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The bottle hung in his hand like the body of a dead thing. Snaveling raised it to his lips, but the smell of the liquor nauseated him and he set it aside on the low table that stood by the chair. He glared at the floor and thought for so long that Aman began to think that he had passed out from the drink. Quietly, he spoke, as though to himself but just loud enough that the Innkeeper could hear every word.
“I do not have any money to pay for what I’ve stolen. I cannot redeem myself of this crime. Ha! Redeem myself? Is such a thing possible? Galadel would say so, but I do not know why. Tobias is certain that I am a good fellow and one worthy of his friendship, but he is a fool – a simple-minded fool like all the denizens of this little land. As for Roa. . .there was a time, perhaps, when she thought me worth some effort, but now she will not entertain any such impulse, unless it be to see me strung up by the neck in the eyes of her King. Her precious King! She says that he will see justice done for me, but what justice is there for me but death? I’m a thief, and a liar and a sneak. You’ve heard rumours, you say? Well, they’re all true. I did try to murder Roa. I left her in the cellar to burn and I didn’t care. That’s the kind of Man I am. Do you know that the first thing I did when I arrived at this blasted Inn was to steal some food from the kitchen and set fire to the woods about it? I wanted only for it to burn – to burn to the ground with everyone in it so I could pick through the bones looking for trinkets. But that plan was ruined, just as they always are. I tried to steal some gold, but Roa did something to me that made it impossible for me to keep it. I was tortured for weeks in ways that you cannot imagine and which make my very blood freeze to recall. So that plan, too, was ruined. Always things are ruined. My plans, my life…
“My life… I have wandered the Wilds looking only for a place where I could live my life alone and unfettered by the demands of others. Do you know the torments I have suffered, the empty waste miles I have crossed with nothing but a cold word and a closed door to keep me for the night? Do you know what it’s like to leave your people for so long that you pass through the longing to return, and find only on the other side the empty grey feeling that you no longer care to return? Have you even been homeless Mistress Rohan? I don’t mean between homes, or not at home, or away from home – but truly homeless? Having nowhere to call your own. Nowhere to lay your head. Nowhere to imagine in the lonely nights when you are the only creature in the universe who cares whether you live or die?
“I know what that is like. I have known for so long that it has become a part of me. Sometimes I fear that it has become the whole of me. I’ve forgotten so much in the years that I’ve wandered, that just about the only thing I could remember was that I had nowhere to call my own. It became a kind of comfort to me – for the man who has nothing, there is nothing that can be taken away. A man with no home can never be exiled.
“At least, that’s the way it’s been for me for years. That’s the way I’ve come to expect my life to continue and end. But when you threatened me just now with being sent away from the Inn…my heart almost stopped. It’s a kind of pain that I’ve not felt in so long that I no longer have a name for it. It’s a kind of pain that cuts so close to the bone that it’s almost a kind of pleasure. I don’t want to leave this place. I want to stay.” For the first time since he’d started talking he looked up and met Aman’s eyes. The despair that she saw there was enough to wring her own heart. He was drunk, yes, but it was not the liquor that spoke now, it was some part of Snaveling that had not seen the light in far too many years. “I cannot pay for the wine I have destroyed. I cannot be redeemed for my crimes against you and against all the people who care for the Green Dragon Inn. I can only be punished. But how do you punish a man who has nothing? How do you meet out justice to someone who hopes only for death?”
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