[Closed] Trod On

[Tallis Cade]

The Trod. Intas 18, 2720. Evening.

U
pstairs, The Trod clamored with its usual din. A cacophonous cadence of conversation and drink. Chairs scraped and plates clattered, the noise of people at leisure. From the bowels of the cellar, it was little more than a dull incoherent roar. Wick, galdori, human—the voices and accents blurred in their rush to beat against the walls, washing like waves across the sands of a beach, ebbing and flowing with the tide of hot food and mediocre drink.

Tallis Cade hefted another log into the bowels of a cast iron stove that stood like a vat in the center of the cavernous room, anchored from the ceiling by a stout flue. Cellars were rarely built for warmth and the bricked walls and stone floors beneath the heart of the noisy Trod were no exception. A short table glowed orange in the light of the stove fire, flanked by a set of mismatched chairs. To any who cared to look, it would appear to be little more than a scant hideaway for smoking and griping, a retreat for the meagre inn-staff to slink away from the demands of their day. Casks of wine lined one wall, bins of coal lined another, all standard fare for a cellar under a bustling inn.

A door stood at the rear, wide enough to accommodate the weekly haul of meats and leaks and potatoes, ferried through the alley around back, so as not to disturb the business upstairs. Of course, it was neither meats nor leaks nor potatoes that had brought her to the cellar tonight. Tallis straightened, leaving the door of the stove open as she rose. Flames licked at the wood, cracking and popping, giving off more noise than heat. On a night like tonight—with snow spitting in the streets and a chill seeping in through brick and pane alike—it was hardly an ideal meeting location. But it was safer than dragging some well-connected pug through the heart of the Trod.

Tallis—Quill, she reminded herself—flicked another look toward the door, as if looking at it would somehow summon a knock from the other side. Icy fingers worked their way into the folds of the loose-knit shawl wrapped around her shoulders, knotting themselves in a nervous quest for warmth. It was the first time she had ever asked for anything from the Resistance. In the year following her father’s death, she had grown accustomed to taking orders. Opening her doors when she was told to open them, tucking away this and that until someone with a fake name and another set of orders came asking for that or this. She was a spoke in a wheel, doing her part to keep things spinning without ever knowing where it was the wheel was going.

Two years ago, she might have asked more questions.

Last week, she asked for help instead.

[Tom Cooke]

The Trod • The Dives

Evening on the 18th of Intas, 2720

Q
uill.

All he had was a name and a place, a date and a time, and a handful of instructions. All Risha had, he reminded himself, if not because he needed reminding then because the name sat warm and lovely in his chest, like a resolution, like purpose.

He had found his orders at the dead drop a week ago. He’d burnt them afterward, leaving not a trace except what he’d committed to his memory. You give me a job, he kept thinking, his old mantra. Well, he had a job now; he didn’t know what it was, but he knew the carriage was rattling towards it. He knew – looking out the window at the passing streetlamps glowing through whirling snow, at the skies marbled dark above the leaning facades – that he would find out soon.

The coach rattled over the Arova. Out the window he got a glimpse of light glinting off ice floating like shattered glass; it disappeared, and Uptown with it behind. The streets grew narrower, the stones rougher.

Officially, he had business with Augur and Backman, attorneys at law; their offices were on a quiet little street just behind, and sharing an alleyway with, the Trodden Fork Inn. The Trod, he reminded himself, as the missive’d said it was called.

He’d never been there; Vienda wasn’t his city, or leastways not in the way the Rose had been. He thought he could picture the place well enough anyway. In the cradle of a fork in the winding streets, spilling out light and laughter on even a snowy night like this one, with coaches rattling by and a steady stream of passersby in and out. He’d been in such places often enough in the Rose, mostly in Redwine, where travelers stayed, and Lossey that merchants and suchlike favored, and even in Quarter Fords, where he and hama had lived.

