The Wandering Inn_Volume 1

by Pirateaba

  “Good stuff. I’m going out with Ivolethe. You got things here? Want me to get Klbkch?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Erin’s stomach growled loudly as the [Innkeepers] stared at Ryoka. Their eyes found the floating Frost Faerie as she carried another wobbly poached egg through the air. Erin had no idea what that must have looked like. She took a breath and the three innkeepers looked back at her.

  “I’m not paying Miss Agnes anything for anything. And I’m not saying sorry. And I’m not paying Maran and Safry either.”

  “Miss Erin—let’s be reasonable here. A dispute with the innkeepers of Celum is not—what would happen if we started fighting? Would you like us to take your guests? What about your workers?”

  Ulia was trying to negotiate. She’d hinted quite unsubtly that a few gold pieces could smooth everything over. Erin wasn’t having it. She had an upset feeling in her stomach now, and not just from the lack of food.

  “No.”

  “Your guests—”

  Erin turned in her seat. The Gold-rank adventurers were filing out of the inn, but she had a few Drakes and Gnolls who’d braved the chill to be here in the morning. Some guests from Celum, too. Erin waved at them.

  “Go ahead. Steal my clientele. If you’ve all got magic doors leading to Liscor, go on and have them go through. But Drakes and Gnolls don’t like most Human places. They only go into Celum to look for better prices. I don’t think they want to stay at a Human inn. And try hiring my workers, too. Drassi and Ishkr. I’m sure they’d love walking a hundred miles to Celum every day rather than work at my inn.”

  She glared at the [Innkeepers]. They glared back, all pretenses of joviality forgotten. Timor coughed deeply and growled.

  “Listen here, you brat. We’re experienced innkeepers who know a lot more about this business than some upstart. I suggest you make things right now, rather than see what happens if you decide to make this a real issue. I’m a Level 24 [Innkeeper], Ulia’s a Level 27 [Innkeeper] and—”

  “I’m a Level 30 [Magical Innkeeper].”

  Timor choked on his words. Erin stared at him, and at Ulia’s suddenly pale face. She stood up and grabbed the knife.

  “You want to threaten me? In my own inn?”

  For a second Erin thought about using her [Inn’s Aura] skill to scare them, but then she spotted someone walking in the front door. She waved him over and then pointed to Pisces as he went back for a sixth egg.

  “That’s Pisces. He’s a [Necromancer] and one of my guests. He lives in my basement. You want to cause trouble? He’ll pull all the bones out of your body through your nose. You want to hire someone to make trouble? Come meet my security. Bird?”

  The Humans turned and Ulia screamed. Agnes and Timor turned pale as Bird, holding a freshly-shot bird stared down at him. The Antinium lifted a hand slowly.

  “Hello. I am Bird. I shoot birds.”

  Agnes, Ulia, and Timor all stared in horror at Bird, Pisces, and then at Erin. Erin folded her arms and nearly cut herself with the knife.

  “Get out.”

  They went. Erin sighed as the door leading to Celum slammed shut and waved at Lyonette.

  “Eggs! Food! Some for Bird, too!”

  Lyonette rushed over, looking apologetic.

  “I’m so sorry, Erin. Pisces just took the last of them…”

  She pointed to the necromancer, who took one look at Erin’s expression and decided to finish his meal outside at speed. Erin flipped over the table she was sitting at.

  “Aargh!”

  She spun as the door to Celum opened and threw the knife she was holding. The blade thunked into the wall as Octavia froze in the act of opening it. Erin blinked. She’d thought it was Agnes, coming for one last word. Octavia took one look at the knife lodged in the wall of Erin’s inn, and then closed the door without another word.

  After a while, Erin had some cheese sauce on bread while Bird ate the bird he’d shot. Raw. That was how she started her Monday morning.

  She assumed it was a Monday. It would have felt so wrong if it were a Thursday.

  —-

  Some days Lyonette felt very bad for Erin. It was easier to feel bad, now. In the days since Erin had fired Safry and Maran she’d become a lot more accommodating to hearing suggestions from Lyonette, and had accordingly started treating her like a partner in running the inn, rather than, well, another Toren.

