Fencer Folles and Sir Margueriff
"- the real stuff," someone in the pew behind Wiegraf Folles whispered. "Just a hundred gil."
"I've got some good tobacco," came the reply. "What do you say we swap?"
"How much tobacco?"
The church was only mildly packed; not more than half of the contingent traveling north from Gallione could be here. Once they were all inside - and they would all arrive, sooner or later, for reasons of warmth or for reasons of it not being done for people of their position to skive off - it would take the greatest of luck for the occasional dip to this level of noise. And things would be no different in all the churches they would enter from here to Fovoham; this was not the church of his village and these were not the village people who had attended it in reverent silence. He might as well get used to it, and enjoy these periods of relative quiet.
Somehow this idea did not comfort Wiegraf overmuch.
"Come on, lower it a bit for a friend, would you?"
The priest at the front stopped his sermon for the third time and waved his arms, calling for silence.
"I've lowered it enough already for a thousand friends-"
"Hey. You're saving this for someone?"
One of the Hokuten knights stood at the aisle end of the pew. Wiegraf had been composing a biting reply, something to do with how he'd certainly not be waiting for someone so late, but abandoned it, to his disgust, at the sight of the white cloak. "No. Sir."
The knight nodded and seated himself with his feet propped on the pew ahead of them, on the verge of coming up against the back of a woman's head. "You from around -" He seemed to register Wiegraf's uniform. "Ah, no, you're not." As he spoke Wiegraf noticed incongruous traces of Dorter lilt.
"Margueriff?" said the bargainers behind them.
The knight Margueriff half-turned. "Yeah?"
"How much tobacco ought I get for a hundred gil's worth silk?"
"Don't know," said Margueriff, "how much is a hundred gil's worth? If you asked me about wine, now…"
The family taking up the rest of the pew glared in their general direction. Wiegraf shrugged back in exasperated solidarity. They continued to glare; a gangling fencer was a safer target than a knight.
"Huh," the knight in question was saying now, "that doesn't sound like much for a hundred gil."
"It's bloody silk, Margie, what do you -"
The priest's voice rose. "- kindly avoid such displays of disregard as talking in church and putting your feet on top of the pews…"
Margueriff calmly replaced his feet on the floor; around the church several others did the same. The talking stopped completely, and Wiegraf dared to hope for a moment, but it swelled up again moments after the priest returned to his regular speech. Apparently resigned, the priest didn't bring it up again.
"Would you stop it with the 'Margie,' already?"
"Fine, fine. Anyway, Margueriff, what I'm saying is, you can't expect to get silk for -"
Wiegraf clenched his fist. Took a deep breath. Unclenched, then leaned forward, trying to catch the priest's litany. Now Margueriff was alternating between his conversation with the bargainers and an exchange of Looks with the woman in the pew ahead. Wiegraf hadn't thought it possible for the family to glare even harder.
O holy Ajora in heaven…
The woman turned her head again and winked. Margueriff grinned and winked
back.
Help me listen to what the priest is saying, hard as that might be in these
circumstances. Help me pay no attention to what the knight-who-ought-to-know-better
is doing right next to me. O holy Ajora, can you do this little thing?
His discussion with the bargainers completed, Margueriff turned his full attention on the woman, leaned forward, and began to whisper, his smile widening. The woman blushed.
Wiegraf's elbow went into Margueriff's side.
O holy Ajora… Wiegraf's mental voice droned on, stunned into mindless repetition, as he arranged his features to suggest that nothing was amiss. He had not, in fact, just elbowed a knight like he would have done to a fellow fencer. His predicted lifespan had not, in fact, just been cut very short and with plenty of excitement inserted in the interim.
Margueriff stayed in the same position for a moment, then whispered something else to the woman and straightened up, without looking once in Wiegraf's direction. He was still smiling.
Someone tapped Wiegraf on the shoulder. He half-turned to see the family had stopped glaring; the mother was even smiling at him. He smiled and nodded back, feeling as though his brain had been replaced with something dense and heavy.
The moment he faced front again, someone tapped Wiegraf on his other shoulder. This time he didn't turn at all. Margueriff spoke anyway. "Aren't you the lucky one."
He didn't hear another word out of Margueriff for the rest of the sermon.
END