couldn’t avoid. At first the word had been whispered, but lately it was openly used to insult or diminish them. It might have been more effective if Rigg had had the slightest idea what it meant.
“So let’s go in and see if we can afford the food at this public house,” said Umbo. “Or stomach it.”
A riverman came lurching out of the tavern, cursing over his shoulder at someone inside. He took a swipe at Rigg, who was inadvertently blocking his way. Rigg dodged aside, but fell, and several men standing not far off laughed at him.
“Privick’s got himself covered in mud!”
“Trying to plant himself to see if he’ll grow.”
“Hey, privick, better go wash yourself!”
“Privicks don’t know about washing.”
“Then let’s duck him in the river and show him how it’s done!”
Umbo helped Rigg rebound to his feet, and they dodged inside the door. Rigg had no idea whether the rivermen really meant to do anything to him, but he didn’t want to stay and see. They were all big men. Even the shortest of them had massive arms and barrel chests from poling and rowing up the river. Rigg knew how to defend himself, even without weapons-Father had seen to that-but only one at a time, and he knew that if they took it into their minds to hurt him, he couldn’t stop them. That knowledge put a cold knot of fear in his belly, and it didn’t go away just because a door closed between them.
The tavern was dark inside-the shutters were nearly closed against the cold outside, but no lanterns had yet been lighted. A dozen men looked up at them, while two dozen more kept their eyes on their mugs, their bowls, or their cards and dice.
Rigg walked to the bar, where the taverner-who looked to be at least as large as the largest of his customers-was setting out a half dozen bowls of a thick stew that made Rigg almost faint with hunger, though it had only been two days since he last ate. But the hunger didn’t drown out the fear that had begun outside and got worse in here.
“We serve men here, not boys,” said the taverner, sounding more bored than hostile.
“We’ve been walking three weeks down the road from the south,” Rigg began.
The taverner chortled. “You have ‘upriver’ writ all over you, no need to tell a soul.”
“We need a meal,” said Rigg. “If you won’t serve us here, then maybe you could tell us where we could buy bread and cheese for the road.”
“Boys nor beggars,” said the taverner. “I don’t get up in the morning wishing to see much of either.”
“We’re not beggars. We’ve got enough coin, if your price is fair.”
“I’m surprised privicks even know what money is,” said the taverner, “let alone what ‘enough’ might be.”
Umbo usually kept still when they had to talk to people, since Rigg could put on a higher dialect than the one they spoke here, and nobody had to ask Rigg to repeat himself. But Umbo spoke up now, sounding a little annoyed. “What’s this ‘privick’ they call us?”
“It’s just an old word,” said the taverner. “It means ‘upriver folk.’”
Umbo sniffed. “That’s all? Because it sounds like an insult.”
“Well,” said the taverner, “privicks aren’t too famous for being smart or talking well or dressing like decent folks, so there might be a bit of contempt in it sometimes.”
“We’re decent enough not to pee in the river for downstream folk to drink,” said Umbo, “and we don’t have no insult for travelers from the north.”
“Why would you?” said the taverner. “Now, are you going to show me your money or am I going to throw you out?”
Again, the knowledge that this man could force Rigg to do whatever he wanted filled him with dread. Instead of feeling in his purse for a single jackface, Rigg filled his hand with all the coins from the moneypurse tucked into the waistband of his trousers, meaning to look through them quickly to find the one he wanted. The taverner reached out at the moment Rigg was opening his fist to show the money, and their hands collided. All the coins were jostled out of Rigg’s hand and hit the counter. They sounded so loud in the quiet room. There were too many of them.
The taverner’s eyes grew narrow and he looked out into the room. Rigg didn’t turn around. He already knew that all eyes were on him, that everyone in the room had mentally counted the money. If only he had not let fear make him hurry; if only he had taken the time to feel for the single coin with the money still in his purse. Now he felt panic surge through him, knowing he had already done something stupid, and chance had made it worse.
Rigg could hear his father’s voice saying, “Don’t let the other man control what you do.” And, “Show little, say less.” Well, he hoped he was keeping his fear well-hidden. But he couldn’t think of anything to do, not before the taverner flung out his hand, scooped the coins to the edge of the bar, and dropped them into his other hand. Then he walked to the end of the bar, where he opened a door.
“Follow me,” said the taverner.
Rigg wasn’t sure whether he meant for them to clamber over the bar and go through the same door, or find another way. Before he could decide, a door on their side of the bar opened and the taverner beckoned. He led them to a tiny room with nothing but a table and two chairs in it, and some books and papers on the table.
The taverner poured their coins out of his hand onto the table. “You bring whole new worlds of meaning to the word ‘stupid,’” he said wearily.
“It was you knocking into my hand that spilled the coins,” said Rigg.
The taverner dismissed his words with a wave of his hand. “Who did you rob and why do you think I won’t turn you in?”
Don’t let the other fellow control what you do-it might be too late, but he could obey it now. So instead of defending himself against the charge of thievery, Rigg moved the conversation back to his real business here. “So it’s enough money to buy a meal and lodgings.”
“Of course it is, are you mad?”
“Seven rivers have joined the Stashik since we left Fall Ford,” said Rigg. “It’s so wide now we can hardly see the other side sometimes, and it seems like the price of everything gets bigger right along with the river. Last town where we ate, a baker charged us a jackface for a small loaf of stale bread, and he wanted two kingfaces for a night’s lodging.”
The taverner shook his head. “You were cheated, that’s all. And who wants to stay in some tiny fleabitten room in a baker’s house? You pay me one fen and you can stay two nights, or stay one night and I give you five shebs in change.”
Rigg touched the coins in turn. “You call this a ‘fen’? And this is a ‘sheb’?” Rigg knew the names of all the coins-including denominations so large that Father said they never actually minted the coins-but it had never occurred to him that the same money might be called by different names just because he had walked a few weeks on the Great North Highway.
“Why, what do you call them?” asked the taverner.
“‘Kingface’ and ‘queenface,’ but we stopped calling them anything when people laughed at us.”
“I’m surprised you’re still alive to tell the tale,” said the taverner, “the way you spread that money out for all to see.”
“You knocked it out of my hand,” said Rigg. “I thought you did it on purpose.”
The taverner covered his eyes. “It never occurred to me you’d bring up more than one coin out of your purse.” He put his hand atop Rigg’s head and turned his face so they were eye to eye. “Listen, boy, maybe nobody killed you back south, but you’re right aside the river here, and this is a river tavern, and these are rough men who wouldn’t think nothing of tipping you into the river to take a pair of shebs out of your pocket, never mind a fen. And they’d do it for a ping if you riled them somehow. Now every man in that room knows you have a lot of money and very little brain.”
“None of them could see,” said Umbo stubbornly.
“You think they’re deaf? Every man of them could name all the coins you dropped by the sound alone.”
Rigg understood now, well enough. Rules were different here. In Fall Ford a man’s money was safe in his pocket or in his palm, because no one would think to take it. But that was because everybody already knew how much money everybody else was likely to have, and if somebody popped up with more of it after somebody else got robbed, it wouldn’t take much of a guess to solve the crime. Here, though, in towns like this, the citizens couldn’t know but a tiny number of their fellows, and the rivermen came and went so that nobody knew anybody.