  Erin’s job wasn’t easy. Lyonette knew that. Only Erin could make the wonderful meals that kept her guests coming back, and even if she did store the food for days in advance, she still had to cook for a few hours each day to keep ahead of her customer’s large appetites. Especially Moore’s.

  Added to that, Erin had to deal with all the big issues, like Miss Agnes and the other [Innkeepers] coming down and trying to extort money or an apology from her. Lyonette had hovered about while the entire tense discussion had taken place, feeling guilty about the whole thing. But Erin had told her it wasn’t her fault and Lyonette had quite liked the part where she kicked them out of her inn.

  “Still, it might be trouble down the road so watch yourself if you go into Celum. Uh, I don’t know if they’ll do anything. They might just spread nasty rumors, but you don’t know.”

  Lyonette nodded as Erin warned her afterwards, glumly eating her cheesy toast. She left Lyonette to clean up while she tried to persuade Bird to let her cook the goshawk he’d shot—or at least pluck it first.

  There weren’t many dishes left to take to the kitchen. Ishkr was extremely good at clearing tables, and he was already happily washing the prodigious stack of plates, bowls, silverware, and cups. Lyonette left him to the idle work since the Gnoll liked it so much and decided to play with Mrsha in the meantime.

  Erin had decided that the task of raising Mrsha was just as, if not more important than keeping the inn running. Thus, Lyonette had free reign to do what was needed to keep the Gnoll cub occupied. Sometimes that meant running about after her, playing catch, or just finding her.

  She hadn’t left the inn. Lyonette was watchful of that, but Mrsha wasn’t in the common room either. She could be upstairs or in the basement, bugging Ceria or Pisces as they studied their respective spell books.

  Lyonette guessed upstairs. Mrsha had been worn out from yesterday’s trip to Garia’s home with Ryoka and she might be taking a nap now. Ryoka hadn’t said much about the experience, but for some reason Mrsha had been leaping around and trying to do handstands the entire time she’d been back.

  Maybe she could ask Ryoka about it? Was that being nosy? Lyonette still didn’t know how to talk to the surly Runner girl. Ryoka wasn’t in the inn to ask, anyways. She had gone off to practice ‘jumping around like an idiot and staring at the wind’, which Lyonette took to mean…exactly that.

  Now Lyonette ascended the wood staircase, calling out for Mrsha.

  “Mrsha? Are you there?”

  She heard a faint sound, a clacking noise, that of something connecting with a wooden surface. It was coming from her room. Frowning, Lyonette pushed the door to the room she shared with Ryoka and Mrsha and saw the Gnoll.

  “What are you doing there?”

  The small Gnoll cub spun guiltily as Lyonette entered the room. Lyonette saw a chessboard sitting in the center of the room, and then blinked as she saw ghostly chess pieces arranging themselves on the board. Mrsha turned as a line of pawns flew into place. She grinned happily and, to Lyonette’s horror, scattered them across the room with a swipe of the paw.

  “Mrsha! Stop that!”

  The white-furred Gnoll blinked innocently up at Lyonette, and then turned eagerly to the board. Lyonette saw the fallen pawns soaring back across the room and falling back into place on the board. It was an eerie sight, but she knew that across the world, somewhere, someone else had picked up the pieces. Mrsha watched a pawn settle into place and poked it.

  Instantly, the pawn scooted back. The Gnoll poked it away, and grinned happily as the pawn slid back, with more force th
is time. She pushed at it again—this time the pawn stayed stubbornly in place. Mrsha heaved and the pawn—and board—went flying.

  The Gnoll was randomly shifting pieces around the board or knocking them to the floor and watching them as they soared back up and returned to their original position. She had no idea that this was because someone else had to pick them up, and probably thought it was magic, or some amazing game designed just for her.

  However, Lyonette understood the issue and rushed to stop Mrsha from upsetting the board—and the board’s mysterious owner—any further. By the force of which the pieces were being slammed back on the chessboard, Lyonette guessed the other side was getting increasingly angry.

