Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,22

but heavier. A false note here, a spark of anger there. Most of these people had come to escape their lives, not to carouse and catch up with friends.

A few faces brightened as they turned her way, old regulars happy to see her, raising hands or tankards in greeting. Those Shins returned with a smile almost alarming in its cheer, so frantic was she to find something familiar.

The bulk of the throng, however, tossed her the same glance they offered any other newcomer and sullenly went back to their cups. That the strangers didn't recognize her was to be expected, but more than a few regulars, those who hadn't offered their welcome, turned away just as swiftly.

How could they fail to even recognize her? Had they changed so much—or she changed so much—in less than a year?

Olgun's presence calmed her, a feeling very much like a comforting arm draped around her shoulders. She probably wouldn't have just turned around and left without it—but she couldn't swear to it.

Still, she might well have considered getting out, had a particularly friendly face not finally presented itself.

“Gerard!”

The burly, red-bearded barman—a fixture of the Flippant Witch since its earliest days under Genevieve Marguilles, before even Robin had been employed—peered curiously around the cluster of customers gathered before the bar. Too chaotic to be a queue, too narrow and winding to be a mob, it was effectively a “smear.” Yes, a smear of patrons.

Gerard leaned around that smear, seeking the source of that call; when he saw her, Shins figured it had to be the beard itself that kept his jaw from swinging freely before dropping to the floor.

Maybe he braided it.

“Shins!” He waved her over, utterly losing track of the drink he was pouring at the time. Pushing, ducking, squeezing, elbowing, and occasionally Olgun-ing herself a path through the busy common room, Widdershins didn't hear whatever complaint the patron had made to Gerard regarding his lapse in attention, but she arrived soon enough to hear the tail end of the barman's reply.

“…to own the place, you jackass! So unless you want a permanent ban—not to mention,” he added with a meaningful gesture toward the thick cudgel he kept for emergencies, “a permanent bang—I suggest you take a few steps back, ponder our wide selection of fine aperitifs, and give long thought to what you want to order!”

She'd made it back behind the bar by the time Gerard had wound down, and the customer had huffed away, doubtless determined to go somewhere else to drink until it occurred to him just how much walking and how much not-drinking that would entail.

“Fine aperitifs?” she asked, eyebrow migrating upward.

“Yeah, well.” Gerard shrugged. “Figured the big words would keep him off-balance, and it sounded better than ‘our intestine-abrading fire-piss.’”

“Oh, what are you snickering at?” she demanded quietly in response to Olgun's burst of amusement. “You don't have intestines, and you don't piss! At least, I assume you don't. Do you? Because considering where you live, ew!” Then, to Gerard, “I was sort of looking for a middle ground, yes? Somewhere our drinks are neither ambrosia nor arsenic.”

“You'll need to hire on a barman with a more sensitive palate, then. Or at least a broader vocabulary.”

They stared, smirked, burst into a hearty laugh, and came together for a mismatched hug almost in perfect unison.

“I'm glad you're okay, Shins,” he breathed into her ear.

Shins could only nod, overwhelmed. She and Gerard hadn't been that close, but right now the heavy squeeze, musky and alcoholic scent, even the tickling of beard against her head, were far and away the best welcome—the only welcome, really—she'd received thus far.

At the same time, while she'd no doubt at all that the embrace was heartfelt, and while she was hardly the foremost expert on Gerard's body language, his posture felt a bit guarded, his back stiff. Sooner than she might have preferred, he slowly disengaged, returning to deal with the ever-growing rumble of irate patrons.

“So, um. Business seems…good,” she said weakly.

Pouring drinks and passing them on with a facility Shins never had mastered, Gerard responded over his shoulder. “Like this most evenings, these days. Bad times…well, the right kind of bad times,” he corrected himself, referring, Shins knew, to the Church-driven recession of a while back. “They're good for places like ours, since folks drink more. Sounds hard, but that's the nature of things.”

“It's not just the Witch, then?”

“Far's I know, every tavern in Davillon's raking it in.”

“Gerard, what is happening in Davillon?”

“Politics. Crime. Superstitious