“Even without Cholls’ cut, the rent is paid with days to spare,” Jaycob said, jingling the purse with their take. “When the debt’s paid, you’ll be rich!”

“We’ll be rich,” Rojer corrected, and Jaycob laughed, kicking his heels and slapping Rojer on the back.

“Look at you,” Rojer said, shaking his head. “What happened to the shuffling and half-blind old man that opened his door to me a few months gone?”

“It’s performing again that’s done it,” Jaycob said, giving Rojer a toothless grin. “I know I’m not singing or throwing knives, but even passing the hat has gotten my dusty blood pumping like it hasn’t in twenty years. I feel I could even …” He looked away.

“What?” Rojer asked.

“Just …” Jaycob said, “I don’t know, spin a tale, perhaps? Or play dim while you throw punch lines my way? Nothing to steal your shine …”

“Of course,” Rojer said. “I would have asked, but I felt I was imposing too much already, dragging you all over town to supervise my performances.”

“Boy,” Jaycob said, “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so happy.”

They were grinning as they turned a corner and walked right into Abrum and Sali. Behind them, Jasin smiled broadly. “It’s good to see you, my friend!” Jasin said, as Abrum clapped Rojer’s shoulder. The wind suddenly exploded from Rojer’s stomach, the punch doubling him over and knocking him to the frozen boardwalk. Before he could rise, Sali delivered a heavy kick to his jaw.

“Leave him alone!” Jaycob cried, throwing himself at Sali. The heavy soprano only laughed, grabbing him and swinging him hard against the wall of a building.

“Oh, there’s plenty for you too, old man!” Jasin said, as Sali landed heavy blows to his body. Rojer could hear the crunch of brittle bone, and the weak, wet gasps that escaped the master’s lips. Only the wall held him upright.

The wooden planks beneath his hands were spinning, but Rojer wrenched himself to his feet, holding his fiddle by the neck with both hands, swinging the makeshift club wildly. “You won’t get away with this!” he cried.

Jasin laughed. “Who will you go to?” he asked. “Will the city magistrates take the obviously false accusations of a petty street performer over the word of the first minister’s nephew? Go to the guard, and it’s you they’ll hang.”

Abrum caught the fiddle easily, twisting Rojer’s arm hard as he drove a knee into his crotch. Rojer felt his arm break even as his groin caught fire, and the fiddle came down hard on the back of his head, shattering as it hammered him to the boardwalk again.

Even through the ringing in his ears, Rojer heard Jaycob’s continued grunts of pain. Abrum stood over him, smiling as he lifted a heavy club.

CHAPTER 26

HOSPIT

332 AR

“AY, JIZELL!” Skot cried as the old Herb Gatherer came to him with her bowl. “Why not let your apprentice take the task for once?” He nodded at Leesha, changing another man’s dressing.

“Ha!” Jizell barked. She was a heavyset woman, with short gray hair and a voice that carried. “If I let her give the rag baths, I’d have half of Angiers crying plague within a week.”

Leesha shook her head as the others in the room laughed, but she was smiling as she did. Skot was harmless. He was a Messenger whose horse had thrown him on the road. Lucky to be alive, especially with two broken arms, he had somehow managed to track down his horse and get back in the saddle. He had no wife to care for him, and so the Messengers’ Guild had produced the klats to put him up in Jizell’s hospit until he could do for himself.

Jizell soaked her rag in the warm, soapy bowl and lifted the man’s sheet, her hand moving with firm efficiency. The Messenger gave a yelp as she was finishing up, and Jizell laughed. “Just as well I give the baths,” she said loudly, glancing down. “We wouldn’t want to disappoint poor Leesha.”

The others in their beds all had a laugh at the man’s expense. It was a full room, and all were a little bed-bored.

“I think she’d likely find it in different form than you,” Skot grumbled, blushing furiously, but Jizell only laughed again.

“Poor Skot has a shine on you,” Jizell told Leesha later, when they were in the pharmacy grinding herbs.

“A shine?” laughed Kadie, one of the younger apprentices. “He’s not shining, he’s in loooove!” The other apprentices in earshot burst into giggles.

“I think he’s cute,” Roni volunteered.

“You think everyone is cute,” Leesha said. Roni was just flowering, and boy-crazed. “But I hope you have better taste than to fall for a man that begs you for a rag bath.”

“Don’t give her ideas,” Jizell said. “Roni had her way, she’d be rag-bathing every man in the hospit.” The girls all giggled, and even Roni didn’t disagree.

“At least have the decency to blush,” Leesha told her, and the girls tittered again.

“Enough! Off with you giggleboxes!” Jizell laughed. “I want a word with Leesha.”

“Most every man that comes in here shines on you,” Jizell said when they were gone. “It wouldn’t kill you to talk to one apart from asking after his health.”

“You sound like my mum,” Leesha said.

Jizell slammed her pestle down on the counter. “I sound like no such thing,” she said, having heard all about Elona over the years. “I just don’t want you to die an old maid to spite her. There’s no crime in liking men.”

“I like men,” Leesha protested.

“Not that I’ve seen,” Jizell said.

“So I should have jumped to offer Skot a rag bath?” Leesha asked.

“Certainly not,” Jizell said. “At least, not in front of everyone,” she added with a wink.

“Now you sound like Bruna,” Leesha groaned. “It will take more than crude comments to win my heart.” Requests like Skot’s were nothing new to Leesha. She had her mother’s body, and that meant a great deal of male attention, whether she invited it or not.

“Then what does it take?” Jizell asked. “What man could pass your heart wards?”

“A man I can trust,” Leesha said. “One I can kiss on the cheek without him bragging to his friends the next day that he stuck me behind the barn.”

Jizell snorted. “You’ll sooner find a friendly coreling,” she said.

Leesha shrugged.

“I think you’re scared,” Jizell accused. “You’ve waited so long to lose your flower that you’ve taken a simple, natural thing every girl does and built it up into some unscalable wall.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Leesha said.

“Is it?” Jizell asked. “I’ve seen you when ladies come asking your advice on bed matters, grasping and guessing as you blush furiously. How can you advise others about their bodies when you don’t even know your own?”

“I’m quite sure I know what goes where,” Leesha said wryly.

“You know what I mean,” Jizell said.

“What do you suggest I do about it?” Leesha demanded. “Pick some man at random, just to get it over with?”