  She winced as the last chess pieces were slammed into place. Mrsha squirmed, trying to get to the board to overturn it once more. Lyonette grabbed her, put the upset Gnoll in time-out, and picked up the chess board. She rushed downstairs to tell Erin about it. On the way, Mrsha tripped her. The Gnoll thought it was incredibly amusing to watch the pieces and board right themselves.

  Lyonette did not. Mrsha got a spanking, and then she took the board—carefully—down to Erin.

  —-

  “Oh no. Oh my god. I—I forgot.”

  Erin stared in horror at the chess board that Lyonette had brought down from her room. A howling Mrsha ran about the inn as Lyonette chased after her. Erin ignored Mrsha as she tried to appeal to her for sympathy. All of her attention was on the ghostly pieces arranged on the board in front of her.

  The pieces were frozen in the middle of a game. Just as they had been when she’d left them. Erin stared at a knight which was threatening her king. She…vaguely remembered that move, the last one her mysterious opponent had made. It had been on the day she’d left with Toren on the sledge. She’d been dreaming of what to do to counter it—probably move her king rather than lose her bishop—when she’d been abducted to Celum.

  Now, far later, the board was rearranged exactly as Erin had left it, despite it having been messed up countless times by Mrsha. Her unknown opponent had remembered and restored it each time. They had been waiting. For her.

  “How could I?”

  There was no way to explain the pain in Erin’s chest. She was a chess player, a maniac who loved the game. She knew her opponent was as well. She—or he—had been waiting for Erin to make the next move. All this time.

  It was like leaving someone hanging when you were playing a game of online chess, only a thousand times worse. Erin respected her opponent on the other side of the board. But she’d forgotten about them.

  They hadn’t forgotten about her, though. Once Lyonette had finally caught Mrsha and made the Gnoll take a nap, she explained to Erin about finding the board and playing a few games with the mysterious owner herself.

  “It was…six games, I think. I did it every now and then, when I didn’t have anything to do. I leveled up, but whoever was on the other side got bored of playing with me, I think. After the last game they reset the board to this. I tried playing—so did Olesm. But once the other player realized we weren’t you, they reset the board to this. Every time.”

  “I don’t believe it. They were waiting.”

  Erin’s hand trembled as she stared at a piece. She pushed it to one side and it snapped back into place. Lyonette winced, as did Erin. The feeling of the invisible opponent was made clear by the motions of the chess pieces. They were beyond irate. Incensed was probably a better word for their feelings at the moment.

  “I put it in my room so no one would take the board or mess with it. I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you!”

  “No, I understand. I should have remembered. It’s just—I forgot. I can’t believe I forgot. I have so much to do and I—”

  Erin stared at the board. She looked at the pieces and whispered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Would you—would you like to play?”

  Lyonette timidly floated the suggestion, but Erin didn’t know. She felt—guilty. As guilty as she’d ever been of anything. She wanted to apologize, to beg for forgiveness for abandoning the game she loved. But there was no way to do that.

  There was only the game. Erin stared at the board. So long. She’d played Go with the others, but this was different. This was chess. The thing she lived and breathed. So what if a computer could beat the world’s best players? So what if there were video games?

  This was eternal. Erin’s hand wavered as she took the king piece. She lifted the ethereal chess piece up and slowly placed it in front of the knight. And waited.

  Silence. Erin knew her opponent had seen the move. It was a legal one. One of the only legal moves Erin could make, in fact. But did they think it was her?

  A minute passed. Then two. Erin grabbed Mrsha as the Gnoll snuck towards the table. The Gnoll blinked up at her.

  “Touch the board and you will regret it.”

  Erin smiled pleasantly at the Gnoll, without a trace of the anger she’d directed towards Agnes and the others. She loved Mrsha, and Mrsha knew that. The Gnoll cub looked into Erin’s smiling face, turned, and ran yelping up into her room.

  The knight on the board moved. Erin’s head snapped back around and she saw the knight slowly shift positions. It moved up, down, and stole one of her pawns.

  A good, safe move. But it felt grudging. The other player didn’t think it was her. Erin half-smiled.

  “Gotcha.”

  She pushed up a bishop and simultaneously threatened a rook and the other player’s queen. Thanks to the knight’s absence it had been possible. That was a trap that Erin had set, oh, about a month ago.

