Jace walked through the third door from the left and looked around. He was a young lad, sixteen or seventeen. He wasn’t quite sure, didn’t know when his birthday was.

  The inn smelled of cedar, good ale, and roast pork. The Innkeeper sat behind the bar, cleaning a mug that was already clean. He’d long since polished the sides of the mug to a shine with his rag, but he continued to clean its surface endlessly, waiting for his next customer to arrive.

  Twelve doors remained open and closed on the wall opposite the bar. They opened to different places.

  He looked behind him, frowning as the door closed itself. He studied the room suspiciously, but other than the Innkeeper, a friendly looking bloke with a mug and a rag in his hands, the inn was empty.

  “Why wasn’t there a sign out front?” Jace asked. “I must have walked right past this door a thousand times. I never knew there was an inn on this street.”

  “Oh, that door just opened,” the Innkeeper said, smiling. “Would you like to stay the night, or just have something to eat? We have pork roasting, as I’m sure you can smell, but if you want something else I can probably whip it up.”

  “Pork would be great,” Jace said. He took a seat at the bar and looked behind him. There were twelve doors, but the building he had entered had only had one. That didn’t make sense. Maybe they were just decorations?

  “Would you like anything to drink?” the Innkeeper asked from the other room.

  “Ale or Wine. Whatever’s cheapest. I have coin for a meal, but not much more. I’ve barely been getting by these last few weeks and I need to save every copper.”

  “If you pay for your meal then the drinks are on the house. Which will it be, Ale or Wine?” the Innkeeper offered.

  Jace considered, but the scent of Ale was strong in the air and it made his decision for him. “I’ll have whatever ale is on tap,” he said, hoping that was what he was smelling.

  The Innkeeper was gone for a few minutes, and Jace continued to examine the common room of the Inn. It was a very nice place. The walls were wooden, cedar of course, as was all of the furniture. Very well made, sturdy and comfortable looking. He’d been in taverns where the tables weren’t level and the chairs all had legs of different lengths and …

  He’d been in much worse Taverns, and he’d wondered why he’d never heard of this one.

  Then he remembered the Innkeeper saying that the door had just opened. The building had been there forever though. Jace would know, he’d walked down this street once or twice a week for the last two years.

  Two years.

  Dammit.

  “So did you just open, then?” Jace called to the back room.

  “Oh I’ve always been around,” the Innkeeper called back. “Just waiting for my regulars. Every now and then I get a new customer, and it’s both a happy and sad occurrence.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sorry, what did you say?” the Innkeeper asked, walking back into the room. He had a plate with a succulent slice of hog shank, grilled greens, and what looked like squash with butter smothered over it.

  It smelled delicious.

  “Huh?” Jace asked, distracted by the meal. “Oh, I forgot what I said. That smells delicious.”

  “Hopefully you think it tastes even better,” the Innkeeper said, putting the plate down in front of him. He pulled out a mug—not the polished one but another one from below the bar—and filled it from the tap.

  “Um, I hate to ask, but how much will this cost?” Jace asked. “I mentioned I’m a little light on the coin at the moment and—“

  “If you can’t pay me tonight then you can pay the next time you visit,” the Innkeeper offered. “I’ll start a tab for you.”

  “You’re very trusting. I’m a total stranger.”

  “So let’s get acquainted,” the Innkeeper suggested. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself. Start at the beginning. What’s your very first memory.”

  Jace frowned. What a weird thing to ask. But he answered. “My brother’s face.”

  “Not your mother or father?”

  “My brother raised me,” the young man answered. “My parents…I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Another time,” the Innkeeper suggested. “When we know each other better. I take only what’s freely given, mind you. Only that and nothing more. So tell me a story you don’t mind sharing with a stranger like me.”

  “Alright,” Jace agreed. “So when I was twelve years old, there was this girl I liked, and—“

  ***

  The Innkeeper was very easy to talk to. He

  with an intensity that was not quite intimidating, but almost intimate. Jace had never had anyone listen to him like that before, and it was addicting. He began telling the man things he’d never told anyone. Not because they were secret, but because he’d never had anyone who cared.

  Not even his brother.

  Thom had done his best when their father had bailed and his mother had drowned. But a twelve year old stuck with a two year old brother could only be expected to do so much.

  He told the Innkeeper about the years that Thom had spent as a pickpocket and beggar. Same thing, really.

  And he told the Innkeeper about how one day, when Jace was six, Thom hadn’t come home one night. So Jace had gone looking for him, only to hear that he’d been picked up by the city watch.

  He told the Innkeeper about Thom’s public flogging, and how frightened and sad watching it had made him feel.

  He told the Innkeeper about how it took Thom two months to work the courage to go back out of their little hovel, and he never picked another pocket. He kept begging.

  But Jace was the one that people felt sorry for, not Thom, so Jace became the breadwinner.

