Charming Sharra, page 12
A woman was sitting on one of the mattresses, playing a plaintive tune on a wooden flute; she looked up when Sharra’s head appeared in the stairwell, set the flute down, and watched the new arrival.
“Hello,” Sharra said.
The other woman didn’t respond.
“My name is Sharra the..,” Sharra began. Then she stopped, and reconsidered. She had intended to say “Sharra the Charming,” but she realized she did not want to call herself that anymore. She had had thirty years to think about it, and had long ago realized that it was a stupid, childish name to give herself, and no one else had ever actually called her that and meant it. She remembered what Kordis had called her, and concluded, “Sharra of the Sands.”
“I’m Irith. Virina hired you to take Lissa’s place?”
Sharra glanced at the empty mattress. “I suppose so,” she said.
“Then you sleep there,” Irith said, jerking a thumb. “Put your stuff anywhere it fits.”
“I don’t have any stuff.”
Irith frowned. “Why not?”
“I was robbed,” Sharra said. “I’m taking this job to make enough money to get home.”
“Why are you dressed like that?”
“It’s what I was wearing when…when the robbers caught me.”
“Why? I mean, why were you dressed like that?”
“I was trying to impress someone. It didn’t work.” She hesitated, looking down at her dress, then asked, “Would you have a spare tunic I might borrow? I’ll return it as soon as I can get my own.”
Irith considered Sharra for a moment, then said, “You’ll need a skirt, too. And an apron. And I don’t think those shoes are going to last very long. You’re going to be on your feet all day.”
Sharra grimaced. “I thought I could just put a tunic over the dress for now.”
Irith snorted. “You do know there’s a slit up one side of your skirt, don’t you?”
“Of course I do!”
“And about every third customer is going to try to slip his hand in there.”
“Oh.” Sharra looked down again, judged where tabletop height would be, and decided Irith was probably right.
“Of course, if you don’t mind that…” Irith said.
“I mind,” Sharra said. “But I don’t have any money for new clothes. This dress is literally all I have right now. Please, could you loan me a tunic?”
“Where’d you get a dress like that, anyway? Did you make it?”
“No. I couldn’t make anything like this.”
“You bought it?”
Sharra hesitated, then admitted, “My sister made it for me.”
“Was it for something special?”
She was not about to admit the truth, that she had hoped to sway a wizard into forgiving a debt; she substituted, “I just wanted to look nice.”
“You said you wanted to impress someone. Trying to catch a rich husband?”
“No, I had a husband. I was just showing off.” That was why she had bought dresses on Luxury Street often enough, even if this wasn’t one of them. She knew that before Dulzan left her she would never have admitted that, but thirty years of introspection had had an effect.
“You were married? What happened?”
“He left me.”
“With your looks?”
Sharra grimaced. “I was…” She groped for the right word. She knew that she had been known as Sharra the Petty, but “petty” didn’t really seem to convey it. “I did not treat him well,” she said.
She saw the change in Irith’s expression, and hastily said, “That was a long time ago.”
“Really? How old were you when you married him, twelve?”
“Eighteen. I’m older than I look.” She was getting tired of saying that.
“You must be. You didn’t treat him well?”
Sharra did not answer that.
“Did he treat you well, before he left?”
“Better than I deserved,” Sharra said.
It would have taken so little, she thought, to have kept Dulzan reasonably happy. If she had let him spend his time at Tizzi’s Tavern with his friends, if she hadn’t dragged him to those fancy events at the overlord’s palace…
Irith looked unconvinced, but she turned to a battered wooden chest and lifted the lid. “I only have the two, the one I’m wearing and this one, so try not to damage it.” She lifted out a folded white tunic.
“Thank you!” Sharra said, stepping forward.
Irith hesitated. “Seriously, this is just a loan until you can get your own.”
“I understand that. I’ll return it as soon as I can.”
Reluctantly, Irith gave her the tunic; Sharra accepted it, and asked, “Do you have a skirt to go with it?”
“I’m not sure how well it will fit,” Irith said, as she rummaged through the chest. “I’m taller than you are.”
“I can fold over the waistband.”
“I suppose.” Irith pulled out a skirt of dull brown wool, poorly cut, badly woven, and lacking any sort of decoration. Sharra bit her lip; that would be the ugliest thing she had ever worn in her life. Still, it would do. She accepted the skirt, and set it aside while she began tugging at the shoulders of her gown. She had been wearing that thing for thirty years, and would be happy to be rid of it.
Irith watched as Sharra stripped off her dress and pulled the tunic over her head. Both women noticed it was a little baggy, but neither remarked on it.
Sharra stepped into the skirt and pulled it up, but discovered when she buttoned it that it did not want to stay at her waist; it slid down to her hips and she had the definite impression that it might fall to the floor if she let it go. She looked for a drawstring, but found none. “Do you have a belt I could use?” she asked.
“No. You’ll need to find a bit of rope. Virina probably has something.”
Sharra grimaced. “What about an apron?”
“No.” Irith nodded toward the other mattress. “Challin might have one. She’s working downstairs; you can ask her.”
