In which a fish out of water needs shoes.

"Run," Estel said.

Sure.

You'll get right on that, you with your worn cloak, open-weave basket/bag, kitchen knife with a blade no longer than your hand, half ton of potatoes, and shoes that are just as likely to fall off your feet as they are to protect them in a walk from here to The Forsaken Inn, much less last while living off the wild until Estel stumbles onto you. If he stumbles onto you.

What the fuck was he thinking?

Him? What the fuck are you thinking?

Run? Run where? You don't know a fucking thing about the world around you beyond stories that are so fantastical as to make no sense. The known and mapped world basically ends at the fields and woods around Bree and beyond that "here be dragons" like, literally, there are fucking dragons and trolls and orcs to name a few things that you absolutely do not want to see up close and personal.

Shit. You might as well have been plunked down on Mars or Vulcan or Sakaar or whatever the fuck other habital planet might be out there for as alien as it is not five miles beyond your door. Can't say you're particularly anxious to jump out of the frying pan into that particular championship arena, with or without the awesome haircut.

Jesus.

You might be feeling a little bit more sympathy for Estel's princess than earlier. That's a hell of a leap of faith he's asking you to take. If that's what he's asking of you, what the hell did he ask of her that she said 'no' to?

Yeah.

Well.

You're mighty tempted to tell Estel to stick it where the sun don't shine, too, but then, guess who's hanging around and starting to get impatient with his lack of progress and the fact that you've successfully made yourself scarce?

Fucker.

And so off to Bree's market square you go, you and your copper pennies and reeds from your floor stuffed into the bottom of your shoes crunching with every step. Damn it.

You'd avoided going out for as long as you could, hunkering down in your hut, sneaking out just before dawn after shift change at the gate to check your traps and do what foraging you could, the eyes of Harry's men burning a hole in your back. You spent the rest of your time boiling and beating on scraps of wool to felt them up into something sturdy and then doing your best to sew them into something resembling a backpack. Maybe, just maybe, you can wait Ferny out until Estel's return.

Or maybe not.

Fucker.

You're going to have to do something about that latch on your door.

The air nips at your cheeks and fingertips, making your nose run, the first frost of the season glittering from the shadows of corners and alleyways and leaving the cobblestones dark and slick. Things heat up toward noon, but you're here early enough that the shadows are still pretty deep across the square and late enough in the morning that there's enough of a crowd to lose yourself if you need to step out of the shadows.

On any other day, Bree's market is no more than about four shops in a row, the shutters of their wide windows propped open and laden with breads of various types and meat pies with crusts as tough as cardboard the size of your fist. But today the benches about the square are lined in farmers with their last cabbages and turnips and beetroots of the season in their baskets and dried beans and peas in sacks about their feet, the tanners with their piles of leather hides and the fullers with their lengths of dyed and fulled woolen cloth laid out on narrow trestle tables. Master Thorny's senior apprentice runs the cobbler's booth today and she turns a pair of boots about in her hands, examining them as their owner points out where they need repair. But that's not where you and your pennies are headed.

Speaking of losing yourself, you duck behind the cooper's cart, rattling and full of his barrels and tubs as its wheels bump along the cobblestones, keeping it between you and the brick building in the middle of the square where Master Blackthorn holds court in the open first floor among a rumble of voices negotiating sales, loans, and payments of debt. God, his business just seems to get busier and busier. There's no avoiding it. Finger in every fucking pie around here. His apprentices dart in and out of the archways running messages about the square and beyond. Bins of goods line the side of the porch, along with barrels of tobacco stacked high and branded with the sign of a horn and "South Farthing" on their side.

"I'll take that and all you got and more, should you have it," says a voice with the distinctive clipped accent of places south of Bree.

Nope, not looking to see what deal Blackthorn is making.

And definitely not looking at the stocks at the other corner of the building, either. Nope. Nor Harry Goatleaf twisting at its lock and then kicking it open and hauling a decidedly bedraggled and sullen Harvey Tunnelson to his feet. You almost feel sorry for him, what with his limping about and stamping blood back into his feet and rubbing at his hands.

