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The tavern Levi chose sat two streets back from the market. Nothing fancy. Low beams, worn tables, the kind of place that served honest food without making a production of it. The lunch crowd had thinned by the time they arrived, leaving a scattered handful of workers and merchants who mostly kept to themselves.
He held the door. Colette walked in without acknowledging it.
The bartender glanced up when they entered. Her eyes moved from Levi's coat, good fabric and well-fitted, the kind that announced money without trying, to Colette standing beside him, hair still half-loose from the earlier scuffle, elbows worn through her coat, bread bag under her arm. The bartender's expression didn't shift. She'd seen enough of the world to not find it worth remarking on.
The few people already seated were less practiced. Heads turned. A couple of men near the window looked over and then kept looking in that sideways way people think isn't obvious.
Levi found a table. Colette sat across from him, choosing the chair with its back to the wall and a clear line to the door. She placed the bread bag between her feet, folded her hands on the table, and waited.
A server appeared, drawn by the coat.
"Grilled chicken and a beer," Levi said. He looked at Colette. "Soup and bread for her."
"And to drink?" the server asked, looking at Colette.
"Water," Colette said.
The server left. Levi settled back in his chair and glanced around the room without making a thing of it. The men by the window had moved on. The couple near the bar hadn't. He noted this and let it go.
Colette had already noted all of it. She turned back to him.
"They're staring," she said.
"People stare," Levi said.
"It means they're wondering what someone like you is doing with someone like me."
"And what are you wondering?"
She looked at him. "Same thing."
He didn't have an answer to that, so he didn't offer one. They waited in silence while the room moved around them, voices overlapping at other tables, the clatter of someone dropping something near the kitchen. Colette sat straight and still, not comfortable but decided.
The food came. Thick soup, dark bread, a cup of water on her side. Half a grilled chicken on a wooden board and a beer on his. It smelled good. He tore off a leg and started eating.
Colette didn't move.
She sat with her hands on the table and her eyes on the soup, not reaching for the spoon.
Levi ate half the drumstick before he looked up. "Why aren't you eating?"
"Did I pay for this?" she asked.
"No."
"Then I'm not eating it."
Levi laughed softly. "Well, my treat."
She still didn't reach for the spoon.
He could hear it then, just barely, the low sound of her stomach making its own argument. She stared at the soup. He looked back down at his chicken.
He pulled off the second drumstick and leaned across the table, dropping it into her bowl.
"Here, have this. You're too thin. I don't want to see you drop dead in front of me."
She looked at the drumstick sitting in her broth. She looked at him. Her hands stayed on the table.
Her stomach rang out again, louder this time, loud enough that the man at the next table glanced over. Colette's face went red from the ears inward. She turned her head toward the window and fixed her gaze on something outside.
Levi just smiled.
"You can trust me," he said. "I meant no harm. Just think of this as compensation."
Colette turned back slowly. She looked at him for a moment.
"Hmm."
"One silver coin," she said.
Levi blinked. "Sorry?"
She met his eyes directly. "One silver coin, and you can have me for a night."
He went still.
"Huh," he said.
She held his gaze and continued without flinching. "One silver coin. No less. Per night. And you need to use protection."
The table of men sitting nearby had gone completely quiet. They were all looking at Levi with the flat, unanimous expression of a judgment already rendered.
Levi opened his mouth. Closed it.
"OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE,"
.
.
.
Colette picked up the spoon and started eating.
The next thirty minutes were among the more exhausting of Levi's recent career, which was saying something given that his recent career had included a plague priest becoming a skeleton.
He explained, at various levels of increasing desperation, that he was a librarian. That he had not been propositioning her. That the word compensation had referred specifically to the bread at the market and nothing else whatsoever.
The men at the nearby table gradually lost interest, though one of them was smiling into his cup for longer than was polite.
Colette ate through all of it with complete composure. By the time she had demolished the soup, the bread, and both drumsticks and set the bones neatly aside, she seemed to have decided that he was probably not a pervert noble after all, or at least not enough of one to be a problem. She picked up the last scrap of bread, gestured at him with it, and spoke with her mouth not entirely empty.
"Soow euh, euncle, wheat dou you whant?"
"Swallow before you speak," Levi said. "I don't speak pig language."
Colette furrowed her brow, looking offended, but she chewed and swallowed.
"So," she said. "Uncle. What do you want from me?"
"What, who's your uncle? I'm twenty-eight."
System
Who the hell is twenty-eight,You're a hundreds-of-thousands-year-old monster.
Guilty as charged, Levi thought. But that's not relevant right now.
