Ten minutes' travel took the party to the gates of a Mintfeldian border town. The gatekeepers had just finished cranking the last entryway closed for the evening when the group trotted up, but with one glance at Alice inside the carriage, they relented and pulled it back open. Tom found himself unsure whether her status or looks had been key to their entry, but at any rate, in they went. 

What appeared to have been a bustling marketplace in the daytime now transformed into a vacant congregation of shacks and stands lining the quiet road. A few vendors remained at their posts, but even they only lingered to pack up their supplies for the night. 

One kindly old lady handed a tulip up to Tom with a grin, telling him to give it to "whoever's in that there carriage" when they stopped. With a generous grin, he thanked her and gave his word that he would. 

Only a few minutes of easy walking later, they had reached the center of the town, and Guistan stopped the carriage to ask a townsman for directions to the inn. The man paled at the sight of him, but soon recovered and hastily instructed him. Guistan saluted the man, and he readily departed. 

At last, Guistan eased the horses to a stop along the side of the broad road running parallel with the inn's length. Alden offered to guide all the beasts to the stable, to which Alice's head of security gruffly agreed. After unharnessing them from the carriage, the old knight coaxed the equestrians to follow him. They did so willingly, as if they understood the comfort they'd soon enjoy as a result. 

Tom, meanwhile, opened the carriage door and first guided Alice's maidservant down with a graceful touch. Once she had stepped away, Alice herself took his hand and stepped down. 

After shutting the door, Tom smirked and handed the tulip to the senator. Her fair eyebrows inched together as she stared up at the young man. 

"You can thank that kind old florist down the road for that." Tom said with a chuckle, "I may be as transparent as men come, but I assure you, such forwardness is beyond even me." 

"Keep telling yourself that. A man should retain his ability to sleep at night." Alice retorted, handing the flower to her maid for safekeeping. 

"I sleep perfectly well, thank you." 

But Alice had already walked away. With a sigh, Tom fell into line in the back of their party, with Guistan spearheading the advance to the inn, followed by the two women. The pair of silver-armored guards flanked Alice and her maid, with Tom not far behind. 

Guistan swung the homely wooden door aside, and the sound of fiddles washed outside, past the travelers' ears, and into the street. A pair of red curtains stretched across the doorway, so the guard held up a hand to halt the party before stepping in to scout ahead. A few seconds passed before he returned. He beckoned them in. 

Lifting her skirt to step over the high threshold, Alice entered. Her maidservant followed closely. A metal hand met Tom's back to nudge him in after them, and then one of the silver guards took up the rear, his comrade agreeing to stand outside and wait for Alden. 

Tom glanced around the interior with an approving nod. From where he stood on a wide landing with a pair of steps leading down to a lower elevation, he viewed a large open area littered with tables and chairs in abundance. Jovial faces smiled at him, heads bopping up and down to the rhythmically sophisticated melody played by a pair of fiddlers to Tom's right. Their furious streams of notes wove around each other in harmonies both beautiful and unconventional. 

Not far from the musicians' corner stage stretched a long bar counter, behind which stood the innkeeper. He grinned agreeably at a young couple sitting on a pair of stools as he poured their drinks. Muscle and fat in equal quantities bulked up his physique, a sign of one who worked hard and justifiably ate all the heartier for it. 

Alice seated herself on the far end of the bar after muttering some words to Guistan that became swept away in the surrounding noise before they reached Tom's ears. The metal helmet bobbed up and down. Then the head guard tapped his comrade's shoulder and pointed the innkeeper's way. He hurried off. 

At Guistan's cue, Tom took his own seat beside Alice's maidservant, who had in turn settled herself beside her master. After casting a glance at the chatty tables behind him, the knight folded his hands and placed them on the counter, knee bouncing in anticipation. 

Soon, the silver-plated guard returned with the innkeeper. The balding man beamed at Alice and kissed her hand. With a genial manner, she spoke a few words to the man, to which he nodded and pulled two keys off a chain. After dropping them into her hand, he leaned his ear closer and agreed again to her next request. He darted off to grab a bottle. Meanwhile, a black metal hand emerged from the shadows, and she dropped the keys into them. 

Tom only realized he had been staring at the blonde senator when she met his gaze and frowned. His face heated and eyes fled. Then he redirected his attention at the entrance, pretending that had been his intention all along. 

Finally, Alden stepped through the scarlet curtains, and after taking in the sights and sounds of his new surroundings for a moment, he made his way to the bar area. He made a detour to drop some coins in the fiddlers' instrument cases, which earned the old man a pair of smiles and an impressively synchronized increase in tempo. 

Alden settled down beside Tom just as the innkeeper returned to Alice, an unopened bottle of wine in his hands. Guistan stepped out from the shadows behind her and took it from his hand. After inspecting the outside, he popped the cork off, poured a few drops on his metal-encased finger, and retreated his hand to the depths of his helmet. 

About a minute passed before Guistan nodded and handed the bottle back. The innkeeper proceeded to grab two glasses and lay them out before Alice and her maid. After filling the cups with red wine, he turned to Tom and offered him a glass. 