"Now get ye gone and find your friends! I'll not see ye here in Bree til spring, or you'll see more of the market than you care to, snow, or rain, or ice, or no," shouts Harry as Harvey grumbles and shuffles past the stack of barrels, shrugging more closely into his coat and fixing the hat on his head. He stops to give a rude gesture to Harry's back before he disappears around the corner.

Shit!

You duck lower, only to slip on the cobblestones. A quick grab onto the side of the cooper's cart keeps you from going down. Ow ow ow.

"Fish?" you hear.

Damn it. Not fast enough.

"Hiya there, Fish!" comes the yell from the cooper as you stumble past the stocks and Harry Goatleaf on the other side of the cart twists about to gawp at the cooper glaring down at you from his seat. "What are ye at? Leave off!"

You push away from the cart and duck between the fuller and cobbler's tents and from there into the narrow alley behind the baker's shop.

"Come now, Poppy," you hear and the sound of a soft scuffle of feet once you slip into the shadows between the buildings.

You hold your breath. They're just outside the entrance to the alley.

"Och," comes Poppy's voice, low and strained. "Let me be, Fern."

"Use good sense," comes the hiss and, looking about, you shrink back further into the shadows, where the damp cold of the stone wall seeps in through both cloak and tunic and makes your back ache. "You can't be seen with that person."

"What an awful thing to say!" exclaims Poppy. "Mama would be ashamed of you, and Pappa, too, should they have heard such a thing come from your mouth."

"Aye, that may be," says Fern, "but Big Folk are not our concern, and clear it is your attention's not wanted, else you'd not be searching the dark for what don't want to be found."

Silence greets this for long enough that when Poppy's voice comes again, barely heard against the rattle of the passing cart, it nearly breaks you.

"Oh, Fish," she says and sighs.

Fuck. Stay hidden or go out and greet Poppy, either way you are sure to reward her kindness with a world of hurt.

"Come now," says Fern's stern voice. Her voice grows muffled. "You can't be seen wandering about alleys in Bree's market and you can't mother every stray that crosses your path. Fish will be well enough. That kind always finds some way to fend for themselves."

You lean against the wall and breathe for a moment, listening for their soft footsteps leading away until you can't hear them against the activity of the market.

Well. Shit. One day, seriously, one day you'd really like to not suck so much.

Poppy and her sister are nowhere to be seen when you peek around the corner and you make it to the far end of the market without further incident. There the crowd of folk thins to a passerby or two and the cobblestone makes way to mud, churned up with the passing of feet and carts and animals. You would pick your way through the puddles more carefully if you weren't in a hurry, but your feet are unpleasantly cold and damp already as it is, and this is kind of why you're here in the first place.

"And what do you want?" greets you when you stop before the ragpicker's assigned spot at the end of a row of shops and booths and benches.

There sits a woman in a woolen cap with a boy of no more than a few months of age swaddled and bound to her chest with a thin woolen wrap, his head laying tucked beneath her chin and mouth slowly losing its grip on his very wet little fingers. He'd be adorable if his grandmother weren't scowling so darkly at you.

"Nice to see you, too, Mistress Penniworth," you say. "How's Hazel?"

"That's none of your concern," she says, her scowl not lightening one bit. "And I'll thank ye to either buy somewhat or move on," she goes on, using the stem of her short pipe with its chipped bowl to jab back the direction you came.

You ignore her in favor of glancing over the piles of rags and baskets of discarded odds and ends crowded around her.

You know, you weren't really expecting a warm greeting, much less a re-issuing of the invitation to her pledgeholder's mid-winter feast, but it's not like your new-found reputation is going to sully hers. She'd had her own brushes with rumor and innuendo. Washerwomen tend to get a bad rap, what with them being women who are so bold as to earn their own money, travel freely about the village from house to house, congregate together at the main source of water to ply their services, and, heaven's forfend, spend time talking together and exchanging news and opinions of their own about what they'd seen both on the streets and on the sheets they gathered in their baskets. And it's not like the father of Hazel's little boy has come forw-

Oh.

