The Crown Wants the Innkeeper Kneeling
(2026)(The second book in the Stew and Steel series)
A novel by Haider
For twenty years, nobody knew the most dangerous man in the realm was the one pouring their ale. Now everybody does. It has not improved his mornings.
Wystan still keeps Fallow, the last waystation on a cold frontier road. The stable burned in the autumn and the west wall is a season of masonry short of trustworthy, but the fire is lit, the bread is good, and the household of misfits he never meant to collect is still his. He would like nothing more than to go back to being a harmless old man who naps after lunch.
The realm has other ideas.
A dead legend running an inn is the sort of story that walks itself down every road in the country. So the folk who turn up out of the dark these days are not all cold and hungry. Some come to gawk at the monster from the song. Some come to find out if the song had it right. And one of them — the man who burned a city and hung it on Wystan's name — is still out there. Richer than a king, more patient than winter, and not one bit less dangerous now that he is the one with a price on his head.
Wystan is very good at vanishing. He has done it before, from better places than this, and called it kindness every time. What he has not worked out yet is the harder trick: what a dangerous man is supposed to do when running would be the coward's move, and staying means the trouble comes straight to the one door he swore he would hold.
He had better learn it quickly. Winter is not the only thing coming up the road.
A cozy fantasy with teeth — about what it costs to stop hiding, and everything that comes knocking once you do.
Inside you'll find:
Wystan still keeps Fallow, the last waystation on a cold frontier road. The stable burned in the autumn and the west wall is a season of masonry short of trustworthy, but the fire is lit, the bread is good, and the household of misfits he never meant to collect is still his. He would like nothing more than to go back to being a harmless old man who naps after lunch.
The realm has other ideas.
A dead legend running an inn is the sort of story that walks itself down every road in the country. So the folk who turn up out of the dark these days are not all cold and hungry. Some come to gawk at the monster from the song. Some come to find out if the song had it right. And one of them — the man who burned a city and hung it on Wystan's name — is still out there. Richer than a king, more patient than winter, and not one bit less dangerous now that he is the one with a price on his head.
Wystan is very good at vanishing. He has done it before, from better places than this, and called it kindness every time. What he has not worked out yet is the harder trick: what a dangerous man is supposed to do when running would be the coward's move, and staying means the trouble comes straight to the one door he swore he would hold.
He had better learn it quickly. Winter is not the only thing coming up the road.
A cozy fantasy with teeth — about what it costs to stop hiding, and everything that comes knocking once you do.
Inside you'll find:
- A frontier inn being patched back together one cold course of stone at a time
An overpowered old hero who is retired, thank you, and would rather not keep proving it
LitRPG Status screens, used sparingly and never stretched past mortal scale
Found family, a hard winter behind them and a harder question in front
A marten who now has a legend of her own and has become completely insufferable about it
Book Two of Stew and Steel.
Genre: Fantasy