by Paul S. Kemp
“But you still want me to stay?” he said, then hurriedly added, “In the chair, I mean. Which is an awful chair.”
“No, you can go if you want, Nix. I know that chair isn’t comfortable. I’ll be fine now.”
He sighed, adjusted his expectations, and eased back into the chair, determined to once more do battle with its cushions. “I think I’ll stay until you fall back asleep at least. Then maybe go have an ale and see if Egil returns. What was the dream about? I’ve been having a few of my own lately.”
She didn’t open her eyes, just nested more deeply into the bed. “That we were the dream,” she said quietly. “That nothing was real and everything was a dream.”
Nix blew out a soft whistle. “Well, that’s fakkin’ disquieting.” He thought it somehow echoed his own dream. “It’s this moonlight, yeah? Some are more sensitive to it than others. No one should sleep bathed in this green.”
She opened one eye and smiled. “Not alone anyway.” She lifted the covers slightly. “Join me?”
The sudden turn took Nix by surprise. He’d been hoping for the invitation but hearing it made him flush and he stuttered with the effort of forming an answer.
“But…I…you said…”
Kiir laughed. “I was teasing you, Nix Fall. You should see your face when you think about sex.” She slackened her expression and looked at him sidelong, a bit oafish.
“I look like that? Really? Hells. Given how often I think about sex, people must think I look a lout more often than not.”
“Well,” she said. “Maybe not quite that bad. Anyway, I’m not asking for marriage here. Just sex. I know what this is.”
“I…you do? Because I’ll own I’m not sure I do. I feel a bit like a nervous first-time hob right now. That explains my expression maybe.”
She chortled. “You’re so silly about some things.”
He frowned. “Seems I’m not having my best night. Silly, now?”
She propped herself up on her elbow. “Yes. Especially about women. I know you like me. I know you think I’m pretty. But I also know why you’re hesitating.”
“You do?”
“Yes! I see the way you look at her. Everyone sees it! Including her.”
By “her,” Nix knew that Kiir meant Tesha, who managed the Slick Tunnel for Egil and Nix and allowed the two of them to get away with precisely nothing.
“What exactly do you think you see?” Nix asked. “Because I don’t even know what I feel about her.”
“Ha!” she said, and collapsed back into the covers. “Yes, you do.”
“No,” Nix insisted and meant it. “I like her, true. And respect her. And I think she’s beautiful and…”
Kiir stared at him, her delicate, plucked eyebrows raised knowingly.
“Shite,” Nix said. “I guess I do know a bit of what I feel, don’t I?” He sighed. “Well, I didn’t realize I was so obvious. I guess this means I won’t be joining you, alas. But not because I’m not tempted,” he quickly added.
She laughed. “Maybe you’re not as inconstant as she thinks.”
Nix’s mood took an instant turn. He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. “First, where in the Pits did you learn that word? Second, inconstant? Me? She thinks that? I’m as loyal a man as there is. Save Egil maybe.”
Her expression told him her mood had turned, too. She stared at him hard, her mouth pressed into a tight line. “To answer your first question: I know the word because I’m a prostitute, not an idiot. And to answer your second: Neither she nor anyone questions your loyalty generally. She questions it when it comes to women. Because your eye wanders, yeah? Because you are tempted, yeah?”
“I…” He trailed off, unable to gainsay her words. He sank back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Actually that’s fair. But it’s only because you’re all so lovely! How’s my eye supposed to stay in one place? And why does everyone know everything about me except me?”
“Ha! You’re not hard to read, Nix.”
Nix went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And the word galls, like something Egil would say. Inconstant. Did she use that word specifically?”
Kiir rolled her eyes. “Gods.”
Nix leaned forward. “Did she?”
“Being honest,” she said, and blew out a sigh, “I don’t remember if she used that word specifically. But that was the sense of her meaning. Let’s be done now, all right? I’m tired. We can talk tomorrow.”
“Hrm. All right, fine,” he said, and stewed in silence as she settled into the blankets, turned her back to him, and eventually fell back asleep.
