Mathis wandered the small shop and examined the boots in the window, wondering how small Olive's feet were. They couldn't be as small as these, could they? She was a fairly tall woman, and she seemed strong. Strong, tall women didn't have little fairy feet.

But she needed a pair of sturdy walking shoes if she was going to join him for the remainder of his trip to the palace.

He found a pair of shoes that looked to have a thick sole and course laces, wide toes and low heels. He would just ask Franny to get a pair of these in her size.

"Here you are, Olive," he heard Franny saying, "you can put these on like I showed you after you get cleaned up. And here's a comb. We know there no inns with a decent comb for a lady. And and do you need hair pins? I have plenty if extra hair pins, oodles of them. I find them everywhere, you'd be doing me a favor if you took some."

Mathis turned and chuckled silently at the dumbfounded look on Olive's face. Franny placed another little parcel on top of her packaged clothing.

"I made this soap last week as well. Inns never have soap for a lady, don't you know? I put rosemary and lemongrass in it, you'll smell like a garden in the summer!"

Anxiety knitted Olive's brow and she cast a worried look in his direction. "Miss Franny, you're very kind, but I'm not the one paying for-"

"Nonsense!" Franny snapped. "You've had a frightful experience and Sir Mathis had heart enough to do you a good deed. I'm not about to reap any benefit from this."

Mathis jerked to look at the older woman. "Come now, Fran, I can't take all this from you with no payment. I'd be robbing you!"

She tsked, lifting her chin at him. "Nonsense. You've sent plenty of business my way over the past 7 years, I'm not about to charge you for helping this lovely little thing." She clapped, remembering something. "That's right! You need shoes!"

"Oh, I was thinking something like this if you have it in her size. We'll be traveling and I want her to be comfortable." He held up the pair of boots he had come across.

Franny turned and looked over them. "Those would do if she had time to break them in. I'm afraid they'd do a bit of damage if she set to the road in new boots though." She turned and ducked back behind the shop, promptly returning with a similar more used pair. "How about these? My granddaughter wore them for about six months before she grew out of them. Poor thing has feet the same size as all her brothers. She trips over them something awful."

Olive looked at them. "They look new."

"I kept them in case I'd have another granddaughter at some point who needed them, but it's been a while and I think there'll be no more babies until I'm a great grandma, so you can have them. They'd be more use on your feet than collecting dust in my shop."

Olive sighed and blinked up at her. "You are being so incredibly generous. Thank you so much. I've done nothing to deserve any of this and you're helping a complete stranger."

Mathis watched Olive with both respect and amusement. He liked someone who showed gratitude where it was due, but she seemed in total awe of Franny's kind heart.

Franny grinned. "Pish posh, girly, don't go trying to embarrass me. Now you two run along so you can get washed up and dressed. As much as I like those little cows on your knickers, you need proper traveling attire, don't you?"

Olive nodded, looking on the verge of tears. Mathis held the door open for her, taking the pair of boots from Franny. "Thank you. Tell Martin I wish him well, all right?"

"Will do! And visit more often, you wandering wastrel!"

Mathis laughed and followed Olive outside, leading her further into town toward the inn. He continued to glance at her as they walked.

"Are they all right? You look like you're about to cry."

"I am!" she burst, looking at him, brown eyes huge and wet with threatening tears.

He flinched, startled. "What? Why?"

"She was so nice!" she gasped, looking back down at her spoils with wonder. "I've never had anyone be so nice to me before. Except my parents. But parents are supposed to do that, right? I never in my life thought a total stranger would dress me, teach me how to put on foreign underwear so selflessly."

He stifled a snort. She was silly. Silly and sweet. Biting a man's finger off one day and crying over an old woman's kindness the next.

"Where you come from," he started, "are people more kind to one another, or more cruel?"

She gave a thoughtful hum. "Probably equal. People are people. We all have a bit of good and bad in is. Sometimes bad people are nice. Sometimes good people are cruel. Sometimes we don't notice what's going on around us because we're busy living our own lives, and that makes us indifferent. So the people where I'm from probably aren't much different than the people here."

He glanced over at her. Those were wise words. He didn't think he knew a lot of people who thought that deeply on human nature, or at all really. He hadn't really thought about it either. He had been indifferent most of the time, as she said, busy living his own life, and then he ran across a screaming woman in the woods. Well he wasn't a scoundrel, he certainly wasn't going to leave her to the devices of those pigs.

But he had almost wandered off and left her alone after she fled from him. What would she have done then? How mindless of him.

He caught sight if the swinging sign above the entrance of the inn. "Here we are. Up these steps."

"I feel like I'm in the middle of an fantasy RPG quest," she whispered as she walked by him and into the building.

He frowned in confusion as he moved after her. A what?

He stopped at the front desk and paused, looking over at Olive.

She caught him gazing at her in hesitation.

"What?" she asked.

