Nyd.

  I woke when the door hit the wall. Selka came in hard, like she wanted the place to know she’d survived the night. The hinge held. The wall didn’t. Slateboard groaned. Coin was already in her hands. Counting while moving meant the night had been busy, or she wanted it to look that way. She smelled like the night had been as long as it looked, and cheap wine. No blood. That was something. I stayed on my back and watched the rafters. One of the boards above me had split further in the night. It hadn’t fallen yet. I gave it another week.

  Bryn was awake, which meant he hadn’t slept. He sat with his knees pulled in, staring at an empty bottle like it might explain itself. His hands shook while he tried to cork it. He missed. He tried again. Still missed. I wasn’t sure if he had woken before me, or just hadn’t slept. These days, fifty-fifty as to which.

  “Morning,” Selka said. She laughed once, thin. Thinner than last time. Getting thinner each time. Bryn made a noise that didn’t commit to anything. Malda was still down in the back, breathing even. She slept like someone who expected to wake up. We’d worked the field together yesterday. She’d taken the heavy end every time and hadn’t looked to see if I noticed. When the pay came, she counted and put it away. That was usually enough to tell you what someone was worth. I sat up. The pallet complained. My shoulder found the slat again. I left it there. If you fixed things, people assumed you had spare time or spare coin. Both were mistakes.

  I checked my belt before I stood. Knife where it should be. Pouch still closed. The bucket by the wall hadn’t been touched. Selka never drank water when there was wine. Bryn drank whatever was closer. The wind came through the boards low and steady. It carried the field with it. Rope and damp wood had a smell you learned once and didn’t forget. Outside, something creaked.

  Selka looked over while I washed my face. “You working?”

  “Yes.”

  That was enough to tell her everything she needed. Bryn snorted. I didn’t look at him.

  “Rent,” I said.

  He stared at the bottle like it might have his share of coin. Malda opened her eyes and met mine. She nodded toward the door. I nodded back. We didn’t bother with words before work. She’d get as ready as she could, morning piss to the alley, eyes to greet the sun. People said the gallows sounded like breathing if you listened for it. That was a story told by people who didn’t have to go near them. I pulled on my boots and tightened the laces until they stopped slipping. Then I stepped around Selka, opened the door, and went out to collect coin from men whose accounts were already closed.

  I stepped out and the field was already there. Its why the four of us could afford the hovel. It’s view made it cheap. I’ve been told the rich pay more for a view. Not us. Gallows Field sat wide, just beyond the hovels, like it had settled in and decided not to move, long, long ago. Three bodies hung from the beam this morning. They’d twisted themselves into stillness sometime before dawn. The ropes were new. Someone had taken care with the knots. That usually meant Knights had overseen it instead of leaving it to a clerk. Tuvo the Leadman was already sitting on his spot, a crate turned on its side near the post where the ground dipped. He liked to watch from there. Said it saved his knees. He was wide in the middle and soft everywhere else, his coat pulled tight and stained dark at the cuffs. He held a heel of bread in one hand and a cup in the other. He didn’t look up when I approached. He didn’t have to.

  “Morning,” I said. Why waste words when one will do just fine.

  He lifted his cup a little. “Get them down.” I looked up at the ropes. One man’s neck had gone clean. The other two had not. Their feet had scraped the post raw. One of them had pissed himself before the end. It showed.

  “Bury?” I asked.

  Tuvo snorted into his cup. “No. Pit.” That told me what kind of day it was.

  The paupers’ pit sat at the edge of the field where the ground sagged like it had given up. It wasn’t deep, not really. Just wide. They were never deep. This one was the third we’d dug since year-turn. They didn’t bother covering it until there were enough bodies to make it worth the effort. Dirt cost time. Time cost coin. Seventeen now, with these three. I did the count without meaning to. Everyone who worked the field did. Twenty would be enough. Then more digging. Those were long days.

