He had taken to joining Captain Shurq Elalle and Skorgen Kaban the Pretty at their preferred table in the corner during lulls in the mayhem, when the serving wenches and scull-boys rushed about with more purpos’ than panic, dull exhaustion replacing abject terror in their glazed eyes-and all seemed, for the moment, right and proper.
There was a certain calm with this here captain-a pirate if the Errant pisses straight and he ain’t missed yet-and a marked elegance and civility to her manner that told the proprietor that she had stolen not just coins from the highborn but culture as well, which marked her as a smart, sharp woman.
He believed he was falling in love, hopeless as that was. Stress of the profession and too much sampling of inland ales had left him-in his honest, not unreasonably harsh judgement-a physical wreck to match his moral lassitude which on good days he called his business acumen. Protruding belly round as a stew pot and damned near as greasy. Bulbous nose-one up on Skorgen there-with hurst veins, hair-sprouting blackheads and swirling bristles that reached down from the nostrils to entwine with his moustache-once a fashion among hirsute men but no more, alas. Watery close-set eyes, the whites so long yellow he was no longer sure they hadn’t always been that colour. A few front teeth were left, four in all, one up top, three below. Better than his wife, then, who’d lost her last two stumbling into a wall while draining an ale casket-the brass spigot knocking the twin tombstones clean out of their sockets, and if she hadn’t then choked on the damned things she’d still be with him, bless her. Times she was sober she’d work like a horse and bite just as hard and both lalents did her well working the tables.
But life was lonely these days, wasn’t it just, then in saunters this glorious, sultry pirate captain. A whole sight better than those foreigners, walking in and out of the Brullyg Shake’s Palace as if it was their ancestral home, then spending their nights here, hunched down at the games table-the biggest table in the whole damned lavern, if you mind, with a single jug of ale to last the entire night no matter how many of them crowded round their st range, foreign, seemingly endless game.
Oh, he’d demanded a cut as was his right and they paid over peaceably enough-even though he could make no sense of the rules of play. And how those peculiar rectangular coins went back and forth! But the tavern’s take wasn’t worth it. A regular game of Bale’s Scoop on any given night would yield twice as much for the house. And the ale quaffed-a player didn’t need a sharp brain to play Bale’s, Errant be praised. So these foreigners were worse than lumps of moss renting a rock, as his dear wife used to say whenever he sat down for a rest.
Contemplating life, my love. Contemplate this fist, dear husband. Wasn’t she something, wasn’t she just something. Been so quiet since that spigot punched her teeth down her throat.