10 - A Silver Coin

That night the boys were camped on a rooftop a few blocks south of The River Sister where the wide lane of Raccoon Street separated the districts of Tabby Square and Fiddlewood. Syatt lay on his back on their scavenged blankets and the hardened tar of the rooftop. He stared up at the expanse of night above them, a cosmic dusting of bright stars known as Lyrwin's Belt. Lyrwin, the God of Time. They had learned about each of the major Yarthan gods and goddesses at the orphanage, though the clerics who had taught them had been followers of Slybbon the Water Goddess. Syatt found all of their interweaving dramas and histories interesting, if not a bit far-fetched, but he recalled a night on the porch of the River Sister when Millie had said to him that every truth would eventually be altered by time and the teller, transformed to the mythical, and in a relatively short amount of time when one thought about it, but that those myths often began as fact. It had stuck with him and he supposed that it was true. There was perhaps some truth to the tales of the elemental deities and their wondrous powers, and the witches and warlocks- humans who could come and go from the gods' realms as they pleased. In any case, the age of magic was long gone if it had been real to begin with, and if anyone was traveling to other realms, there was no clear evidence of it to him.

It was considered a sort of common knowledge that at the top of Ryli Tower were objects which had come from those realms. They supposedly proved the existence of both deities and magic, though he knew not how. The Towers spoke little of such things. Only scholars, graduates of the academy- highborn, essentially- were allowed to even see them. They were shrouded in mystery to most of the underclass, who could not even come to a clear consensus about if they existed or what they were if they did, their speculation ranging from simple trinkets to flying carpets and talking swords.

Pox stood off near the building's edge- a tall but single story structure of stone bricks. Its roof was planks of wood laid into the stone and covered with a layer of felt and then tar. They had seen the process done for other buildings in the city. The gutter was crafted into the stone and they used it each night to climb up. Neither had been able to figure out exactly what went on inside of the building, but it was unoccupied from dusk to dawn, and the rooftop was a thousand times better than a night spent in the alleys or down on the landing. Pox gazed out at the street. The nightly cries of the people had died down. A lone dog barked somewhere far off.

For a rooftop, they found it to be a cozy one, and so far no one had bothered them there. The thick stone which made the buildings walls created a shallow railing around them, and an ornamental centerpiece hid the boys from the view of anyone on Raccoon Street, but they could still be seen from the taller buildings across the lane. Normally, Syatt would have reminded Pox to keep low, as he'd done at least once each night they'd spent there, but his mind was on something else. He was thinking about Millie's niece, Cass.

Syatt's first thought had been that she was beautiful, possibly the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and only then had it occurred to him that Millie was also beautiful in her way. Earlier that afternoon, as he and Pox talked with her as they often did, Cass had walked in from the porch with a slight smile on her face, and Millie had called her over to where they stood by the hearth. She wore a brown tunic and gray breeches. A loose strand of her dark hair hung down over her face, her hazel eyes, and when Millie had introduced them there had been a quick and light handshake, a gesture which had been nothing but a simple greeting- she had given the same to Pox- but he couldn't stop thinking about it.

She’d later gone to work behind the bar at The River Sister, chatting back and forth with the usual crowd like she had worked there for years. Her demeanor was warm and friendly, outgoing in a way that was uncommon of the few Yarthan girls her age which Syatt and Pox knew. She was only two years older than them, but at that time in their lives those couple years bulked large. As he recollected their meeting for what seemed to him the hundredth time, he gazed up at the night sky and listened to the lone dog. He wondered if the city was a malicious force of some kind, souring moods day by day until they were permanently scarred- sullen, mean.

She didn't seem like the city girls to him because she wasn't one, he thought. She was from a farm on the borderlands, which to them might as well have been a different planet. Millie had suggested that he and Pox show her around the city in a few days, and they’d agreed, but once Syatt saw her he was filled with a tremendous dread- not because he didn't want her company, but because he was embarrassed of how they might seem to her- ruffians, or uneducated, both of which he supposed they were, but only to a degree, he hoped. He had never felt the need to impress anyone before, but suddenly it had become very important.

He lay back and closed his eyes, wondering why she would come to Yartha at such a time, alarmed by the thought that the countryside could be worse off than the city. Most of the underclass of Yartha dreamt of owning land outside its walls, in the territories protected by the Towers, at least. Regardless of her reasons for coming, Pox had enthusiastically agreed for the both of them to show her around on her next free day, which would be the one after next.

In the blue moonlight Pox stared intently at something across the street from his perch at the edge of the roof, and Syatt listened to him as he softly chuckled. "That guy's drunk as a skunk," he said.

Syatt didn’t hear him. He groaned. "What are we going to do, Pox?" he said.

"Nothin' I reckon. It's just some old pigeon-eyed fellow."

Syatt sat upright, and said in an urgent whisper, "Not him. What are we going to do about Millie's niece? On Sunday? What are we supposed to do?"

Pox stared back at him in the dark and ensuing silence, and although all he could see of him was a dim ghostly blur, Syatt knew the foolish expression his friend wore and he laughed. "Get down from there," he said. "Stop waving at the stumblers."

He did so. Pox kneeled and began to spread out his blankets. "What do you mean, though?” Pox asked him. “We show her around like Millie said. You're about the only fella I know who would complain about this. Besides, who cares? It's just a favor for Millie."

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Even in the moonlight Syatt could not hide his expression, or his nerves, and a grin spread across Pox's face. "She ain't hard to look at. That's a fact," he said. He turned and pulled his ratty blanket over his shoulder. "So you want to impress her. Is that it?"