Damn.

He's the spitting image of Pim of gastrointestinal fame.

You wonder if the Mistress Blackthorn has any clue. Welp, with that light hair peeking out from his cap, when that child grows into that nose of his it won't be long until she figures it out.

Well, fuck. No wonder Mistress Penniworth is so on edge and unwilling to court your attention no matter how many pennies you might give her. She's sitting on a ticking time bomb that's about to blow up any second.

You nod at the basket to her left against the wall barely containing a jumble of second-hand shoes and boots. "I could use some shoes," you say and she glances over to where you're pointing before she grunts and shrugs, jostling the infant laying on her chest.

"Aye, you're welcome to look through them should you have somewhat of worth to purchase them with." She draws in air through her pipe, her words coming out in puffs of ill-smelling smoke. "I'll not take those you've got on your feet now in exchange and I'm no hobbit to put much worth in those mushrooms you've been tramping about to find."

Yeah, whatever. Lovely that everyone seems to know your business.

You squirm your way in between baskets and dive in, the smell of wet and rotting leather rising about you as you set aside chewed up slippers some dog obviously got ahold of and sandals and simple slip-on shoes in even worse repair than your own and let Mistress Penniworth go back to rocking and patting at the infant's behind when he stirs, squirming about in search of his fingers.

Oh, hey! Now that's a nice boot even if it's a little short, just over the ankle. Dark leather. Thick soles. These knobby fasteners instead of thin strips of leather that rot and shred with use. You lean your butt against the wall so you can compare its sole to the bottom of your foot. Should be about right. Excellent!

"I'll save you time, there's not a match for that one," Mistress Penniworth says and cocks an eye your direction.

Well, shit. That's really too bad. You sigh and drop it in the growing pile of rejects.

"Should it be boots you're looking for," she says and you glance up to find her studiously looking out into the booths and brightly colored clusters of the good folk of Bree, "you'll find a pair or two the right size or close enough near the bottom from last spring."

"And what may you be needing boots for, eh Fish?" comes a loud voice from behind you and you nearly leap out of your skin.

Jesus!

You whip about to find Harry Goatleaf leaning on his cudgel giving you and the growing pile of shoes at your feet a speculative look. His dog, this huge mastiff-looking thing, gives you the canine equivalent of a "Is it tasty?" slobbery sniff before Harry kicks it in the chest with his heel and the dog sidles back and sits, shifting restlessly and eyeing Harry.

God damn it. You were really hoping to keep from drawing exactly this kind of attention.

"What's it to you?" you ask, cuz, fuck him and his cudgel and his anxiously attached dog. "I like dry feet." You shrug to drive the point home. Nothing to see here, move along. These are not the droids you are looking for.

"Oh, aye," Harry says, flicking his fingers at the red shoe you're holding from where he's got his hands resting atop his cudgel, "but you'd be better off eating the leather of that than putting it on your feet, I would think, come midwinter."

Yeah yeah.

"Thanks," you say and drop the shoe among the others. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Got any other recipe tips you'd like to share?"

"You best be keeping in mind that the well-being of the good folk of Bree is my business, Fish, should you think my attention to your affairs warranted or no, and don't you forget it," he says, his voice sharpening. He leans over to make sure you see him as you go back to rummaging through the basket. "Should you have got it into your fool head that you could do somewhat unseemly or hurtful and then take off out into the wild to avoid the consequence of it, you best run fast and you best run far."

You really really want to snap back at him with something devastatingly cutting, but you're having a hard time coming up with anything, what with a dog the size of a pony eyeing you with a squint as if that kick he got was somehow your fault and you better not even think of getting out of line or he's going to tell dad on you. And god, that fucking metal muzzle of Harry's that he jangled on his knee throughout the court hearing, the one with the god damn bit built into that you know he's just itching to use on someone. Wouldn't take much, just an over-full pack and an attempt to exit one of Bree's gates, and hey, might as well be you, right?

