Weapon of Flesh (14 page)

“That’s four and two, Forbish, and I’ll not have any of that southern coin!”

“Still robbery!”  The big man fished six coins, four gold and two silver, from a pouch under his stained apron and handed them over to the smaller man.  “Just bring it in to the kitchen, and I’ll --”

“I’m a butcher, not a porter,” replied the merchant, as he handed the legs of mutton over and started to unload the beef, but the other man held up a hand.

“Hold on just a moment!  I can’t heft that, or my back would surely pain me for a fortnight.  Let me call one of the maids out, and I’ll --”

“Sir?”

The two men looked at Lad as if he had sprouted up out of the ground.  The innkeeper’s eyes inspected him at a glance, from head to foot and back.

“Yes?  What do you want?”

“I want to work, Sir.”  The big man opened his mouth to speak, but Lad continued before he could.  “I am stronger than I look, and I am a good worker.  I only want food and a place to sleep that is warm.”  He looked at the two men, and at the strain on the butcher’s face from the heavy load on his shoulder.  “I can take all of that for you.”

“Oh, now you can’t heft that!”

But before the man could protest, Lad lifted the side of beef from the butcher’s shoulder, and relieved the innkeeper of his mutton as well.  He bounded up the ten steps to the inn’s porch in three strides, and turned around to say, “If you would tell me where the kitchen is, I will take this meat there.”

“Uh, through the common room, and to the right.  Tell Josie to show you where the locker is.  You can hang them in there.”

“Looks like you just got yourself a new stable hand, Forbish!” the butcher said with a laugh as Lad nodded and entered the inn.

“I ain’t hired that skinny kid yet, you bloody-handed land-pirate.  You just get back up on your meat wagon and...”

Their voices faded into the murmur of the common room as Lad entered, balancing his heavy load easily.  There were four men at two tables, and a woman pouring mugs of black, steaming liquid into cups on their tables.  The room could have easily seated forty.  All of their eyes were on him as he walked through the room and pushed open the swinging door to the right.

The kitchen was a sweltering maze of counters, washbasins, chopping blocks, pothooks, stoves, ovens, grills, and huge iron and copper pots and pans.  A quick turn around confirmed that there was nobody there.  There were two doors besides the one he’d come in through, and he had no idea where or what the “locker” was.  Not knowing what to do, he stood and waited for “Josie” to appear.

“Who are you?”

Lad turned toward the voice and saw a girl standing at one of the doors; she held two metal pails brimming with milk.  Her stance was slightly askew, looking at him somewhat sideways as if she were frozen in mid-step, unsure of whether she should enter or back up.  Her knuckles were white on the handles of the pails, and Lad could see the concentric ripples on the milk within that betrayed her shaking.

“I am Lad.”  This got nothing but a raised eyebrow.  “Are you Josie?”

“Wiggen.”  She took a step into the kitchen and put her pails aside, dusting her hands on her apron.  “You work for the butcher?”

“No.”  She stopped again and gave him that same, wide-eyed, sidelong stare.  “Do you know where the locker is?  I was told to put these there.”

“Who told you?”

“Forbish.”

“My
Father
told you to bring that in here?”

“What is a father?”  She looked at him blankly, eyebrows arched in astonishment.  “Forbish is your father?”

“Yes,” she said carefully.

“No.”

“What?”

“Forbish did not ask me to take this meat in here.”

“What?  You
just
said that he --”

“Forbish told me to ask Josie where the locker was and to hang these in
there
, not here.  You are not Josie, but you work here, so I asked you where the locker is.  If you do not know where the locker is, I can wait for Josie.”

The girl shook her head and took a half step back, then turned away and opened one of the other doors.  “The locker’s this way.”

Lad followed her through the door and down a passage lined with large barrels and smaller casks.  The passage had a yeasty smell that was heady, but not unpleasant.  At the end of the passage was another door.  Wiggen opened this door and entered.  Lad followed.  The room was cool, thick stone on all sides, and the walls were crowded with shelves full of crates.  Barrels stood on the floor, some full of apples, some potatoes, and one full of pickles swimming in brine.  Wiggen took a small lamp from beside the door and lit it with a match she struck with her thumbnail.  She took the lamp to the center of the room and pulled up a heavy oak-planked hatch.  A steep stair vanished into the darkness below.

“That’s the locker, but you’ll need help to get that beef down there.  I can take one end and --”

“If you take this,” he handed the bound legs of mutton to her, “I can take the large piece down.

“Don’t be silly!  If you --  Wait!”

Lad repositioned the heavy side of beef and merely stepped into the empty space of the hole.  His eyes had penetrated the gloom of the locker easily, and he knew the floor was only twice his height from the hatch.  He just flexed his knees upon landing and looked around for something to hang the meat on.  It was very cool and dry in the stone-lined locker, and there were many hams, sides of smoked meat, and a much-diminished side of beef hanging from hooks.

“Are you --”

“Wiggen!  Did you see a --”

Lad ignored the chatter for a moment as he found one of the heavy meat hooks.  He placed it firmly into the shoulder and looped the eye over one of the pegs on the ceiling, then wiped the grease from his hands onto his trousers and ascended the steps through the hatch.

“-- don’t like the idea of you hiring a street urchin to --” 

Lad lifted the two legs of mutton from Wiggen’s hand, and she jumped like she’d been slapped, whirling on him and glaring straight at him for the first time.  Forbish stood behind her, his eyes wide in surprise.

“I did not intend to startle you, Wiggen.”  He looked at her face, and noted the deep scar that ran from her ear almost to the point of her chin.  But Lad had seen many scars, and thought nothing of it.  He lifted the mutton to show her.  “I will take these down into the locker now.”  He stepped off into the hole.

