“Why am I not safe?”
Without answering, the priest brushed past, a swirl of wool sweeping around his ankles. Shrill whistles sounded from the next alley.
Peter took the priest’s advice and ran.
Peter lifted the last of the chairs onto the tables so Addie could clean the floor.
“Nice crowd tonight,” she said, clinking the proof in her apron pockets. “They know how to appreciate my… talents.”
Not to mention her ample breasts nearly spilling from her dress.My little moneymakers,she called them. Then she’d cackle and add,“Maybe not so little.”Yes, she enticed clientele, who left disappointed. Local prostitutes should give Addie a cut of their pay for sending the frustrated men into their arms.
“It was a decent night.” Peter might never grow wealthy lodging travelers and serving ale, but he made a good living, a far better living than he had any right to, without the ever-present threat of a hangman’s noose. He’d hidden away his father’s legacy, using only when needed. Much went to the poor Addie helped. She didn’t ask where it came from, and Peter didn’t volunteer the information. Addie knew his previous profession.
Peter eyed the stool where the handsome stranger sometimes sat, all dark, brooding and quiet.
Something about the man struck Peter as familiar. Arkenn had blond hair and blue eyes, but the man who came in silently and left without saying much had too much width to his shoulders and appeared taller. No lovely mountain lilt added interest to the words, whenever he did speak. No, he sounded E’Skaara born and raised.
Besides, Peter looked for Arkenn and never found him. But, of course, in a city of this size, easy to overlook someone who traveled in different circles, even if blond hair and blue eyes narrowed the choices.
In his time in this city, Peter often swore he’d found Arkenn, only to embarrass himself when the person he approached turned out to be someone else.
His heart couldn’t take much more disappointment.
Both past and present, Peter’s professions taught him what to look for and how to study people. Yet, there was more to the stranger than met the eye, the way he balanced on his stool as if poised to fight at a moment’s notice. Hard to miss the knife up his sleeve, or the one in his boot that inhibited the movement of his right ankle, the way he constantly swept his gaze from side to side.
The way he paused when his gaze fell on Peter, though not in an unfriendly way.
Assassin, perhaps? Hardly the first to grace this city.
Soldier? Guard? Some dangerous profession, surely.
Long, sturdy fingers gripped the spoon when the stranger ate his stew. Peter shuddered, imagining those fingers on his skin. For the sake of that skin and his livelihood, he’d best not get caught staring. On a ship, no one cared how men occupied themselves with each other. However, most landed locals followed the edicts of the Father, at least to a degree. Any regard Peter harbored for the stranger wouldn’t be tolerated. Still, how closely could a former pirate possibly follow the temple’s teachings?
He’d felt the man’s eyes upon him. If only the stranger stayed until all other patrons left… No, such thinking would do Peter no good. No good at all.
Who was the mysterious stranger who hadn’t divulged his name or spoken more than a handful of words? Although he spoke like a native speaker without mixing in unfamiliar words as many travelers did, he didn’t share the locals’ coloring or bearing. Perhaps a younger son, driven away to protect an older sibling’s claim to the family’s legacy.
Most left on ships, overestimating their abilities, never to return.
The man definitely watched Peter. Too bad he always arrived during the busiest part of the night, when Peter had no time to socialize.
And left before the crowd dwindled.
“I’m taking my leave of you.” Addie pulled her shawl off the back of the chair she’d placed near the fire to warm. Though the city enjoyed milder temperatures regardless of the season, nights grew cold from incoming sea breezes, enhanced by the recent unrelenting rains.
“Shall I walk with you?” Peter asked as he did every night. In the beginning, when he’d only worked at the tavern, he’d climbed the stairs at her house to his small room, but once he’d inherited the Stone’s Throw from Mitta and become a business owner, he moved above the tavern.
Addie patted his cheek. “No need for that. Any cutpurses are likely to be my kin.” Peter locked the door behind her. Asqueak, squeak, squeak,unmistakable to anyone listening, sounded in the rooms above his head. He’d rented to a bonded couple and two men claiming to be cousins.
The noise wasn’t coming from the couple’s room. If the crowd hadn’t left the tavern, Peter would never have heard the sound.
Although Addie was no stranger to the goings-on of travelers, he’d rather not have her here to grin and make suggestions of him joining the lodgers.
“Meddling woman. I cannot wait until your nephews and nieces reach bondable age so you can matchmake for them and leave me alone,” he often grumbled.
Addie always snickered, unrepentant. She never reminded him of how they’d met, how she’d rescued him from the streets and treated him like one of her own.
“Oh! Oooooh!” came from the ceiling, followed by silence. If she bore witness, Peter didn’t even want to imagine what the saucy-tongued Addie would say. He shifted his rising cock in his trousers and fled the room, assailed by visions of the “cousins,” one buried deep in the other’s body.