Sharra guessed that was the girl she had seen serving customers while she had been speaking to Virina the innkeeper. Challin was short, plump, and very young, but an apron did not need to fit the way a tunic or skirt did. Holding her borrowed skirt in place, Sharra bent down to retrieve her dress. She picked it up and looked it over.
It was more than thirty years old, but still looked almost new, since it had spent most of that time as stone. It was not only revealing, it was, judging by what she had seen on the streets, seriously out of style. She glanced at the mattress she had been assigned. There was nowhere to hang the dress, but she could fold it up…
Or not. She didn’t want to show off her body anymore. Thirty years on display was enough.
“Would you like to have this?” she asked Irith, holding it out.
Irith started. “It wouldn’t fit me,” she said.
“Maybe you could alter it.”
“It’s not long enough, and besides, I don’t want to be seen in something like that. Listen, if you really don’t have any money, why don’t you sell it?”
Sharra opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had started to ask whether people really bought used clothing, but then she remembered seeing shops and market stalls doing exactly that. The idea of actually dealing with them had never occurred to her; she had always given her old clothes away, as selling them had seemed beneath her. Dulzan had earned enough that she did not need to bother with the few bits she might get from selling her cast-offs.
Now, though, every bit mattered.
“Do you know a good place to do that?” she asked.
“There’s a shop on North Street. It’s where my mother took my father’s clothes after he died.”
“Oh. Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”
Irith turned up an empty palm. “We’re going to be living and working together; better we get along with one another.”
“Of course.” Sharra glanced at the mattress that was now hers. “What happened to…Lissa, was it?”
“She moved in with her boyfriend. I expect they’ll be married in a year or so – either that, or she’ll move back here. She’s still working some evenings.”
That was a much more cheerful explanation than Sharra had expected. “Good for her!” she said.
“I suppose. I wouldn’t want to marry Beran, but I’m not Lissa. Shouldn’t you be heading back downstairs?”
“I should,” Sharra agreed. She turned and headed for the stairs, holding her ugly skirt up with one hand so she wouldn’t trip over the hem. She remembered wryly that Irith had made it very plain she wanted the tunic back, but had shown no such concern for the skirt.
Back in the kitchen Virina found a piece of butcher’s string that could be pinned in place to secure the skirt, and Challin, during a pause in dealing with customers, unearthed an old apron that was stained with beer and stiff with spilled gravy. The thing was disgusting, but it was still technically an apron, and tying it in place helped assure that the brown skirt would stay up. That done, Challin hurried back out with two mugs of beer while Virina began instructing Sharra in the fine art of serving food and ale to sailors, longshoremen, boatmen, and the others who made up the clientele of the Crooked Mast.
Chapter Fourteen
By the end of her first shift Sharra was so exhausted she was not sure she was going to make it back up the stairs to the attic.
At least, she thought, she was young and strong again; if she had been her natural age, or even the age she had been when she first went to Poldrian’s shop, she really did not think she could have survived the experience.
Or perhaps all those years standing motionless had left her feeble.
She had discovered that the promised room and board consisted of the mattress in the attic and whatever the patrons left on their plate, along with an allotted three mugs of small beer. That was, she thought, not particularly generous, but then, Virina had never claimed otherwise.
The innkeeper had been startled when Sharra asked for her pay. “Usually I pay every sixnight,” Virina said.
“You said two bits per day. I worked a full day.”
“And I only had one complaint about you, so…fine. Here’s your money.” She fished two triangular coins from the till and handed them over.
“Someone complained?” Sharra had thought she had done a good job; she had managed to not spill anything where customers could see, not even when some fool in a blue kilt had tried to trip her. Several people had been downright complimentary, though more about her looks than her serving skills.
“Emmen of Shiphaven,” Virina said. “He just likes to gripe. He said you didn’t smile enough and took too long with his mutton.”
“It wasn’t ready!”
“I know. If you’d brought it any sooner he’d have complained it was raw. You did fine, for a beginner. Go to bed. You have the morning off, but I want you ready to work by midday.”
Sharra nodded, and headed up the stairs.
Virina had been right that morning in suggesting that customers might want to give her an extra coin or two. She was not entirely sure of the thinking responsible for this, since an extra bit was not about to buy much of anything; if anyone wanted something more than a smile from her, and perhaps a little extra sway of her hips, it would cost far more than one little coin. Still, she had four bits tucked into the folded waistband of her skirt, in addition to the wages in her hand; she had not mentioned that to anyone.
A bit here and a bit there could add up nicely, she thought as she climbed up to the attic.
She slept soundly. When she awoke it took her a moment to remember that she could move and open her eyes; when she did the morning light pouring through the attic window seemed impossibly bright.
She was still wearing her borrowed clothes. She took off the apron and set it aside, picked up her old dress, and made her way downstairs. To her pleased surprise she discovered that her pay included a real breakfast – two buttered flatcakes, a plump sausage, and another mug of small beer. The only drawback was that she had to clean up after herself, which meant fetching a bucket of water from the pump in the courtyard. She wondered whether leaving her apron upstairs had been a mistake, but simply took extra care to not splash anything on Irith’s tunic.