When he was sure she was in a deep sleep and not revisiting her dream, he rose, made an obscene gesture at the chair for being so damned uncomfortable, stretched, and walked out of the room into the dark hall. He gently closed the door behind him, turned, and almost walked into Vella as she led a glassy-eyed middle-aged hob toward her room. The woman moved as quietly as a thief. She was taller than Nix, with raven hair that reached her waist, and colorful floral tattoos that covered both her arms from shoulder to wrist.
“Nix,” she said in her husky voice, by way of greeting.
“Do I look inconstant to you?” he said to them. He stood back and held out his arms so they could regard him more easily.
“Huh?” the hob said, squinting, his voice slurred from Gadd’s ale and the late hour.
Vella stared hard at Nix while she put a protective arm around the hob. “Ignore him. He babbles. Come on, my lovely. Vella has lessons to teach you.”
She challenged Nix with her eyes to say anything more and he didn’t take the dare. He watched her walk away, the dark dress she wore hugging the pronounced curve of her hips, and wondered what it would be like to bed a woman with legs so long.
And then immediately cursed himself for being fakking inconstant and constantly tempted. Wandering eye, indeed.
From down the hall he heard the hob say to Vella, “What does inconstant mean?”
“Shh,” she said, and took him into her room.
Muttering to himself, Nix descended the large central staircase that led down to the soft glow of the lantern-lit common room. The smell of stale tobacco and eel stew hung thick in the air, the atmosphere spiced with an undercurrent of sweat and the pungency of the pisspots, which given the hour were probably filled to capacity.
“Inconstant,” he said to himself.
The clay lamps on the tables and the glow of flames in the large hearth overwhelmed the green glow of Minnear coming in through the leaded glass windows—the ornate glass of the windows a reminder that the building the Tunnel occupied had once been a nobleman’s manse. Judging from the mere handful of patrons still at the tables, Nix figured it had to be near the third hour past midnight. Almost closing time.
One serving girl worked the few occupied tables, and two working girls, Lis and Arris, lingered by Gadd’s bar, looking lovely but tired, wrapped too tightly in their figure-hugging dresses, and obviously ready for the night to end. Gadd tended his cups and bottles with his usual diligence and Nix wondered if the towering, dark-skinned Easterner ever slept. Nix didn’t see Tesha on the floor and that was probably just as well. As irritated as he was, he might have started a fight with her over her word choice.
Three hard-looking drunks sat at the corner table near the Tunnel’s double doors and talked and laughed loud enough to irk Nix, but he fought down his impulse to confront them and instead went to the bar. The girls smiled at him and he smiled in return.
“Doing all right?” he asked.
“Tired is all,” Lis said, and Arris nodded agreement.
Nix made homage to the fading, stained portrait of pig-faced Hyrum Mung, the lord mayor of Dur Follin, which hung on the wall behind the bar. They should’ve taken it down—Mung was a contemptible figure when he wasn’t comical—but the painting had become something akin to the Tunnel’s mascot.
Gadd, in a sleeveless tunic and stained apron, put a tankard of ale i
n front of Nix and smiled his mouthful of filed teeth.
“Obliged,” Nix said. He raised the tankard to the painting. “To the ugliest man in the room,” he said. He took a draught and immediately felt better. Nothing topped Gadd’s bitter ales.
“Is that anise in there?” he asked Gadd.
Gadd grinned and nodded. “Like it?”
Nix nodded in return. “I believe I do.”
“You look bothered,” Lis said to him. She took the seat beside him and blew a wisp of her long dark hair from her face. She took his tankard in hand and took a sip, nodding approvingly at Gadd.
“You do indeed look bothered,” Gadd said.
Gadd usually played as though he couldn’t speak Common, mostly to further his mystique among the patrons as a savage foreign beer alchemist, but Nix knew the man to be articulate. He knew little else of Gadd, though, only that his history was somehow tied up with Tesha and the distant realm of Jafari, and that he could handle a tulwar when necessary.
Nix started to answer, but instead belched up another fishy cloud.
Lis winced at the smell and waved a ringed hand before her face. “Gods, Nix.”