  I climbed the post and cut the first rope. The body dropped hard and the smell came up with it. Old sweat. Waste. The sour-sweet edge that meant the bowels had gone at the end. Tuvo once said he’d told a knight to take the condemned potty before the gallows-dance. The knight had laughed at the suggestion. The second man was worse. His neck had stretched instead of breaking. There was a sound when he hit the ground, wet and wrong. The third followed. The ropes slapped the beam as they snapped free. The stink settled in fast. Heat would make it worse later. For now it clung, thick as fog. It got into the mouth if you breathed wrong. I kept my breaths shallow and through my nose, slow and steady, warding them as best I could. That helped some. Not much. Dragging them was the worst part. The skin had cooled overnight but the insides hadn’t caught up yet. They bent the wrong way when I pulled. One of them left something behind in the grass. I didn’t look back to see what.

  The pit smelled before you reached it. Seventeen bodies made a smell you could feel in your eyes. Right in the back of them. It wasn’t one thing. It was everything that had once been inside people and wasn’t anymore. Rot wasn’t the right word for it yet. This was earlier. Wet. Thick. Alive in its own way. I rolled the first body in. It landed on someone’s shoulder and slid. The second followed. The third caught on an arm and stayed there for a moment, like it was thinking about climbing back out. I shoved it with my boot. It dropped. The smell surged. I swallowed it down and wiped my hands on my trousers even though it didn’t help. It never did. The stink stayed. It always stayed. It followed you back to the hovel, into sleep, into food if you weren’t careful.

  Tuvo was watching when I turned around. He took another bite of bread. “Seventeen,” he said.

  “Seventeen,” I agreed. He nodded, satisfied. That was all.

  Malda and I didn’t talk after the pit. There wasn’t much point. The work wasn’t finished and talking didn’t make it any lighter. Malda didn’t like to waste words in the same way she didn’t waste time. The corpse hauling had been the easy, if it can be called that, part of the day. The rest was just labor as the sun grew hotter. We did the corpses first before they really started to get ripe.

  The fourth gallows stood apart from the others, closer to the rise that faced the Black Keep. The Black Keep. Such a name. The fourth dance floor of hanging had been a frame for weeks now. Uprights set, crossbeam still waiting, the whole thing taller than the rest by a good span. Too tall for convenience or necessity. Someone had asked for it that way, and someone else had signed their name under the request. Orders from the Keep, Tuvo had said when the timbers arrived. Just that. Like it explained everything. I imagine they wanted a better view from on high. I could see in my minds eye a preening noble watching from the Black Keep with one of those tubes with glass on both ends. A spyglass. Or a looking glass to death.

  We fetched the hammers from where they leaned against the post, handles worn smooth by hands that didn’t belong to us anymore. Mine had a split near the head that I’d wrapped with twine. Malda’s was heavier. She liked it that way. She always took the heavier one. The wood smelled clean, at least. Fresh-cut beams, resin still clinging to the grain. It didn’t belong out here. That was the first thing you noticed. New wood in Gallows Field looked wrong, like clean linen on a corpse. We worked without counting strikes. You only counted when you were tired, and neither of us wanted to admit to that yet. The uprights were already sunk deep. Today was bracing and leveling, fitting the supports so the weight wouldn’t twist when it finally carried what it was meant to carry.

  A third of the bastard done, maybe a little more. Enough that you could see what it was going to be. I stepped back once and tilted my head, lining it up with the Keep on the rise. From the right angle, if you squinted past the smoke and the roofs, you could imagine it. The beam high enough that a body would hang clear, black against the sky. Tall enough to be seen from a distance. Tall enough that someone watching from stone walls wouldn’t have to strain. Tall enough for their spyglass. That made sense. Most things did, once you stopped pretending they didn’t.

  “Where’s the others?” I said.

  Malda drove a spike home and rested the hammer against her thigh. She shrugged. One shoulder. Could mean anything.

  “Drunk,” I said.

  She nodded once.

  “Or they found something that paid better and smelled less.” I said more.

