After some time, Roth opened his eyes and looked up. “Will you pray tonight?”
Malen regarded his boy for a long moment. “I don’t think so, son. Not tonight.” He tipped his bowl slightly toward the boy. “Are you grateful for this?” He smiled tiredly.
His son smiled back. “You could fry the other trout, instead.”
Malen considered it briefly. “It’d be a waste. I’ll dry it and we’ll get a couple of meals out of it. Maybe tonight we’ll just pick the fish from the stew, how’s that?”
Roth carefully spooned a bite of the trout from his bowl, taking care to avoid the floating wheat. Watching the skill with which his son performed the simple feat reminded Malen that it wasn’t the first time.
He put down his own spoon. “We need to talk, Roth. I need to tell you some things.”
His boy nodded and began working at a second bit of fish.
“The captain has no more work for me. I won’t be going back to the trawler.”
Roth paused and looked up at him. His face held the kind of grave expression that a child so young shouldn’t know. The boy understood the realities of their situation, where they could wind up if his father couldn’t find work.
Before Malen could say more, a knock came at the door. He started at the intrusion, but was grateful for an excuse to look away from the concern in his son’s face. He got up and went to the door.
A very young girl stood there, her blouse pulled down off her shoulders far enough to expose the tops of her breasts. She’d painted her face more expertly than a girl her age should have had the skill to do. She would be a beautiful woman in ten years. Today, she was maybe thirteen. Still, she looked up at him with a wanton, seductive expression that Malen believed made her door-to-door trade a successful one.
“A silver. Or four realm plugs if you let me stay the night.” She looked past him into the home. “I can sleep on the floor.”
Several times a week the girls of the Wanship slums worked the doors, but Malen had never seen this particular young woman before. “I don’t have—”
“I’ll give the boy his turn for free,” she added. “Make a man of him.”
Desperation crept into her face. She needed a place to stay. And he wanted to help. But with wharf-drabs, if one let conscience get the better of caution, things of value had a way of disappearing in the night. And he had need of their last few valuables.
“I’m sorry,” he began, “We can’t—”
“For food, then,” she broke in. “A bowl of whatever’s on your table. That’s a bargain you can’t deny.” She began pulling her blouse further down, to give him a look, as she eyed him provocatively.
Malen caught her hand before she could expose herself. “There’s no need of that,” he said. “Wait here.”
As he crossed to the table to pick up his bowl, he realized he hadn’t seen a brand on the girl’s breast near her nipple. She wasn’t yet working for a mack-man who whored her out. She was playing a dangerous game without such protection—both prostitutors and callers might beat her. Returning to the door, he handed her the food. “I need the bowl back. So I’ll wait while you eat.”
Most of the people who lived nearby weren’t really neighbors. The houses were rented. People came and went. Often quickly. Often in the shadows of evening. And of those whose faces he might recognize, some few shared his bad fortune. But mostly, the tenants at this end of the district walked with their heads down and lips shut. Wharf-drift, was what they were. Grifters, peddlers and pawners, door-knockers, and sad sacks who seemed to use what money they could come by to drink bay rum endlessly. Despite all that, he would avoid even the appearance of impropriety. He wouldn’t invite her in. She would have to eat at the doorway.
She took the bowl from his hands, seeming to understand that she wouldn’t be allowed inside. “If you don’t want me to come in, I can—”
“Never mind. The food is free.” He stood waiting.
Understanding bloomed on her face and she set to the bowl of mash, taking no note of the weevils. She’d downed it entirely in a matter of moments, upending the bowl to suck every last drop. She wiped her mouth more delicately than he might have imagined she would, and gave him a look of gratitude he’d always remember.
Then she handed him the bowl and moved on to the next house. Malen saw the door open, and the girl talk with the person who stood just out of sight. She cast a look back in his direction as a hand checked her breast for a brand, then pulled her inside.
There’d always been wharf-drift in Wanship. Young drabs knocking on slum doors. But since League reform, there’d been more of them. And younger. He was no economist, but it didn’t seem to him that the levies and programs were helping the people who paid them.
Malen studied the bowl in his hands for a moment before returning to his chair. His son watched him as he settled himself and prepared to tell the boy what he’d decided. Before he could begin, Roth spoke.
“I can help, Da. I’ve learned some of the wharf games. I’m good at them, too. Give me a few thin plugs and I can turn them into silver, I know it.” An eager look shone on his son’s face.
“No!” He surprised himself with the violence of his response. He supposed it had to do with letting Marta down where Roth was concerned. And wharf-drift.
The boy stared back at Malen, looking a bit afraid, but more than anything else, sad. Sad in the way one feels when they helplessly watch someone they love suffer. Malen knew that look. He’d seen it in his own reflection. It had stared back at him from the still morning waters of Wanship Bay every morning since Marta had gone to her earth.
“Roth,” he began, finding a soft tone and giving the boy an understanding smile. “I don’t ever want you playing wharf games. Just remember that the people these friends of yours are fleecing are families like us. Every thin plug you take off them is a bowl of mash a father can’t give his son.” He thought a moment, and added. “We’re down. And we’re going to be down for a while. But I want you to remember this: Any man willing to work, if he’ll let go his pride, can find something to lift or push or drag, and someone to place a cold iron plug in his hand for doing so. That’s a heavy net to haul, but you keep a stitch of honor for hauling it.”
His son looked back at him in a way that made him think he understood. After a long moment, Roth licked his lips and spoke. “The dock chamberlain was here.”
Malen’s heart beat hard as if mule-kicked. And he began to silently calculate the day’s date. He’d completely lost track of time inside the endless routine of scrubbing down the trawler decks, scrambling together whatever ingredients he could scrape up into barely edible mash, getting Roth to bed with a story or two, and sleepless nights with Marta on his mind.
Roth showed his father sympathetic eyes, worried eyes. “He says you’re behind with rent. He says he’s coming back in three days. With help. He says it’ll be coin or culling when he comes.”
Pay the back rent or they’d be evicted; Malen had known this was coming. There won’t be time to earn a silver and three. Never mind find the work to do it.
But he didn’t want these things to lay heavy on his son’s young heart. A child should get to be a child, have imaginings, sing tuneless songs out loud and expect applause. He should get to chase daring adventures for no other reason than that they occurred to him. There’d be time enough later on for sober-mindedness.
Malen gave his son a comforting smile. “Here’s the truth of it, son. Like I said, we’re going to be down for a while. But it won’t always be so. We’ll get back on top.” He paused a moment, considering. “You may plant that seed in summer soil,” he added, reassuring his boy that sometimes things come later than they should. But they still come.