1.3. Slow and Silent

“Grig.” Seth smiled and, behind his back, wiped his thumb on his shirt. “Evening.”

Grigori took in the great pale horse, its black leather tack. “This big bastard’s not yours, surely?”

“Lady who just walked in,” Seth said, and pressed three solitars into Grigori’s palm. “The works for her horse, she said.”

Grigori scanned the coins for clippings, found none, and pocketed them. “Fuck’re you doing here, Seth? Didn’t you get fired?”

“Quit this time, actually,” Seth said.

“That’s not what Esza said.”

“She’s mixing up this time and two times ago.” Seth stuck his hands into the pockets of his overalls.

“And the carrying-on earlier. The banging and the yelling.” Grig squinted. “Was that you?”

“Nope,” Seth said. “Heard about it, though. Thought maybe you could use someone to climb onto that roof, patch that hole.”

“What hole?”

“Whatever hole.” Seth shrugged. “Or if there’s anything else you need. Anything seasonal going on. Still in the high times, y’know. Deathspell’s holding strong. Months until the roads get real bad.”

Grigori’s mouth twisted under his scruff. “I’ll put in the word, man. You go on and get now, right?”

Seth pretended he couldn’t see through the other man’s transparent lie. “Course, Grig. Course.” He headed for the evening and wiped the straw from his feet. “And thank you. I’ll see you around.”

“Sure.”

Seth strolled down the hill from the Sidewinder, back to the river that abutted it. Second time in one evening. Might as well get a dip in before the job. He’d changed into his other set of clothes, the set that hadn’t been waterlogged and bloodied, but there was still some dried blood in the furrows of his nose, and the shallow cut on his arm where Polecat had tested his claws. Annalise must not have noticed. No big surprise. He was not the sort of man a woman like her noticed.

He stripped down and waded into the river. It carried the cold from the slow souring of the season in the north. Talk of high times aside, it wouldn’t be so long now. At least working for Rohan would put some walls up around him at night. Keep some rogue seraph from dragging him off once the winter war started. Maybe running could wait. Maybe he could just sit by and let someone else call his shots, for a while at least. It wasn’t like he was doing a wonderful job belonging to himself.

The sun was setting; its light reflected in tidal ribbons across the distant deathspell roof. Seth had heard once that beyond that dome the sky was actually blue. Odd to think about. The last lit kindred who remembered it as anything but green had long since gone back to the dirt and the turning wheel.

He stuck a thumb in his ear and listened. Annalise was eating something, by the sound of chewing and clinking cutlery.

So he waited, and felt the night grow colder, and felt the passage of time toward the bad months and the bad jobs, his thumb to his ear, and the cold moon showed him his hunkered shadow across the tall grasses, leashed uncomfortably to his heels. When had he gotten so skinny?

Then a long, sawing huff of a snore sounded through his thumbpad, and it was time to get to work.

Back into his clothes. Back to the Sidewinder, slow and silent. Moving through the pools of shadow cast by the posts of the porch. Music playing from inside the main taproom. He could climb a clapboard quiet as a cat, but these walls were thin. He circled round to the stables instead, crept onto its roof. An animal whinnied below his feet; he hastened to the wall of the lodge in case old Grig came to check on that.

Up the lodge wall he went, and he was making good time when a sound came through the pine and froze him. Voices. His own name, out of Grigori’s mouth.

His fingers crimped into the clapboards and stilled him.

“Seth il Gutierre?” There was Esza, all sweetheart custom absent. “What the fuck was he doing in my stable?”

“What’s Seth il Gutierre ever doing?” Grigori replied. “Pacing around like a mutt waiting for you to drop a scrap or two. He took in the big Orwinese lady’s horse, I think. The one in the suite. Passed me a brace and a half for the works.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“A brace and—Wycrest’s wilting whack. She told me she paid him five.”

“Well, there you go. Still an overpay either way. And we pay three-and-one to the Seth il Gutierre tax. Call it alms to St. Sorrel and hope he finds a hot deal on a sense of shame.”

“How’d he look?”

“Ah, you know. Skinny. Sad. Do you reckon… maybe there’s something we could pass his way.”