When that was done she set out to North Street to see what she could get for her dress. It took some time to find the shop Irith had mentioned, and then another half-hour or so to get the shopkeeper’s attention and dicker for a decent price; she was relieved to see that her bargaining skills had not been completely forgotten in her thirty years as a household ornament, and she departed with six bits in silver. She was certain the dress was worth far more, or at least that it would have been when it was the latest fashion, but now she thought she had done very well to get so much; she had argued that the buyer could market it as a precious antique, and he had apparently believed her.
She owed her mother and Dallisa a serious debt for making the dress for her; she hoped she would be able to repay them somehow.
She hoped her mother was still alive.
Of course, six silver bits was not a fortune, and she promptly spent one of the six bits on a good new tunic, white linen trimmed with blue silk, so she could return Irith’s, and then part of another silver bit on a belt and purse. She decided to make do with the hideous skirt and grubby apron for a little longer.
As she left the shop she paused.
She had, she thought, been foolishly hasty in hurrying off, refusing Morvash’s offer of help. That idea had come to her several times the previous day, but she had been too busy to do anything about it. Now she wasn’t.
She stopped back at the Crooked Mast long enough to give Irith back her tunic, and then, wearing her own new one, she headed south, retracing her steps, to see if Morvash was still offering assistance.
The sun was high in the eastern sky by the time Sharra reached that strange gray house; she knew that she would need to hurry if she intended to get back to the tavern in time for her shift.
Half a dozen guardsmen were in the street in front of the house – not patrolling, but standing there, talking quietly amongst themselves. One of them stood on the front steps. Two of the big upstairs windows stood wide open, but there was no sign of anyone inside. Something appeared to have happened in the alley on one side of the house; dirt and gravel had been scattered everywhere.
Hesitantly, Sharra crossed the street and walked up to the cluster of soldiers. “Excuse me,” she called.
One of the guardsmen turned to look at her, and she saw his expression change in a familiar way once he got a look at her, going from bored to both interested and wary. At least his lust was not as obvious as what she had seen when she wore the just-sold dress.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I’m looking for a wizard named Morvash of the Shadows,” she said. “Is he home?”
The soldier turned to one side and called, “Lieutenant! This woman is looking for the wizard!”
Another soldier turned and looked her over as he walked closer. “Why do you want him?” he asked.
“He offered to help me with something,” she said.
“You know him?”
“Well, we’ve met. I know he lives here.”
“We don’t know whether he does live here anymore. He and his friends left in the middle of the night, and the Wizards’ Guild says that the house belongs to them now, and no one is allowed inside without the Guild’s permission. Now, is there something we can help you with?”
Sharra recalled the old proverb, unasked questions go unanswered, and said, “He offered to help me get home to Ethshar of the Sands.” Even as she spoke, though, she realized that was not quite true. Morvash had offered to let her stay until arrangements could be made, he had not said he would get her home.
But it did not matter. The soldier grimaced, and said, “I don’t think he’s in any position to do that. When he left here he was being pursued by a demon.”
Sharra blinked. She knew there had been a great deal of magic involved in the preceding morning’s events, but she had not realized any demons were involved. “Oh,” she said.
“You weren’t involved with that?”
“With a demon? No!” She shuddered, then hesitated.
She could perhaps ask someone else for help – the guards, or the Wizards’ Guild – but she did not think that was likely to work very well. They had no reason to aid her, and she might wind up being questioned or imprisoned. If she wasn’t back at the Crooked Mast by noon she would lose her job and the shelter of the attic.
She never should have rushed out of Morvash’s house, she realized that, and when she first noticed she had no money she should have come back immediately – but she hadn’t. She had been so sure she could manage without the wizard, and had not wanted to get tangled up in his affairs, particularly not his argument with the other wizard, the tall one in the dark blue robe. After what had happened with Poldrian, she hadn’t wanted anything to do with any wizards.
And if she had stayed, maybe the demon would have gotten her.
“This demon,” she asked. “Did it kill anyone?”
“Not that I heard, but it gave that house a good pounding.”
That did not sound good. “What happened to all the people who were here yesterday morning?”
“I have no idea.”
“Are they all right?”
“I just told you, I don’t know – well, except for the four who were guardsmen. They all got back to camp safely.”
“So you don’t know what happened?”
The lieutenant sighed. “Look, all I know is that this Morvash had a spell go wrong, and a bunch of people who had been turned to stone all came back to life, but some of them were magicians and started fighting each other. The wizards all flew off somewhere, a demon showed up trying to kill some of them, and most of the rest were driven away in carriages. When it looked as if the demon was going to get through the protective spells, Morvash and his friends flew off on a magic carpet, the demon took off after him, and then people from the Wizards’ Guild showed up and told us to keep everyone out and watch for anything strange. So we’re here, keeping people out and watching for anything strange. Now, are you involved with any of this?”
