Chapter One – Part Two – Inebriation
“I wouldn’t bother,” an inky voice chimed from beside Rhayd as he scuttled between the tables. “They’re talking about Tere’s bill.”
Brought up short, Rhayd fought back an ounce of bile that instantly crept up to the back of his mouth. Lips twisted into a grimace, he turned to find the source of the voice, the bar wench Kintere was so fond of. Mireya something or other. Rhayd had never bothered to find out her full name – he couldn’t have cared less. It was her fault Kintere drank so much, after all. He spent all his time pining over her golden curls and unnaturally bright blue eyes and round, soft curves… The list never seemed to end, nor did the tribesman’s patience with reciting it. It was almost easier sometimes to have the big man drunk and keeping to himself rather than sober and regretting very audibly whatever he had or hadn’t said the night earlier in his vain attempts to bed the girl.
“It never seems to grow,” Rhayd mused, feeling a rare generosity in his response. “I don’t know why Auss even bothers any more. Tere’s his slave for life by now, they’re always trading favours back and forth, and Porphigaul always bails his brother out anyway.”
“Gaul’s stopped paying for him,” the girl spat, sneering at the table she was wiping down. Rhayd shared her sentiments about that at least. It had to be hard getting vomit out of wood with naught but a cloth and lukewarm water. “He says Tere’s got to find his own way now he’s a man. Needless to say, it’s not going over well. Especially since Gaul didn’t say it right to Tere’s face, he just told Auss to cut him off after the available credit was used. That mug in one-arm’s hand is the last one Gaul’s paying for.”
“Good. Do the boy a favour to get him out of this place,” Rhayd looked back at the bar, where Kintere was practically crawling into Auss’ lap to get at the mug being held just out of his long reach by the very disgruntled looking barkeep.
“He’d be missed here,” the girl whispered. Rhayd did not choose to respond. He could never be sure whether Mireya was being sarcastic or sincere. Like as not it came from spending all her time writhing in beds for money.
With a disgusted grunt, the young noble struck off for the bar again, finally slipping between the tall tribesman and his quarry, resting a forceful hand against the big man’s chest.
“Alright, Tere, time to call it quits for the night. I think Auss can hang onto that mug for you this time tomorrow, am I right Auss?”
“It’s paid for,” the barkeep grunted. “Someone’s drinking it now, or it’s forfeit to the house.”
“Right,” Kintere agreed with a disheartening slowness. “Paid for. Drink up. Can’t be put to waste.”
With a shake of his head, Rhayd pushed the big man back from the bar again.
“We won’t let it get wasted, Tere. Just head to your room and I’ll settle with Auss for you. I’ll bring the mug up when I’m done.”
“There’s no food nor drink in the rooms,” Auss began, wrinkling his nose.
“I said,” Rhayd repeated, turning his eyes on Auss. “I’ll bring it up when Kintere’s settled in his rooms. No use letting it go to waste. I’ll stand liable for any messes he makes tonight.”
With a displeased grumble, the barkeep set the mug down forcefully on the counter, slopping a measure of the foam over onto the glistening wrywood, and turned away to other, more lucrative customers.
“Thanks, Rhayd,” the big tribesman said, reaching for the huge pottery mug.
“Ah, ah,” the noble snapped with a quick slap on Kintere’s wrist. “I said you’d have it when you were settled. So go get yourself settled. You look fit to sleep on your feet, much less finish another pint of Penance gold. Just think how mad I’ll end up if you break one of Auss’ fine tables and I’ve got to pay for it.”
Kintere blinked sleepily for a moment and began to develop a mighty frown.
“No,” he said after a while, swaying with each word as if it were a blow to his swimming head. “No, we can’t have that. You’re right. I’ll just head for bed, bring that mug will you? Hate to spill it.”
With some less than subtle direction from Rhayd, Kintere pointed himself in the general line of the stairs up to the rooming house above the pub. Rhayd helped him out until he found the railing there, keeping him far from any tables immediately near, and let him go as soon as his hands wrapped about the thick wood guide. He’d find his room fine – it was likely the only one with its door still unlocked and wide open – and collapse on the bed immediately thereafter. Even as Rhayd was making his way back to the bar to reclaim the abandoned mug of ale, there was a thud on the roof just above which shook dust from the rafters. Proof that Kintere had steered himself at least most of the way right.
“You shouldn’t keep doing that, you know,” Mireya’s chiding voice appeared behind him just as he scooped up the mug. “You’re only keeping him drinking.”
“Who said anything about giving him the beer?” Rhayd raised his eyebrows at the girl, taking a large draft from the mug. “I said he’d have the mug, and he will. Memory like a vice when he’s sober, that one. He will not know he wasn’t the one to drink what was in it.”
Her disgusted shake of the head was enough to set Rhayd smiling all the way up the stairs, draining ale as he went. Upon entering his friend’s room, he found the big man curled in a ball on the floor, blanket halfway on his body, halfway still on the bed beside him. With a small laugh, the young noble set the empty mug down on Kintere’s night stand and slipped back down to the pub, hastily reclaiming his seat by the fire and wrapping himself in the voluminous cloak he had abandoned there earlier, against pain of some other desperate person seeking his aid. Much as he had grown to love Kintere over the eight years they had been friends, Kintere the drunk was by far more tiring than Kintere the eager child. Three years the two of them had been playing this dance now, ever since Kintere had happened upon Mireya during one of Gaul’s meetings here at the pub. Sword of Nieri that had been, binding the three of them up in some sick joke of a romance.
Rhayd had often tried convincing Kintere to just buy the girl for the night and be done with it. Unfortunately the fool wouldn’t have it, said it was unclean. He had constructed a virginal image of Mireya in his over active mind and convinced himself that if they ever did find each other, somehow her past here in the pub would drift away like so many bad dreams. Rhayd knew better, and spent most of his time trying to school his friend in the realities of adult life. This, too, met with Kintere’s stalwart resistance, a quality which had all the nobility of an idiot running headlong into a wall repeatedly.
Exhausted and soul-worn, Rhayd pulled his legs up into the nest of his chair and closed his eyes, opting to simply spend the night where he was rather than undertake the trek back to his family’s estate some two miles away. The mug Auss had made for Kintere hadn’t been softened after all, and Rhayd’s sudden fuzziness of thought convinced him something other than ale had bolstered its potency.