The man arrived on a morning when the fog had swallowed the harbor whole.
Yara saw him from the window of the tavern, a shape moving through the grey, unhurried despite the cold. He walked the way the very old walk, or the very ill. She wasn’t sure which, yet. His breath was coarse, as though something inside him were failing.
She watched him stop at the edge of the dock and stand there for a long time, facing west where the ocean should have been. Of course, there was nothing to see. The fog had swallowed everything in that day. But he stood anyway, his hands at his sides, waiting for something seemingly only he understood.
When he finally turned and walked toward the tavern, Yara moved away from the window and busied herself behind the bar.
◊◊◊◊◊
He said he wanted a room.
She told him she didn’t rent rooms, that the tavern was only for drinking and eating. A night, maybe two if he was insistent, but for any real stay he’d need a proper inn closer to the marble district.
He nodded, as if he had expected this answer. Up close she could see his age more clearly. He was perhaps seventy, maybe older, with the kind of face that had been weathered past easy counting. His hair had gone fully white and his hands, resting on the bar, were spotted and thin. But his eyes were sharp. Whatever was killing him hadn’t touched those yet.
He took a seat at a table near the window and ordered tea. He remained there for three hours, watching the fog burn away beneath the late-morning sun, revealing the white walls of the harbor piece by piece. He didn’t speak much to others. He brought an old book to read, but mostly he simply watched.
When he finally left, he placed some coins on the table. Far more than the tea was worth. Yara counted them twice, thinking she had made a mistake. But there was no mistake. He had paid four times what he was owed.
She almost called after him. But he was already gone, disappearing into the streets of the harbor district.
Then he returned the next day. And the next. Always the same table. Always facing the window. And always, when he left, too much money on the table. Not extravagantly so, but consistently. She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t question it.
Soon, the fishermen and loggers who filled her tavern in the evenings began to notice him, this grey stranger who sat alone and watched the water. They asked Yara who he was. She told them she didn’t know.
◊◊◊◊◊
On the fifth day, he had a coughing fit.
It came on suddenly, just as he lifted the tea to his lips. The cup clattered against the saucer and his body folded forward, shoulders heaving. The sound was bad. Even Yara knew it spoke of a deep illness, one that had gone too far for even potions to help.
The tavern went quiet. A few of the fishermen looked over, then looked away again. This was a harbor town, after all. They knew the sound of a body failing.
Yara brought him water and a cloth without being asked. She stood beside his table until the fit passed, saying nothing. When he finally straightened, his face was grey and damp with sweat. He looked ten years older than he had that morning.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice was a rasp.
“How long do you have?”
He looked up at her, surprised. Most people danced around the question. Most people pretended not to see.
“A few months. Maybe less.” He wiped his mouth with the cloth. “The physicians in the capital weren’t specific.”
Yara studied him. Seventy-some years old, dying alone in this strange town, watching the ocean like he was waiting for it to tell him something. She had seen men like this before. Sailors who came back to port when they felt the end coming, wanting to die near the water. But she knew this man wasn’t a sailor. She could tell by his hands. There were no rope calluses. No tar stains.
“Why Lithia?” she asked. “Why not die at home?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I have something I need to do here. Someone I need to find.”
She didn’t ask who. It wasn’t her business. But something about the way he said it stayed with her after he left that evening.
◊◊◊◊◊
On the seventh day, he asked about the room again.
“I can pay for three months in advance,” he said. His voice was quiet, careful. “I won’t be much trouble. I only need a bed and the window.”
“I told you. I don’t rent rooms.”
“I know.” He looked at her steadily. “But I’m asking anyway.”
“Why here?”
He looked at her then. Really looked. “Because you can see the clear ocean from here,” he said. “I want to see it every day. For as long as I can.”
Yara thought of the room upstairs. It had been empty for six years. Once a month, out of habit, she cleaned it, refusing to let dust settle on the bed where Toben used to sleep when he came home too tired to climb to their real bedroom.
The room still smelled faintly of pine pitch and salt.
She missed his presence, yet could not bring herself to rent it to anyone else. They had bought the tavern together, after all. Their dream had been to die together in this tavern. Others had asked before. Travelers, merchants, young couples looking for cheap lodging. She had turned them all away without hesitation. The room was Toben’s. It would stay Toben’s.
But after a moment, she understood that he was not asking for lodging. He was asking for a place to live out his final days. Yara was forty-three years old. She had been a widow for six of those years. In that time, she had learned that grief was not a single thing, but a thousand small ones, and that some of them never went away. She had also learned to recognize it in others.
“You’re right. The tavern is close to the ocean,” she said at last. “That’s the only good thing about it, I suppose.”
“That’s all I need.”
She should have said no. Every reasonable part of her told her to. But she pictured him coughing alone in some tavern near the marble district, surrounded by strangers who would step over his body when the time came. Perhaps it was time to let the room serve a purpose again.
“One month,” she said. “We’ll see after that.”