He’d met in the cellars of them, too, and stained more than one set of floorboards with sap spilt in a deal gone wrong. Strange to think of that now, with a wash of clairvoyant mona around him, with his hands – a fine-boned gentleman’s hands, unscarred and manicured – folded in his lap. All the same, there was a knife tucked into his boot, just in case.

Quill, he couldn’t well picture, whoever they were. That, too, he reckoned he’d find out soon enough. What he wanted more than anything was a stiff drink; what he needed less than anything in all Vita was a stiff drink.

It wasn’t the next best thing by a long shot, but he eased back against the coach seats and tried his damnedest to measure his breaths.

He had had another dream last night. Painting spell circles on the floorboards, somehow, with his old hands, strong and scarred and human; speaking the words with his old tongue, with his old voice. He had woken shaking, guilt sinking through him like an anchor.

Anatole’s expensive, lined leather gloves did little to cut through the chill. When he got out of the coach in front of the sleepy offices, it was to a flurry of snow, and the air was sharp and bitter in his lungs. He nearly slipped in the feathery, steadily-laying snow.

The clerk on the first floor of the office looked up sharp when he entered, and even when he gave the word, she peered up at him with a pinched and uneven look. She took the small phosphor lamp and showed him to the alleyway anyway.

She left him in the alleyway. He caught whiffs of cheap liquor and old vegetables, the snow settling over wet tangles of discarded newspaper newspaper and cabbage and cigarette butts. He could hear the Trod even here, the muffled roar of laughter and clinking silverware and heavy footfalls, light drifting warm from the windows. He steered clear of them. He was wet and cold; snow had settled on Anatole’s long dark coat and hat.

But his back was ramrod-straight, and his breaths were even as he’d been taught. He found the worn steps down to the broad cellar doors, careful with his boots in the snow and slush.

He hesitated only a moment, then knocked out the pattern the instructions had given: knock, pause, knock knock, pause, knock. He took a deep breath and waited just outside.

[Tallis Cade]

The Trod. Intas 18, 2720. Evening.

T
he first knock made her jump.

Quill—that was who she was now—tightened her grip on the loose-knit shawl, clutching it against her chest as she waited, listening to the quiet pause that followed. Two more raps thudded against the door, followed by another lull and one, final knock. The Resistance, come to answer her call. She moved in a flurry of nerves that sent the hem of her dress chasing after her ankles, letting in the chill she blamed for the shiver that racked her spine as she pulled open the cellar door. It was far too late now to consider the alternative.

A wet rush of snow swept across the threshold to sting at her cheeks, leaving a trail of melting flurries in its wake. Even her ears burned, tucked tidily though they were under the grey-blue scarf she wore over her hair, tied in a thick knot at the nape of her neck. Quill squinted against the cold, eyes adjusting to the dim of the street…where a clocksbedamned golly stood waiting at her door. It was the cut of his coat that gave him away, even before she noticed his height, the slender rail of his frame.

Her heart slammed in her chest before stopping completely and dropping like an anvil through her stomach.

He knew the sequence. Knock, pause, knock, knock, pause, knock. Her thoughts thickened in a panic as one explanation collided against another, fracturing and ricocheting into a thousand impossible pieces. He was supposed to be a wick. Some well-placed go-between who could make her problem go away. Not some golly. Right? Right?

Someone had talked.

It made more sense than the Resistance sending a galdor.

She was found out. It was the only explanation.

“Can’I help you?” The words fell out of her mouth in a slurred rush while her hand shook on the doorframe. Her father’s legs swayed lifelessly in front of her eyes while she wondered whether it was worth it to run. He looked frail enough. It was the magic that gave her pause. And the fact that answering a door wasn’t a crime. Not the last time she checked. ‘Course, being human might just be, though. Was there still a primer open on the table in her room? No. She had put it away after her last lesson, stashed under a loose board in the floor of her narrow room, along with all the rest. Hadn’t she? She couldn’t remember.

