The Broken Yoke on a Wednesday had four people in it and one of them was asleep.
Soren came in at half four with Vesper's letter delivered, Vail's clerk's signature in his shirt, and no reason at all to be anywhere in particular until five the next morning.
Reia looked up from the barrel she was tapping.
"No."
"I haven't said anything."
"You've got a face on. It's a face that wants something." She straightened up and wiped her hands.
"And the last time you had that face, you asked me four questions about Brannick Sallow and then a man's leg got broken."
"That was a coincidence."
"That was not a coincidence, Soren."
He sat down at the end of the counter where the light from the window did not reach, which was a habit now, and put two crowns down.
Reia looked at the coins.
"You've been paid," she said.
"I've been paid."
"By the slaver?"
"By her guard, technically, on her instruction, because I found her four hundred and sixty one crowns." He turned one of the coins over
.
" 'She'd have spent it on a bottle and not finished it.' That's a direct quote."
Reia took the coins, put a cup in front of him, and then, to his mild surprise, poured herself one and sat down on the stool behind the counter.
"Slow day," she said, to nobody.
...
He was there for three hours.
It was not a plan. Soren had turned up intending to sit in the dark corner and listen for names, and instead he had ended up in a conversation.
Mostly because Reia had asked him one question about the ledger and he had answered it properly instead of deflecting, and she had gone very quiet and then asked another one.
By six she knew what a spoilage clause was and had strong opinions about it.
By seven he knew that her father had owned the licence for nineteen years, that he had stopped being able to run the place four years ago for reasons she described as the obvious ones.
He knew that she had been behind the counter since she was fourteen and had done the books, the ordering, the barrels, and the throwing out ever since.
On top of all that, he got to know that the licence would still be in her father's name when he died and then in her half brother's, who was eleven as well as her thoughts on the matter.
"So you'll be working for an eleven year old."
"I'll be working for a nineteen year old eventually," Reia said. "It's fine. He's a nice kid."
"That isn't fine."
"No," she agreed, "it isn't." She topped up his cup without asking.
"But there's about two hundred people in this town whose situation is worse and about four of them are in this room, so I don't say it out loud."
<<Lilith: Soren...>>
I know.
<<Lilith: I'm not doing anything, I'm just present.>>
You're being extremely present, Lilith.
At half eight a carter at the long table got loud with one of the girls who came through selling bread, and Soren watched Reia cross the room without hurrying, say four words, and watch him leave.
She came back and sat down.
"You've done that before," Soren said.
"About nine hundred times."
"What do you say?"
"I say out, and then I say his wife's name." Reia shrugged. "Works on nearly all of them. The ones it doesn't work on, I've got a stool leg under the counter."
"That's terrifying."
"That's Wednesday," she said with a singsong tone that made Soren smile unconsciously.
...
At ten she started stacking, and Soren got up and started stacking with her, and she stopped and looked at him.
"What are you doing."
"Stacking."
"You're a slave, you do a lot of work already, you don't have to—"
"I've carried grain sacks since five in the morning before, Reia, this is a holiday." He put four cups on the shelf.
"Also I've got nowhere to be until five tomorrow and if I sit still any longer I'm going to start thinking about things."
Reia watched him for a second.
Then she went behind the counter, and came back, and put a key with a bent iron ring on it down on the table between them.
"Room above the stairs, at the back," she said. "It's mine to give. Father hasn't been up those stairs in two years and my brother's asleep by nine. Two crowns, same as anyone, don't make me a charity."
Soren put two crowns down.
Reia picked them up. Then she stood there holding them, and did not go anywhere, and the not-going-anywhere sat between them for about four seconds until it stopped being ambiguous.
"I finish at eleven," she said.
<<Lilith: Soren. Ask her.>>
I know.
<<Lilith: Properly.>>
Lilith, I know.
He picked up the key.
"Reia."
"Mm."
"Do you actually want to," he said, "or is it just the easiest way to end a Wednesday?"
Reia's hand closed around the coins.
For a moment her face did something complicated, and Soren, who had been reading rooms for a living since he was nineteen years old, could not read a single part of it.
"What?" she said.
"It's not a trick question."
"No, I heard the question." She put the coins in her apron very slowly, like she needed her hands to be doing something. "I'm asking what you mean by it."
"I mean I've been sitting at your counter for six hours and you've been very good company and I'd like to keep being in the room with you," Soren said.
"And I also mean that you've spent nine years behind that counter with men deciding things about you across it, and I'd rather not be a another one, so I'm asking."
Reia stared at him.
"You're a slave," she said.
"Yeah."
"You're property, in a town where a man can buy you, and you're standing in my common room asking me whether I want to."
"That's about the shape of it."
She laughed. It came out slightly wrong, and she stopped it fast, and then she put both hands flat on the table and leaned on them and looked at the wood for a while.
"Nobody's ever asked me that," she said.
"You sai-"
"No, I didn't. I said nobody asks me things." She looked up.
Her eyes rolled but they were bright and she was extremely annoyed about it, but the smile she was supressing gave her away.
"That's different. Men ask me things constantly. What time I finish, what I'm doing after, whether I'd like to see the river, whether my father knows what I get up to. They ask me a hundred things a week and not one of them has ever once been a question I was actually allowed to say no to."
Soren waited.
"So say it," he said. "If it's no, it's no, and I'll go up and put the chair under the door and be gone by five and it won't be strange."
"And if it's yes?"
"Then it's yes."
Reia straightened up.
She took the cloth off her shoulder, folded it once, and put it on the counter, which was a small and completely unnecessary thing to do and which Soren understood was her buying four more seconds.
"I finish at eleven," she said. "Don't fall asleep."
Soren smiled, his tone becoming playful as he teased. "Not without you."
Reia shot him a glare, earning a chuckle from Soren as she vanished behind a pillar so he couldn't see her ears turn a shade.