  Another nod. Longer this time. Work inside the walls was always cleaner. Even the bad jobs. Blood washed off stone easier than it soaked into dirt. People knew that. They didn’t need to be told twice. Malda picked up the hammer again and went back to it. I followed. The wood rang under the blows, on and on. The sound carried across the field, bounced off the other gallows, drifted toward the hovels. By the time we were done for the morning, my hands ached and the frame stood straighter than it had when we started. Still unfinished. Still waiting. Like most things.

  The girl came out of nowhere, the way they usually did. Bare feet, dirt up to the calves, hair tied back with something that had once been cloth. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. Maybe less. Still at the age to errand run. Not long now she’d be at the age to choose. What life did she want in the hovels? Back rending work like Malda, or her back on soft things like Selka, but her spirit rended in the process? Not many other choices. She stopped a few steps off, eyes back and forth from Malda to me and back again, waiting to see if either of us would snarl at her. When we didn’t, she stepped closer and held out the bundle.

  “From Tuvo the Leadman,” she said. Bread and salt pork. Not much of either. The bread was dense and already going hard at the edges. The pork was more salt than meat, wrapped in oilcloth that had been used too many times. Enough to keep the hands moving. Not enough to feel generous.

  “Tell him thanks,” I said. She nodded, already turning away. The food was off her hands. That was all that mattered. She vanished back toward the hovels without looking over her shoulder. Malda wiped her hands on her trousers and took half without comment. We sat on the beam’s shadow and ate where we were. No sense walking anywhere else. The field didn’t care. I watched her while she chewed. Malda was thick through the shoulders and hips, built like someone meant to haul weight like an ox. Her face was broad, features set heavy and plain, skin roughened by sun and work. No softness anywhere that hadn’t been earned the hard way. She kept her hair cut short, not for looks but because long hair got caught and pulled and burned time you didn’t have. She wasn’t ugly by accident. She just hadn’t been spared.

  If I wanted a quick fuck, Selka was the one. Selka smiled when she needed to, knew how to angle herself, how to make it feel like a favor even when it wasn’t. Malda never looked at anyone that way. She didn’t look at me at all, most days. Eyes on the work, on the ground, on whatever needed doing next. That suited me fine. She ate slow and paced, like she expected the food to last exactly as long as it did. When she was done, she folded the oilcloth and tucked it into her pocket to return later. No waste. I finished my share and stood. She did the same. Neither of us said anything. We picked up our hammers and went back to the frame. Malda set her feet, tested the beam with one hand, then swung. Solid. Clean hit. Every strike where it needed to be. She didn’t rush. She didn’t lag. She worked like the gallows were just another thing that needed building, no different from a fence or a shed. That was why I liked working with her. No questions. No stories. No looking my way. Just the sound of iron on wood, steady as it could be, in a field that never was. We worked until the sun climbed high enough to make the wood warm under the hand.

  A few hours in, it went wrong. Not all at once. Just enough that I noticed the line wasn’t holding true. One brace leaned a finger-width off, which didn’t sound like much until you pictured weight swinging from it. I stepped back and sighted it again. Malda did the same without me saying anything. She grunted.

  “Pull it,” I said. We pulled three boards free and laid them in the dirt. The nails came out bent and screaming. One split the wood when it finally let go. Neither of us swore. We weren’t carpenters. We were close enough until close enough wasn’t good enough anymore. We reset the brace, slower this time. Measured by eye. Checked it twice. It still wasn’t right, but it was better than it had been. That was how the day went. Fixing what we could, pretending the rest would hold. By the time the shadows stretched long again, Tuvo came waddling over from his crate. He circled the frame, hands clasped behind his back like he owned it instead of merely sitting near it. He stopped, squinted, and clicked his tongue.

  “That’s not square,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  He sighed, like this was news. “I’ll have to get a real carpenter in to guide you.” I wondered how much that would cost of our pay in the days to come.

  Malda wiped her hands on her trousers. “Where’s the last one?”