Her heart chose that moment to start beating again, so hard she could feel it in her ears.

[Tom Cooke]

The Trod • The Dives

Evening on the 18th of Intas, 2720

H
e listened for anything behind the door – footsteps, whispering hems. Any sign of who this Quill kov was. His head was aching, and all he could hear was the noise from the Trod, reverberating and echoing oddly above. His jaw tightened, then relaxed. He stood straight; he breathed. He really needed that flooding drink.

The cellar door opened with a creak.

All he could see at first was a silhouette, limned in warm light, and a drift of snow stirred up by the sudden draught. He blinked, instinctively taking a step back out of field range. He didn’t have a mant one – three and a half steps, he’d trained himself to know, was his range – but he still felt uneasy. It was a nattle, he realized as his eyes came into focus. He had to tilt his head up slightly to look at her, which irked him not as much as it once had. Still he blinked owlishly against her silhouette.

She was a slight lass, far as he could tell, but human through and through. Sloping a little in the shoulder, mousy. It was a pale face looking down at him underneath a soft blue headwrap, her wide eyes the same color. There was red in her cheeks and the tip of her sharp nose. She stared at him for a long moment, and he stared back at her, not altogether sure why they were staring at each other.

Was this Quill? He tried to put it back together in his head, like the pieces of a torn-up spec. He’d expected a kov, but then, he thought wryly, he’d expected a kov in the past and been just as surprised. He’d a habit of expecting kov, one he might ought to’ve broken by now.

But if she was expecting Risha, whoever this lass was, the slurring mess out of her mouth didn’t give him much indication. “Pardon?” he blurted out at first.

Then the words, four of them, Can I help you? sunk in.

Can I help you? he wanted to blurt, and he managed to stop himself that time, by the skin of his teeth. He stood there stock-still, his hands still shoved deep in his pockets, too surprised to even think to bow. A strange, cold sort of fear’d begun to wrap its fingers round his heart. Your first job, he thought, and you fuck up this bad. He saw her hand in the corner of his eye, shaking slightly on the doorframe, but he couldn't seem to focus.

“I’m,” he started, blinking melting snowflakes from his lashes, shivering again. His cheeks were numb, but they prickled at the brush of warmth that leaked out around her.

He’d no clue what he was supposed to do if this went wrong. There’d been no instruction to the effect; the knock was supposed to have done it. He thought of a dozen half-baked clevernesses: if you’ve a quill pen I can borrow… no, no; if…

What he knew was that he didn’t think it safe, not yet – for him or the Cause or for her, if she was some maid as happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – to speak freely. Worse, he thought with a prickle of anxiety, it might be a trap. “Madam,” he said, taking off his hat and bowing stiffly. “I’m here on business. I happen to be meeting someone – here,” he said hesitantly, as if it were remotely normal. “May I come in?”

[Tallis Cade]

The Trod. Intas 18, 2720. Evening.

S
ome five or six years ago, Tallis rounded a corner on her way back to The Trod. It was a bright, spring day, the kind that left the world a glaring white, too bright to even really look at rightly. Cady, the cook’s girl, was laughing at her side, doubled over, same as Tallis. Thinking back on it now, she couldn’t remember why it was they were laughing, only that they were, and that the frothing, mangy dog growling at the other end of the alley, hackles up and snarling, was the last thing either one of them expected to see when they rounded that corner.

Cady dropped her basket. Tallis forgot how to breathe.

It was the closest thing she could think of to describe what it felt like opening her cellar door to a Resistance knock only to find a wrinkled galdor staring up at her from the other side. He simply wasn’t supposed to be there. Like that dog.

Her hand was still shaking on the frame by the time she found her breath. That was before the old man bent himself in a bow and called her ‘madam.’ Wide eyes narrowed under the knotted line of her brow, thoughts tripping over one another in a rush to rearrange themselves yet again. And then the golly stifled a shiver, reminding her that—whoever he was—they were both still standing in the cold freezing their erses off, along with her fingers.