He paid her for three months anyway. She tried to return the extra, but he refused.
“I’ll only stay for one. If you change your mind after that, you can keep the rest.”
She tried to refuse again, but he insisted.
“Please,” he said. “It would mean a lot to me.”
She didn’t understand what he meant. But she kept the money.
◊◊◊◊◊
She found out his name was Coram.
He told her this on the third night of his stay, when she brought dinner up to his room and found him sitting in the chair by the window, a blanket over his legs despite the fire in the hearth. The sunset was painting the marble walls of Lithia in shades of amber and rose.
“Coram,” he said as she set the tray down. “In case you were wondering. Sixty-two years old. Born in Tenebris. No wife. I do have a daughter in the capital, though. I send her money when I can. Now you know everything worth knowing.”
“I wasn’t wondering.”
He smiled at that, just slightly. “Fair enough.”
She left without another word. But she noticed he had eaten only half his breakfast that morning. The day before, he had finished everything.
◊◊◊◊◊
The decline came slowly at first.
In the second week, Coram still came downstairs for his evening tea. He moved more carefully on the stairs, one hand always on the wall, but he made it down and back up on his own. He talked with some of the fishermen, asked them about their work, about the expeditions heading west. He had a way of listening that made people want to talk to him.
But Yara noticed things. The way he paused at the top of the stairs to catch his breath. The way his hands sometimes trembled when he lifted his cup. The way he started leaving food on his plate, then half his plate, then most of it.
By the third week, he stopped coming downstairs.
“Just tired,” he told her when she brought his breakfast. He was still sitting in the chair by the window, still dressed, still watching the water. But his face had grown thinner and there were dark circles under his eyes. “I’ll come down this evening.”
He didn’t come down that evening. Or the next day. Or the day after.
The coughing grew worse. She could hear it through the floor at night now, long fits that went on for minutes at a time. During the day he slept more and more, dozing in his chair, waking only when she came with food he barely touched.
She found herself checking on him more often. Bringing tea he hadn’t asked for. Sitting with him momentarily in silence while the light changed outside the window. She told herself it was practical. If he died in her tavern, she would need to know. She would need to make arrangements.
But that wasn’t really why.
◊◊◊◊◊
He talked more as he weakened. Small things at first. The names of other ports he had visited in his younger days. A younger sister in Trost he hadn’t spoken to in years. The way the night sky looked from the deck of a ship.
“I thought you weren’t a sailor,” Yara said.
“I’m not. But I worked the timber routes for a while. Logging crews, transport ships.” He shifted in his chair, grimacing slightly. “It was good work.”
She poured him more tea. His hands were too unsteady now to manage the pot himself.
“Is that why you came to Lithia?” she asked. “The timber routes?”
He was quiet for a moment. Outside, the sun was setting, and the azure ceilings of the harbor district were beginning to glow with that particular light that happened just before dark.
“In a way,” he said. “In a way.”
◊◊◊◊◊
One evening in the fourth week, when the sunset was particularly vivid and his breathing particularly labored, he said: “You should ask me why I really came here.”
“Should I?”
“You haven’t. In almost a month, you haven’t asked a single question about why I’m alone. Why I chose this place to die.” He turned his head to look at her. “Most people would have asked by now.”
Yara set down the cup of tea she had been holding. “Would the answers change anything?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Then why does it matter?”
He was quiet for a moment. Outside, a gull cried.
“Because I’ve wanted to tell you something as well,” he said. “And I’ve been waiting for you to let me.”
◊◊◊◊◊
She didn’t ask that night. Or the next.
She moved through her days as she always had, serving fishermen and loggers, wiping down tables, listening to the rhythm of a harbor town that lived at the edge of known things within the Third Kingdom. Expeditions south were increasing, she heard. More ships every month, chasing whatever lay beyond the horizon.
Upstairs, Coram grew weaker. He couldn’t sit in the chair anymore. She helped him to the bed, propping pillows behind him so he could still see the window. His breathing had taken on a new sound, a faint rattle that hadn’t been there before.
She thought about hope sometimes. About how it could feel like a sickness, burning through you and leaving you empty. She had been hopeful once. She had stood on this very dock and watched Toben’s boat disappear into the morning mist and felt certain he would return.
Toben had drowned on a clear day. That was the part she could never make sense of. The weather had been perfect. The seas were calm. He had gone out with three other men on a logging run up the coast, ferrying timber back from the northern camps. Routine work.
Only two men came back. They told her there had been an accident, that a cable had snapped, that Toben had gone into the water and never come up. They said they were sorry.
She had not asked many questions. Only a few, and there was little they could tell her beyond that. There was nothing more questions could bring back.
◊◊◊◊◊
On the night before Coram died, Yara finally asked.
She hadn’t planned to. But she had brought his dinner and found him lying in bed, his face turned toward the window, his breathing shallow and rough. The fire had gone out. The room was cold. She rebuilt the fire and sat beside him and watched the flames catch.
