The Missing Tankard

Pavri had been searching for some time for the large tankard with the chipped rim. Short, very fair-haired and pale-eyed, she was the landlady of the Crooked Lantern; few who saw her lift a little barrel in one hand would have guessed her strength. She found it beneath a bench, beside a boot that belonged to nobody at the table. She recovered the tankard, inspected it by lanternlight and put it aside: that rim would cut nobody, not tonight. Depa, the black-fingered craftswoman who tended the lights, noticed the boot. “Shall we put it outside?” Pavri shook her head. “Its owner will come looking for it before the other foot gets cold.” A little later Shaya came in, slender, her ears faintly pointed beneath her hood. She clutched a roll of fabric too large for her cloak to protect. She asked for somewhere dry to set it down. Pavri pointed to a space beside the fire, well away from the boot. A place full of lost things, she thought, was still a place where somebody expected to return.