‘Business,’ he explained with a tentative drawl that sent a wrinkle creasing just beneath the line of her scarf. ‘Here.’ Her eyes flashed from their inspection of his person to the shadow of the golly’s wizened visage. A tell, perhaps, that she, too, was waiting for someone. Here. Could he come in? Tallis managed a bewildered nod, partly because she was too cold to know what to think and partly because some part of her doubted an uncle would have asked quite so nicely. Shuffling a step back, she pulled the door open just enough to let the galdor slip through before closing it against the spitting snow and biting wind outside.

A line of sconces burned oil along the cellar walls, basking the basement in a dull orange glow that brightened to a pale yellow in front of the open stove. Tallis pushed the cellar door shut without a second glance, still scrutinizing the wizened golly. He didn’t look like any Seventen she’d ever seen, but then that hardly meant anything. Even so, her panic didn’t feel quite right. The pieces didn’t fit, no matter which way she turned them. If someone yapped—and that was a big ‘if,’ or, at least, she liked to think that it was—the old man already knew the knock. Knew the place. Knew what her opening the door meant. Tallis hadn’t been around when the uncles snatched her da, but she knew it happened fast. If he wasn’t Resistance, she’d be nabbed already, wouldn’t she?

“An’ who’s it you’re waitin’ for?” Despite herself, a hint of accusation lingered on her tone, fueled no doubt by the apprehension that loitered behind her eyes. Tallis folded her arms under her shawl, regretting not pulling the blanket from her bed instead. The warmth of the room was already chasing the cold from her skin and into the marrow of her bones, leaving her face burning like ice and her toes aching in her boots. Overhead, laughter split the rafters, pealing from one side of the cellar to the other. A raucous of shouting followed, the kind that conjured an image of pointed fingers and wagered bets. The sort men settled over drink and unsettled two drinks later.

Had the man standing in front of her been anything other than what he was, Tallis would’ve already waved him to the table in front of the stove with an offer of ale. As it was, she hesitated. Fear and doubt weighed down her hospitality, leaving it trailing behind her questions like a near-forgotten afterthought. This was the sort of thing her father always handled. Rent and gollies and Resistance knocking and the like. It would be two years since his passing soon enough, and Tallis was still little more than a girl, standing in his shadow, wishing it was real.

[Tom Cooke]

The Trod • The Dives

Evening on the 18th of Intas, 2720

T
he lass’ brow wrinkled, and her eyes narrowed, this time sharp. He felt himself grasping at the edges of something like certainty, but he still couldn’t be sure.

She didn’t open the door up much more – not enough, at any rate, to give him a very good view of the other side. There was a pit in his stomach, but he had already passed the threshold, even if his boots weren’t over it yet. So he took a deep breath and he kept his bearing neat and straight, and he stepped in past her.

The back of his neck prickled. He kept himself from jumping when he heard the heavy door pulled to, and he kept himself from turning around, too, though he knew he was being studied. His back ached, but he held it like a ramrod; new as he might have been to this, he was trained too well to do otherwise. There was comfort, or at least surety, in the mask. She had taught him that.

It was a large cellar. The table with its two chairs, one lower than the other, cast warped shadows over the floorboards in the light from that monster of a stove; the whole cellar was a warm orange glow. He tried not to look too close at the casks of wine on one wall, at the spaces behind and around the racks. The lass’ footfalls creaked soft on the floorboards behind, and still he didn’t turn, thinking of trust and of the Cause and what it meant.

All the same, his hand itched in his pocket, even still numb-fingered with the cold. He wondered how long it would take him to go for the knife in his boot. Too long, he thought; maybe once he’d’ve stood a chance, but now, too long.

In here, it was easier to hear the Trod above, trickling down a muffled mess of sound. Familiar pub-sounds, he thought, trying to get his mind off the smell of whisky and wine and old barrels. Even so, the Trod was like a different world above; the lass’ voice was loud in the quiet, this time with its riff-sharp edge.

