As the twilight gathered, Orain found a cookshop and commanded a meal. Romilly felt inclined to protest.
“You should not – I can pay my share-”
Orain shrugged. “I hate to dine alone. And Dom Carlo made it clear he has other fish to fry this night….”
She bent her head, accepting graciously. She had never been in a public tavern or cookshop before, and she noted there were no women present except for the bustling fat waitress who came and slapped crockery hi front of them and fussed away again. If Orain had known her true sex he would never have brought her here; if a lady, unimaginably, came in here, there would have been all sorts of deferential fuss made, they would never have taken her quite simply for granted. Far less would she be able to lounge here at ease, her feet propped on the bench across from her, sipping from a tankard of cider, while the good smell of cooking gradually filled the room.
No, it was better to remain a boy. She had respectable work, three silver bits for a tenday; no cook-woman or dairymaid could hope to command such pay for any work she could do, and she remembered that Rory’s grandmother, telling of her lost affluence, had spoken of the fact that when her husband did not seek her bed, he was sent, quite without worrying about what the dairymaid thought about it, to sleep with the dairymaid as a matter of course. Better to spend all her life in breeches and boots than have that added to the regular duties of a dairymaid’s work!
She found herself wondering if Luciella made such routine demands of her women. Well, he must at some times – there was Nelda’s son. It made Romilly uncomfortable to think of her father that way, and she reminded herself that he was a cristoforo . . . but would that make such a difference? In the world where she had been brought up it was taken for granted that a nobleman would have bastards and nedestro sons and daughters. Romilly had never really thought about their mothers.
She shifted uneasily in her seat, and Orain said with a grin, “Getting hungry? Something smells good in the kitchen yonder.” Half a dozen men were flinging darts at a board hung at the back of the tavern, a few others playing dice. “Shall we have a game of darts, lad?”
Romilly shook her head, protesting that she did not know the game. “But don’t let me stop you.”
“You’ll never learn younger, then,” Orain said, and Romilly found herself standing, urged to fling the darts.
“Hold it this way,” Orain instructed, “and just let it go – you don’t have to push it.”
“That’s the way,” said one of the men standing behind her in the crowd, “Just imagine the circle painted on the wall is the head of King Carolin and you have a chance at the fifty copper reis offered for his head!”
“Rather,” said a bitter voice somewhere behind the first speaker, “that the head is of that bloodthirsty wolf Rakhal – or his chief jackal Lyondri, the Hastur-Lord!”
“Treason,” said another voice and the speaker was quickly hushed, “That kind o’ talk’s not safe even here beyond the Kadarin – who knows what kind of spies Lyondri Hastur may be sending into the city?”
“I say, may Zandru plague’em both with boils and the bald fever,” said another, “What matters it to free mountain men which great rogue plants his backside on the throne or what greater rogue tries to pry his arse loose from the seat? I say Zandru take’em both off to his hells and I wish ‘im joy of their company, so that they stay south o’ the river and leave honest men to go about their business in peace!”
“Carolin must ha’ done something or they’d never kicked him off the throne,” someone said, “Down there, the Hali’imyn think the Hastur are kin to their filthy Gods – I’ve heard some tales when I travel down there, I could tell you-”
The darts had been forgotten; no one came to take a turn from Romilly. She whispered to Orain, “Are you going to let them talk that way about King Carolin?”
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