It only happens once in a great while, and no one can predict it.
The lamps burn colored.
Not dramatically — not a festival, not a warning. Just certain lamps, on certain nights, for reasons the inn does not explain. The lamp near the bar burns amber. The one at the foot of the stairs goes a deep winter-river blue, the kind of blue that makes everything under it look like sleep.
The travelers always notice. They stop talking and look up, the way you look up at stars when you’ve spent too long with your eyes at ground level.
“Is this normal?” asked the young knight — the one who’d been very busy being very certain about everything.
Old Henrick shrugged. “For here.”
The lamps burned until just before dawn. The knight sat under the blue one the whole night, reading nothing, not moving. Just sitting in the strange light with an expression like he was remembering something he’d thought was gone for good.
The keeper refilled his cup twice. Neither time did she ask if he was all right.