“See what I mean?  Did you see what he did?  He did that with a whole side of beef, Father!  It’s probably ruined, smashed on the floor like that!”

“Now, Wiggen, he’s just a poor beggar boy.  Don’t you take that tone.  He asked me for work, and wants nothing but food and a warm place to sleep in return.  With Tam gone, we could use the help, and he seems capable enough.  I’ll check on the meat.”

But Lad was already back up the steps, silent as a mouse on a rug.  “I hung the beef next to the other one, and the mutton next to that.”  He looked at Wiggen and cocked his head in question.  “Did I do something wrong?  The meat did not touch the floor.”

“Now he’s lying,” the girl said flatly, backing away until she was half behind her father.  “He couldn’t have kept it from hitting the floor, jumping down like that.  I don’t think you should hire him, Father.”  She lowered her voice to a whisper.  “And he told me his name was ‘Lad.’  That can’t be true.  Nobody names someone that.”

“My name is Lad.”  He tried to understand why she was afraid of him.  All he’d done was try to be helpful.

“Well... Lad,” Forbish said, looking to his daughter, then back to Lad.  “Show me where you hung that meat, and I’ll decide whether or not you can work for me.  Is that alright?”

“Yes.”  He turned and stepped through the hatch again, landing lightly on the floor.  Forbish followed more slowly, working his bulk backward down the steps.  Wiggen handed down the lamp and the big man looked around carefully.  He touched the meat, and checked the floor, and then looked at Lad.

“Looks fine to me,” he said with a shrug.  The big man worked his way back up the steps.  By the time he handed the lamp back to his daughter and dusted off his hands, Lad was standing beside him, waiting patiently.  “Woah!  You do move quick, don’t you Lad?”

“Yes.”  Lad stepped back, since his appearance at the man’s elbow had startled him so, and asked, “Will you let me work for food and a place to sleep?”

“Father, I don’t like the idea of having a stranger staying in the inn.”

“Now, Wiggen.  We have strangers stayin’ here every night, so you’ll have to come up with a better excuse than that.  Lad didn’t lie about the meat; it didn’t touch the floor.  And I’ve heard stranger names than ‘Lad’ in my time.  He can sleep in the tack room out in the barn, if that’ll suit you, Lad.  And we serve three meals a day.  You can have leftovers after you’ve finished the work.  Will that be alright?”

“Yes.”  He waited patiently for a few breaths, then asked, “What work do you want me to do?”

“Wiggen can show you,” the big man said.  “And don’t you give me that look, Girl!  He’s workin’ for us as of right now.  Just show him where to wash up.  He can take his meals in the kitchen.”  Forbish turned and led the way back through the taproom to the kitchen. 

“After lunch you get Josie to pull down some extra blankets.  We can wash his things tonight after supper.”  He looked at Lad with a raised eyebrow.  “Do you have any other things?  Clothes and such?”

“No.”

“Well, there’s Tam’s old things that he’d grown out of.  Some of that might fit.  Can’t have you runnin’ around in naught but rags, you know.  Gives the
Tap and Kettle
a bad name!”

“The tap and kettle?”

“Aye, that’s the inn, Lad!  The
Tap
,” he waved to the taproom, “and
Kettle
!” he waved to the huge copper kettle on one of the stoves.  “Best beer and blackbrew in all of Twailin!”

“I understand,” Lad said, though he did not know what blackbrew was.

“Good!”  The big man sighed gustily, and fixed his daughter with a meaningful stare.  “You show him around now, Wiggen, and don’t be mean.  He’s gonna be here a while.”

“Yes, Father,” she said, her voice and manner less than enthusiastic.  She still stood sideways to Lad, and he noticed that she wore her hair down over the off-side of her face.  “Come on, Lad.”

 Chapter
X

S
oft, warm water scented with exotic oils cascaded over Mya’s tired shoulders, leeching the exhaustion from her fatigued muscles and easing her aches and pains.  Her eyes closed in bliss as one of the servants massaged her scalp with fragrant soap for the second time and once again rinsed the soap away with more luscious water.

“How is this, Lady?”

Mya opened her eyes and found herself staring into the face of the Grandfather’s weapon, but rendered in charcoal pencil on fine parchment.  The likeness was amazing, but there was something not quite right.

“The eyes are too dark,” she said, easing up out of the water and accepting a thick, warm towel from a servant.  “He has eyes the color of mica, a very light tan, almost like they were made of colored glass.”

The artist went back to work, rubbing out the darker irises and sketching in lighter ones.  Mya stepped out of the huge copper tub.  Two servants dried her hair and legs and the towel she had been wrapped in was replaced by a warm robe of emerald silk.  When the servants were finished, she slid her feet into slippers of black satin and looked again at the artist’s rendering.

“Yes.  That’s him.”  She turned to the Grandfather and nodded to the sketch.  “That is your weapon, Grandfather.”

“Ah, yes.”  The Guildmaster of Assassins eased himself up from the thickly upholstered chair next to the window.  The morning sun bathed the chair, and the old man’s wizened features were flushed with color from the warm rays.  He bid his artist come near with a flick of one hand and the man complied, presenting his work for his master’s scrutiny.

“We meet at last.”  He stood there utterly still for so long that Mya would have thought he had slipped into a trance, except for his eyes.  Those slitted orbs danced within their wrinkle-rimmed sockets, flickering over the artist’s rendering like a mosquito hovering over warm skin.  Then his eyes snapped up and met hers.