  Tuvo shrugged. “Disappeared.” He had been cheap, for he was paid in spirits. That could mean a lot of things. None of them were worth asking about. He reached into his coat and counted out coin, slow and for show. Five each. He placed them in our hands one at a time. Silver washed thin over tin, the Protector’s face stamped deep enough that it caught the light. Heavy enough to feel like something. Light enough to remind you it wasn’t. I turned one over with my thumb. I’d heard a fletcher earned fifteen of those in a day if he was any good. A knight twice that. Maybe more, if there was a campaign on. Gallows work didn’t pay. Everyone knew that. It just didn’t bother either. Tuvo nodded once, satisfied with himself, and went back to his crate. Malda tucked her coins away without counting. I did the same after a glance. Five was five. It would spend the same either way. The field was quiet again. The fourth gallows stood unfinished, taller than the rest, waiting on someone who knew how to make lines true. I rolled my shoulders and picked up my hammer. The day wasn’t done yet. I nodded to Malda. She nodded back. That was it. We didn’t make a thing of endings.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I went deeper into the hovels, toward the shadow the wall threw when the sun slid low. The air changed there. Less open. More stench. People pressed closer together the nearer you got to stone. Like it might rub off. The Hanged Dancer squatted where the ground dipped, its sign hanging crooked on a chain that had seen better days. A painted man swung from a rope, legs kicked out in a clumsy jig, smile stretched too wide. Someone had tried to make it funny once. They hadn’t succeeded. I shook my head at it anyway and kept walking. There was a horse trough just outside, water gone gray with use. I knelt and washed the field off my hands and face. The stink clung longer than it should have. It always did. I scrubbed until the water rippled dark and my skin burned a little. Good enough. I wiped my hands on my trousers, tucked the hammer into my belt next to the knife, and stepped inside. The tavern was dim after the sun. Took a moment for the shapes to settle. Pipe smoke hung low, thick enough to taste. Someone laughed too loud near the back. Desi the Rings sat in her corner.

  She always did. Back to the wall, table close, chair angled so she could see the door and the room without turning her head. Middle-aged, which meant she’d survived longer than most and learned from it. Her hair was still dark, though she worked at it. Her face held on to what it could. Attractive, once. Still was, if you didn’t look too close. Every finger carried a ring. Thick bands, stones that caught the light when she moved her hand. Gaudy. Deliberate in their gaudy. She liked people to know where their debt went. Desi loaned coin. She loaned it to people who needed it right now and couldn’t afford it later. Then she collected, with interest that grew teeth if you ignored it. Everyone knew that. Everyone still came to her. Mug sat near her, half-turned toward the room. Big man. Bigger scowl. His face was a map of old work, scars laid one over another like someone had tried to erase him and failed. He didn’t drink much. He didn’t talk at all unless Desi told him to. That was his value. Desi saw me as my eyes finished adjusting. She lifted two fingers from the table. Not a wave. More like a claim.

  I walked over. I stopped at her table. “Work?” I asked.

  Desi clicked her tongue and leaned back in her chair. “No hello? Always so damn droll, Nyd. You come in smelling like a field full of pissed corpses and can’t spare a greeting?”

  I shrugged. “Hi.” My face didn’t move. There wasn’t much point. Mug made a sound through his nose. Might’ve been a chuckle. Might’ve been gas. Hard to tell with him.

  Desi smiled like she’d won something small. “There we go.” She tapped one ring against the table, then another. “I’ve got a bit of work. Not much. Pays three.” I waited. You didn’t rush Desi. She enjoyed the pause.

  “Kemi,” she said finally. “The baker’s boy. Owes me forty. Time’s up.”

  I pictured him without trying. Flour on his sleeves. Soft hands. Too young to think numbers mattered once bread was involved.

  “And if he don’t have?” I asked.

  Desi shrugged, all laconic. “Then you break something to remind him. Let him know you’ll be back to break something else.” She leaned forward a little, rings catching the light. “Third time, Mug comes.”

  I nodded. I knew what that meant, that meant a dead man. Everyone in the room would’ve understood it the same way. Desi didn’t hire out death. That kept her hands clean. Mug did the death. Desi hired out the breaking. Mug’s scowl didn’t change.

