I looked down at myself and brushed absently at the rags. “Oh, man, I would so love some clothes! Not that I’m a prude or anything, but I shudder to think of the sort of idea people will get about me if I wander around looking like a hooker.”
“Hooker?” Renata grunted as she squatted stiffly next to a small wooden chest that sat next to a rickety-looking bed. “Ye make rugs, then?”
“Not that kind of hooker,” I said, kneeling next to her. “I meant the business-girl kind.”
She blinked at me.
I dredged up a couple of piratey-sounding synonyms. “Tarts. Trollops. Ladies of the evening.”
“Ah?” Renata looked away, gesturing at the trunk. “There be some things in here that ye can use. Belonged to one of me girls who ran off with a captain. Ye look to be about her size. Teh. Looks as if the other girls have been goin‘
through it. All that’s left is a pair of stripy breeches, a bodice, and a wee nothin’
of a skirt.”
I looked at the garments she was offering me. The green and white striped breeches—nothing more than a pair of clamdigger pants—didn’t look too bad, but as I held up the green cloth skirt and brown leather bodice, I could see the latter was cut to act as a push-up bra. “Thanks. They’re a bit… but anything is better than these atrocious rags. I appreciate them. I… er… I don’t think I have any money.”
She waved an airy hand. “Not many folks hereabouts have reales, despite the mine. We mostly barter for the things we be needin‘.”
“Ray-all?” I asked, confused by the word she used.
“Aye. ‘Tis a Spanish word for the piece of silver that be used for coin hereabouts.”
“Ah. Gotcha. Well, I’m realless at the moment, and I can’t give up my leg because I need it to get to the officer level, but I’m sure if we think hard, I can find something to barter for these things. Er… I have a masters in financial management. I don’t suppose you run a business of any sort?”
She made a faintly distressed sound. I turned my back and shucked the revealing rags, slipping into the skirt, matching linen shirt, and leather bodice.
The skirt definitely covered more than the rags, reaching almost to my knees, but the bodice… well, it definitely lifted, separated, and presented my breasts in a way that faintly alarmed me. Not having been overly endowed in the breast area, I found it a bit of a novelty to suddenly have apparently abundant cleavage. I tried a trial bend to make sure I wouldn’t pop out, and when I was satisfied that I wouldn’t, glanced back to the silent Renata. “Sorry; just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be shocking anyone. Did you say you had a business?”
“Aye, I do. I’ve this house,” she answered after a minute, her eyes troubled.
“Ye’ll be wantin‘ somethin’ to put in yer belly, no doubt.”
“Well… I suppose I could spend a few more minutes here,” I said, strangely unwilling to leave. “At least until we work out a trade for these clothes. But then I really do have to get cracking and collect my officer legs. I made this deal with my daughter, and somehow I keep getting sidetracked.”
Renata gave me an odd look as we walked back to the room with the fireplace.
Despite the warmth of the day, there was a fire in the fireplace—and a haunch of something roasting away on an antique-looking spit. “Full marks for the game maker for going into such details,” I said, sniffing the air. The scent of the roasting meat mingled with something salty and tangy that reminded me of my childhood summers spent on the northern Oregon coast. “This really is amazing. My mouth is actually watering.”
“Eh, lass, there be somethin‘ ye be needin’ to know,” Renata said as she plucked a battered wooden plate from a stack on an equally battered sideboard. She turned the haunch on the spit, pulling a knife from her belt to hack off a few strips of meat. I stared in growing horror at the plate she shoved toward me.
“This no longer be a game ye’re in.”
“Um… is this… uh… what exactly is it?” I asked, glancing between the plate of meat slices and the oozing, still bloody slab of meat roasting over the fire.
“ ‘Tis a perfectly good bit of mutton,” Renata answered.
I looked at her. “I don’t want to sound rude or ungrateful or anything, because I appreciate you giving me the clothes when I don’t have any money or anything but my financial skills to barter, but man alive, the California Health Department would have kittens over your idea of safe food handling and cooking. That’s still bloody!”
She looked to where I was pointing at the cooking meat. “Aye, but the bit ye’ve got isn’t. Ye be needed somethin‘ to wash it down, I’m willin’ to wager.”
“No, thank you, that’s not necessary—” Renata ignored me as she bustled over to where a small keg rested on the sideboard. She wiped out a couple of metal tankards with the hem of her skirt, filling both with a dark, thick-looking ale.
“I’m alcohol-intolerant, I’m afraid. It’s the sulfites. They trigger migraines.”
“Ye not hungry?” she asked, shoving one of the two tankards into my hand despite my objections. “Sit down and eat, lass. Ye’re about to have a bit of a shock, and ye’ll be needin‘ a bit of food in yer belly to get ye past it.”
“Shock? What kind of a shock can a computer game give me? Other than the kind from a faulty laptop plug, that is,” I asked, obediently sitting down at the small table she’d indicated. The smell of the cooking meat had my stomach rumbling uncomfortably, reminding me that I’d missed dinner in my haste to get the press release ready. I poked at the long strips of meat, looking them over carefully. “Oh, what the hell. If I pick up a computer version of E. coli, so be it.