A burst of laughter from above. His eyes drifted up, then snapped back down, though he didn’t look at the table yet. He breathed in the smell of coal and woodsmoke. His skin was prickling; warmth was draining back into his fingers, and his toes stung in his boots. It was good to be inside, and it would’ve been damned good to sit, but he couldn’t think about that now, not yet.

Her arms were folded under her shawl, moving round him, and that edge of apprehension hadn’t gone from her eyes. He remembered her hand, red-knuckled, shaking on the door. But she was looking at him still in a way that was – searching, he thought, distinctly. Not confused, or not just. Searching.

He was still viciously conscious of the field that hung round him, but he didn’t try to suppress it. Instead, he took his hands out of his pockets – real slow, careful-like – and took off his hat a second time, this time tucking it under one arm. His red curls were damp and tangled.

“Someone by the name of Quill,” he said, raising both red eyebrows sharply.

Wasn’t much use in pretending, now the door was shut behind him; either this was or wasn’t Quill, or was or wasn’t a trap. “My name is Risha,” he added more quietly, taking the final step over the threshold and giving himself to trust. That was it, wasn’t it? After a thousand practicalities, it was trust, in the end; the Cause breathed trust, and he supposed they meant not much of anything without it. He had never known much about it, trust, but maybe a man could learn.

[Tallis Cade]

The Trod. Intas 18, 2720. Evening.

Striding straight-backed into the Trod, hands in his pockets as he inspected the place, Tallis could not help but think the golly looked more likely to buy the inn out from under its rent-gouging landlords than a friend of the Resistance, come to offer his support. ’Course, she realized, the two weren’t strictly exclusive. The thought was not an especially comforting one.

Tallis ventured half a step from the cellar door, tucking her arms more tightly over her chest, as if her shawl might somehow ward against more than the lingering cold. The aged golly had not looked half so fine, standing in the spitting snow under the orange light of the alley, as he did now. The kind of galdor she read about in books, who dined with kings and slept on beds of silk, not the working sort who popped round the Trod for a quick bite ordered over a demeaning nose. It was his coat that set him apart. His hat, too. And his walk, his stance. She’d only ever seen his like once before. The day her father hanged.

Despite herself, Tallis tensed as he turned, jaw straightening in a sharp, nervous line. But the kov reached for his hat long before she had the chance to consider where else his hands might be going, and her half-formed fears subsided, sinking slowly into a muted vigilance. Red curls appeared under the dripping brim of his hat, enough to draw another scrunch of her brow. She had expected to gray, or perhaps even white, something to match the shadowed creases of his face in the snow. Of course, Tallis realized, the creases were still there, though they were fewer than she had imagined squinting at him in the dark.

Chairs scraped across the floor overhead, followed by the muffled drumming of feet. She was waiting for him to say her name. He hadn’t arrested her yet, hadn’t led in a whole host of uncles to toss the place, looking for the crooks and crannies tucked away behind the casks of wine and the barrels of whiskey. He knew the knock.

It was the only explanation left, however reticent she was to believe it.

Quill. Her eyes flashed from where they had shifted to the wooden stairs at the back of the room, following the muted noise of the Trod, to jump back to where his not-quite-so-wrinkled face was still watching her. Tallis stared at him. The din from above wafted heavily in the air, a dull echo thudding stubbornly against the alacrity of their silence. Risha. It was the right name but, by now, she knew it would be. Even if the face wearing it still didn’t seem to match.

Tallis’s hands were in knots, wrapped in the ends of her scarf as she nodded. “I’m Quill.” She had meant to say it louder, stronger, with her chin jutted out and a Resistance-worthy fearlessness shining in her eyes. Instead, her gaze bounced hastily from his visage to the table in front of the stove, faltering. “I weren’t expectin’ a—” A golly. A galdor. You. Tallis swallowed the thought with a shake of her head and an empty smile, laced with an apology. “Doesn’t matter now.” It had occurred to her she could still lie, say she’d never heard the name Quill, and would he like a nightcap for his trouble? It was the tidy stack of papers on the table that gave her pause. In two more months, she’d lose the linen girl. Another month after that, she’d lose the cook.