  “Three,” I said.

  Desi slid the coins across the table. I didn’t count them. I didn’t need to. She knew counts better than I knew the gallows. I turned away before she could say anything else. Three wasn’t much. But it spent. And breaking didn’t bother me either. I left the Hanged Dancer and went back into the hovels. They sagged as the light went, shadows pooling where streets pretended to exist. Tents patched with sailcloth leaned against half-built shacks. Smoke drifted low and never quite cleared. Children sat too still near cookfires that burned down to nothing, watching pots that wouldn’t fill. Men argued constantly as ambiance. Women counted without hope. Everything felt temporary except the hunger. It was all outside the walls, officially. Unofficially, the walls didn’t care. The malaise, no, the misery, crept through gates and cracks and guard bribes. A street just inside the walls could look the same as one out here if the stones were old enough and the overseer looked away. You learned that early. Stone didn’t make you safe. Coin did.

  I passed a gap where you could see the Iron Quarter’s smoke rising, thick and steady. Forges burned there all night. Smiths earned real money. Enough to rent space that didn’t decay, quickly at least. Enough to wash every day. I tried to picture what it would take to get in. Years of learning. A master who didn’t drink himself to death. Hands that hadn’t already been bent the wrong way by bad work. The Market of Chains lay farther on, all noise and counting. Merchants there wore clean boots and didn’t look down unless they wanted something. Slavery paid well. Everyone knew it. Buying, selling, moving people from one ledger to another. Hard to get into unless you were a cruel bastard, or could pretend long enough to pass. The pay was good, though. Very good. I turned the thought over and put it back where I kept the others.

  The bakery squatted near the bend where the street narrowed, bricks blackened by old fires, door hanging open to let the heat out. It smelled better than most places, even on a bad day. Kemi was outside, sweeping dirt like it might leave if he asked right. Flour dust clung to his sleeves. He moved fast, nervous, like the broom might bite him. He looked up and saw me. He dropped the broom and ran. I sighed and went after him.

  He didn’t make it far. Kemi ran like someone who’d never had to run for anything important. All speed at the start, no sense of where to put it. I caught him halfway down the lane when his foot slid on the dirt and he windmilled, trying to stay upright. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him sideways, hard, wedging him into the narrow gap between a butcher’s shop and a leaning hovel. The butcher had been busy earlier. Blood had run out into the dirt and stayed there, dark and slick. I shoved Kemi back and planted him down in it. He hit on his ass with a wet sound and a sharp breath. He was no more than sixteen. Skinny in the way that meant he ate when he could and not when he should. Too much bone in the shoulders, wrists thin as rope. His eyes never stopped moving. He pushed himself up on his hands and smeared them red-brown without noticing.

  “Nyd,” he said, breathless already. “Please. I just need more time.”

  I said nothing. He talked anyway. They always did. “I’ll have it. I swear. The dice, I thought I could turn it. I almost did. Just… just a little more time.”

  Still nothing. It was almost always gambling. Fools. He fumbled in his pocket and came up with coin, spilling it into his palm like an offering. Seven pieces. Probably all he had.

  “That’s it,” he said. “All of it.”

  I looked at the coins, then at him.

  “Five for Desi looks like.” I said. “Still owe thirty-five more.”

  His face pinched. “It’s seven.”

  I leaned in just enough that he could see I wasn’t joking. “It’s five. Desi will believe me.” I took the coins from his hand and sorted them without looking hurried. Two went into my pouch. The other five I slid into the inner pocket, separate. Desi’s cut. She would believe me. I also knew she figured I skimmed. If not, I’d have argued the three.

  Kemi saw it and shook his head fast. “No, please, Nyd, please, I need those. I can make it right. I swear I can.” He reached for my arm. Bad choice. I thought about the hammer at my belt. How easy it would be. How final it could get if the swing went wrong. The fist was easier. I hit him once, straight and short. Knuckles to nose. There was a sound like biting into something soft. He screamed and folded, hands flying up too late. Blood came quick, bright against the dirt and old stains. He rocked forward, gagging, eyes wide with shock more than pain. It was broke for sure, turned to the side of his cheek. I can lay a man out proper when I want to. I grabbed his hair and held his head steady while he cried.

