Chapter 17

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Winning a battle against gravity, Dieder thrust his mug upward. "To the holidays! When godly things happened a lotta years ago so us peasants can party now!"

"To parties now!" Alys echoed, raising her own mug.

"And to Ker'!" Dieder continued. "For comin' out and bein' a sport fiiiive nights in a rooooow!"

"Five nights in a row!"

Kerchen muttered something under his breath, probably something moralizing, but he clunked his mug against the others' anyway. The boy looked less easy in his seat than usual and less aloof. Dieder obviously found this endearing and used the opportunity to ruffle Kerchen's hair every five minutes and order a pitcher of beer.

"This is just great," Dieder crooned. "This is just one of the best Midwinters ever. Spending it with a girl, in theory, and my best friend, who came back from the dead."

"Me too!" Alys said, refusing to be outdone in effusive appreciation of her friends. Dieder squinted at her, noticing even through his stupor that neither he nor Kerchen were girls. Alys took a gamely gulp from her mug and blinked. "What do you mean came back from the dead?"

"O well, Mister Dramatic over there was all, 'I'm gonna go on a trip, and if I don't come back next week, put on my funeral! 'Cause that means I'm dead. Crying is optional. Also thanks fer the cheese."

Kerchen pointed a finger at him. "That is not what I said."

Alys gasped. "Wow, did you really say that?"

"That is not what I said!"

"That's what he said!" Dieder insisted. "Except he was makin' this stone poker face like this." He demonstrated, then snorted some beer through his nose.

"Dieder, stop drinking."

"What sort of trip was it?" Alys asked as Dieder refilled his mug instead. "I'd say Karse, but you're from there, so it wouldn't be dangerous for you." Kerchen ignored the nearby heads turning their way.

"Oh, ya don't know?" Dieder asked smugly. "Turns out he-"

"I made a mistake," Kerchen grumbled into his mug. "I don't need it repeated. I don't...I am not..." He fell silent.

Dieder's smirk dropped. "Oi, I din't mean anything by it. I'm horsin' wit' you. Cheer up, it's the holidays. I won't mention it no more." He ruffled his hair, and Kerchen made half-hearted attempts at swatting his hand before relenting to the treatment.

"Cheer up," Alys parroted, fuzzily remembering Kerchen with a broken arm a few nights back. "I know what'll cheer you up." Her hand shot into the air before Kerchen could stop her. "Yana! Another pitcher!"

The next pitcher did nothing for Kerchen's spirits, but Dieder proved to be as determined as he was drunk as he regaled Kerchen with tale after tall tale.

"And lo and behol', the stinker comes out with a Companion, climbs up the horse's back and snatches the fruit off the tree right afore me eyes! Starin' me in the face, smirkin' this big o' smirk, and 'e Fetches it out to his Companion and the stinker-horse gallops away! I was robbed, I was, what happened to finders keepers?"

"Companions aren't horses," Alys chirped.

"I do not believe this story," said Kerchen.

"'ey, are you callin' me a liar?"

There was silence and some shifting eyes.

"Obviously that story ain't true! I dun steal fruit from trees at rich folk's manors!" Dieder huffed. "I'm jus' tryin' t'make ya feel better. D'ya feel bedder yet?!"

Kerchen flushed slightly and looked down. "I..."

"He means better," Alys supplied.

Kerchen shook his head. "I know. I meant," he began, eyes fixed on his still full mug, "I meant you don't have to try to do that. I...being here with you two makes me feel better. Enough, it is." He twiddled his thumbs behind his mug, rubbed the back of his neck. "I hope you'll be with me next Midwinter, too," he said quietly, "and the next."

Dieder's sniff was wet.

Convinced that the bottom of the pitcher would mark the end of Dieder, Kerchen deigned to share in the vices, if only to take it away from the other boy at the table with rather less discretion. As a result, Kerchen had his head in his arms for the last ten minutes. Dieder and Alys, after making sure Kerchen wasn't passed out in a bad way, nobly took it upon themselves to finish off the pitcher.

"Ker's a great guy, y'know," Dieder said, stumbling over his syllables. "Even being from Karse an' all."

"People from Karse are great," Alys agreed.

Dieder scrunched his nose. "No, I said Ker'. Ker' is a great guy."

"Just like other men from Karse!" Dieder was about to protest again, but Alys thought they'd wrapped that topic up nicely and veered. "Why do you always call him Ker'? It's not so easy to say, is it? Keeerrr. You should call him Kerch. That syllable falls, and you're done with it! Not like Kerrrrr, where it runs off from you and you're just left hanging." She demonstrated the syllables as hand gestures.

"Nah, can't call him Kerch. Sounds too much like shaych!"

"Havens, you're really concerned about that. What's it matter anyway?"

Dieder slammed his mug on the table. Kerchen groaned. "Because I can't git a girlfriend if they all think I'm shaych!"

Alys got a hiccup out of the way and smirked at him. "Ooh, I don't think that's why you can't get a girlfriend."