He set his beer down.
"I'm a librarian. Based in the capital. I'm here on a short vacation, but I'm also taking the chance to do some research on life in the border cities. I know how people live in the capital well enough. Out here I don't." He kept his tone easy, nothing demanding in it.
"You know this city. I helped you out today, so I thought maybe you'd be willing to show me around for a few days while I'm here. I'll pay you fairly for your time."
Colette looked at him. She chewed the last of the bread slowly. "That's really it?"
"That's really it."
"You don't want anything else."
"I want to understand how people live here. That's the job." He paused.
I also want to get her comfortable enough to eventually bring her to the Library. But that comes later, once she actually trusts me.
"For now, just a guide. A few days."
She was quiet, turning it over. She wasn't trying to hide that she was thinking, which was more than she'd given him all afternoon. Finally she looked up.
"Fine," she said. "A few days."
"Good."
She glanced at the empty bowl and the bones on the board. "Can I take some food back? For my brothers and sisters."
"Of course," Levi said. "Are they blood relate?"
She shook her head. "War orphans. Same as me. The border's been like this long enough that there are a lot of us. You group together because that's what works out here. In my group there are five of us total. Two boys, two girls, and me."
"How old are they?"
"Eight, nine, eleven, thirteen."
Levi looked at her for a moment. Four kids, a border city, whatever she could scrape together each day. He pushed back his chair.
"Finish the rest," he said, nodding at what remained on the board. "Then we'll go to the market."
.
.
.
Colette knew the market the way you know a place you've depended on for years. She moved through it quickly, reading the vendors at a glance, going straight for what she needed without browsing. Dried lentils. Root vegetables. Two small pieces of cured meat. She picked by weight and price and was done with it in minutes.
Levi walked beside her and paid when she handed things to him. After the second stall she stopped checking if that was all right and just handed things over, which he took as progress.
At the grain stall she reached for the white rice. He stopped her gently.
"Take the brown instead."
She looked at him.
"The brown keeps more of what it starts with during milling," he said. "Fiber, minerals, things that help the body actually use what it eats. The white is mostly starch. It fills you up fast but it doesn't hold. For growing kids the brown is worth the extra two copper."
She looked between the two bags, then swapped without comment.
At the next stall she moved past the dark leafy greens. Levi stopped again.
"Those."
"They're bitter," she said.
"They have iron in them," he said.
"And vitamins that growing bodies need, especially under eight and nine. If you cook them into the lentils with a bit of that cured meat, the fat from the meat helps the body absorb the fat-soluble vitamins in the greens, and the bitterness softens enough that the kids will eat it. The combination is worth more than either thing alone."
She looked at him for a moment, then picked up the greens.
He added dried beans at the next stall. "Beans and lentils together cover the same protein as meat at a fraction of the cost," he said. "The body needs different amino acids and those two together cover the full range."
Then a small jar of cooking oil, which he held up briefly.
"Fat-soluble vitamins don't absorb without fat. A little oil in the cooking makes everything else work better."
Then eggs, six of them, from a woman with a basket near the edge of the market. Colette looked at the eggs.
"Eggs are one of the most complete foods you can buy for the price," Levi said.
"Full protein, good for the brain and the eyes. Especially for the younger two."
Colette had been tallying quietly in her head this whole time. She looked at the pile in her arms and what Levi was carrying and knew it was more than she would have bought on her own.
"This is more than I asked for," she said.
"I know."
"Why."
Levi thought about it honestly.
"Because you're feeding four kids on whatever you can manage in a border city, and what they're getting is probably not enough. Not because you're not trying. Just because it's hard to know what stretches and what actually does something when you're buying by price." He adjusted the sack in his arms.
"The lentils and beans together give them real protein without the meat cost. The greens and oil cover what's hardest to get otherwise. The eggs fill in the rest. It's the same money, roughly, just used better."
Colette was quiet for a moment. She looked at the provisions.
"You know a lot for a librarian," she said.
"Libraries have books on everything," he said.
She almost smiled. Not quite, but it was in the direction of one. She took the sack from him and packed everything in with practiced efficiency, settled the weight on her shoulder, and picked up the bread bag from where she'd set it down.
She looked at him.
"Seventh bell tomorrow morning," she said. "I'll take you to the docks. Don't be late."
She turned and walked into the last of the afternoon crowd, bread under one arm and provisions over the other shoulder, and didn't look back.
Levi stood there as the market thinned around him, the light going long and golden across the stalls.
Okay so… where the fuck should I sleep for the night?