  It floored the other player. They probably had seen it coming, but they’d been too upset over Mrsha. Understandably so, but there was no mercy in chess.

  This time, the next move came within a minute. Erin saw the queen move to threaten one of her pieces. She still took the rook. Double attacks were there to punish. Then she hunted down the knight, stole the queen, and ended the game in six minutes.

  She hadn’t forgotten. Erin cracked her fingers and winced at the pain. The other player hadn’t moved the pieces since Erin had checkmated the king. She thought they might be in shock.

  So Erin reached out, turned the board around so she had the black side and reset it. She left the white side as it was. A challenge.

  The board reset itself. Pieces flew into place. Then a knight leapt over the pawns heads. Erin smiled and pushed forwards a pawn.

  “Erin?”

  She turned. Pawn the Antinium was staring at her. He was hovering right over her shoulder. She nearly fell out of her chair.

  “Pawn? What are you doing here?”

  “I have been here for the last five minutes. As have my Soldiers.”

  She turned and saw a group of painted Antinium lined up patiently while Lyonette served them fried fish and honeyed milk. Erin hadn’t heard them come in. She blinked at Pawn and then saw a piece on the board move. She quickly turned back to it.

  “Sorry Pawn! I’m uh, playing a game. How are you?”

  “I am well. My Soldiers and I are taking a break from combat duty in the Hive. We have slain many monsters and I am showing the new ones around.”

  “Really? Cool! Uh…combat duty?”

  Erin was distracted. She was pondering her move. Pawn nodded.

  “I see you are occupied. You are playing an interesting game already, I note. Belgrade and Anand would both love to see this. As would Olesm, I suspect.”

  “Isn’t it good? This is the Tennison Gambit right here. See how they’re gambling their pawn? It comes from the Réti Opening—you know, starting with the knight. Belgrade and Olesm can’t really get their heads around hypermodern strategy yet, although Anand is good at using the wings to dominate, which is why he usually beats Belgrade. I wonder what would happen if I used a reverse Budapest Gambit here? Nah…is that stupid? Hm…”

  “I believe this game may take a while. Or the subsequent games will. Lyonette, would you mind if I left my Soldie
rs here to visit the city?”

  Pawn left. Erin was vaguely aware of that, and of a Soldier with yellow spatters of paint on his body sitting and staring at her. At some point Olesm rushed into the inn, screaming.

  “I’ve got to write this down for my newsletter! Quick! Anand, let’s set up a board here! And Belgrade—oh. Sorry. Are your wounds fine?”

  Erin looked over.

  “Hey! You two are hurt! How did that happen?”

  Anand and Belgrade paused. Both were covered in some kind of orangeish slime that was covering several cuts. Belgrade clicked his mandible together.

  “We were wounded in defense of the Hive. Our worst injuries were healed, however.”

  “Lyonette! Get a potion! And Anand, pull a chair up if you want to see. Look at this.”

  Erin waved the chess players over and they crowded around. She kept playing as she explained her position.

  She lost that game. It was a brutal match where her opponent tried to strip all her pieces away and Erin did the same. It ended fast, and when it was over, Erin slowly rearranged her board.

  There was a silence in her mind. A quietus, that overwhelmed the sounds of Olesm chattering and the Soldiers covertly feeding Mrsha scraps of fish when Lyonette wasn’t looking. The last two games had been…a test, Erin felt. She’d caught the other player off-guard and won the first time, and the second they’d played aggressively, at their best. Erin had matched them, though she’d lost.

  Now they knew. They knew it was Erin. And as Erin was white, she set the pace.

  She picked up a pawn and stared at it. Silence. In the mind, and in her heart. Erin looked at the board. She loved the game. Whatever else changed, she still loved the game. She looked at the pawn. The room full of people, the watchers, all had disappeared. There was only silence. An empty stage. Then, for the first time in what felt like years, Erin began to play.

  A simple song. A dance on a chess board only a few feet long. It started out as a quick shuffling of the feet. Pawn to D4. Clearing the throat. Pawn to D5.

  Anyone could do the dance. Erin moved Knight to F3, and after a moment of hesitation in which the music skipped around aimlessly, the other side moved. Knight to F6.