“That’s the Debtor’s Hand, yae?”
Yae, he said, a northern Holtish affectation. It seemed they were all Norholters here, which figured—we weren’t so far from the provincial border.
I was required to acknowledge the tattoo, but I didn’t have to be sweet about it.
“Yae,” I said, stretching it out just a little so he couldn’t tell if I was mocking him or if I was a fellow rube.
“Ye see that, barkeep?”
“I do,” she said without looking back. She was up on a stool now, fetching the Spanth’s wine from a high shelf.
“Anybody claim the Guild-gift yet?” the rube said.
“Nae,” said the barkeep, yet another Norholter. “Not tonight.” Now Leathers took my measure. I leaned back to give him a look at the blade on my belt, a fine stabber and slasher. A serious knife. A knife-fighter’s knife. I called her Palthra, Galtish for “petal”—the rondel at the back of my belt was Angna, or “nail”—and I had two wee leather roses inlaid on Palthra’s sheath. Not that Leathers would likely see more than the sheath and handle. I’d be unthumbed if I pulled a blade on any who slapped me in the Takers’ name, and should I bleed them, I’d be poked by the Guild wherever I poked them for the slap.
But did this kark know that?
“Then I claim the Guild-gift. Debtor, in the name of the Takers, ye’ll have this.”
Yah, he knew it.
He looked back at the prettier of the two girleens he had been nose-rubbing with, then, never taking his eyes off her, he flashed out his hand and popped my cheek. It stung, of course, especially the ring that cut my lip against my tooth a little, but the slaps never hurt as much as the knowledge that a moron got to paddle my cheeks and I could make no answer. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to him again unless he spoke first.
The barkeep poured the fellow his half pint of beer, on the Guild, putting enough head on it to let him know what she thought of him making Norholters look like cowards for striking those not allowed to return the favor. The rube drank from it, painting his near hairless upper lip with foam, which he then wiped with his sleeve.
“Man ought to pay what he owes,” he said with the conviction of the freshly twenty, as much to himself as to the room generally, but that was all I needed. He wasn’t supposed to speak to me after. Now I could talk.
“Man also ought to have a bit of callus on his hands,” I said. “Yours look borrowed from a high-nut boy.”
He seemed surprised I answered, but covered as well as he could, raising his half pint at me like he got what he wanted and didn’t care what I said, but he cared, all right. Someone had sniggered at what I said, and the laugh cut him, especially in front of his henlets. Oh, I knew his sort. Family had a bit of coin, but he was such an arsehole he’d up and left the inn or the chandlery or whatever business his bunioned mother ran because he couldn’t stand to be told what to do. Might have found his way to a Guild straw farm to get filled up with useless tricks and style himself a thief, but he couldn’t hack even that and got bounced before his debt could sink him. Gone long enough now that his clothes reeked, but he still hadn’t pawned his last good ring. Was one hard week away from turning cunnyboy or sell-sword, but wasn’t sweet or clever enough for the first or strong enough for the second.
I was a half heartbeat away from pitying him, but my face still stung from his bastard hand, so I said, “You can have another slap at me, as far as the Guild’s concerned. Seems a shame you wasted your first one doing so little harm, you fatherless kark.”
A kark is a wet fart, by the way, if you’ve never been to Galtia or Norholt. The kind you think will be one thing but turns out to be the other, to your shame and sorrow. It’s why a Galt says, “Close the whiskey jug,” not cork it. We say cork and kark almost the same, and most of us don’t hate whiskey so much we’d go putting a kark in it.
Several at the tavern hooed at that, shepherds and farm women mostly, not the sort to forgive weakness. He couldn’t let that be the last word, or he’d likely have one or two of them to reckon with as the taps kept flowing. A smart lad would’ve hustled the girls off to whatever hayrick awaited their exchange of crotch-fleas. But he wasn’t smart.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt ye, I just wanted the beer. But I’ll hurt ye if y’like, y’shyte-tongue Galtie knap.”
The Spanth opened the wine with her teeth and poured herself a gurgle, one eyebrow raised in amused curiosity. She likely won’t have known that a knap was a tit, nor will she have known that the word I was about to use meant a particularly cute tuft of pubic hair.
“I doubt that, sprumlet,” I said. “I’ve had a hard piss hurt me worse than you look like to. But if you’d care to try, I’m all face for your knuckles. So why don’t you come and have another throw before your little sisters get the idea they’re at the wrong table.”
I touched my black tongue to the tip of my nose and winked at him.
That did the trick.
He rushed across the tavern and punched at my jaw. I shrugged up and leaned so my shoulder caught most of it. I won’t bore you with a blow by blow, except to tell you that he flailed his little cat paws at me, and soon, we ended up tussling on the floor, me grabbing his head close, now an arm, grabbing his head again. He smelled like week-old sweat and like his leathers had had the mold at some time or another, and they never really come back from that, do they? The barkeep was all “Here, here!” and “Now, now!” until she flubbed us apart with the end of the flail she’d had mounted over the brassheet mirror, probably the very one she’d parted goblin hair with in the Daughters’ War.
I got up holding a hand to my bloodied lip, evidently worse off than Stinkleathers, and he flipped his longish hair back in a move that a cockerel would have been proud of. Since he’d been the first to throw a punch and he was obviously a twat, the bartender gave him a shove toward the door. He collected the girleens on his way out, saying, “Regards to the Guild,” in such a nasty way I was now sure he’d been chewed by the Takers and spat out.
“Sorry you didn’t get to finish your beer,” I said to his retreating back.
I looked up where the Spanth had been standing, but she had slipped out during the fray. A woman who’s got someplace to be. A woman who doesn’t want to be recognized. Intriguing. I saw the fancy man with the made-up eyes looking at me with the same casual disinterest he might have shown a dog who wandered in. I winked at him. He sneered and looked away, which was what I wanted him to do, because I had to palm something from my mouth to my pouch.
It was Stinkleathers’s ring.
Goblin silver.
Probably the most valuable thing he still owned.
Worth letting him hit me a few glancing blows at bad angles I entirely controlled. I had given his finger a good pinch as I stripped the ring so he would still feel it there, he wouldn’t notice its absence until he hit the bedstraw if I were lucky.
And I was.
Very, very lucky.
* * *
In many ways, I’m perfectly ordinary. A bit shorter than most, but Galts run small. Thin as a stray dog. No arse to speak of, so I need a belt to keep my breeches north of Crackmere. I’m a decent fiddler, as I’ve said, and you wouldn’t punch me in the throat for singing near you, but you wouldn’t be like to hire me for your wedding either. Some things I’m shyte at. Not laughing when I find something funny, for example. Adding figures in my head. Farmwork. Lifting heavy weights. But thieving? That I’ve a talent for. And part of that talent is a pure gift for and awareness of luck. Luck is the first of my two great birth-gifts—more about the second later.