“Vrunta, ye spitch! Watchit!”
Tallis raised a bored look from where she stood picking at a dish rag on the bar to the cursing kov behind her. The man was already spitting-mad and squirming by the time she spotted him, pinched between the kitchen doorframe and a dripping icebox. Sam Beatty’s wide eyes appeared over the top of the leaking chest just long enough to realize his mistake before the lad disappeared again, hastily dragging the appliance backward, away from the frame—and his red-faced foreman. It’d’ve been easier to fix the thing in the kitchen, but then Tallis never would’ve heard the end of the cook’s grumbling. Better to have it hauled out for repair. Well, she thought, watching the ordeal unfold behind the bar, better for her at least.
Hock Ryker let loose a string of cusses foul enough to knock the freckles off a golly when he finally shoved himself free. If it’d been anyone else, Tallis might’ve intervened. But she knew Hock well enough to know the man’d have the Beatty boy’s head if she made a fuss. Besides, he was a friend of her da’s and she wasn’t paying him half as much as the job was worth. So instead, she watched, wincing—for Hock’s sake as much as the lad.
There wasn’t much more to do but watch, anyhow. She’d already cleaned the bar twice since morning, the linens upstairs were changed, and she’d finally managed to chase the cook from the kitchens, vowing to make do with whatever stew the woman made the day before if anyone came looking for a hot meal. Coincidentally, that was precisely what she did when two kovs came round an hour later. They trudged across the little dining room, wet and sopping, dripping rain across the fresh-cleaned floor to take up residence at a little table by the fire. Tallis poured their drinks and brought out their bowls, steaming and savory with the cook’s day-old stew, the sort that hit all the right spots on a dreary, rainy day. They were still there, over an hour later, none the wiser with their heads bent over their table in a conversation lost to the crackling in the hearth. Tallis could hardly blame them for lingering, not when the rest of the city was still spitting water outside.
“Sack it to Alioe,” Hock growled at the Beatty boy behind her. “Leave th’damn thing there fer a piss. I need a drink.” The foreman rolled his neck with a crack, while Sam’s wide eyes appeared again on the other side of the icebox. Tallis spared an empty smirk at the boy, waving him around with a shake of her head. There wasn’t a job in all of Vita Hock Ryker did without getting halfway to sloshed first.
Outside, the sign over the door creaked in the wind. ‘The Trodding Fork Inn,’ it read. Not that anyone ever called the place that. It was The Trod to most. Every so often, someone’d try out ‘The Fork’ instead, but it never stuck. The road out front split, winding north into The Dives proper, and arcing south toward Uptown. It made for a prime location for an inn as well as a pub, and those who came knocking with fake names and memorized orders could hardly ask for a better layover.
’Course, none of that dried the rain. Tallis reached for a bottle under the slab of the bar and passed it to Hock as he passed. “That’s comin’ out of your pay, you know,” she warned. The foreman batted a hand; they both knew his price for the day was already settled.