You are Paul Aleman: retired adventurer turned Tavernkeeper. This is your story.

Last thread you:
- hired some stablehands for your tavern
- caught a runaway princess
- hired a family down on their luck
- made a strange discovery in your well
- trained some peasants in dungeon delving
- dealt with some unusual squatters
- hired the alewife's daughter (the ugly one)
- confronted a lop-rustler seeking the runaway princess

Archive: https://lws.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Tavernkeeper

You'll go with him to ensure that everything goes smoothly as well as to satisfy your own curiosity as to the truth. Peter seems surprised by your decision but does not try to stop you. He knows you will not hold him back. You ride swiftly to Wnuk, toward the castle towers which loom in the pale moonlight like gigantic chessmen.

Peter has arranged everything in advance. An attendant waiting at the gate approaches to take the two of you (after some hissed arguments, for he had prepared himself for only one guest) to the garden. There the princess awaits, dressed in the finest gossamer and silk.

If she did not expect Peter, she expected you even less. It is quickly apparent, however, from the conversation and tears that follow, that she did not even know her husband was dead, let alone play a part in his untimely demise. With the princess now absolved, you think the whole matter settled--but Peter does not retreat. Instead, he offers his hand to the princess. He wants her to go with him. To go where? The princess wants to know. Anywhere. And then a look in Peter's eyes whose significance you know very well: secret and painful passion, long held in check but never conquered. The princess sees it also. She is afraid of it, at first, ashamed by its connotations, but perhaps also secretly thrilled and flattered by it. She reaches out to him, hesitatingly, when a figure emerges from the shadows, clad in gleaming steel. His helmet bears the image of a leaping warlop. It is Howell, one of the knights that accompanied the princess to your tavern. The other is here too, Fletcher, standing by the door, cutting off your escape.

"If I'm being honest: would greatly prefer it if you fought back," says Howell, brandishing his flanged mace. Peter feels likewise, but Fletcher, the wiser than them both, understands that when fighting a cornered beast one may not always come away unscathed.

"Peace, we've not come to--is that the innkeeper?" Fletcher has spotted you. "What on earth? Are you in cahoots?" He nods at Peter.

>Of course not, he forced you into coming. If anything you're a prisoner and are most grateful for their intervention.
>There is a certain honor among survivors that must be respected. Now that you've come this far, you cannot abandon him.
>You're acting on your own behalf and from your own interests as a tavernkeeper, nothing more.
>write-in