Rune nodded, and tucked her pack behind the stool. Lady Rose was still in her hand, and she set the fiddle down on top of the pack gently, so that the instrument was cradled by the worn fabric of the pack and the clothing it contained.
"Look sharp here, boy," Beth said, and Rune looked up. "Ye see how close ye are t' the bar?" She pointed with her chin at the massive barrier of wood that stood between the customers and the barrels of beer and wine.
Rune nodded again, and Beth grinned. "There's a reason why we put th' musicker here. Most of ye ain't big 'nuff t' take care'a yerselves if it comes t' fightin'. Now, mostly things is quiet, but sometimes a ruckus comes up. If there's a ruckus, ye get yer tail down behin' that bar, hear? Ain't yer job t' stop a ruckus. Tha's Boony's job, an' he be right good at it."
Beth tossed her curly tangle of hair over her shoulder again, and pointed at a shadowy figure across the room, in a little alcove near the door. She hadn't noticed it when she first came in, because her back had been to it, and the occupant hadn't moved to attract her attention. Rune squinted, then started. Surely she hadn't seen what she thought she'd seen-
Beth laughed, showing that she still had most of her teeth, and that they were in good shape. "Ain't never seen no Mintak, eh, fiddler? Well, Boony's a Mintak, an' right good at keepin' the peace. So mind what I said an' let him do what he's good at, 'f it come to it."
Rune blinked, and nodded. She wanted to stare at the creature across the room, but she had the vague feeling that too many people already stared at Boony, openly or covertly, and she wasn't going to add to their rudeness.
A Mintak . . . she'd heard about the isolated pockets of strange creatures that were scattered across the face of Alanda, but no one in her village had ever seen so much as an elven forester, much less a Mintak. They were supposed to have bodies like huge humans, but the heads of horses. The brief glimpse she'd gotten didn't make her think of a horse so much as a dog, except that the teeth hadn't been the sharp, pointed rending teeth of a canine, but the flat teeth of an herbivore. And the eyes had been set on the front of the head, not the sides. But the Mintak loomed a good head-and-a-half above the bartender, and that worthy was one of the tallest men Rune had ever seen.
Beth came bustling back with a bowl of stew, a mug, and a thick slice of bread covered in bacon drippings in one hand, and a pitcher with water beading the sides in the other. "Take this, there's a good lad." She'd evidently decided that Rune was terribly young, too young and girl-shy to be attracted, and had taken a big-sisterly approach to dealing with her. "You get dry an' look to run short, you nod at me or one'a th' other girls. Ol' Mathe, he don't like his musickers goin' dry; you heard him sayin' that, an' he meant it."
She put the pitcher on the floor beside the stool, shoved the rest into Rune's hands, and scampered off, with a squeal as one of the customers' pinches got a little closer to certain portions of her anatomy than she liked. She slapped the hand back and huffed away; the customer started to rise to follow-
And Boony stepped forward into the light. Now Rune saw him clearly; he wore a pair of breeches and a vest, and nothing else. He carried a cudgel, and he was a uniform dark brown all over, like a horse, and he had the shaggy hair of a horse on his face and what could be seen of his body. His eyes seemed small for his head; he had pointed ears on the top of his head, peeking up through longer, darker hair than was on his face, and that hair continued down the back of his neck like a mane. He looked straight at the offending customer, who immediately sat down again.
So Boony kept the peace. It looks like he does a good job, Rune mused.
But there was dinner waiting, and beyond that, a room full of people to entertain. She wolfed down her food, taking care not to get any grease on her fingers that might cause problems with the strings of her fiddle. The sooner she started, the sooner she could collect a few coins.
And hopefully, tonight Boony's services wouldn't be needed. Nothing cooled a crowd like a fight, and nothing dried up money faster.
She put out her hat, wedging it between her feet with one foot on the brim to keep it from being "accidentally" kicked out into the room, and re-tuned Lady Rose.
Cider or no, with all these people and only herself to entertain them, it was going to be a long night.
* * *
"Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen," Rune counted out the coins on the table under Mathe's careful eye. "That's the whole of it, sir. Nineteen coppers." The candle between them shone softly on the worn copper coins, and Mathe took a sip of his beer before replying.
"Not bad," Mathe said, taking nine and leaving her ten, scooping his coins off the table and into a little leather pouch. "In case ye were wonderin' lad. That's not at all bad for a night that ain't a feast nor Faire-day. Harse don' do much better nor that."
He set a bowl down in front of her, and a plate and filled mug. "Ye did well 'nough for another meal, boy. So, eat whiles I have my beer, an' we'll talk."
This time the stew had meat in it, and the bread had a thin slice of cheese on top. Getting an extra meal like that meant that she'd done more than "all right." She could use it, too; she was starving.
The public house was very quiet; Beth and the other girls had gone off somewhere. Whether they had lodgings upstairs or elsewhere, Rune had no idea, for they'd left while Rune was packing up, going out the back way through the kitchen. Presumably, they'd gotten their meals from the leftovers on their way through. Boony slept upstairs; she knew that for certain. So did Mathe and one of the cooks and all of the children, who turned out to be his wife and offspring.
Right now, she was was thinking about how this would have meant a month's take in Faire-season at home. She shook her head. "It seems like a lot-" she said, tentatively, "-but people keep telling me how much more expensive it is to live in the city."
Mathe sipped his own beer. "It is, and this'd keep ye for 'bout a day; but it's 'cause'a the rules, the taxes, an' the Priests," he said. "Ye gotta tithe, ye gotta pay yer tax, an' ye gotta live where they say. Here-lemme show ye-"
He stretched out his finger and extracted two coppers, and moving them to the side. "That's yer tithe-ye gotta pay tithe an' tax on what ye made, b'fore I took my share." He moved two more. "That's yer tax. Now, ye got six pence left. Rules say ye gotta live in res'dential distrik, 'less yer a relative or a special kinda hireling, like the cooks an' the kids and Boony is. Musickers don' count. So-there's fourpence a day fer a place w' decent folks in it, where ye c'n leave things an' know they ain't gonna make legs an' walk while ye're gone. That leaves ye tuppence fer food."
Rune blinked, caught off guard by the way four pennies evaporated-close to half her income for the day. "Tax?" she said stupidly. "Tithe?" Fourpence, gone-and for what?
Mathe shook his head. "Church is the law round 'bout towns," he told her, a hint of scolding in his voice. "Ye tithe, lad, an' ye base it on what ye took in. Same fer taxes. If ye don' pay, sooner 'r later they cotch up wi' ye, or sommut turns ye in, an' then they fine ye. They fine ye ten times what they figger ye owe."
"But how would they know what I owe them?" she asked, still confused. " 'Specially if I work the street-"
"They know 'bout what a musicker like you should make in a night, barrin' windfalls," he replied. "Twenny pence. That's two fer Church an' two fer tax. An' if ye get them windfalls, the lad as drops bit'a gold in yer hat an' the like, ye best r'port 'em too. Could be sommut saw it go in yer hat, an's gone t' snitch on ye. Could be 'tis a Priest in disguise, belike, testin' ye."