Some things were worth the risk. The Trod just so happened to be one of them.

With a quick breath, Tallis—Quill—turned, doing her best to eclipse her fumbling with something remotely akin to welcome. “Can I get you a drink?” At the very least, she could use one. A flagon of ale was already on the table, surrounded by a few stout mugs. She finally managed to unwind a hand, gesturing toward the stove and the mismatched seats that basked in its warmth.

A hundred questions thundered in her mind.

[Tom Cooke]

The Trod • The Dives

Evening on the 18th of Intas, 2720

Q
uill, he had said, and like a word of Monite – her eyes had leapt from somewhere behind him to meet his own. He’d tucked one of his hands back in his pockets, chilly even with the warmth from the stove and with his thick gloves. He looked at them and did not look away, though he itched to turn round and look wherever she’d been looking; the back of his neck crawled.

Familiar bar sounds drifted down from above. Familiar, unfamiliar, muffled like this. Not just by the boards and beams of the cellar, echoing with the warped whispers of lower, quieter conversations on the heels of the scraping chairs and raucous laughter. It was muffled by the rushing of the blood in his ears, too, pounding pulse. His heart was bloodying its wings against his ribs, trying to make its way out through his throat. A second longer – a second’s more uncertainty – under those wary blue eyes, wondering if he’d made a mistake after all, if she was just some cook or maid and he’d been mislead…

He should’ve known from the sharpness in her eyes. The way her jaw shifted set.

Quill, she echoed back at him. He didn’t sag, but it was all he had to stay straight. Godsdamn. She was sharp, but her eyes were still bouncing round. Her thin pale hands – callused still, working woman’s hands – were all tangled up, still red at the knuckles, more from the wringing now than the cold or the new heat. Her shoulders were still almost hunched. Expectin’, she said in her broad nattle accent, and nothing changed in his face. She shook it off with a paper-thin smile, and he inclined his head.

His eyes didn’t move from her face, didn’t dare, ‘til she gestured, with a hand that looked stiff and wont to go back to its twisting. Then he did: he took in the table and the mismatched chairs again, and the stack of papers on it, and the flagon and mugs, casting shadows over the distressed wool.

He felt like he was grabbing at the edges of understanding. It wasn’t just a meeting-place. It looked, in the first place, like where a couple of delivery kov would rest their aching knees after a shipment, especially on a night like tonight; he could imagine it well enough, without the papers, with the smoke from a couple of spurs mingling in the air. Now, it looked like a place where somebody’d been sitting and going over shit that didn’t add up.

Well, he didn’t need much urging to the seat, anyway. “Thank you, madam,” he said in the same polite, enunciated voice, second-nature now; first-nature, he thought bitterly, with just how much he had forgotten the way he used to speak. He bowed again, a slight incline of his head and shoulders, and went to sit.

The relief was immediate. Even if the seat was too low, so his knees ached a little in the lowering; even if it creaked underneath even his slight weight, and wobbled a little. That, he couldn’t hide. He could feel his face prickling warm red in the glow from the stove, and he shut his stinging eyes and breathed a moment. It smelled like woodsmoke, too, and for a flicker of a second his face relaxed from its thin, tight smile.

He blinked his eyes open, sniffing. His nose was running. “I, ah –” I don’t drink, madam, he’d almost said. There was another burst of laughter from above. “Please,” he said, then again, “thank you, Quill,” smiling a little more.

It was a moment before he spoke again. She still didn’t seem fair at ease; he glanced down at the papers, squinting against the dark and Anatole’s poor eyes. He didn’t get his reading glasses out just yet.

