His voice trailed off, mainly because he didn’t know the proper non-offensive word to continue. Thankfully, Liva had no such shame.
“A whore? Well, what if I am?”
She still seemed amused to no end, but all the innocence was gone.
“Well, I… As far as I know, we don’t have anyone like you in Mistpine.”
Kraghtol tried to navigate the potentially treacherous waters carefully.
“But it’s an honorable profession, I think. I mean, in a way we are colleagues even.”
Before Liva could answer, he quickly added,
“In the guild. You guys are also in the Guild of Healing and Bodycraft, right?”
It was true: not only healers and apothecaries were organized in this particular guild. It was one of the biggest guilds in Wardenreach since it included every profession that dealt with the bodily needs, including barbers, bathers and, yes, even whores. Say what you want about the guilds, but they really were well-organized.
Liva wiped her eyes from laughter and grinned cheekily now.
“That would certainly be true. But I’ll let you in on a little secret, Kragh. Come closer.”
Even more confused, Kraghtol leaned closer, just to hear Liva whisper, almost mouth,
“I’m not with the guild.”
“What? But that’s…”
Liva’s finger on her lips reminded him to lower his voice just in time.
“…Illegal. What if they find out?”
To his surprise, Liva just shrugged.
“So far, nobody has been able to catch me. I wasn’t born here in Caemdir, and I’m not planning to die here. And even if they catch me, what are they supposed to do? Fine me? I’m trembling!”
“They could imprison you. Or worse.”
The young woman’s courage impressed Kraghtol, but at the same time, he could hardly believe what he had heard. That was justrecklesswithout reason. Granted, this was probably a backwater village the guilds didn’t care too much about, too, but after everything he had heard about them, it seemed unlikely that she could escape the vigilanteye of the guilds and the orderkeepers forever. And that could only end one way: badly.
“Kragh, you’re thinking too much. You know what? Let’s dance. It’s far too late to find another client for tonight anyway, so we might as well have some fun. Someinnocent and entirely freefun.”
She winked at him again but quickly jumped to her feet and half-dragged him towards the music. Kraghtol had never danced in his life and felt incredibly out-of-place again, but to Liva, this didn’t seem to matter. Her way of dancing was just like herself: chaotic, without rules but somehow miraculously fitting in with the music just fine. And for once, Kraghtol found it possible not to let himself be stopped by all the staring eyes watching the half-orc dance the night away with the whore.
Even though he believed Liva’s offer to spend the night at her place — and nothing else — to be sincere, he opted to return to his outdoor campsite late in the night so he could continue his way early in the morning without causing any commotion. If he didn’t still have to travel for many more kilometers, he probably would have liked to stay even longer here. Liva had turned out to be a really captivating person once they got past the flirting attempts. She was refreshingly open about just about everything andunconventionalto the core. Not only was she the first person besides Merrick to speak to Kraghtol like he was a normal human being, but she also showed genuine interest in him, which was also a first. Over the course of the night, he told her the whole short story of his life — from the circumstances of his birth that he only knew the full extend of for a few days now to the mysterious patient and the alchemical concoction in his backpack. Liva was agood listener and asked many questions, showing genuine interest. She did not, however, judge anything. Still, when he walked through the chilly night out of the village, Kraghtol felt strangely warm inside. This adventure was starting better than he had hoped for. In just a week’s time, he had already accomplished something he had failed to do for nineteen years now: to make a friend, even though he had done most of the talking.
The rest of the journey went by largely uneventful. Now and then he encountered signs that told him how far it was to the city, and it pleased him to see he was making good progress and might even arrive shortly before the end of the tenth month.
The guilds strictly standardized every unit of measurement, which must have been no small feat. At least his foster father had told him stories about earlier times, when everything was in utter disarray and people used units named after body parts.
Now, it was much more logical. They had grams and kilograms for weight, meters and kilometers for distances, and an easy to remember monetary system that only required you to count to ten. The only thing the guilds could not simplify to a ten-based system was time.
Not that they didn’t try, but it had proven just too convenient to slice the day into 24 hours, and those into 60 minutes, as it was easily divisible by a lot of numbers. 7 days were a week, going from Firstday to Masonday. And four of these formed a month, since that was about the time the moon needed for a full cycle — although Elven astronomers had calculated that to be one or two hours longer than 28 days — and a full year were 365 days, which was split into 13 monthsand one day of celebration. That day marked the winter solstice, while the summer solstice was in the middle of the seventh month.
If he arrived in Winterstone before the eleventh month, he would still have two months before the long night, which was good. The lack of daylight in the last months made people even more on edge than they already were in his presence, and he wanted to make a good first impression.
With that in mind, he spent the night in a proper inn when he was just one more day of travel from the city. Besides enjoying a hearty meal and sleeping in a proper bed, he wanted to take a bath, and it was better to pay four copper pieces than look like a sweaty, unshaven savage.
His finances were looking good too, or at least not terrible. He had had to buy food for four copper coins, and his shoes had needed repair after two weeks on the road for eight, but that was all. Combined with the four coins from today, that left him with just under 17 and a half silver pieces, not counting the gold coin from his mother.
