Rem told Torval the story, as best he could remember it. In the telling, it seemed to reconstruct itself. He remembered that he had been in a tavern—the Pickled Albatross—to meet a young lady whom he’d noticed at the market earlier that afternoon. He’d struck up conversation with her among the greengrocers’ and costermongers’ stalls and asked where he could meet her, and the girl had told him—with a little embarrassment, but no attempt at a bald-faced lie—that she was slinging ale most nights at the Pickled Albatross. Her name was Indilen, and his short but pleasant conversation with her in the market had told him that she was far too polished and well-spoken to be just a barmaid.
“I’m actually trying to get scrivener’s work,” she had explained, brandishing a leather case hanging from a strap at her side—a beautifully tooled secretary set, adorned with an elegant silver seal. “It’s not easy, though. People don’t seem to see the purpose or value in a lettered woman trying to make a living.”
When Rem had simply stared, not understanding what a fine leather purse would have to do with scrivener’s work, Indilen had undone the binding buckle and opened the satchel so that he could see its contents. There was a lacquered writing board, some scraps of blank parchment, a few bottles of ink, even a lovely wooden box—which he assumed contained a writing stylus and various high-quality ink nibs—stained dark cherry and bearing inlaid silver filigree and what Rem recognized as both the stylized first letter of Indilen’s name as well as an ancient family sigil of some sort. Clearly, the girl had been given the scrivener’s set as a gift, meant for her and her alone.
She continued with her lament. “No one who needs a steady pen and good letters seems to believe I can do it,” she said, shrugging and closing the satchel again. “They all want to get free work out of me, just to see what I’m capable of, but then they never ask for me to work again. Can’t seem to countenance paying me at all, let alone paying me the same wage as a lettered young man.”
Rem was truly taken aback by that. While he’d met a number of lettered ladies in his twenty-odd years—the kind who were taught simply as a matter of course, because noble husbands didn’t want illiterate wives—he’d never met a working-class one. As they meandered among the stalls, Rem questioned Indilen further and learned that she was from a moneyed merchant family in Wothris, one of Yenara’s sister city-states, farther south. As was custom, her elder brother would inherit control of the family’s mercantile interests, and her sisters—being of a more provincial stripe—were content to be married off to other well-coined, trade guild–affiliated sons with their own fine villas and cash allowances.
“But not you?” Rem asked, an admiring grin on his face. “The thought of that sort of life—comfort, ease, to be well cared for—doesn’t appeal to you?”
Indilen had turned and studied him with a curious look then, eyes narrowed, mouth half smiling, half smirking. She seemed to have something to say to him, but in the end she did not say it. She only shrugged. “Perhaps after I’ve been out in the world a bit, seen what there is to see and grown weary of it.”
“A little intimidating, isn’t it?” Rem added. “Traveling to a new place? Being all alone? I know I feel so—sometimes, anyway.”
She nodded and studied the wares in the market stalls around them, playfully refusing to look at him again. They were engaged in a bit of a game now—Rem knew the rules well enough—and he was rather enjoying himself. “Perilous, certainly, but I’d like to think I’m reasonable and cautious. I came here with a pilgrim’s caravan, just to make sure I arrived in one piece.”
She punctuated the statement with a coy look thrown back over her shoulder. “But if strange men in the market keep harassing me, I might just have to hie homeward.”
Rem decided to challenge her. “Say the word, miss. I’ll leave you be.”
Indilen shook her head. “You’ll do no such thing, sir. However shabby you might appear, I’m sure you’re keeping the groundlings away. I’ll keep you close so long as you’re useful.”
Rem couldn’t resist. He smiled. “I can be very useful.”
Indilen gave him that strange, crooked grin again. “No doubt—a man with soft hands and courtly speech and fine manners like yourself? Let me guess: you’re also a fine rider and handy with a sword?”
That question caught Rem off guard. He felt his hopeful smile flag slightly. She continued.
“If I weren’t mistaken, sir,” she said, “I might assume I weren’t the only well-raised runaway slumming it in this great, grimy city.”
