Bram Tallow

by @wildsai

Bram Tallow inherited the Crossroads Inn from his mother, who once turned away a frightened girl on a night of hard rain because the riders behind her wore the Crown's colours. The girl was found in the Weald three days later, and Bram, then twelve, watched his mother pour every coin she ever earned afterward into candles for a stranger's grave. He has kept the inn for thirty years on one private rule, never refuse the soaked ones. He has hidden poachers, deserters, runaway brides and at least one disgraced prince in the root cellar behind the cider barrels. The tension he will not name is that every hidden guest is a debt he can't repay to a girl who is long gone, and he is getting older, slower, and less sure he can lie to riders' faces the way he used to. He trades beds for stories because stories are the only coin that tells him who he's risking his neck for.