16. Local
Local
After that the spring came on in full. Flowers ran across the hills, and the trees filled out into leaf, and the vines that had lain dead all winter started to creep over the ground again.
Fish rose and broke the surface of the river. The rabbits were out in number, bounding through the grass, though more than a few of them caught the scent on the air near Kain's place and bolted the other way.
Kain watched the seedlings come up. The shoots pushed up out of the beds, small and pale and bent, and a few still wore the split seed casing stuck to their leaves.
He picked those free by hand, careful of the tender growth, so the plants could open without the husk holding them.
The seedlings were barely up when Kain heard a trumpet ring out across the evening. The light was nearly gone.
He set down the siding he had been nailing back onto the barn and looked toward the road. In the barn behind him Roan stamped and circled, worked up by the sound.
The trumpet sounded again, and a herald came up the road, bright-clothed and mounted on a big black horse. He set the trumpet to his lips and blew another long blast, and Kain walked down and leaned against the half-built stone wall at the front of the property.
"Hello there, quaint local." The herald turned and addressed him. "I bring you welcome from the great caravan of Duke Wilhowser."
"Never heard of him," Kain said.
"Of course not, in this far corner of the world. We come with much to trade and much to sell, and we may yet buy up whatever this settlement has worth the having."
A merchant caravan, then, and the grifting sort of it, the kind that liked to dress one of their own up as a duke or a baron out of some far country and run the trade by styling themselves lords of lands that had never existed.
"You keep blowing that thing like that, you'll bring the bandits down off the mountains," Kain said. "They may not take the whole caravan. I'd wager those clothes of yours would fetch a fair bit, though."
The herald went pale and rode off down the road in a hurry, the trumpet dropped to his side. Kain went back up to the barn. Sasha would need the help, and he meant to keep an eye on things besides.
Before long he was behind the bar at the Copper Kettle, Sasha working the kitchen with Matthew slung on her back. The smell of roasting meat was thick in the room when the front door banged open and the duke came strutting in.
He was barrel-chested, his beard down to his chest with jewels twined through it, though Kain put most of them for glass. His clothes were bright enough to ache the eyes.
A crowd of helpers and hangers-on came pouring in behind him.
"Ale for everyone. Ale and food."
"Seven copper the ale," Kain said as the duke came up to the bar. "Fifteen for an ale and a plate together."
The duke glanced at the board behind Kain, which set an ale at three copper plain as day, and a meal at five.
"That's not what the board says."
"I'm a quaint local. I can't read." Kain raised an eyebrow. "You're a wealthy duke. A few gold to feed your caravan won't trouble your purse any."
The duke's eyes narrowed, and then he gave a small nod. They had the measure of each other, and the prices still ran under what the cities would charge. "Fair enough. Two gold, and you feed every soul in the caravan."
"Done."
Kain put out his hand and the duke shook it, and then he and Sasha threw themselves into feeding the lot of them.
A hundred people rode with the caravan, and over the night every last one came through the Kettle.
Kain poured drinks as fast as his hands would go, filling rows of mugs and setting them out, turning to take plates off Sasha and laying them up beside the ale, then working down to the end of the bar to gather the empties.
The plates went into a bucket of soapy water, the mugs dunked in after and wiped out, rinsed in the clean water, dried, and set back on the bar to go again. The plates wanted a bit more scrubbing, but it went quick enough.
By now he and Sasha had worked enough nights together that their hands moved in step, his ready for her plates the moment she had them up, hers ready to take the clean ware back to the kitchen as he finished.
The duke sat at the end of the bar through it all, watching. He traded a few words with his people, but mostly he sat lost in his own thoughts.
What turned in the man's head Kain neither knew nor cared, working out his next road, most likely. Somewhere in the thick of it Matthew started to fuss, and Sasha slipped off to put him down.
With her gone, the duke leaned in over the bar.
"So. You're the father."
Kain shrugged. "I'm the help."
"The help." The duke stroked his beard.
Sasha came back out with a tray for the dishes. "He's the brother."
The duke's brow furrowed. He looked from Sasha to Kain and back, and his eyes went wide, and he shifted in his seat.
There were few men Kain would trouble to set straight on the matter, and the oily lord wasn't among them.
The crowd thinned as the night wore on. The duke paid for a room and was soon snoring in it, while the rest of his train bedded down out in the caravan.
A few lingered by the fire with their drinks into the small hours before they too wandered off. Kain held the bar, paying no mind to the burn in his legs, until the last of them had gone.
When the last of them had gone, Kain took up a rag and started in on the tables while Sasha fetched the broom and swept. The caravan had tracked in a great deal of mud and dirt.
Neither said a word as they worked. The fire popped, and out in the street the camels lowed and the horses and men and tents shifted and settled, and that was all there was to hear.
Somewhere around eleven Sasha yawned, the bags dark under her eyes.
"Go get some sleep. I'll finish here and head off."
"You sure?" Sasha asked.
"You ever known me not to be?" Kain shrugged.
"Fair." She set the broom against the wall. "Then I'll take it. If you've the legs for it in the morning, they'll all be wanting breakfast."
"I'll be here. And if I'm not down before the duke is, don't let him pay you a copper under a gold and a half for the breakfast. Charge him over for any damage the caravan does to the town tonight, besides. We hold the coin and hand it round to whoever it's owed."
"You make it all look so easy."
Kain held off until she was gone. When the door clicked shut behind her, he shrugged to the empty room. "I wasn't always so far off from their sort," he said. "You learn how to handle them."
He finished out the work. He dried the last of the mugs and set them in their places, racked the plates, poured out the dirty water, wrung the cloths and hung them, and set every chair square to its table.
A steady rain had started up on the shingles while he worked.
When the room was set to rights he nodded once and went out into the dark. It was past midnight.
Roan stood hunched under the eaves of the Kettle, stamping, and Kain swung up onto his back and turned him out into the rain at a trot. The rain was cold and the hour was late, and the road home ran long under it.
He reached the farm, put Roan up and saw him settled for the night, and went up to the house.
Ghost was inside when he opened the door. The wolf had worked out how to let itself in while he was gone, whether by pulling the latch or shouldering the door at the right spot he couldn't say.
He shut the door behind him and locked it and made for bed. He was asleep before the covers were over him.