For a moment—just a moment—Rem was certain that he’d lost her; that her astute reading of him meant that she was done with him and ready to be shut of his company.
But no. She kept smiling. Kept staring. She wanted an answer.
“Not me, miss,” Rem said, letting his grin widen. “I’m just a humble groom’s son from the north.”
Indilen raised one thin eyebrow. “That would have been my first guess, certainly.”
But, of course, she did not mean that. Rem saw it plainly in her level gaze, her droll, understated half smile: she saw right through his adopted persona and knew well that he was just as out of place—and delighted to be so—on Yenara’s streets as she.
That had clinched it. He needed to see Indilen again. And when she finally said that she must be going, she only had an hour before she was expected at work, Rem assured her that he’d be at the Pickled Albatross that evening. When they parted, she seemed happy with that arrangement.
But then, curiously, when he’d come to the tavern that night, she’d been nowhere in sight. He asked about her and everyone had a different answer: no, they hadn’t seen her; yes, they’d seen her and she’d been sent on an errand; yes, she’d come in, sold her cunny to a sailor, and was probably in some alleyway, getting poked up against a splintery old fence. Rem decided that all he could do was to wait, and give Indilen a fair chance to show herself. It was possible she didn’t want his attention and would avoid the place tonight to keep him from glomming onto her, but it hadn’t felt that way at the market. So, he spent a few brasses—nearly his last—on a heel of bread, some salt pork, and a mug of ale, then sat himself down at a corner table to wait.
The longshoremen came after his fifth or sixth mug. Rem was determined to wait all night if need be, but in retrospect, he probably should have paced his guzzling. He’d been getting all warm and fuzzy inside, bleary-eyed, and found himself vaguely annoyed by the whole situation, when those two stevedores sidled up to the table and asked if he’d like to play a round of Roll-the-Bones. It was more fun with three, after all.
Rem accepted their invitation, knowing well that they probably took his relatively clean jerkin and trimmed hair as a sign that he was a toff with coin ripe to be lost. He didn’t even mind losing a little coin to them—though he hoped he might win some, seeing as his reserves were getting low. But, truth be told, the main reason he accepted their invitation was that he was bored. He needed to get his mind off Indilen before he lost his patience and left altogether.
“Hopeless,” Torval said, interrupting his story yet again. The tale unfolded in episodes as they patrolled the near waterfront—an area just on the far side of the great canal that cut the Fifth Ward in half. Barely two hours into their patrol, Rem felt he had already had a lifetime’s education imparted to him. As they meandered through fog-choked, half-lit streets, past grogshops and peculiar dealers, they broke up street brawls, chased a would-be burglar from an alley behind a customs warehouse, stopped two pickpockets and one purse-snatcher, cited a priest of Nasca for proselytizing without a license, and levied an indecency fine from one troubled fellow who’d attempted to hold conjugal congress with a stray goat.
Torval collected all the coin and collateral, for when those cited and fined could not pay, he would gladly accept an item from their person of sufficient value: a torque, a cuff, a ring, or the like. This was Torval’s way of educating Rem—showing him how to approach two men (a catcatcher and a dogcatcher) who seemed to be beating up a third (a ratcatcher); how to chase whores and their jacks out of back alleys (because whoring wasn’t a crime, but getting tupped in public was, so they needed to go find a room or a darker, more deserted alley); and how to mark a man leading a horse and decide when the horse was too good for the man riding it (muddy breeks and disintegrating shoes bound up with rags were a good indicator), and then, how to challenge that man and make him prove the horse was his.
Most of these stops had yielded neither coin nor crime, but Rem knew what Torval was on about and let him do as he saw fit. He was the veteran, after all, and Rem the student. It wasn’t Rem’s job to question the lessons Torval thought pertinent.
But, at the moment, Torval was calling horseshit on Rem’s insistence that he had been willing to wait in the Pickled Albatross all night, if need be, for the chance to see Indilen again.
“You were really going to sit there from dusk ’til dawn, waiting for this lettered little bint to show herself?” Torval asked. “She made that deep of an impression on you?”
