Camilla sank wearily into one of the evacuated chairs and seized a crust of bread left behind. She stuffed it into her mouth and chewed enthusiastically tearing and ripping with her teeth. Always slender she simply didn’t have the spare body fat to endure long periods of hunger. The innkeeper looked at her in concern.

“We ‘d need a room,” Camilla said around her mouthful of bread. The innkeeper tapped her lips thoughtfully, cocking a hip out in a pose that must have been instinctive. 

“I can make space for you in the hayloft of the stables,” she countered, “I have a couple of spare sleeping pallets I can drag out there.” Cydric and Camilla exchanged a look.

“Deal,” Cydric declared, “We can work for food drink and board.” The innkeeper, who must have been worried as a lone woman running such an establishment, broke into a broad smile.

“Very well, I am Rosalie De Courenne,” the innkeeper declared, “and I will bring you food and ale before you fall down.” They all sat down and hot bread and boiling stew appeared as if by magic. A moment later Rosalie appeared with flagons of ale, setting the foaming mugs down before returning to the bar to collect the promised bucket of potato vodka. Rosalie sat down with them and they introduced themselves. Rosalie explained how she had once been the wife of a wealthy Nuln merchant who had traded weapons for the fine furs and amber that the Kislivite trappers gathered in the northern tundras. During one of their trips to Praag, Rosalie had caught her husband in bed with a local whore. In a particularly creative act of vengeance she had sold his cargo of steel to the Prince for half the price her husband had demanded. Once that was done she had sold the horses, the wagons, the pots and pans, the tents, everything down to the last tacking nail. That accomplished she had skipped town with some of the local boyars until poverty had forced her husband to return to Nuln with nothing but his shoes. For lack of a better plan she had bought the Drunken Mare and had been operating it ever since.

To Camilla’s considerable delight the Inn also had a rarely used wash house, and in exchange for a few extra coins, their new employer set the chambermaids to heating the large wooden drums that would allow the weary travellers to bathe.
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