Even through the tunnels of snow, the tavern was only a short distance down the hill from the bakery. Everything in Pothollow was only a short distance from everything else. It was that sort of place.

  It was a two-storey building, windows shuttered against the cold, wattle and daub up top and stone on the bottom, somewhere behind the snow.

  Most of the village was crammed inside. Runa had only half paid attention to names as she scraped snow away from front doors and off of rooftops, and even those vague memories were swept away by the noise and heat that slammed into her as she stooped through the door. Lamps hung from rafters overhead, and a fire blazed in a huge stone fireplace. Wooden tables were tucked against the walls and into corners, and a long countertop guarded the kitchen and several large barrels from the tavern’s guests. Or would have done, if the locals paid it any attention. Runa spotted several of the villagers she’d dug out earlier wandering back and forth from behind the counter, serving out tankards of ale and steaming bowls of stew for themselves and everyone else.

  Her mouth watered.

  “Hungry?” Junilla elbowed her in the ribs. “Let’s get you that dinner I promised.”

  She bustled into the crowd, squeezing a shoulder here, idly knocking heads together there, doling out greetings and friendly insults in a voice loud enough to break over the hubbub.

  “What do you call this?” she shouted to a human man behind the counter. “I leave you to hold down the fort, and you break out every barrel in my cellar?”

  “Junilla!” he shouted back. “You want your tavern back? Give me back my husband!”

  The innkeeper threw back her head and laughed. “Take him!”

  Runa hung back as Tam marched up to the counter and pulled his husband down for a kiss. The elbow in her ribs hadn’t been more than casually sharp, but it and the promise of dinner had wakened her body’s other signals.

  Right now, it was reminding her of all those bruises she’d told herself she would deal with later.

  “Runa!”

  Junilla jerked her head towards a door leading further into the building. “You can wash up down the end of the hall. Food’ll be waiting when you come back.”

  Runa made her way carefully through the packed room. The villagers were a mix of human and dwarf. She couldn’t spot anyone with obvious nymphish heritage, other than a few pointy ears.

  No other trolls. Meaning she towered above all of them. And probably stank to all the heavens, after being tossed down a mountain and spending the day digging.

  But no one shied away as she edged past them. Even back at Sollus’ Gate, people gave her a wide berth, and she’d usually had a bath sometime in the past month there. Only one person gave her anything approaching a suspicious look: a dark-skinned human man sitting in the corner, hunched over a tankard of ale and sorting through a collection of stoppered glass vials.

  That felt a bit more normal.

  Then a kid who didn’t even reach her kneecaps barrelled into her, bounced off, and didn’t even cry out in terror, and any sense of normalcy whisked away again.

  Maybe when you lived this close to the Cauldron, your sense of danger got a bit skewed.

  The door opened into a narrow corridor, and she found the washroom at the far end. She’d expected the passageway to be human-height at most, after having to duck through the front door and watch out for hanging lamps on her way through the main room, but the ceiling was high enough that her horns didn’t even scrape it.

  Well, they were on the northern side of the Cauldron. Even if there weren’t any other trolls resident in town, could be she wasn’t the first to visit, and the tavern owner figured a comfortable guest was more profitable than one that kept scraping up the ceilings with their horns.

  There was a tub in one corner of the washroom, which she ignored. Even if she thought Junilla’s invitation to wash up included however much water and magic it would take to fill a whole tub, she wasn’t going to strip down with only a couple of walls between her and a tavern full of strangers.

  Also, it was too small.

  A stone bench along the other wall held everything she needed. A jug of water, kept warm by a small charm in the base, soap, and cloths. She shrugged off her belt and tunic, leaving her undershirt on, then poured water into a shallow bowl and splashed it on her face.

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  The contract charms swung out, still cheerful yellow. She frowned at them, guilt mingling with relief.

  She shook her head. No point feeling guilty while they were still alive. Even if, before today, she would have bet her entire savings against the two wizards being able to make it from sunrise to sunset without arguing themselves into a bone-sucker’s maw.

  Maybe the stranger was keeping them out of trouble.

  She scrubbed at herself with renewed vigour, wincing as the soap stung in scrapes and cuts she had known were there but hadn’t been thinking about. Warm water—water someone else had gathered and heated up—was a luxury, and one she wouldn’t experience again for a good while once she was back in the wild. She cleaned under her nails, including several she hadn’t known were broken, and gingerly poked at the bruises blossoming all over her arms and torso. There wasn’t a mirror, but she assumed she looked much like she felt.

  Her hair was still in a tangle, the black braid with its single stripe of white gritty and knotted. It would have to stay that way.

  The water in the bowl turned a nasty shade of grey. She tipped it into the slop bucket and dried off.

