Dirty, messy work, indeed.

Thomas threw the contents of his shovel over his shoulder. For the first hour, he'd maneuvered the shovel and carefully tilted it to dump it; he'd long gotten over his initial squeamishness, however, and just started tossing it. A … clump landed on his shoulder, and rolled off the oiled cloth mantle of his coat.

Anne had gotten him some of the local clothing before they had departed to speak to the victims' families, which is the only reason he was even doing the work; otherwise he'd be too worried about infecting his wounds. He was constantly aware of the hat sitting on his head, and it had taken its share of the clumps of 'nightsoil', as the clumps of congealed dirt, shit, and piss had been euphemistically referred to. He was waist-deep in a latrine pit, digging it back out.

The stench was more chemical than he would have expected, burning at his nose and eyes. It didn't smell anything like what he would have expected it to, and instead smelled more like what he would imagine acid would smell like.

Well, the pit did. There was the scent of fresh shit coming from the pit next to him that he had just cleared out; somebody had come by and used it right after he had finished. He wasn't sure whether he should feel annoyed or not about that, but there wasn't much he could do about it either way; he hadn't even seen who it was.

This was his third, and final, pit to dig out, and he moved the shovel mechanically, clearing the contents of the pit out onto a tarp, of sorts, made of the same oiled cloth. When he was done, he grabbed the little ladder from the side and climbed up, pulling the ladder out of the pit behind him, and moved to the cart sitting next to the pit, beginning to toss piles of a mixture of sand and gravel back into the pit.

Then, cart empty, he trucked it around to where the tarp was, and started refilling the cart from the tarp, careful with the shovel. The process was complete when he set one end of the tarp into the cart, and pulled it up, to dump the final few pounds into it.

An older man, named Endre, nodded to him, walking around to help Thomas lug the little lacquered wooden bench back over the edge of the pit. It had a hole cut out of it, and a small rail that would help keep people from tipping over backwards into the pit. It wouldn't prevent it entirely, and Thomas suspected that more than one drunk had fallen in, but it would help.

Endre dropped three metal coins in his hand, and Thomas headed to the river to clean. Downriver, there was an area for bathing and laundry, and people were already there when he arrived; he stripped, tossing the brown oilcloth on the sandy beach of the river, and stepped into it. The cold water was quite encouraging of a quick rinse, but he forced himself to duck his head under, sending an oddly hot pain across his scalp, and scrubbed at his face and hair with handfuls of sand as best he could.

Next, he grabbed the oilcloth, moving the copper coins he'd been given into the sand, and just kind of … waved the cloth around in the water. He didn't want to scrub it, as the oil would come off with any kind of effort. He moved out of the river, dressing as he went, and scooped the coins back up and into a pocket. He wasn't certain how much the copper was worth – he was vaguely aware copper was not actually cheap, people stole copper pipes back home, but he had no gauge for value here.

So his next task was to try to get a sense of what things were worth; he headed back to the small shop, a building that looked like any other, without even signage, where Anne had gotten him his clothing, as he hadn't actually been paying attention at the time.

A brief conversation with the shopkeeper later, and Thomas left. A shirt cost around fifteen of these little coins, depending on size and quality, and more if they were fitted – his clothes were not. Pants, twelve. The shop didn't sell shoes, but he moved out of the way of people going this way and that, trying to remember prices back home.

His shirt had cost, what, thirty dollars? A basic minimum wage job paid about seven dollars an hour. So a little less than half a day's work for a nice shirt. He considered the day spent shoveling dirt and shit and piss, for which he'd gotten, assuming the value of a shirt held constant, six dollars. So less than a dollar an hour.

Then again, the value of a shirt probably didn't hold constant. He didn't know how shirts were made, but he doubted it was the hand crafting that almost certainly went into it here. Thomas was vaguely aware that historically, clothing had been very expensive. So maybe his wages weren't quite so bad? He couldn't tell which buildings were stores versus houses – they all looked alike to him. He needed more information.

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He accosted a few passersby until he had a few more points of data. They had no idea how much a loaf of bread cost, and seemed startled by the idea that anybody would buy one. Their primary trade good here was oil, both from fish, and from an inedible berry that the outlying farms produced; a cask of fish oil sold for four silver coins, which ended up being about four hundred and eighty copper coins, and a cask of the berry oil – which he'd learned was what coated his clothing – for one silver coin, so one hundred and twenty copper.