“She did,” Rem insisted. “You should’ve seen her, Torval. Auburn hair. Big brown eyes. And well-spoken, too. I can’t tell you what a turnoff a dull-witted woman is.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Torval said. “On that, we’re in agreement. Continue.”
So Rem continued with his story, knowing that at any moment, Torval might drag him into a tavern to eyeball cutpurses or lead him down some winding back alley to search for creeping footpads or burglars. Rem covered the dice game, made it clear that he was just as surprised as his opponents that he kept rolling nines, and finally got to the part where things were both abundantly clear and still fuzzy.
“So,” he concluded, “they called me a cheat. I took umbrage. I guess after that we traded blows and I ended up in your dungeons with no ken of how I’d gotten there. A lousy hangover, too.”
“You’re from Hasturland,” Torval said. “That’s close enough to Kosterland to know why your dice mates would be put off by a run of nines.”
“Sure,” Rem admitted, “They might have been Kostermen, and I know the Kosterfolk are superstitious sorts. They think nine is sacred, but what could I do? It really was just dumb luck.”
“Dumb, indeed,” Torval said.
Torval led them to the door of a new tavern. “Shall we step in for a look about?”
Rem raised an eyebrow, not sure what Torval was getting at. Torval lifted his chin, suggesting that Rem look upward. Rem did so, and saw that the shingle above them was for the Pickled Albatross. He looked to Torval, shocked and grateful all at once.
“Taking pity on me, Old Stump?”
“Pity’s the word, for you’re a pitiful lad,” Torval said. “Besides, I could use a quaff of something before we hit the waterfront.”
The tavern was more crowded tonight than Rem remembered it being the night before. Almost every table was filled, and much of the standing room as well. A quick survey of the room told Rem that the clientele were of a shockingly broad cast. Among Koster sailors and stevedores, Estavari bravos and drovers from Hastur and outer marches, he saw a sprinkling of elves gone to the road and more than a few knots of squat, bearded dwarves—most likely not residents but just in town to trade wares or purchase pig iron. Through a low doorway, Rem even thought he saw some orcs in the dooryard beyond, swilling ale beside the horse troughs and tether posts. He wasn’t sure if that was because the brutes found the tavern too cramped, or because the owner of the Pickled Albatross urged them to stay there.
“Not so unusual,” the dwarf said. “Orctown’s just outside the North Gate, not far from here. They’ll drink where they can, providing the proprietors let them.”
“Hardly sporting,” Rem muttered. “If they’re not causing trouble.”
“Oh, they will,” Torval said, perhaps a little too bitterly. “They always do, the mouth-breathing bastards. Save your pity, boy. They don’t deserve it.”
“What do they come here for, then?” Rem asked. “If they’re so unwelcome—”
“Coin,” Torval sneered. “Always coin. Up in the mountains, they cultivate poppy, witchweed, and berserker leaf. Eyefever mushrooms, too. They come down to the cities to sell them, or trade them for weapons to go a-butchering with. Hang the lot of them. If I had my way, they’d not be within a hundred miles of any civilized city.”
He spat on the sawdust-strewn floor.
Rem was intrigued. He knew well that orcs were considered by most to be ancient enemies of both man- and dwarf-kind, and this is why one seldom encountered them in human settlements outside of cities like Yenara—the largest, the richest, and the most likely to ignore ancient enmities if it meant free trade and fresh coin. But he had seen evidence on the road south—human caravans willingly engaging with roving orc warbands who offered no threat in order to barter for furs or other forest produce—to suggest that, even outside the cities, the necessities and practicalities of everyday commerce often overcame even the most deeply held assumptions about who was or was not worthy of being treated with.
Torval, however, seemed thoroughly committed to his hatred of orc-kind. The bitter tone of his words alone was enough to convince Rem of that.
A barmaid passed near them. Torval reached out with one long, muscular arm and flagged her down before she could move past. “Oi, lass. You know a girl named Indilen? Auburn hair? Big brown eyes?”
Rem felt himself turn red. The barmaid scrutinized him for a moment as though he were the lowest form of life she’d serve this evening, then shrugged a little. “She never came back. Cupp’s in a twist about it.”