  Even as the gangs of the city circled in around Thom and began pressuring him to join their ranks.

  Then, one day, Thom simply didn’t come home. The guard didn’t know what had happened to him. Nobody did.

  Jace never got closure.

  He refused to believe that his brother had abandoned him, and eventually gave up hope that his brother was still alive.

  Life was short in the city, when you didn’t have someone looking out for you. Jace thought he’d join Thom in the afterlife, but one of the gangs picked him up as a lookout and a spy. They kept him clothed and fed just enough to keep him going.

  But last week Jace had screwed up a delivery. He’d failed to spot a patrol, and the entire shipment had been confiscated.

  And now his boss was demanding that the young man compensate the gang for the lost goods.

  He was pretty certain that they were just figuring out the most lucrative way to spend his life.

  They were going to make an example out of him.

  And Jace was just waiting for the end when he’d walked past the Inn’s door.

  When he reached the end of the story, the Innkeeper placed a hand on his shoulder. “That’s a tough life. I’ve heard a thousand and one stories like it, but each one is different. Yours is different because it’s your story, and it’s your truth. Thank you for your Story. Why don’t you spend the night? You’ll be safe in my Inn.”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble. When they come for me—“

  The Innkeeper’s eyes flashed, and the door that Jace had come through slammed shut. For the first time, Jace saw something in the Innkeeper that made him uneasy.

  “You are safe under my roof, Jace. That is a truth inviolate. Spend the night, and in the morning I will send you on your way to safety.”

  “I—I don’t have any way to pay you for such kindness,” Jace argued.

  “You have already paid,” the Innkeeper said. “With your Story.”

  ***

  Jace luxuriated in the hot water. It was the first hot bath he’d ever taken. He wasn’t certain how the Innkeeper had heated the water, for he didn’t see a stove nearby and the water had been steaming when he’d come into the Bathroom.

  He was on edge, a little nervous as to exactly what he had stumbled into. This Inn, he had been suspicious at the start but the friendliness of the Innkeeper had put him at ease. After seeing the man’s eyes flash, he was frightened.

  But if he was going to die anyway, he had might as well have a pleasant soak first.

  “So much better than bathing in the river,” he muttered to himself. Although he hadn’t done that for years. Not since he’d seen the bloated body of—

  He hadn’t told the Innkeeper about that day.

  Should he?

  It wasn’t a secret.

  He just hadn’t thought of it when he’d been telling his life’s story earlier, and now that he had he put it on the list of things that the Innkeeper might want to know about.

  He fell asleep in the bath, and when he woke the water was still hot. His skin was wrinkled as a prune.

  After drying himself off, he put on the robe that the Innkeeper had given him. The Innkeeper had taken his filthy clothes away while he slept, having promised before the bath that he would have them cleaned.

  Jace retired to the room on the left of the stairs, the one that the Innkeeper had promised was his for as long as he stayed under the Inn’s roof, and he collapsed onto the bed.

  Despite the nap in the bath, he was asleep in minutes. For the first time in his life he felt safe.

  ***

  “This isn’t just an Inn, is it?” Jace asked as he ate the eggs the Innkeeper served him the next morning. “And you’re not a normal Innkeeper. I’m not selling you my soul by staying here, am I?”

  “No, you’re not,” the Innkeeper said. “The soul is inviolate; you can no more trade it away than I can give you the sun and stars. But you can give me your Story, and that is all the payment I demand. You offered to pay me coin, but I have no need of that. What you gave me last night, what you told me? Your life, your Story, it sustains me.”

  “I’m not going to forget it, am I?”

  “Hardly,” the Innkeeper said with a smile. “You can share a Story without losing the Memory.”

  “What is this place, really?” Jace asked.

  “A little piece of the Dream, made real,” the Innkeeper answered. “People like you stop by now and then, and they tell their Story, and they move on. They sustain me, and I reply with hospitality. I like to think that everyone is happy with the arrangement.”

  “I’m certainly not complaining,” Jace admitted. “I never want to leave.”

  “You have paid for sixteen years,” the innkeeper informed him. “That is how long you are welcome beneath my roof before I need more Story from you.”

  Jace swallowed. “And…the people after me? What if they come around causing problems?”

  “The door you came through no longer opens to the same place.” The Innkeeper answered. “I do not let my guests leave my Inn only to face danger and death. I will return you to your world. In a different city, where nobody knows your face or your past. You may start over. And perhaps you will find this new life better. Perhaps not. Either way, you’re one of my regulars now, so if you see a door that wasn’t there a moment before, I’d love it if you’d stop in and say hello.”

  Jace thought about what the Innkeeper said as he continued to eat his eggs.

  “Yeah. Okay. I think I’ll do just that.”

  He stayed for three nights.

  And left a changed man.