“Go fuck your mother,” the cherub spat and raced off after kicking mud at me.
Ah, the memories. Rising, I gathered the reins and entered the pub. Strangely enough, or perhaps not strange at all, several horses and four woolly goats were tethered to a rough-hewn hitching post. They were all chewing on some flakes of hay as a tall Bhaston woman with a crooked nose sat beside them, pitchfork in her hand.
“You leaving the horse?” Her accent was thick with tundra inflections. I nodded. “Two coppers. Three if you want feed and water.”
I dug into my coin pouch. Her hand closed around the three coins like a rat trap. Two bards strolled past, strumming lutes as they sang about a woman with three teats but one cold heart. They were the brightest things on this first floor.
“You want a woman?” she asked as one of the horses shit on the floor.
“No.”
“Man?”
“No.”
“If you want anything peculiar, you got to go down the street to the Harried Heron.”
“I do not seek…I seek employment.”
She tipped her chin down to study me. “Wait here.” She stepped over the steaming pile of shit with dirty bare feet. I tied Hasulett to the rail.
If anyone touches you oddly shout.
Apples?
I sighed.I shall find you some.
A shout pulled my attention from a couple having sex on top of a table. The horse tender pointed to a set of crooked steps. I bobbed my head and started to climb. The second floor held nothing but dice tables, kegs of ale, and two women wrestling in a tub of green muck. I asked a dwarf rolling four bone dice for any new arrivals at the docks and was told to fuck off. The human woman on whose lap he was seated told me floor four and offered me a cherry tart.
I thanked her kindly but declined the tart. Taking another flight of stairs upward, I moved through a room built for sin. Beds and lounges, tables with candles, people writhing about wearing animal masks and little else, most with one or more partners. I was no stranger to sex. I’d grown up in a bandit camp and then on a farm. I’d even ventured into a brothel in Celear once but left when one of the whores teased me about my freckles. But I had never seen an establishment like this one. Gambling, prostitution, and illicit drugs, if the reek of hobo weed were any indication. Probably all the ale and whiskey were untaxed.
I climbed a spiral staircase after having to apologize to a lizard giving a pelican a hearty fuck for stepping on the lizard’s foot. Someone lobbed an empty bottle of wine across the room, the glass shattering. A woman laughed. I scurried up the stepswith speed, coming to the top where a human man the size of a rock bear sat on a stool three times too small for the behemoth. His nose had been broken several times, his ear was cut in half, and his right eye was cloudy.
“They sent me up to talk to someone about work,” I explained.
“Who sent you up?”
“The horse tender.”
“Ah, right, so you’re a strumpet. You’ll need a good scrubbing before you can work the main floor,” Murky Eye said. “Not that the customers are that particular about dirt when they get an elf under them.”
“I…no, I…where are the baths?”
“Down the block.”
“Oh, well, I will go bathe then return to speak to the pub manager?”
“Never heard of him.” I could hear the sounds of multiple people having a romp behind the thin door. The screams of passion were hard to ignore.
“But you just said I needed to bathe before he can hire me.”
“Never said nothing about that. Go wash your arse then come back, and I’ll see if themanageris available to look over yourcredentials.”
Now he was just being a cock stand. And a leering one at that.
“Thank you for the tip.” The man was obviously lying. I eased back down the stairs, keeping to the edges of the chaos until I reached the ground floor. Hasulett had been fed and watered so was not pleased to be pulled back outside.
Apples?
