feeling that too many people already stared at Boony, openly or covertly, and she wasn't going to add to their rudeness.
A Mintak . . . she'd heard about the isolated pockets of strange creatures that were scattered across the face of Alanda, but no one in her village had ever seen so much as an elven forester, much less a Mintak. They were supposed to have bodies like huge humans, but the heads of horses. The brief glimpse she'd gotten didn't make her think of a horse so much as a dog, except that the teeth hadn't been the sharp, pointed rending teeth of a canine, but the flat teeth of an herbivore. And the eyes had been set on the front of the head, not the sides. But the Mintak loomed a good head-and-a-half above the bartender, and that worthy was one of the tallest men Rune had ever seen.
Beth came bustling back with a bowl of stew, a mug, and a thick slice of bread covered in bacon drippings in one hand, and a pitcher with water beading the sides in the other. 'Take this, there's a good lad.' She'd evidently decided that Rune was terribly young, too young and girl-shy to be attracted, and had taken a big-sisterly approach to dealing with her. 'You get dry an' look to run short, you nod at me or one'a th' other girls. Ol' Mathe, he don't like his musickers goin' dry; you heard him sayin' that, an' he meant it.'
She put the pitcher on the floor beside the stool, shoved the rest into Rune's hands, and scampered off, with a squeal as one of the customers' pinches got a little closer to certain portions of her anatomy than she liked. She slapped the hand back and huffed away; the customer started to rise to follow-
And Boony stepped forward into the light. Now Rune saw him clearly; he wore a pair of breeches and a vest, and nothing else. He carried a cudgel, and he was a uniform dark brown all over, like a horse, and he had the shaggy hair of a horse on his face and what could be seen of his body. His eyes seemed small for his head; he had pointed ears on the top of his head, peeking up through longer, darker hair than was on his face, and that hair continued down the back of his neck like a mane. He looked straight at the offending customer, who immediately sat down again.
So Boony kept the peace. It looks like he does a good job, Rune mused.
But there was dinner waiting, and beyond that, a room full of people to entertain. She wolfed down her food, taking care not to get any grease on her fingers that might cause problems with the strings of her fiddle. The sooner she started, the sooner she could collect a few coins.
And hopefully, tonight Boony's services wouldn't be needed. Nothing cooled a crowd like a fight, and nothing dried up money faster.
She put out her hat, wedging it between her feet with one foot on the brim to keep it from being 'accidentally' kicked out into the room, and re-tuned Lady Rose.
Cider or no, with all these people and only herself to entertain them, it was going to be a long night.
* * *
'Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,' Rune counted out the coins on the table under Mathe's careful eye. 'That's the whole of it, sir. Nineteen coppers.' The candle between them shone softly on the worn copper coins, and Mathe took a sip of his beer before replying.
'Not bad,' Mathe said, taking nine and leaving her ten, scooping his coins off the table and into a little leather pouch. 'In case ye were wonderin' lad. That's not at all bad for a night that ain't a feast nor Faire-day. Harse don' do much better nor that.'
He set a bowl down in front of her, and a plate and filled mug. 'Ye did well 'nough for another meal, boy. So, eat whiles I have my beer, an' we'll talk.'
This time the stew had meat in it, and the bread had a thin slice of cheese on top. Getting an extra meal like that meant that she'd done more than 'all right.' She could use it, too; she was starving.
The public house was very quiet; Beth and the other girls had gone off somewhere. Whether they had lodgings upstairs or elsewhere, Rune had no idea, for they'd left while Rune was packing up, going out the back way through the kitchen. Presumably, they'd gotten their meals from the leftovers on their way through. Boony slept upstairs; she knew that for certain. So did Mathe and one of the cooks and all of the children, who turned out to be his wife and offspring.
Right now, she was was thinking about how this would have meant a month's take in Faire-season at home. She shook her head. 'It seems like a lot-' she said, tentatively, '-but people keep telling me how much more expensive it is to live in the city.'