"Man," you say and sigh, waving about the remains of an embroidered mule with a tastefully low heel, "I'm just here to replace my shoes so I don't end up with frostbite or gangrene or something. You know, contributing to the economy and buying local and reusing and recycling like a fine upstanding citizen."

"Aye, aye," he says and shifts his weight off his cudgel, "so you say. Best ye get yourself a good pair of sturdy boots but don't think you'll get far." He then speaks to the dog panting at his feet. "Take a nice, long sniff Bear, and get that scent in your nose." He waves the end of his cudgel in your direction. "You'll be needing it later, like as not."

Great. Just great. Just exactly what you need.

With no further ado, Harry kicks his dog up to his feet. "Mistress Penniworth." Harry flicks his finger against his cap in a half-assed farewell.

You're apparently not the only one relieved to see him go. Seems Mistress Penniworth nearly smothered the infant laying on her chest with his wrap in an attempt to keep him covered and away from Harry's eyes. She jostles the boy and pats at him where he's been working up a good fuss.

Fucking hell.

God, there's a very large part of you that wants the fuck out of here. You just wish you had any reassurance that what you'd be getting yourself into wouldn't be a hell of a lot worse than what you're dealing with now.

All right. All right. First solve one problem. You've got feet. They need shoes. Once you've got that taken care of you can think of the next problem your attempt to solve this one revealed.

You go through a few other likely pairs and set them aside before you hear a soft sniff. She's doing it very quietly, but Mistress Penniworth is patting at her cheeks and wiping her chin as she works to quiet her grandson. She's looking at him like it's all just going to break her heart.

Well, shit. Harry's a fucking asshole. But he's not the only asshole around and it's not a good idea to forget that assholes tend to flock together. Fuck, maybe you should just gather all of the Penniworths and their ilk in one place and make the case for everyone taking off together for someplace else.

Yeah, cuz asking everyone to stick together under these circumstances worked so well the last time you tried it.

You clear your throat, leaning back against the wall so you can slip off your shoe without your foot touching the muddy ground.

"Have you ever noticed that shaving off someone's eyebrows makes them look completely different?" you say in a conversational tone and Mistress Penniworth blinks and then scowls your direction. "That, and, you know, you can get a nice red tint to hair if you add beet juice to oil and work it in good." You pause to pull on a boot. Ow. Way too fucking small. Like seriously too small. How did you actually get it on your foot?

She scoffs and looks away.

"No, I mean, seriously, my little brother once toasted his eyebrows off playing with fire when he was five." You chuckle. "He had a perpetual look of startled surprise on his face for a while there, especially after he tried drawing in eyebrows with a… with a bit of charcoal," you say as you work the boot off your foot.

Actually it was blue permanent marker. Funniest shit you'd ever seen. Your mother refused to help him clean his new eyebrows off, figuring it was as natural of a consequence as you could get. It was awesome.

"Let it sit for at least an hour wrapped up so it doesn't dry out. The hair, I mean," you say, pulling a boot out from under a set of sandals tied together and rummaging about for its mate. You'll have to replace the laces if you get this one. "Carrot would work, too, you know."

"No amount of carrot is going to stop up folks' mouths, now is it," she says, her voice bitter.

You clear your throat and pull out another boot by its toe. "No, but it will buy you some time."

She doesn't say anything to that. You're pretty much near the bottom of the basket and you've got two likely options picked out and carefully balanced on the pile of discards.

"Burl, Aster, and Privet were willing to stand up to the head of the Council, no matter how clearly pissed he was about it," you say, the effort of pulling option number one on strangling your voice a bit. "If they did it for me, they'd be even more likely to do it for you. You might be able to work out an exchange and get under one of their oaths."

"Mayhap," she says, shaking her head, "but it will take some doing."