“You weren’t expecting a galdor,” he said finally, finishing the thought she’d left off. “I would’ve thought they’d have let you know ahead of time.” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “Well, all I know is that the Trod has a problem I can help with, and I should like to be of service, if I can.”

He felt the words, snakelike, even as he said them. Trust, he thought again; it was so sharp he could feel the edge of it cutting into him.

[Tallis Cade]

The Trod. Intas 18, 2720. Evening.

Every letter made a sound when he spoke.

It reminded Tallis of the nights she spent hunched over a table in the backroom of the Trod, dragging a finger under worn-out words on a yellowing page, shaping symbols into sounds until they finally meant something to someone for the first time. Something sayable, something thinkable. A kind of magic all its own. The sort any kov could learn, mona be damned. Those moments were precious to her; every letter she uttered was a rope cast for another. An invitation.

Risha made all the same sounds when he talked, but—in his mouth—they were a wall. A wrought-iron fence made of spoken g’s and tidily separated words. Gollies called it ‘class.’ And maybe it was. Like a spiked gate in front of a sprawling estate, a classy testament to consummate better-than-ness. After a while, even the toffins forgot why those spikes were really there; they forgot what their hard g’s and crisp annunciations really were: artful instruments of effortless exclusion, masquerading as culture.

The red-haired golly said her fake name with a tentative smile, and Tallis brought a wary glance up from the earthen flagon in her hand. ‘Please,’ he said kindly. ‘Thank you.’ It’d’ve been easier if he balked, looking down his angled nose at her in the way only a galdor could look down on someone taller than himself. Then, at least, something might’ve made sense. Risha’s chair cricked and creaked as he sat, while the logs in the stove hissed, spitting embers. Tallis managed another practiced smile. She was a bartender again, standing on the other side of the weathered table sloshing ale into one mug and then the next. It was easier to smile with a pitcher in her hand. Like putting on an apron in the mornings. It was all part of the job. The armor of barmaids, tavern wenches, and inn keepers the world over.

Tallis set one mug on the table in front of Risha, bringing the other with her as she sank down into the chair across from his. A full-grown kov could’ve turned a jig between her seat and the table without smacking into either, there was so much space between them. She could still reach the tidy stack of notices and ledgers in front of her, but it would take leaning forward to do it. For the time being, Tallis reclined against the rigid back of her chair, shoulders rolled subtly over the rim of her cradled mug. Tart hops filled the air, twisting and twining with the heat from the stove to hang in a bitter haze over the table. Tallis breathed it in, nostrils burning with the familiar, homey scent. It wasn’t swill exactly, but it wasn’t far off either. There was finer fare upstairs, tucked away behind the bar. Aged whiskeys that smelled of oak and stoppered bottles of fragrant wines. The sort of things made with galdori palettes in mind. She said nothing of them.

‘You weren’t expecting a galdor.’ The remark caught her by surprise and, despite herself, Tallis dropped her gaze with a silent shake of her head. Agreeing. If there was a touch of guilt there, it was faint, disguised behind a thorough inspection of the amber bubbles rising and bursting against the surface of her ale. “All they gave me was a name.” She would’ve liked to agree, to say that she thought the Resistance would’ve told her they were sending a golly knocking round her cellar after dark. But when had she ever been given more than a name and a time? There were crates packed with Vesep-knows-what stashed in the walls behind her wine casks even now. Some kov would turn up in a few days to move them and Tallis would never know what it was she hid or why. Theirs was a revolution built on fake names and vague appointments. “And the knock,” she added as an afterthought.

Doubt and distrust still lined her brow when Tallis finally brought her gaze up to search Risha’s once more, the quiet reverberations of her initial alarm, softening now into something milder, and—perhaps—more introspective. The Trod. It had already occurred to her that Risha—whoever he was—could do far more for her predicament than any wick ever could. The thought was as encouraging as it was embittering. He was a boon trussed up as a toffin, come to rescue her stacked-brick inn from the woes of unrelenting usury. That is, of course, if he was to be believed.

