He had taken to joining Captain Shurq Elalle and Skorgen Kaban the Pretty at their preferred table in the corner during lulls in the mayhem, when the serving wenches and scull-boys rushed about with more purpos’ than panic, dull exhaustion replacing abject terror in their glazed eyes-and all seemed, for the moment, right and proper.
There was a certain calm with this here captain-a pirate if the Errant pisses straight and he ain’t missed yet-and a marked elegance and civility to her manner that told the proprietor that she had stolen not just coins from the highborn but culture as well, which marked her as a smart, sharp woman.
He believed he was falling in love, hopeless as that was. Stress of the profession and too much sampling of inland ales had left him-in his honest, not unreasonably harsh judgement-a physical wreck to match his moral lassitude which on good days he called his business acumen. Protruding belly round as a stew pot and damned near as greasy. Bulbous nose-one up on Skorgen there-with hurst veins, hair-sprouting blackheads and swirling bristles that reached down from the nostrils to entwine with his moustache-once a fashion among hirsute men but no more, alas. Watery close-set eyes, the whites so long yellow he was no longer sure they hadn’t always been that colour. A few front teeth were left, four in all, one up top, three below. Better than his wife, then, who’d lost her last two stumbling into a wall while draining an ale casket-the brass spigot knocking the twin tombstones clean out of their sockets, and if she hadn’t then choked on the damned things she’d still be with him, bless her. Times she was sober she’d work like a horse and bite just as hard and both lalents did her well working the tables.
But life was lonely these days, wasn’t it just, then in saunters this glorious, sultry pirate captain. A whole sight better than those foreigners, walking in and out of the Brullyg Shake’s Palace as if it was their ancestral home, then spending their nights here, hunched down at the games table-the biggest table in the whole damned lavern, if you mind, with a single jug of ale to last the entire night no matter how many of them crowded round their st range, foreign, seemingly endless game.
Oh, he’d demanded a cut as was his right and they paid over peaceably enough-even though he could make no sense of the rules of play. And how those peculiar rectangular coins went back and forth! But the tavern’s take wasn’t worth it. A regular game of Bale’s Scoop on any given night would yield twice as much for the house. And the ale quaffed-a player didn’t need a sharp brain to play Bale’s, Errant be praised. So these foreigners were worse than lumps of moss renting a rock, as his dear wife used to say whenever he sat down for a rest.
Contemplating life, my love. Contemplate this fist, dear husband. Wasn’t she something, wasn’t she just something. Been so quiet since that spigot punched her teeth down her throat.
‘All right, Ballant,’ Skorgen Kaban said in a sudden gust of beery breath, leaning over the table. ‘You come and sit wi’ us every damned night. And just sit. Saying nothing. You’re the most tight-lipped tavernkeep I’ve ever known.’
‘Leave the man alone,’ the captain said. ‘He’s mourning. Grief don’t need words for company. In fact, words is the last thing grief needs, so wipe your dripping nose, Pretty, and shut the toothy hole under it.’
The first mate ducked. ‘Hey, I never knew nothing about grief, Captain.’ He used the back of one cuff to blot at the weeping holes where his nose used to be, then said to Ballant, ‘You just sit here, Keeper, and go on saying nothing to no-one for as long as you like.’
Ballant struggled to pull his adoring gaze from the captain, long enough to nod and smile at Skorgen Kaban, then looked back again to Shurq Elalle.
The diamond set in her forehead glittered in the yellowy lantern light like a knuckle sun, the jewel in her frown-oh, he’d have to remember that one-but she was frowning, and that was never good. Not for a woman.
‘Pretty,’ she now said in a low voice, ‘you remember a couple of them Crimson Guard-in the squad? There was that dark-skinned one-sort of a more earthy colour than an Edur. And the other one, with that faint blue skin, some island mix, he said.’
‘What about them, Captain?’
‘Well.’ She nodded towards the foreigners at the games table on the other side of the room. ‘Them. Something reminds me of those two in Iron Bars’s squad. Not just skin, but their gestures, the way they move-even some of the words I’ve overheard in that language they’re speaking. Just… odd echoes.’ She then fixed her dark but luminous gaze on Ballant. ‘What do you know about them, Keeper?’