“Blame Gadd,” Nix said. “It’s his stew I’m raising from the dead.” He took another gulp of ale to chase the taste of the burp, then said to Gadd, “It’s well that you make such excellent ale, my friend, because your stew is most, most wanting.”
“Excel in one thing and be content,” Gadd said in his thickly accented Common.
“Something from your homeland?” Lis asked him.
Nix pointed at him with the tankard. “And where is that homeland again? And how the fak did you get all the way here? And what’s your history with Tesha? And what in the name of the Gods did you do to so curse that eel stew?”
Lis and Arris giggled.
The men on the other side of the room laughed louder, one of them hitting the table for emphasis. Once again, Nix resisted the urge to tell them to quiet down.
“That story’s for another time, Nix Fall and Lady Lis,” said Gadd. “As for the stew, I take no responsibility. The eels that come out of the Meander are bottom feeders. They eat shite and taste similarly. But they’re cheap in the fish market and that’s why the stew is on the house.”
Nix said, “And that’s also why, despite being free, a full pot sits even at this moment over the fire, stinking up the room.” He burped again, eliciting moans from the girls. “The drunks are smarter than me when it comes to culinary choices, it seems.”
“I stick to bacon and eggs,” Lis said, fidgeting with the charm of Lyyra, the goddess of sensuality, which she wore on a chain that hung from her neck.
“Wise,” Nix said somberly. “Where’s Tesha?”
“Retired for the night,” Lis said.
“Wasn’t feeling well,” Gadd said, then quickly added, “But not because of the stew.”
Nix grinned and shook his head. “Look at that. Even Gadd jests now. The world’s gone upside down.” He turned serious. “She doesn’t have Kiir’s fever, does she?”
“No,” Gadd said. “Female matter.”
“Ah,” Nix said.
“Speaking of fever,” Arris said. “Is Kiir all right?”
Nix nodded. “Fever broke. She’ll be fine. Sleeping now.”
Lis eyed him sidelong. “It was kind of you to watch over her. You’d be welcome to watch over me sometime, too, fever or no.”
Nix dropped a fist lightly on the bar in mock anger. “You see? You’re lovely and you’re flirting. I know it’s only half-sincere, but even so. This is why it’s so hard.”
“Already?” Lis asked coyly, eyeing his groin.
Nix smiled and shook his head. “Everyone with the jests, now. Must be the hour.” To Gadd: “What about Egil, then? Seen him?”
Gadd’s expression fell and he shook his head and Nix knew what that meant. Likely the priest would stumble drunk into the Tunnel around daybreak, if he got back at all. Or he’d pass out in the street. Or who knew what else? Nix knew he ought to go find the priest and he would. But before he did he took another swallow of ale and turned in his seat to face Lis and Arris. “Tell me something, do I seem inconstant to you? Because—”
“Yes,” said Lis.
“Very much so,” Arris added.
“Damn it,” Nix said, and Gadd chuckled, the sound a deep rumble.
“But we still love you,” Lis said.
“And I, you,” Nix said with a harrumph.
The men in the corner table again laughed loud and long, and the sound was as irritating to Nix as a pebble in his shoe. He’d had enough.
“Isn’t it closing time?” he said to Lis.
“Nearly,” she said and yawned as though to make the point. “Those ones have been here going on three hours. Loud, they are. Rude, too.”
One of the men at the table suddenly pushed back his chair, turned his head, and puked all over the floor. Lis and Arris exclaimed a collective, “Eww,” and looked away. The other two laughed at their nauseous friend. Gadd cursed in his native tongue. The serving girl—Nix had forgotten her name—looked at the bar for guidance.
“Can’t handle his drink is what!” said one of the three, and the other guffawed. Even the puker laughed.
“Well, clean that up, girl,” one of the others said to the serving girl.
“No doubt they drank your stew,” Nix said to Gadd, by way of a final shot as he bounded from his chair and strode across the room. He put a hand on the arm of the serving girl and said softly, “Go on over to the bar, now.”
The puker didn’t see him coming, but the other two did.
