Kharanos arrived as roofs, then as voices, then as the particular gold of a hearth seen through a doorway at the end of a cold walk. He did not stride. Level 6 was not a parade. He came in under the eaves with snow melting in his beard and the hatchet down along his leg, so he did not look like a problem the town had to solve before supper.

The inn took him without a speech. That was the best of it. Heat. A bench that had held heavier dwarves than him. The smell of stew, spilled ale, and wet wool drying into something almost kind. He set his back to a post where he could see the door, because Coldridge had taught him things he did not intend to unlearn between one bowl and the next, and he let the fire find the parts of him the vest had not reached.