His next questions had been to identify the size of a cask, and it was larger than he expected; about knee-high, and nearly as wide. He didn't feel like doing the math for that, and moved on to ask about food, trying a different tact. A copper coin could buy a bag of wheat the size of his chest, or a bag of flour the size of both of his fists together. The two people he accosted to ask about the price of wood laughed in his face; he did get the answer out of the second, and when he tried to explain a 2x4x8, he'd been shocked by the two silver coins cited as the likely price. Then again, wood seemed scarce, here.

Thomas gave up, then. He had enough money to get by, and to save some up. Whatever he saved up after a month would have to do; he didn't know how much Leisa's work and supplies had been worth, but a month of his time seemed more than generous. Even if it would amount to a handful of what he had trouble not thinking of as pennies. Why could he remember the name of a penny, but not who was on it, or the country that had issued it?

Thomas headed to the 'inn' that Balier had referred him to, or rather, the house that somebody was renting out a room of. He was clean, or at least smelled like river instead of a latrine pit, and he was inclined to sleep early and see what work was available in the morning. The owner of the house, a widower inclined to talking, greeted him as he headed in, and Thomas handed him one of the coins.

Corugard, the widower in question – he'd heard all about the man's dead wife that morning, when he'd asked about the rooms – greeted him cheerfully, wispy gray hair sticking out of his hat in every direction. “Hello Thomas. Get done with your work for the day?” The coin disappeared into a pouch; Thomas would need to get one of those, the one pocket in the shirt wasn't a very secure location to keep things. If he leaned over the coins would dump out. Thomas nodded in response to Corugard, who continued without waiting for another response, “Dinner will be another hour, but there's manna in the cupboard if you're inclined to an early rest. Hilde” his dead wife “always liked to sleep early, said the morning was the best part of the day. Never much agreed, but I do miss waking up with her anyways. Say, do you ...”

Thomas didn't really respond – he'd learned that morning Corugard didn't care much for what other people had to say, being far more interested in what he himself had to say – beyond nodding, shrugging, and making vague affirmative noises at appropriate intervals. At length the man wound down and returned to his work, which appeared to be rope-making, alternating between pouring some kind of thick sap, or maybe just glue, over long lengths of some kind of plant fiber, which were twisted using a clay dowel. He'd then run his fingers along the twisted fibers, to pull the excess sap off, and rub it into the next section.

The 'manna', as it was called, was the flavorless bread that Norris had had an endless supply of. It was, apparently, perfectly nutritious, and universally reviled, which Thomas didn't really understand. He also wasn't certain where it came from. He ate mechanically, and retired to his pallet on the floor, basically a large flat basket to his eye.

The next day found him helping a farmer plow a field – which mean he dragged the heavy wood and iron contraption around until he felt like his arms and legs would fall off; he quietly blessed his damage reduction, as he'd certainly have had blisters on his hands, wrists, and shoulders from the straps and handles. The plow had to be expensive, but he supposed the oil paid for it. The day after that, he 'mucked out' a pen full of tusked green pigs while the rancher kept them from mauling him, mostly successfully – the one escaped pig did try to strike him with a tusk, but the point slid across his skin like it was blunted, much to the rancher's surprise. He got four coins for the work of both days, and some gentle praise.

The next day was a two-coin job, joining a small crew of locals in cleaning out a dry ditch, which had become overgrown, and the day after that there wasn't anything to do at all, so he spent it watching the fishermen. Here he learned, as he watched an old man standing on a pier using a two-pronged spear while angrily telling off some nearby fishermen using the circular throwing nets for abandoning traditions in favor of convenience, that the town was indeed named after the weapon, and not the fish. They didn't have any fish called pike, here; he walked off mid-tirade to ask someone, to their confusion.

Apparently, talking to a couple of other people, the man wasn't well-liked, in part because he was seen as a hypocrite; the piers were new, and they were the reason he had the convenience of a bident – apparently a two-pronged spear was a bident - instead of the long fishing spears for which the town had actually been named. Thomas had no particular interest in the traditions of the town, or in the squabbles, so he moved on. He started to watch people swim, but started feeling awkward about it when he realized he might be perceived as having a more prurient interest in the activities, given the general lack of bathing suits in existence here, so instead just started walking around the town, watching people engage in other activities.