"'Ey, watcha tryin' t'say?!"

"I said," Alys repeated at the top of her lungs, "I don't think that's why-"

"Um, Alys." The two swerved to Yana the barmaid, who gave them an apologetic smile. "I think this night's been plenty fun for you, hasn't it? And you've drunk enough, I'm sure?"

Alys paused and mulled that over. "You're right!" she said, lighting up. "Dieder, we did all our drinking today!"

"What? I ain't tired!" Dieder cried. "Night's still young!"

"No no no, I meant-we don't need to drink anymore, so we can do other things!"

"Like what?"

Before Yana could suggest something sensible, Alys grabbed his arm and declared, "We're gonna find you a girlfriend! Come on, let's find a pub where the men are stinkier and uglier, and you'll be sure to stand out in a nice way!"

Dieder put up a finger as she dragged him away. "You got me at girlfriend, but the rest o' that, I dunno-"

"Yana, take care of Kerchen!"

"Alys!"

Kerchen woke up with a start. He bolted to his feet and staggered, steadying himself on the wall.

The wall?

Kerchen's eyes darted around. The hallway was still the wood and design of Alys's tavern, but he wasn't in the front area anymore. Something inside him clutched, cold despite the blanket that now piled at his feet. Alys's friend darted in from the main room, the spill of light and noise swelling and shutting as she closed the door behind her. Kerchen surreptitiously wiped the dampness from his eyes and cheeks.

"Where are they?" he asked, before collecting his wits. "I am sorry, I mean, excuse me..."

The girl huffed, obviously not having time for pleasantries. "They left over a mark ago, off to other taverns it seems. I tried to stop them, but-"

"Do you know where?"

"Not in the least. Where men are stinkier and uglier, apparently."

Kerchen's fist tightened. They were in a better stretch of the city's taverns, but a mark was a long enough time, and with both of them in that state... He hadn't drunk that much, so why did he fall asleep?

He knew the answer, but he didn't want to think about it.

Kerchen took a breath and tried to put himself in the calm state that he entered for his missions. His mind emptied itself of emotions, emptied itself until it hit the wall once more, and he bit his lip. Nevermind, he thought. The most important thing was to find the other two; once he knew that nothing had happened to them, he could go back to pretending like nothing had happened to him.

"It is fine. May I have some water instead?" He considered. "And some rope, please."

Nothing had happened to Alys and Dieder. They had happily flitted from tavern to tavern, buying a drink and finding different ways of talking to female strangers. Alys, having much knowledge in what sorts of attention was never appreciated, did an unexpectedly admirable job of steering Dieder into giving positive if bizarre impressions on the girls they spotted, but inevitably they found themselves moving onto the next tavern. Whether it was because most of the girls they found either were uneasy with being asked to be a girlfriend, twice Dieder's age, or charged for pretending to be a girlfriend, or both of the latter two was hard to say, but Dieder and Alys were undaunted as they pressed on, deeper and deeper into the city.

Pressed on, that is, until they ran into Jedeth Levalen. While nothing had happened to Alys and Dieder except a shrinking purse, the noble heir had found himself in a lot of trouble. The evening had started the same as most others for the boy-dinner at Rahlen's estate, a few rigged games in Exile's Gate, then wringing down those that didn't pay up. Jedeth had curled his lip at the idea of hiring filthy muscle from the heap of waste that was most of Exile's Gate, but Rahlen had pointed out that it took dirty hands to do a dirty job.

So it was that Jedeth was with a group of thugs and swordarms while Rahlen took over the usual spot at Solid Oak. He smirked at the loser across the table, this time the youngest boy of one of the newest merchant upstarts. The boy should have enough money to pay up-at least, his parents did-and it would only take a bit of encouragement to motivate him to do so.

Jedeth had rounded up his thug dogs with a whistle and followed the boy's retreat down an alley, only to be shoved to the ground himself.

He didn't even get a chance to shout something indignant at them. Fists and kicks connected into his stomach, his legs-he barely had time to throw his arms up to protect his face, and even protecting himself something managed to sock him in the eyes. They weren't even demanding anything yet-Jedeth recognized through a blaze of pain Rahlen's tactics against people he wanted to make sure to silence.

He couldn't decide whether to be shocked or furious.

There was a lull in the beating. Jedeth gagged and coughed his innards onto the stones as the merchant boy came back, the sneer on his face decidedly aristocratic. Jedeth bared his teeth, and the boy tutted.

"Oh my, what's with that look? The Poitregas heir told me that you knew how this works."

Jedeth snarled something obscene. The boy smirked. "It seems to me that you need another lesson."

Someone yelped behind Jedeth. They all turned to see Alys and Dieder, wide-eyed and now very much sober.

Despite his swollen eye, Jedeth stared at Alys. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" she countered, her eyes flicking from one face to the next.

The not-merchant boy coughed into his fist. Dieder grabbed Alys's wrist and ran.