Just when it couldn’t have gotten any worse. Aeron watched the dirty stones and pebbles clatter into the bowl with a sinking heart. Mellonin tossed the bag away and then watched him with a mocking smile. “It’s odd that coins and stones would be mixed together in a money bag,” he observed. He leaned back in his chair, raised his eyebrows, and stared at Mellonin.
“I was hoping you could explain that,” she said with a small smile.
Aeron glanced at her, his spirits sagging under the heavy gaze of his three opponents. Why did it have be this way? He should have just taken the inn money and gone back home...He shook his head. He had broken one of the principal laws of thievery and now he was receiving his just rewards. “And what makes you think I have anything to do with this?” Aeron asked, resisting the urge to fidget. He would have bolted through the nearby window, but Ravion or Raefindan would have caught him, and maybe subjected him to a worse deed than a bucket of water. A thrashing perhaps. Aeron’s smile faltered at the thought. Tracing the grain of the wooded table with a grimy finger, he said, glancing at Ravion and cocking an accusatory eyebrow at him, “I’m not the only thief in the Inn.”
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