He looked ancient now. The flesh had fallen away from his face over the past weeks, leaving hollows and angles that made him look like a different person than the man who had first walked into her tavern. Only his eyes were the same.
“Tell me,” she said.
He didn’t ask what she meant.
“I was on the boat,” he said. “Six years ago. The logging run from the northern camps. I was one of the four.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
She felt the words settle into her chest like stones.
“The cable snapped,” he continued. “That part was true. But it didn’t just snap. I noticed the fraying the day before. I should have reported it. I should have insisted we replace it before loading the timber. But we were behind schedule, the weather was good, and I told myself it would hold.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“He went into the water, and I jumped in after him. I want you to know that. I tried. But the current was strong, my hands were numb, and I couldn’t hold on. My body—what little mana I have—nothing was working the way I needed it to.”
The fire cracked and popped. Somewhere below, a fisherman laughed at something.
“I’ve thought about that moment every day for six years,” Coram said. “My hands on his leather coat. His face looking up at me. And then the current pulling him away, and my fingers opening, and the water taking him. I thought I was strong enough.”
Yara sat still. She could feel something building in her chest, something that wanted to become rage or grief. But it wouldn’t take shape.
“Why did you come here?” she asked.
“Because I’m dying. And I didn’t want to die with you not knowing.”
“You wanted forgiveness.”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “I wanted you to know the truth. That was all.”
He was quiet for a moment, gathering his breath.
“There’s a bag under the bed,” he said. “Everything I saved from the last six years of work. I couldn’t spend it all. Only some. Every time I tried, I thought about him. About what I took from you.” He paused. “I’ve been overpaying you since I arrived. I didn’t know how else to start giving it back.”
She looked at him. This grey stranger in her dead husband’s room, sixty-two years old and hours from death, carrying money he could not spend and guilt he could not shed.
“I don’t deserve it,” he said. “I want you to have it. All of it.”
And she thought of Toben. His laugh. The way he smelled of pine pitch and salt. The way he used to stand at the window in the mornings, watching the light strike the marble walls, and say, every time: Look at that, Yara. Just look at that.
She had spent six years not knowing, six years telling herself that even knowing the full story wouldn’t bring him back, that the details didn’t matter.
But they did matter. And they were something Coram could have kept forever, taken to whatever grave awaited him, and no one would have known.
“You jumped in after him,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You tried to save him.”
“I failed.”
“But you tried, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer. His breathing had grown more labored.
Yara reached out and took his hand. It was cold, the skin thin, the bones too close to the surface.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
He looked at her with something like confusion. “You don’t despise me?”
“No.”
“I killed your husband.”
“You made a mistake. And then you tried to fix it. And you couldn’t.” She squeezed his hand once, then let go. “That’s not the same thing.”
“The money,” he said. “Will you take it?”
She was quiet for a moment. She thought about what it meant to him.
“Not because you don’t deserve to have it,” she said. “That’s not it.”
He looked at her, waiting.
“I’ll take it only if you want to give it,” she said. “Because it’s yours to give. That’s the only reason.”
Something shifted in his face, a tension she hadn’t even noticed easing.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Coram said softly, turning his head downward. “But it wasn’t this.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Rage. Blame. Something I could fight.” He almost smiled. “This… is much harder.”
Yara stood. She adjusted his blankets, added another log to the fire and checked that the water pitcher was full. Small tasks.
“Rest,” she said. “I’ll come back in the morning. By then, you’ll know whether you want to give the money to me. You said you have a daughter, didn’t you? Perhaps she could use it instead.”
◊◊◊◊◊
She did come back in the morning.
He was still in the bed, facing the window. The light was just reaching the marble walls, that slow glow he had watched so many times from his chair. His eyes were closed. His hands were folded over his chest, and his face had settled into something that looked almost like rest.
She knew before she touched him. But she touched him anyway, her hand on his forehead, feeling the cold that had replaced him.
She sat with his body for a long time before she went downstairs.
The bag was beside the bed, pulled out from where it had been hidden, placed where she would see it clearly.
She didn’t count what was inside. Not right then. She simply held it for a while, feeling the weight of it, thinking about what it had cost him to save.
Instead, she decided to use the money to give him a proper burial.
Not a pauper’s grave at the edge of town, which was what most strangers got. She paid for a proper plot near the water, where the morning light hit the marble walls and you could hear the gulls and the waves. She paid for a well-made wooden coffin and a stone tablet carved with his name on it. She didn’t know his family name, so she just had them carve Coram and the year. It cost more than she would’ve ever paid for herself, but she wanted to make sure he could still see the ocean.
It took most of what was in the bag. She kept the rest, because he had wanted her to have it, and that was enough.
When the fishermen asked her, later that week, who the stranger had been and why she’d given him such a burial, she told them simply: “Someone I forgave.”
She didn’t explain further. And they, being people of the harbor, people who understood that some things weren’t meant to be explained, did not ask.