They hadn’t noticed her. She was too short and round a figure. Curvy if you took the cloak off, which she had no intention of doing. That would only invite attention of the kind she did not want from piss-soaked men who were here for the wenches as much as the food and brew.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You look like you need a stout draught,” the barkeep said.
Those few words were hardly the most wild expression of kindness, but it took very little kindness to make tears come to Iris’ eyes. She was so tired, and so scared, and so sad, that the little comment designed to sell her beer was enough to make her almost burst into tears.
“Maybe more than a stout draught,” he said, seeing the way her eyes filled with tears. “Maybe something harder.”
The inn was loud. A minstrel was trying to tune his lute, and there was a group of singers humming tunelessly, warming up for their later performances.
“Do you have a room I can have for the night?” She wiped her tears on the cloak and tried to compose herself. Now was not the time to break down. Later, maybe. But not here in a room full of loud and dangerous men.
Iris had been a trapper and hunter her entire life. She knew how small animals would behave when they felt they were in danger. She also knew how their furtive movements would draw the attention of predators, and if they were weak and injured, then they would be even more likely to be caught. She had to maintain the appearance of strength. The weaker she felt, the stronger she had to appear.
“Got a room up there, got good food down here. Got a hot fire and something like decent company. No need to worry about anything that happened outside that door. This, in here, this is a world outside the world. What happens in Vezgaz, stays in Vezgaz.”
“The king burned my village, and everybody in it.”
The bar keeper did not say a word, just poured a shot of the highest intensity liquor he had in his bar, a viscous amber liquid which trickled rather than flowed into the glass which awaited it.
“Drink this,” he said. “Then tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
She did as she was told. She didn’t know the bar keeper, and he didn't know her, but that was immaterial. She was feeling lost and afraid, and he had the sort of face that people trusted. He would never have made it as a barkeep if he didn’t.
“The king came down from the sky, he rode a burning dragon, and he destroyed my village. Burned absolutely everything. Destroyed every building, and every single one of our people. I escaped because I was out gathering. Everybody else is dead. Gone.”
Saying the words made her feel very strange on the inside, as if it were all somehow less real for having said it out loud. She looked up at the barkeep, half expecting him to laugh at her, or dismiss her as one of the mad women who got into the ergot and started dreaming up flying monsters and kings.
Instead, he let out a long sigh and shook his head. “There was word of fire last few days. Some claimed to have seen dragons. We didn’t believe them, because dragons aren’t real, but the smell of smoke and death on you is real enough.”
Iris hadn’t considered her smell. She was filthy with the kind of dirt which didn’t lie. The truth of her story was written all over her with filth, sweat, and human soot.
There was a small space around her now, people were giving her a berth, as wide as they could given the press of humanity in the bar. Her story had been overheard and was being relayed from person to person through the crowd.
Within a matter of minutes, it was as if the story had taken on a life of its own. The moment it was told, it started to spread in ripples through the tongues and ears, replicating and repeating, mutating with every retelling.
Almost nobody was interested in verifying the original source, she noticed. She was sitting almost entirely alone in a crush of people telling her story, some of them telling it with far more authority than she had told it in the first place.
“So the king, he comes down here, starts killing everybody with a six headed dragon which ate every villager.”
“No, it wasn’t a dragon. It was a really big fire breathing elephant.”
“Elephants don’t breathe fire, and they don’t fly, and how would the king even fit an elephant on his space ship?”
“How would he fit a dragon?”
“Good point. It was probably a machine, not an actual dragon. You know the lizard king loves his machines. It’s why we’re not allowed them.”