But there were ways to do this, and no one knew them better. “Pick her up and carry her inside,” she told him. She had walked over, bent down, and found a pulse. Weak, but there. “Gently, Tavo. She is the key to everything. I will explain it all to you once we are inside. There will be a bed for you in which to rest and sleep. There will be food to eat and ale to drink. And medicine, Tavo. Medicine to help calm you and keep your thoughts directed as they should be. Come now, pick her up.”
Tavo did so, cradling her in his arms and lifting her effortlessly from where she lay on the ground. “Tarsha,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for what I did.”
He started for the porch, walked up the steps, and disappeared through the open door. Clizia Porse followed, allowing herself a surreptitious smile. He was hers now, and she would make certain he remained so.
SEVENTEEN
Later that evening, in the city of Varfleet, a boy of capable skills but limited means was watching a game of Pickroll. The game was taking place in the gambling room of the Sticky Wicked Hall of Chance, a popular gaming palace down near the docks, where men of hard lives and questionable morals gathered nightly to find new ways to part with their money and their patience. Because the loss of the first frequently led to the loss of the second, big men with scars and frowns stood against the walls of the room at regular intervals in spaces specifically designated for them, each providing a clear view of and a short path to the gaming tables should trouble arise.
All of which provided Shea Ohmsford with a small financial opportunity he was quick to recognize.
It worked like this. Servers employed by the Sticky Wicked were there to provide food and drink to the patrons, and it did not do to get underfoot when they were on the floor. On the other hand, they were not required to perform other types of fetch and carry, so they made it a hard-and-fast rule not to—and signs above the serving counter and on each of the walls of the room said as much. They also described in graphic terms what could happen to you if you made the mistake of trying to sidestep the rule.
But sometimes other forms of fetch and carry were necessary, and young Shea Ohmsford was quick to recognize an opportunity. Messages needed to be conveyed to friends and family, offering reassurance that long hours of absence did not signal permanent abandonment. Or pleas for help needed to be speedily dispatched for players who found themselves suddenly short of credits. Or excuses needed to be proffered for failure to appear for work. Then there were the items to be fetched: medicines to sharpen the mind and quicken the hand—none of which were on the gaming hall menu of food and drink—or fresh clothing to replace that damaged in a brawl.
And so on and so forth.
Shea Ohmsford—small and slender and wiry and easily able to navigate the sea of larger bodies—was there to provide any of those services, circling the room with catlike ease to respond to a beckoning hand raised by an eager customer. And all for a coin or two—though sometimes more since the market was fluid and the law of supply and demand reigned supreme.
The boy worked at the sufferance of the establishment, but the owner liked him and knew him to be dependable. She understood the need for the services he offered, yet preferred that it be Shea who carried them out, since the boy represented no threat and was well known about the quarter to be honest and circumspect about what he saw or heard—all good qualities for anyone who worked in a place like the Sticky Wicked.
Shea Ohmsford was not particularly fond of the work. It was mostly boring, payment was spotty, and the gaming room’s players were frequently unpleasant. Nor did he need the credits. The black-cloaked grandfather he had encountered a few weeks back had paid him handsomely, and he had squirreled that money away against a future that was always uncertain. But he did not want to use those credits to live off because they were his stakes in a larger future that waited a few years farther down the road. So he worked both to make enough to survive from day to day and because he knew that if you expected to find opportunities you had to make space for them in your life. Better to keep your hand in even when things were going well, at a place where keeping your eyes and ears open might present you with such opportunities. He had grander plans for his life than spending the rest of it in Varfleet, and whether those plans came to fruition or not it was better to avail himself of the chance that they might.
Tonight was an ordinary sort of night—the number of players about average and the number of tables in use about the same. Shea was watching with half an eye for a raised hand, but for now they were few and far between. He could have spent the night in bored disinterest, but instead he had found something to help him pass the time.
At a table not ten feet away, a game of which he knew almost nothing was under way. Pickroll, it was called. Only men and women with credits to burn played it. The stakes were high and the odds against winning long. The game involved the use of both cards and dice, along with expenditures of large numbers of credits during the course of play. Three of the four men sitting at the table were Sticky Wicked regulars—men of questionable practices in their ordinary lives (some of those practices legal and some not). All three were well known for their skill at games of chance, and each possessed the experience to know and anticipate how other players might react in any given situation. None were men Shea Ohmsford much cared for, although all of them, at one time or another, had enriched the boy with credits in return for services rendered.
The fourth man was the wild card, a newcomer to the gaming hall and perhaps to Varfleet, as well. Shea knew he had never seen the man before, nor seen the fetching creature that clung to him as if to imprint herself upon his body. She slid over and around him as if she were oiled, and draped herself about him like a second skin. She was stunningly beautiful—long and lithe, with the most flawless white skin and catlike golden eyes Shea Ohmsford had ever seen. She laughed and whispered and winked at her companion in a teasing fashion, but never with anything that suggested an attempt to distract him.
Still, the dock marshal sitting directly to the newcomer’s right had apparently begun to grow weary of her. Leaning back, he coughed loudly and looked the newcomer directly in the eye. “Your pretty cloak appears to need its drawstrings tightened,” he growled. “Better straighten her up before she falls on the table.”
The dock marshal was a lean, rawboned man of considerable size—fully six and a half feet and 270 pounds at a minimum. When he spoke, his voice rumbled out of his belly like the low growl of a furnace burning hot. His glower was deep and threatening, and his big hands were knotted before him in fists.
The newcomer nodded but did not otherwise respond. He was not a big man, but he was a commanding presence nevertheless. He wore his dark hair long and tied back and sported a closely shaved beard and mustache. He was a cool one, the boy thought. He had been winning steadily, never taking his eyes off the dice or the cards, humming softly now and again, giving the astonishingly fetching woman who hung on him little more than the occasional glance and wink. He did so now from beneath his heavy brow, his eyes the color of storm-clouded skies. The silken creature that clung to him went instantly still, fixing herself in place and staring directly at the dock marshal.