"Yeah." You put weight on your foot, doing your best to keep to the driest patch of ground you can find. Yeah, pretty tight. Might work if the leather eases a bit as you break them in. "Barliman would probably be willing to help, if you catch him in the right mood and if he gets to know someone from your family well enough to be invested in them."

"Well that's not likely," she says, her voice dismissive, as if that were that and you're just annoying her.

"I wouldn't give up on it. He'd be grateful to have a set of extra hands about the place, especially when the mid-winter festivities start up. Cook's always looking for more mushrooms and I hear your youngest is pretty good with animals. And it doesn't hurt that he's a charmer and, well, rather nice on the eyes."

You wiggle your toes. Or, rather, you attempt to. Nope, you need more room for the ends of your feet or you're going to hurt yourself trying to walk very far in these. Off comes that boot and we're moving on to option number two, not as high up on the leg or as well made as option number one, but the soles are thick and not too worn. All in all they're in pretty good shape, minus the gash across the front of one that you'll have to repair.

"Is he going to need one?" you hear and you look up to find her looking back.

"A new set of hands," she says, her voice low.

Well then. Secret's out, you guess, if that look she's giving you is any indication.

"Maybe," you say.

You put your attention back on shaking off your other shoe and pulling on option number two's mate. You've tried it on the foot that's a little bigger than the other, but it never hurts to check.

"There's ways of making yourself useful and available so that you'll be the first person Barliman thinks of or, even better, if Bob suggests it at the right time Barliman'll be too harried to think of something else, instead." You stamp your feet. Yep. These are them. Okay. Now let's see if you can afford whatever price she dreams up.

"Ho there! Mind where you're walking," you hear and someone rumbles by while you're tossing footwear back into the basket and a couple of hobbits scramble out of the way of a team of ponies pulling a heavily laden wagon down the street to the Road. A thick canvas covers its load, tied down snuggly against its side, but it's still hard to miss the Hornblower stamp on the barrels at the back of the wagon as it trundles away.

So weird. So late in the season, it's got to have just one destination in mind, right? There's no way they'd be crisscrossing the continent or dallying in their journey south away from the cold weather that's got to make travel too uncomfortable to be worthwhile. But where the fuck would they be going?

Okay. You shake your head. Not your business anymore. Stick to getting the fuck out of here.

"Just, you know, tell your son to be nice to the hobbits and be ready to step in and lend a hand before you're asked and you're pretty much guaranteed to be the first one on everyone's mind when the time comes," you say once you're back in your own shoes and are standing in front of Mistress Penniworth, the boots dangling from your hand.

You peer at her, trying to get a better look, but she's turned away, her face screwed up and her body rocking in place on the bench. It's not until you pull your little purse out of your tunic, turning away from the market behind you and trying to hide what you're doing behind your shoulders that she speaks.

"Keep your pennies," she says, her voice rough, nodding and dabbing at her nose with the wrap.

You squint at her, not exactly sure what you're hearing. Does she mean 'Keep your pennies and put those boots back where you got them?' Or does she mean 'Keep your pennies and take the boots with you?'

"Go on now. Get ye gone," she says, waving you away abruptly with her pipe when you open your mouth and figure you'll find some way to ask. "You'll do neither of us any favors should ye linger."

Oh. You get to keep the boots. Wow. Okay. That works. Yep, you're leaving.

You're half a step away when you turn back. "Will you do something else for me?" you ask and she sighs and lifts her eyes to the heavens.

You've kinda got her cornered. She's not getting the boots back and she knows it.

"Look, it's not going to cost you anything," you begin and she gives you a serious side eye. "Just, will you ask your son to give Bob and Poppy and Cook my thanks and tell them that I miss them. I really wouldn't have made it if they hadn't been so generous with me."

She probably couldn't agree with that statement more given the wry look that passes across her face. But at least she's not saying no. In fact, she's not saying much and her eyes flick to points behind you, back into the main square. A muttering of voices grows louder behind you, along with the squish of mud, as someone makes their way down the narrow street. You back up a step or two.