  “You’re running out of time,” I said. Kept my voice level. “I come next. Just once more.” He sobbed, words gone useless. “Then Mug.” That cut through what the punch hadn’t. His body went slack in my hand. I let him go and stepped back. He stayed where he was, broken nose already swelling, blood dripping onto his shirt like he might drown in it. I walked away. People said gambling was a vice. Made it sound like a luxury. Truth was, people gambled because it felt like doing something when everything else was already decided. Dice didn’t care who you were. Cards didn’t remember yesterday. For a moment, you could believe the next turn might be different. It never was. I headed back, five coins heavier for Desi, two for me, and one more lesson left behind in the dirt.

  The Hanged Dancer looked the same from the outside. The sign still swung. The man still danced. I pushed through the door and let the noise take me. Desi was still in her corner, only now she had company. A greasy-looking man leaned in close, hair slicked back, fingers worrying the rim of his cup like it might confess something if he kept at it. Merchant, maybe. Or someone who wanted to sound like one. His boots were clean enough to notice. That told me where he stood. I didn’t interrupt. I walked up, laid the five coins on the table beside her elbow, and stepped back. Desi glanced down, nodded once, and slid the coins away with two fingers without breaking stride in her conversation. That was one of the reasons I liked working for her. The other was the perk.

  The Hanged Dancer was hers. Won it off a debt years back, or so the story went. When you worked for Desi, it was understood you drank. Not to excess. Just enough that the dust went down easier and the hands loosened. A few flagons of bitter ale were part of the pay. No one kept count. I took a seat at the bar. Sauld was working it. He didn’t talk. Didn’t ask questions. Didn’t banter. He saw my face, reached for a mug, and poured without ceremony. The ale was dark and sharp. I took a long pull and let it sit. The day replayed itself without asking. The hovel. The field. The pit. The frame rising crooked and slow. Kemi’s eyes when he ran. The sound his nose made when it broke. None of it stuck out as special. That was the strange part.

  I drank again. By the time the light outside shifted and the room filled with more bodies, I’d worked it out. Five for Desi. Two from Kemi. Three for the job. That put me up ten for the day. Ten coin wasn’t a fortune. But it was enough to eat, drink, and sleep without worrying about tomorrow until it arrived. That counted for something. I stayed where I was, ale in hand, and let the evening come on.

  Bryn came in just before the room filled proper. He wasn’t far gone yet. Just enough drink on him to loosen his shoulders and dull the edges. He spotted me at the bar and made a line for the stool beside mine, plopping down hard enough to make Sauld glance over. Bryn slapped a coin on the wood.

  “Ale,” he said. Sauld poured it and slid it over without a word. Bryn took a pull and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “So,” he said. “How’d the day go?”

  I drank. “Did you work?”

  He shrugged. One shoulder. Casual. “Bit.” I watched the ale settle in his mug. Bryn said that a lot. Bit. Sometimes it meant hauling. Sometimes it meant nothing at all. Sometimes drinking was the work, depending on who you asked. He always had his share of rent, most of the time. That was the only part that mattered. Most of the time. I’d only had to box his ears once.

  “Pits are running tonight,” he said after a moment. “You going?”

  There it was. I didn’t answer right away. I knew why he was asking. Bryn liked the fighting pits same as anyone else out here. Blood, shouting, the chance that someone stronger than you might get dropped in the dirt. But that wasn’t the real reason he wanted me along. I could read. Not well. Well enough. Numbers too. Sums didn’t scare me. Words didn’t slide off my eyes. That alone made me useful in ways most people in the hovels weren’t. I hadn’t found a way to make coin at it, the business of the Scrivner is beyond my skills, but it gave me an edge. Bryn couldn’t read a bet board to save his life. Letters might as well have been scratches. Without me, he always thought the pit runners were cheating him. Sometimes they were. Sometimes they weren’t. He never knew which.