Tallis considered Risha a moment longer before finally uttering a word that had fled her vernacular in the tear-stained days following her father’s death. “Why?” There was not a single scenario her imagination could supply that made his risk of knocking at her door and offering his aid seem worth it. What could he possibly have to gain?

[Tom Cooke]

The Trod • The Dives

Evening on the 18th of Intas, 2720

I
t was the practiced grace of a bartender. Quill, he thought, watching her out of the corner of his eye; he didn’t look at her, and he kept fair still, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He thought to take his gloves off, but he was still chilly, the warmth from the stove never quite working its way through. Diana had laughed once at a soirée when she had taken his hand, saying he was cold as a corpse. He knew he wasn’t a corpse, at least, but he thought he might’ve wept from the irony.

He looked askance at the wall of casks as Quill poured the ale from the other side of the table, smiling matter-of-factly. There was still something like a smile on his face; it was even and polite. Even as she made her way round to set his own in front of him, he smiled, and he glanced up at her only briefly to incline his head in thanks.

Then she was on the other side of the table.

If she’d sat as close to it as he was, she might’ve still been in field range; as it was, the chair was far back enough to put her firmly past the edges of it. He didn’t flex, but he didn’t suppress, either. He let it hang indectal around him, and he sat still where he was, watching her cradle her ale in her lap. He watched her eyes go down when he spoke; his smile flickered, and his lips pressed thin, but he said nothing yet.

Even when she spoke, he said nothing. He waited for her to finish, watching the contemplative, guarded look on her face, wondering what was behind the delicate line of her brow.

“Well, I suppose that’s all I knew, too,” he said, taking a deep breath. “They don’t like to tell you much, do they, our mutual friends? And I’ve never seen you in the How, but I’m not exactly a, uh – a regular guest at any of the watering-holes. For reasons you might guess.” Something wry tugged at the edge of his lips.

She was studying his face again then. Her eyes were wide and thoughtful, oddly arresting and oddly hard to meet, though that might’ve been the fact that they were scrutinizing him. He knew little of what was behind them, too; they looked to him like eyes that’d seen things. Most of the Cause’s eyes, he thought, had.

He remembered the old aches, the old scars, all the ones he didn’t have anymore. He couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her eye, or reach for the mug just yet. He thought it would’ve loosened his nerves – but he didn’t want his nerves loosened yet. Nor did he feel like scooting to the table, taking out his glasses and looking over the papers. Not ‘til he was looking over them with her, not ‘til he knew there wasn’t a target between his eyes.

But he couldn’t look at her while she was watching him – a new and strange weakness, and one of many he’d discovered since he’d started this qalqa. So he set about to taking his gloves off instead, with the same slow and careful motions. He tucked them into his pocket and flexed the long, freckled fingers of his hands, no longer shocked by the softness of them, but pained in an older and deeper way.

Look, Risha wanted to say. Get a good look at me, and don’t for a minute let your guard down. You know this is what a monster looks like; I can tell from your eyes you’ve already seen what a monster like this can do.

Then: why?

His eyes flicked up, and his eyebrows too. “Uh,” he said. The question made sense, but this was, after all, the first time he’d ever done this; he’d not prepared an answer.

“Because,” he said slowly, taking the mug off the table. “The Trod is important to the Cause, or so I’m told. I can see why. And because we, ah – because the Cause takes care of its own, Quill. And because I’m a man who does a job when he is given a job.” He glanced over Quill’s face, his brow knitting.

Risha took a long drink of the ale. It wasn’t piss, but it was close; he didn’t think it was poison, but if it was, it was already too late. What it was was damned familiar, and he took a deep breath, steadying himself on the taste of cheap ale. “Besides,” he hazarded a lighter tone, “you’ve given me a seat by the fire and a mug of ale. I’ll have to repay you somehow, won’t I?”