"Uh," he started awkwardly, "I only have enough for one room."

She shrugged, unfazed. "Okay. Do you need me to sleep on the floor? I can do that."

He furrowed his brows and blinked at her. "I…," he looked up to the man behind the counter. "Excuse us." He shuffled off to the side, leading Olive away and whispering to her. "Olive, you're unmarried, right?"

She snorted. "God, yes!"

He didn't know what she meant by that, but he was going to ignore it for now. "I'm going to give you the room then. You can't spend the night with an unmarried man at an inn. It'd ruin your reputation. You'd never be able to start a family afterwards."

Her lips parted and she stared at him in stunned silence. Then she burst into giggles. "Mathis, what's there to ruin? I'm not from here. Nobody knows me. And anyway, even if they did, what do I care what a bunch of people think if they're going to assume they know everything about me based on who I sleep with?"

He opened his mouth and then closed it, looking around. Okay, he agreed with her, but she was speaking a little loudly.

"Plus," she sighed, seeing his awareness of their surroundings. She rolled her eyes and lowered her voice, "Don't blush when I say this, all right?"

He closed his eyes. Talking to this woman was becoming tiring.

"I'm not some innocent virgin. You don't have to lead me around by the hand like one."

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Oh." He paused. "Have you been married before?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Gross. No way."

He made a face. "Why do you react that way to the thought of marriage?"

She made a noise of disgust in her throat. "Marriage ruins everything. It makes people who were in love all dull and unhappy. Who needs marriage, anyway? It's just a piece of paper, some official declaration or whatever. Just live together, it's the same thing."

He scratched at his chin. "Doesn't marriage help make sure you stay together?"

"What, it traps you together? If you have to be trapped together to stay together, that has to be miserable. I'd rather my spouse leave me than stay miserable with me. And where I come from, marriage can be as flippant as anything else. Divorce is as common as marriage."

He pondered her words. "All right. I see what you mean." He frowned. "The people here know me, however, so they'll remember I was at an inn with a woman. News travels, especially about knights. I don't care if rumors spread about me. It wouldn't be the first time. But if we go through another town, you might not be treated so… kindly?"

She shrugged. "As bad as the men in the forest?"

He scowled. "Not if I can help it."

She grinned. "Then I don't care. I'll sleep on the floor, it'll be fine."

He shook a finger at her. "You are not sleeping on the floor. What do you take me for? I shan't shame my mother that way." He turned and went back to the counter, putting down a single coin. "One room please. And a bath for the lady."

"Yes, Sir Mathis," said the man behind the counter, "pleasure doing business with ya."

Mathis led the way up the rickety steps out of the common area and toward the rooms, fighting with the key they had been given until he managed to get the door open.

"Question," Olive asked, shuffling into the room behind him and looking around, "I've read that men and women who are unmarried and unrelated traveling in times like these just lie and say they're siblings or they're married or something."

Mathis lifted his satchel off his shoulder and over his head, dropping it into the small wooden chair beside the dingy window. "Well, we could do that. But I travel these parts a lot. Everyone knows I'm a knight, and we don't take wives unless the King gives us land and a title and wants us to settle down. I'm friends with a lot of the people around here and I'm kind of a prattler when I drink, so most folks know I don't have a sister. It would be a lie with a lot of holes in it, and I don't want to make my king look bad. Better a knight to commit adultery once or twice than be a liar."

She scowled. "But women commit adultery and they're spurned by society?"

He grimaced. "Well… yes."

"Well to hell with that. I'll commit all the adultery I please while I'm here just to make a point." She stopped. "Nevermind. I'll end up with some terrible disease that way."

Mathis laughed. "Yes and some poor bastard child to take back home with you."

"I suppose rules about adultery make more sense when you can't control disease or pregnancy, can you?"

"If you can do that where you're from, then I applaud your magicians," Mathis said in amazement.

"Magicians?" Olive echoed. "You have magic here? Like witches and wizards?"

"You can control pregnancy and you don't?"

"That's not magic, that's medicine! Can they fly on brooms? Turn people into frogs?"

"I'm not sure, I've never studied magic. It's outlawed in a lot of places because it's seen as devilish. The dragons control most of it in the North and only the court magicians are allowed to practice it in Hessux."

"You have dragons!" Olive roared. "Do they fly and breathe fire and steal virgins and hoard treasure?"

Mathis gave a lopsided smile. "Why on earth would they steal virgins and hoard treasure? They're scholars. More than anything they like to share what they find. Not steal and hide away."

"You don't have electricity but somehow this place is way more exciting than Phoenix, Arizona!" She clenched a fist. "That place is a god damn hellscape. Everything there wants to poke and bite you and it gets so hot!"

A knock sounded at the door and Mathis moved to pull it open. Four women holding huge steaming buckets of water stood in the hall.

"We've come to fill the lady's tub," said the first woman, shoving past Mathis with no ceremony whatsoever.