Tom nodded, but Alden laid a hand on his shoulder and held his hand up at the innkeeper. "He will not be needing any, but thank you." 

The man raised a patchy eyebrow and shrugged. "Alright, then." 

Tom narrowed his eyes at his grandfather. "I'm thirsty!" 

"Water will do you just fine. All things are open to you, Thomas, but you readily transform your permissions into excess." 

"One drink, Grandfather. That's all I—" 

"No." Alden insisted, "You shall retain total sobriety this night." 

"If you're done arguing, we should talk." a voice called from over Tom's left shoulder, causing both him and his grandfather to jump. His head whipped around to identify the speaker as Guistan. 

"About what?" Tom asked. 

"Guard shifts." 

"Yeah, what about them?" 

Guistan crossed his arms. "My men will take one watch each. You?" 

Tom narrowed his eyes. "You mentioned your men, but what about you yourself?" 

"I'm staying up." 

"All night?" 

Guistan nodded. "Now, I asked a question." 

Alden glanced at Tom for a moment. "Thomas will take the first watch, and I will take the second." 

"Kind of you to volunteer me without my consent." Tom grumbled. "And what exactly does this watching entail? We're in an inn, for goodness' sake, so it's doubtful anything could happen!" 

"Doubtful and impossible are distant relatives indeed, especially in our line of work." Guistan muttered, "Come along. We'll see what we're working with." 

With a sigh, Tom slid off the barstool with an empty stomach and dry mouth. He followed behind the suit of armor and the old man as they wove through the maze of tables full of men and women feasting and laughing in turns. If only you'd spoken sooner, he told himself, you could be one of them right now. 

They finally reached the back wall, where a right turn led them to a flight of wooden stairs. The loud thumps of Guistan's feet on the treads warned a trio of young ladies in festive garb to stay back at the landing and allow the trio to pass. 

After ascending, the three found themselves in a narrow hallway, barely lit by a row of candles mounted to the wall at wide intervals. Each door lining the passage displayed a number affixed to it, fashioned out of bronze. Guistan glanced down at the keys in his hands, and once he did, he continued down with a quickened pace. 

He stopped abruptly at a door marked "17" and unlocked it. Then they entered a spacious room lit by oil lamps strewn about in key locations. The first flickered atop a nightstand, which stood beside a sturdy bed with three quilts neatly draped over it. A second illuminated a corner desk complete with quill pens, ink and parchment. Hanging from the ceiling over a small closet and nearby coat rack, the third appeared to require some cleaning. And the fourth sat at a dressing table. 

Guistan approached the fourth lamp and picked it up, sweeping it around for a closer inspection. Nothing new was revealed, except for a latticed balcony door on sliding tracks, covered up by black curtains to keep the moonlight out. While Alden opted to stay inside, Tom followed the black guard out onto the balcony. 

Moonlight abounded outside, bright enough that Tom could swear he could just barely make out a nose in the depths of Guistan's helmet. But the black guard kept his head moving, and before long, he headed inside again. After instructing Alden to stay in the room, he moved back out to the hallway with Tom and unlocked their second room. 

As Tom glanced around, he quickly concluded that little difference existed between the two rooms. Aside from the second chamber's lack of a dressing table and the way the curtains had been left agape, he felt as if he were in the same place a second time. When they stepped onto the balcony, he observed no contrasts there either. The same simple metal railings stretched across both. 

Finally, Guistan shut the second room's door behind them and returned to Alden in the first. "I see now." the guard said. 

Alden raised a white eyebrow. "You see what?" 

"This room's for the ladies." he said, waving a metal hand around their current surroundings. "We don't need dressing tables." 

Tom snorted. "Well, of course we don't." 

"So," Alden began, "how will we distribute ourselves?" 

"First watch, Tom on the ladies' balcony. I'll stand outside in the hall. And one of my men will watch the other balcony." 

Tom slowly nodded. "And then when we rotate, Grandfather takes my place, and the guards switch...what about you?" 

Guistan shrugged. "I'll stay up, I said." 

"All night long? You're a crazy man." 

"Devotion and craziness have distinctions." 

Tom shrugged. "I suppose. Well, I think we've seen all we can up here. How about we head back down until bedtime?" 

Guistan nodded. With that, he led the way back down to the noisy downstairs, filled with delicious smells Tom could nearly taste as he breathed them in.

**** 

A/N: Well, there you have it, our second chapter of today! This inn seems like a much better place to spend the night, if you ask me, warmer to be sure, and hopefully safer as well. 

If you liked that chapter, do me a favor, please, and leave it a vote and some comments! I always appreciate it. 

And now, that was certainly a passage with a lot of description, because I wanted to give you as a reader a really good feel for this place. So my question is, did I succeed? 

Well, I hope you have an awesome day ahead of you, or maybe behind you! I'm off to work for the last day of the week, and then I get some sweet weekend, so I ain't complainin'. So until next time, adios!