Rishi murmured. “Right hand keeps him turned. Flankers. Watcher.”

Teren looked at him rather than the men. “What do you see?”

Rishi swallowed.

The merchant slapped the table and loosed a laugh too loud to hold any pleasure. “Again. Come on, then. I’ve paid for worse luck than this.”

The smiling man leaned close. His voice carried this time.

“No one said luck was free, friend. Roads are safer when a man pays his share.”

The ring turned again.

The smiling man reached for the merchant’s cup.

“Protection,” Rishi said.

The word opened an old room inside him.

The merchant shoved the cup away. “I paid at the last bridge. I paid at the last yard. I paid your friend in the blue cloak, and if he forgot, that’s not my problem.”

Two fingers touched lips. One finger tapped wood.

The watcher shifted his weight.

A flanker moved his boot half an inch and hooked it around the leg of a chair.

Rishi stood.

Maeril reached for his sleeve. Her hand stopped before touching it.

His staff remained against the wall.

Without it in his hands, her wards could not reach him.

“Rish.”

He was already walking.

He did not hurry. A serving girl crossed before him with a stack of bowls, and he let her pass. A chair scraped into his path. He stepped around it. In plain traveling robes, empty-handed, he was only another weary man crossing a crowded room.

Behind him, Teren’s good hand gripped the table.

“What is he doing?”

Maeril did not answer.

The smiling man gathered the dice.

The merchant pushed upright. His face had reddened beyond drink. “You think I don’t know what this is?”

“Sit down,” one of the men said.

The merchant turned toward the voice. A narrow space opened between two chairs.

Rishi entered it.

His hip struck the table. He let the impact turn him into a clumsy traveler.

Cups jumped. Ale sheeted across the wood. Dice scattered into the rushes, and half a cup emptied down the merchant’s fine coat. The smiling man recoiled with a curse.

“Ouch,” Rishi said. His apology came breathless and harmless. “Forgive me.”

“Gods—watch yourself!” The merchant stumbled back and clawed at his wet coat.

“I am sorry.” Rishi offered him a hand. “Are you hurt?”

The smiling man stared at him.

The nearest flanker rose so fast that his chair slammed into a woman behind him. She shouted. The merchant tried to escape the spreading ale, but the second man moved into his path. The watcher lowered his cup.

Bodies pressed into the aisle behind Rishi. Maeril gained one step before a pair of shoulders closed the gap again. Near the door, the house guards looked toward the commotion. They had seen a spill and heard a curse. They had not yet seen enough.

Rishi seized the merchant’s sleeve.

“Move.”

The merchant’s drunken confusion broke open into fear.

The smiling man grinned. His hand dropped below the table.

A knife came up close to his body and drove forward.

Rishi saw the mistake he had made.

He had meant to break the line, numb the knife arm, and draw the merchant out before the four men could recover. Instead, the merchant stumbled into him. The hooked chair caught behind his calf. Table edge pressed his hip. Ale slipped beneath his heel while the flankers closed from both sides.

Too close. Too many bodies.

No staff.

The blade came for him.

Fear struck cold beneath his ribs. His body clenched around it. There was no clean answer left.

Maeril stepped onto a chair.

She rose above the crowded room with one hand outstretched. Fear blazed naked across her face, and rage burned through it.

The Weave answered her blood.

A thin, sickly ray snapped from her fingers and crossed the room before Rishi could draw breath. It struck the knife-man beneath the ribs.

The man’s body forgot the blade.

His arm jerked aside. The knife dropped into spilled ale. He folded around a violent convulsion, mouth open and voiceless, then gagged. Ale, bile, and half-digested supper burst across the table.

His knees failed. He struck the rushes clawing at his throat, retching while every limb shook.

For one heartbeat, the common room held still.

Then it shattered.

“Magic!” someone screamed.

A bench overturned. The merchant reeled away. The house guards reached for their cudgels.

Rishi turned toward Maeril.

She stood above the crowd, hand still raised, her heart visible in the pulse at her throat.

Near the hearth, where no one was looking, the woman with the broom stopped sweeping.