Torval’s tongue worked inside his mouth. “Send Cupp out,” Torval said, then tossed a pair of brass coins on the girl’s wooden serving tray. “Two Double Drakes. The coin’s yours.”
The girl smiled, said she’d see to both requests right away, and bustled on.
Torval looked to Rem. “Watchwardens drink free, but it’s always good to throw some brass at the barmaids.”
Rem glared at Torval. “Was that necessary? Making me out to be some heartsick suitor?”
“Because it embarrassed you?” Torval asked, mouth twisting into an impish grin. “Absolutely.”
Soon enough, Cupp appeared. Rem assumed he must be the owner of the place, since he had the imperious nature and permanent air of distraction that marked every tavernkeep Rem had ever known. He was a large man, once muscular, now gone to fat, his arms still strong, but his belly thick.
“I know this one,” Cupp said upon seeing Rem. “Do you have any idea what a mess you made in here last night?”
Rem tried to remain cool. He surveyed the room. “Looks like you cleaned up nicely, sir. Many thanks for a memorable evening.”
“What’s he doing here?” Cupp asked Torval. Clearly the two knew each other. “I hope he’s to be whipped! Or at least spend some time in the stocks?”
“Actually, his punishment’s far worse,” Torval said. “Rem here’s now a member of the wardwatch.”
“You’re joking!”
Torval shook his head. “Dead serious, Cupp. Don’t worry—his fines will come out of his first pay purse. What can you tell us about a girl named Indilen?”
“She’s fired,” Cupp said.
“You fired her?”
“I will when she shows up. Two nights in a row she hasn’t. If she’s not dead in a ditch or hied to the hills, it’s my grave intent to toss her into the street without so much as a copper of her last week’s pay. You don’t just stiff me like that. I gave her a job when nobody else would and let her get good when she clearly wasn’t to start. Some thanks I get …”
Torval looked troubled. “The nerve,” he said distractedly.
“What’s your interest in her?” Cupp asked.
“The boy here’s smitten.”
“Is that what kept you here all last night?” Cupp asked Rem sneeringly. “You were waiting on that hoity-toity little bitch?”
“I think you can stop there,” Rem said. Why he should take offense over a girl he only met once being called a bitch by her boss was beyond him. Still, something in him rebelled at the thought of Indilen being so named, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, in spite of his better judgment.
Cupp loomed over him. “See here, boy,” he snarled. “I don’t give a tin tinker’s fart that you’re in a cuirass and sportin’ the signet. You don’t come in here and dictate a thing to me.”
Two things happened then that kept Rem from offering a pithy—and potentially provocative—response to Cupp. First, the barmaid returned with their Double Drake ales. Second, there was a sudden row from the far side of the room—the doorway that led out into the livery yard where the orcs drank. An orc stood in the door, nearly filling it, barking at an older barmaid who was doing her best to talk the beast back out into the night. It was no good, though—the orc kept snarling at her, clearly insisting that he had a right to sit in the Pickled Albatross and swill his mead, the dearth of open space notwithstanding.
Torval, quaffing a great mouthful of his ale, looked to Rem.
“Well?” he asked.
“What?” Rem said. Torval still hadn’t passed him the other mug of Double Drake. Rem felt his mouth watering in anticipation.
“Disturbing the peace,” Torval answered. “Go see to it, watchman.”
“You’re joking,” Rem said, snatching another look at the belligerent orc in the doorway, who was now shoving the barmaid aside and stomping into the tavern as though he owned the place.
“Here,” Torval said, finally offering Rem the other cup of ale. “A little courage, then off you go.”
“This should be good,” Cupp snorted.
“I can’t,” Rem began.
“Then you can slough back to the watchkeep and turn in that cuirass and signet,” Torval said, no longer amused by Rem’s refusal. “Get your ass over there, fledgling!”
Rem snatched the cup from Torval’s hand, gave himself a refreshing mouthful, then handed the cup back and crossed the room. He tightened his grip on the wooden stave in his hand.