Mathe sipped his own beer. 'It is, and this'd keep ye for 'bout a day; but it's 'cause'a the rules, the taxes, an' the Priests,' he said. 'Ye gotta tithe, ye gotta pay yer tax, an' ye gotta live where they say. Here-lemme show ye-'
He stretched out his finger and extracted two coppers, and moving them to the side. 'That's yer tithe-ye gotta pay tithe an' tax on what ye made, b'fore I took my share.' He moved two more. 'That's yer tax. Now, ye got six pence left. Rules say ye gotta live in res'dential distrik, 'less yer a relative or a special kinda hireling, like the cooks an' the kids and Boony is. Musickers don' count. So-there's fourpence a day fer a place w' decent folks in it, where ye c'n leave things an' know they ain't gonna make legs an' walk while ye're gone. That leaves ye tuppence fer food.'
Rune blinked, caught off guard by the way four pennies evaporated-close to half her income for the day. 'Tax?' she said stupidly. 'Tithe?' Fourpence, gone-and for what?
Mathe shook his head. 'Church is the law round 'bout towns,' he told her, a hint of scolding in his voice. 'Ye tithe, lad, an' ye base it on what ye took in. Same fer taxes. If ye don' pay, sooner 'r later they cotch up wi' ye, or sommut turns ye in, an' then they fine ye. They fine ye ten times what they figger ye owe.'
'But how would they know what I owe them?' she asked, still confused. ' 'Specially if I work the street-'
'They know 'bout what a musicker like you should make in a night, barrin' windfalls,' he replied. 'Twenny pence. That's two fer Church an' two fer tax. An' if ye get them windfalls, the lad as drops bit'a gold in yer hat an' the like, ye best r'port 'em too. Could be sommut saw it go in yer hat, an's gone t' snitch on ye. Could be 'tis a Priest in disguise, belike, testin' ye.'
This all seemed terribly sinister. 'But what happens if I couldn't pay?' she asked. 'I mean, what if I'd been holding back for a year-' Ten times tuppence times-how many days in a year? The figures made her head swim. It was more than she'd ever seen in her life, except for the windfall of the silver. And she panicked over that for a moment, until she realized that no one knew about it but her-nor ever would, if she kept her mouth shut.
'Happened to a girl'a mine,' Mathe said warningly. 'She owed 'em fer 'bout three year back; spent it all, a' course, stupid cow. Couldn't pay. She got indentured t' pay the bill.'
Indentured? There was that word again. 'What's 'indentured,' Mathe?' she asked.
'Worse than slavery,' boomed a voice over her head, so that she jumped. 'Worse than being chattel.'
'Ol' Boony, he's got hard feelin's 'bout bein' indentured,' Mathe offered, as Boony moved around to the other side of the table and sat down on the bench, making it creak under his weight.
'There are laws to keep a slave from being beaten,' Boony rumbled. 'There are laws saying he must be fed so much a day, he must have decent clothing and shelter. The Church sees to these laws, and fines the men who break them. There are no such laws for the indentured.'
The Mintak nodded his massive head with each word. Now that he was so close, he looked less animal-like and more-well, human wasn't the word, but there was ready intelligence in his face; he had expressions Rune was able to read. His face was flatter than a horse's, and his mouth and lips were mobile enough to form human speech without difficulty. His hands only had three broad fingers, though, and the fingers had one less joint than a human's, though the joints seemed much more flexible.
'Boony didn' know 'bout tithin' an taxes when he come here,' Mathe said, as Boony took a turnip from the bowl at the end of the table and began stolidly chewing it. 'He got indentured t' pay 'em. An' he's right, the way indenturin' works is that ye work fer yer wage. But yer wage goes first t' yer master, t' pay off yer debt, an' there ain't no law saying how much he c'n take, so long as he leaves ye a penny a day.'
And a penny, as she had just learned, wouldn't go far in this city.
'I was bought by a greedy man who used my strength in his warehouse, took all, and left me with nothing,' Boony said. 'He thought I was stupid.' A dark light in his eyes told her he'd somehow managed to turn the tables on his greedy owner, and was waiting for her to ask how he'd done it.
'What did you do?' she asked, obediently.
Boony chewed up the last of the turnip, top and all, confirming her notion that he was herbivorous. He laughed, a slow, deep laugh that sounded like stones rolling down a hill. 'I was so very stupid that I did not know