"No, just, I don't want her to think that we're-"

"Poorer than poor? Street-thieves? Three years younger'n she is? She's lowborn, too, don't forget."

"Two years," Syatt said. "I don't know. Maybe I thought she didn't know about all that, being from the countryside."

"Know about what?"

"Lowborn and highborn," he said. "Also, Yartha is boring. Everyone thinks it's some great place, but… we do the same thing every day. We can't even spend the coin we have on anything fun. It's only about finding something to eat."

Pox lay back with his hands behind his head. "She's Millie's niece, so you know she's smart," he said, "and there ain't no way she's going to go for some street kid anyhow, but it sounds like she hasn’t seen the fancy part of the city yet, or any of its dashing young assholes if that's what you're worried about." He swatted at a mosquito. "But, you can know about something and still not give a rat's ass."

Syatt contemplated it. "I guess we do that a lot, huh?"

"I guess I do. You give so many rat's asses about so many things that it makes my head spin."

"Well," Syatt said, yawning, "I don't give a rat's ass," he finished, and they laughed their stifled laughter.

"She got your mind off that feller who jumped, at least. We can both thank her for that."

Soon they settled into stillness. The noise of Tabby Square was at its lowest point. Every so often, a gentle breeze would clear the oppressive heat. They drifted off to sleep and in the morning left just before the sun rose.

***

Syatt stood outside on the porch of The River Sister as Pox made his way to the open door. Beyond it was the commotion of the tavern at the noon hour. “I’ll just wait out here,” Syatt told him in a tone that he hoped sounded casual.

Pox turned to him there at the door and gave him a look. A group of patrons walked between them and into the common room.

“What if she’s in there?” Syatt tried to explain his reluctance and regretted it at once.

“What do you mean what if she’s in there?” Pox shouted. “She works there! She’s livin’ there! Come on. I want to hear what those folks were talking about.” He grabbed Syatt by the red kerchief tied around his neck and pulled.

“Alright. Alright. Keep it down.”

The group Pox was interested in hearing had entered The River Sister as the two of them milled about outside- men and women, lowborn. They'd talked excitedly to one another- about what, neither of them had been able to quite discern, but they’d all worn astonished expressions, and the hair of their heads looked as if it had been hastily cut, short and uneven. Pox was intrigued, and Syatt reluctantly sidled behind him into the common room.

It was busy at the hour. They found stools at the opposite side of the long oak bar. Between them were a couple of old fishermen. As they took their stools, Pox asked Millie where Cass was.

“She’s upstairs, preparing a room for guests,” Millie said, and went to tend to the new patrons.

“There you go,” Pox said, smiling. Syatt breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Pox shook his head. “I don’t see what you're actin' so crazy for, Sy,” he said. “But she’s going to be able to tell that you’re actin’ crazy, so you better get yourself together.”

“Don’t say that,” he pleaded.

Pox grinned. “You're hopeless. I ain't never seen you like this before.” He looked at the other end of the bar, tapped Syatt’s arm and nodded. “Let’s listen."

The conversation went on unheard until the fishermen between them stopped their chatter and began to pay attention as well, to listen to a young man with a patchy beard and closely cropped hair. He took a long drink from his tankard with a visibly shaking hand, and spoke again. "The little rocks," he said to Millie as he stared into his drink. "They were floating." He shook his head and laughed uneasily, ran a hand through his short hair. "I ain't never seen anything like it, but I know what I seen. We all seen it. Unless we’ve all gone plum crazy, we all seen it."

The others nodded solemnly, some lost in recollection, faces pale. They looked at their hands or at one another, confused, as if still processing some information within.

Millie wiped the bar idly, and said without conviction, “And he’s giving everybody a silver piece? For their hair?”

Syatt turned to Pox. “Listen,” Pox whispered, not taking his eyes off of them.

“He’s a highborn. Strange looking. Bald, and he ain’t even got eyebrows.”

“And he eats your hair and hands you a silver bit for your trouble? While everything floats and your belly aches?” Millie tossed her rag in the soap bucket, threw her head back and laughed her huge, hearty laugh. Syatt loved the sound of it, and could not help but smile each time he heard it.

The man and his companions quickly defended themselves with conviction. “No. No. There’s a sick man at the end of the alley who eats the hair. The highborn is the one with the coin.”

Millie looked at him, deadpan. “That’s a tall tale if I ever heard one,” she said. "A very creative one. I’ll give you that. What sort of grift do you think you’re pulling here, mister?”

"He says it's going to bring rain…"

"And the plot gets sillier," Millie said, laughing again.

Suddenly Pox shouted, startling Syatt. “Hey! Where at? Where at?” he yelled past him.

The man looked in their general direction but did not seem to see them. “Fiddlewood. Glass Avenue close to Chatter. You’ll see it. There’s people lined up,” he said.

Pox grabbed Syatt’s arm and they were headed toward the door.

“I'd get there before the wizard runs out of coin, kid!” said someone behind them, and laughter followed.

“For crying out loud,” Millie yelled after them. “Be smart, boys!” and then they were in the street beneath the sun, feet patting against the bricks as they ran. They heard Millie’s call faintly behind them, “Be careful.”

Pox looked back grinning at Syatt as he ran down the street. "A silver bit is gonna be more'n enough to show your date a good time tomorrow, Sy!" he shouted. “We need haircuts, anyway.”

Syatt ran to catch up.