She moved toward Mack and Will, Cend’s hangers-on, and the two who were lucky to still be alive after challenging the Crimson Prince himself. She thought to ask them where Cend was, but she decided, considering how quickly Prince Feledias had known where Cutter was, that she probably didn’t need to. The two men were scared, standing with their wives and their little ones, them scared too, and why not? She knelt before the kids, two girls around eight years of age and thank the gods they didn’t get their looks from their fathers. The boy, the youngest, not even old enough to speak, with tears in his eyes, his lip trembling. Not sure why he was scared, maybe, just that his mother and father were scared and so he ought to be too.
Scared just like everyone else, which was a problem. After all, scared people did stupid things, that was another favorite of Berden’s, one she’d found to be truer than she’d like. In fact, she would have gone a step further and said that people did stupid things, but being scared certainly didn’t help matters. “Mack, Will,” she said, “as I recall, there’s a couple of decks of cards down in the cellar.” She paused, glancing at the children. “Why don’t you go and see if you can’t fetch ‘em for us?”
The bigger of the two—Cend’s stand in when the man wasn’t around to be a nuisance—Mack, frowned. “Don’t feel much like playin’ cards just now, Netty, it’s all the same to you.”
Netty held back a sigh, telling herself that there were other qualities to recommend a man than his intelligence, otherwise the whole damned human race would have ended a long time ago.
Natalie, Mack’s wife and therefore to Netty’s mind just about as close to godly patience as anyone was likely to get, let out a tired sigh. “She means for the kids, Mack.”
“Ah,” the big man said, grunting. “Not sure if it’s such a good idea, that,” he went on, “teachin’ the kids to play cards.”
Natalie tensed her jaw, and Netty thought that the woman’s patience, godly or not, was just about stripped bare, and when the woman spoke she did so in a low tone, without inflection. “I reckon there’s probably bigger things to worry about just now than them becoming gamblers, don’t you, Mack?”
Perhaps the big man had heard that tone before and recognized it as an alarm bell, for he grunted, turning back to Netty. “In the cellar, you said?”
“That’s right.”
He grunted. “Come on, Will. Let’s see if we can’t find ‘em.”
His friend—the dumbest of the three by Netty’s estimation, and that no small accomplishment—frowned. “But I thought you said—”
“Shut up and come on,” Mack growled, and then they were gone, heading toward the cellar.
When they were out of earshot, Natalie turned back to her. “Thanks, Netty.”
It felt good, that thanks. Good, and by and large unearned, but she gave the best smile of which she was capable. “Don’t thank me yet—it’ll be a damn shame these pretty little young’uns grow up to be the world’s worst gamblers.”
The woman laughed at that, one that was pulled from her almost against her judgment, but she sobered up quickly enough, looking even worse than she had before. Gods, I’m a fool, Netty thought. A nice little joke, about the kiddies growing up to be gamblers, maybe, but one that wasn’t quite as funny when a body stopped to consider the likely proposition that they’d never have a chance to grow up at all.
Netty thought it best to quit while she was behind, and she offered the two women the best smile she could before turning and walking away, trying to look around and decide who else’s life she could screw up before it was taken from them. Then an idea struck her, and she moved to Emille. The girl stood alone. A quiet one, Emille, pretty but a little unearthly, some said touched by the Fey. Foolish talk, of course, but there was no denying that she was different, a difference which had only been exacerbated when the girl’s father had died to the fever two winters past and grown even more when her mother had been taken by the Fey. The girl was pale, silent tears gliding their way down her cheeks, no doubt still traumatized from the prince’s threat.
And then another saying came to Netty, this one not Berden’s but her own, passed down to her from her mother, usually accompanied by a whipping, one she likelier than not had deserved at the time. Idle hands do evil work.
That was another she’d found to be true. Maybe she couldn’t give all the people comfort, maybe it wasn’t in her to give, not when she had none of it herself. But she could give them work, at least. That much she could do. And if the work didn’t help, well, it was a tavern, after all. There was always ale. “Emille,” she shouted.
The girl started and looked up at her. “Ma’am?”
“Come on, girl,” Netty said, loud enough for the entire common room, packed full of people, to hear, “I need your help. This is the busiest my and my husband’s inn has ever been, and I’ll be damned, I don’t take advantage and sell all these mopey bastards some ale.”
That got a few laughs, and that felt good, felt damned fine, in truth. She moved toward the back of the bar and began pouring drinks, pausing after she’d poured half a dozen or so to look back at the common room, everyone seeming to watch her as if she’d lost her mind. And who knew? Maybe she had. But then, when a person was about to lose her life—and probably in a pretty uncomfortable fashion—she figured there were worse things. “Well?” she demanded, doing her best to adopt her slightly-scolding tone, the one Berden had always joked with her about. “I don’t know as I’ll be able to drink all this myself,