“She gonna clean this up?” one of them asked. His eyes were too close together over a protuberant nose, and he had a long, narrow, pox-scarred face that reminded Nix of a crescent moon.
Nix ignored him and stepped beside the puker, taking care not to soil his boots in the vomit.
“Stand,” Nix said to the man.
“Who in the Hells are you?” said the third man.
Nix hadn’t walked across the floor intending a heated confrontation necessarily, but with one seeming imminent, he found he welcomed it.
“I’m the owner,” Nix said, then to the puker, “One of them, anyway. Stand the fak up, I said.”
Balding and grizzled, the man wiped his mouth with his sleeve, turned around in his chair, and looked up at Nix through bleary eyes. “What’s this bother now?”
“He didn’t mean nothing by the puke,” said moon-face.
“I guess I mean nothing by this, then,” Nix said, and kicked the puker’s chair leg, spilling the chair and the man. When the man hit the floor, he put a hand in his puddle of puke.
“Aw, fak! Look at this now! That’s disgusting.”
“Hey!” the other two said to Nix, and started to stand.
“Stay in your fakkin’ seats,” Nix ordered them, pointing a finger.
The puker was trying to rise, but before he could Nix grabbed him by his vest and pulled him to his feet.
The man visibly winced in the face of Nix’s fish breath.
“Fak, man,” the puker said, turning his face to the side. “Your breath.”
“Yours isn’t flowers, either, friend,” Nix said. “Smelling, as it does, of puke. Now…”
Nix forcibly turned the man around, grabbed a handful of trousers, and hoisted him high enough to elicit a high-pitched yelp.
“As I said, I’m the owner and that’s my floor you puked on. I frown on that generally. I frown on it particularly when the puker behaves like a bunghole slubber. Now, you outstayed your welcome a while back and the puke just mortars tight the point.”
“I didn’t puke on purpose!” the man protested, his voice an octave higher than it had been a moment before.
“It just came on all of a sudden like,” said the third man, and pointed with his thick, hairy arms at the hearth. “Probably that eel stew.”
Nix sympathized with that, but he was in a mood, so he hitched the tr
ousers up higher.
“My balls, man!” wailed the puker.
“Your balls are leaving,” Nix said, leading the man toward the Tunnel’s double doors. “Along with the rest of you. And if you puke on my floor on the way out you’ll not only clean it up yourself but you’ll empty the pisspots as added penance.”
“Come now!” the man said. “What’d I do to you?”
Halfway to the door, Nix looked over his shoulder back at the table. “You didn’t hear me? You two slubbers, too. Out. We’re closed. Gadd, close up.”
“There’s still patrons here,” the moon-faced one said, and he pointed with his chin at the other table across the common room, where a couple of drunks slouched in their chairs, snoring. Not even the tumult had awakened them.
“And we still have our ales,” said the other, holding up his tankard. “We paid.”
“Too bad,” Nix said. “We’re closed and you’re leaving.”
He watched as Lis hitched up her dress and hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time, probably to inform Tesha what was happening. Gadd stood with his hands on the bar, glaring at the men, pointed teeth bared in a grimace.
“Bunghole,” the larger one said to Nix, but both of them rose, muttering at each other. Nix noted the blades on their belts, their scowls. Both were bigger than Nix and neither was as drunk as the puker.
“He just puked, is all he did,” said moon-face. “Not the first to do so in here, I’d wager.”
Nix propelled the puker the last few steps to the doors, stepped out onto the porch, and shoved him into the street. The man stumbled, tried to catch himself, failed, and fell face-first in the road. He was spitting mud as he whirled and stood on wobbly legs. He glared at Nix through drunken eyes and drew his blade. It stuck for a moment in the scabbard before he got it clear. Minnear still rode the sky and cast the world in green, irritating Nix still more.
“Come on, you fakker,” puker said, holding his blade inexpertly.
Nix burped, cursed the stew anew, and bounded down the stairs and into the road, in no mood to take lip from some drunk slubber. He drew his own blade and the man visibly quailed.
Nix had no intention of killing the man, of course, but thought maybe the man could afford to be taught a small lesson.