  Cleanish, dryish, not too badly banged up. She’d been in worse shape. A hot meal and a good night’s sleep, and she’d be ready to go.

  Back in the dining hall, Junilla hailed her to a seat near the fire. She thumped a bowl of stew and a full tankard in front of her, then sat down.

  Great.

  Conversation.

  Junilla leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands steepled in front of her. “Are you much of a cook, Runa?”

  Where is this going? Runa wondered. “Wouldn’t go that far.”

  “But you’re a guide. You must keep your adventuring groups fed.”

  “Sure. Sometimes it helps people to have a good reason to get back home again. Food that only has recognisable bits in it is a good reason.”

  Junilla raised her eyebrows, and Runa realized she’d said that last bit out loud. “Uh—”

  “I only ask because as Tam just reminded me, the bakery smelled like freshly baked bread when we found you this morning. We wondered if that might be why you picked it.”

  “I picked it because it was the first door I found that I could break down. If I’d gone the other way along the wall, I would have ended up…” Runa waved one hand, trying to remember who they’d dug out of the first house in that direction.

  “Widow Tremblewood. That would have been a spot of excitement for her.”

  Juna imagined what the old woman’s reaction to a snow-battered troll appearing on her doorstep in the middle of a blizzard might have been. “Better for everyone I ended up where I did.”

  “Eh…” Junilla wobbled her head. “Maybe. That bread, though… You’re not a cook. Maybe a baker?”

  “I’m a Cauldron guide.”

  “Oh, well. You’re welcome to stay at the bakery, though, so long as you’re here. It’s been empty since the last baker ran off.” Junilla said it off-hand, which immediately raised Runa’s suspicions.

  “Why’d he do that?”

  Junilla shrugged. “Small-town life didn’t agree with him. He left a gap, though. Particularly for some of us. Hello, Corvin. Did everything in your shop survive the storm?”

  Runa looked up into the eyes of the man who’d been glaring at her earlier.

  Not a human, she realised, as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  A dragon.

  No wonder that despite the other locals’ strange cheerfulness, he was the only one to keep a wary eye on her.

  “I don’t think we met earlier,” Runa said slowly. She would have remembered a dragon, in human form or not. “I’m Runa.”

  The dragon’s disguise was perfect. He’d made himself tall for a human, but there were none of the usual telltale hints of a dragon taking another species’ form. No stray scales. No elegant horns. Just brown skin, dark hair, expressive eyebrows and grumpiness.

  “Corvin. I’ve been here all day, dealing with frostbite and other injuries.” His lip peeled back slightly. A sneer, or a fear response? “I’d be a poor excuse for an apothecary if I waited for someone else to dig me out so I could do my job.”

  “Speaking of our previous baker, Corvin’s been unconsolable since Bracklethorn left. There’s no one left for him to be a grumpy little shit with. More ale?” Junilla offered, tapping Runa’s empty tankard.

  Corvin stiffened. Runa was still wondering why he’d come over if he was so frightened of her, when he whisked the tankard from Junilla’s grasp.

  “She doesn’t need more ale,” he snapped, pulling vials of brightly coloured liquid from the satchel slung over his shoulder. “Healing potion, bruise repair, ward against frostbite—”

  “I don’t need warding against frostbite,” Runa tried to cut in.

  He raised one winged eyebrow, not looking up. “Ale isn’t proof against ice injuries, even if it makes you feel like it is. And you’ve been in the Cauldron? General disease resistance and strengthening tonic.”

  Runa shifted uneasily in her seat as he unstoppered the vials and poured them into her tankard. Her coin purse was back with the wizards. She hoped. Or lost forever in the Cauldron. “I can’t pay you for any of these.”

  “You don’t need to. You spent the entire day digging my neighbours out of their houses.” The words themselves were fine; it was the way he said them that made it sound like an insult. “And I doubt it’s the last job our fine innkeeper will find for you.”

  “She’ll have to be quick.” Runa gulped the potion mixture down, grimacing at the taste. “Can I get more of these from you? On credit from the Guildhall in Sollus Gate? I’m heading off in the morning.”

  Junilla and Corvin stared at her.

  “So soon?” Junilla sounded disbelieving.

  Did they really want her to stick around? “I’ve got a job to finish. Two wizards stuck in the middle of nowhere I need to deliver home before they get themselves killed.”

  And a strange woman, she added silently. Whose eyes I can’t get out of my head—not that that’s the reason. I’d go after anyone lost in the Cauldron, no matter what their eyes were like.

  Junilla sighed. “Even I’d find it hard to argue with that,” she accepted. “Tomorrow, then. We’ll see you properly provisioned and send you on your way.”