  “You still don’t trust them,” I said.

  Bryn snorted. “Would you?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s why I count.” He grinned at that, like it was a joke we shared. He took another drink and leaned back, hopeful already. I finished my ale and set the empty down. It was refilled quick, another perk. Ten coin in my pocket. Enough for a night out. Enough for trouble if I went looking for it.

  “Maybe,” I said. Bryn nodded like that settled it.

  Selka came in with the evening. She’d done herself up for work. Same clothes, just pulled tighter and brushed clean enough to pass in low light. The dress was old and a little dirty no matter how hard she tried, cut to show what paid best. She was still perky. The lines were settling into her face, even though we were roughly the same age, but everything else was pert. Cheap paint sat high on her cheeks, rubbed in heavy. Her hair hung loose tonight, red-blonde and dull in the candlelight, resting on her shoulders like she meant it to. Anyone with eyes knew what she did. I watched her cross the room without pretending otherwise. Selka looked better at night. Daylight was honest. Evening let her choose what to show.

  We’d shared the hovel two years now, I think? Maybe a bit longer. Long enough that nothing needed explaining. She worked hard. Just differently than Malda. We fucked about once a week, regular as rent, when the mood and the coin lined up. Six coin. Friend rate. She knew I didn’t hurt her, which led to the friend rate, or maybe just to keep the shared space more amicable. Maybe both. Cheap enough to keep it simple. Honest enough not to pretend it meant more. It didn’t for me. I don’t think it did for her. She came up to us and took Bryn’s mug without asking. Drank, wiped her mouth with two fingers, and smiled like she hadn’t just stolen it.

  “You boys going to the pits tonight?” she asked. Bryn glanced at me, hopeful already. I looked at Selka instead. The way she leaned on the bar. The way the paint didn’t quite hide the tired lines if you knew where to look. Six coin would buy a quiet night and her warm body and nothing else to think about. No shouting. No counting. No Bryn leaning over my shoulder asking if the board was lying to him. The pits would cost more. Different kind of fun. I took another drink and let the thought sit there between us. Ten coin in my pocket. One evening to spend it.

  Malda came in while Selka was still waiting on an answer. She looked worse than she had that morning, which told me she’d gone to her other work. Tanner’s yard down by the run-off. Honest work, if you could call any of it that. Hauling soaked hides, scraping, carrying vats that burned the nose and never quite washed out of clothes. It paid steady. Not much, but it showed up when it was supposed to. I knew what that meant for her coin. She’d have enough. Always did. Not like mine. Some days it was three. Some days Desi needed something more done and it turned into more than that. Unpredictable. Useful. Dangerous if you started counting on it. Malda preferred her coin in honest work. I respected that. She smelled like it too. Sharp and sour, under the dirt. Her sleeves were dark with it, trousers stiff where they’d dried wrong. She paused just inside the door, letting her eyes adjust, then made for the bar without hurry. Sauld poured her an ale before she asked. She nodded thanks and took it to the end of the counter, not crowding us, not avoiding us either.

  Malda had moved into the hovel last year. No drama. No stories. She paid her share on time, didn’t steal, didn’t pry. That was more than the last lout that held her corner of the shack. We kicked him to the gutter when we found him rifling Bryn’s hidey-hole. Malda was a good board mate. In truth, all three of them were. Sometimes, when the night went long and the ale softened the edges, the four of us even pretended we were friends. Shared a laugh. Split food without counting too close on who owed what.

  We all knew better. It was temporary. All of it. The hovel. Just a way for the rent-lord to cram more coin into a small shack. The work. The way we leaned on each other like it might last. Something better always came along for someone eventually. Or something worse did. Either way, nothing stayed put. Malda drank, quiet as ever. Selka leaned against the bar, watching the room. Bryn waited on me like I’d already decided. Ten coin in my pocket. One evening ahead of me. I let it stretch a little longer before choosing what it would be.