"And put out the word that somebody needs to check on Ferny's pony every once in a while. Bring the poor thing apples or something, give it something to look forward to and keep it from going feral," you say as a couple someone brushes past your shoulder. And now you'd better shut up.

"Master Oakley," Mistress Penniworth says, a bright smile pasting itself on her face, "and what might you be needing this fine morning?"

And with that, you tuck the new to you boots under your arm and make your way back through the market. You keep to the edge of the square and wind your way behind tents and booths and through the crowd of folk when that's not available. No more shadows and carts passing through to hide behind. But no more Poppy or Fern, either. Only Master Blackthorn stretching his back beneath the arch of the market building, the bins and barrels that had been stacked there cleared away. A cluster of men conclude their business and move off as you pass and, shit, he's not alone. Of course it's Harry and his dog, speaking low as Blackthorn crosses his arms and scowls. And that's when he glances back at a man sitting on the lone barrel left in the shadows.

Fuck.

It's Ferny, looking decidedly mutinous as he scrubs at his jaw.

Well. Fuck.

Maybe it's not about you.

Probably. Right? They've got a lot of other things going on than just you. Right?

Maybe.

Fuck.

So, later, after you've attached the straps to your quilted pack and twisted them, giving them a good tug to test them out, and loaded it up with potatoes and odds and ends you might need, you stand in the dark looking at your door.

Holy fuck.

You're a little dizzy.

You tap at your chest and the phone knocks against you. Yep it's there. Leather water bottles dangling from the pack. Blanket lashed tightly to the bottom. Boots repaired with new waxed linen laces on your feet. Striker and flint wrapped up in a rag. Cup. Bag of rye and wheat berries settled in against the potatoes. Dried mushroom and fish leather and some apples. Fuck it's heavy. You shift the pack a little more comfortably on your shoulders.

Wait, did you-?

No, no, you did. The leather bundle of scissors and soap and brush all snuggly rolled up and tucked in the bottom, otherwise it would still be on the shelf and it's not there.

C'mon. Fuck, it's not like you've got keys to forget or something. Your knuckles hurt from where you're clenching your hands into fists.

Just open it. That's all you need to do. Just lift your hand and turn the latch and tug on the handle.

Fuck, your hands have gone all sweaty. You rub them against your thighs.

C'mon. You can do it.

Fuck.

Go south, that's what he said, right? South and east and just keep going that direction until you hit the river.

What river? How big is it? How long to get there? Is there only one river? What if there are a bunch of them? What if it's all dried up? What if you mistake a stream for "the river?"

And that's when it hits you.

Holy shit!

Ferny and Harry and Blackthorn sitting in a tree. C-o-n-s-p-i-r-i-n-g. First comes money. Then comes power. Then comes… Fuck!

Follow the money.

Goods from the Shire passing through Blackthorn's hands. Blackthorn's hold on Bree. How quickly it's grown lately. All except for Barliman and The Prancing Pony. The one and only island in all of Bree free from his influence. Ferny's friend from the south. Drivers and merchants from the south bringing money into Bree to line Blackthorn's pockets.

Holy shit. They're all in on it.

Shit! Shit shit shit shit shit.

And they know you're planning on leaving.

Fuck. All this time Ferny and Harry kept you focused on what will happen if you do something to defend yourself, putting the pressure on you to let Ferny use you to spy on Barliman and the comings and goings at The Pony for them. And then tightening the noose and making it harder to stay when you refuse to knuckle under and give in.

Oh god.

You don't have to worry about some lie to get past the gate. They're not going to haul you in on suspicion that you've done something you're fleeing. They're going to let you go. And follow the trail. Until it leads to Strider the Ranger whose whereabouts Ferny has been oh so interested in.

Holy fuck. Were they the ones who set the men on Estel in the first place back in the spring?

And you're going to lead them to him out in the middle of the wild?

Somehow you've stumbled back over your hearth. The edge of your cot hits your calves and down you go, bouncing onto the webbing.

Oh god.