north to the upper Wobbish country. So you won't lack for houses willing to take a beggar in - you can thank the Reds for that, too."
"I'm no beggar, sir," said Taleswapper. "As I told you, I'm willing to work."
"With knacks and hidden shiftiness, no doubt."
The man's hostility was the plain opposite of his wife's gentle welcoming air. "What is your knack, sir?" asked the wife. "From your speech you're an educated man. You'd not be a teacher, would you?"
"My knack is spoken with my name," he said. "Taleswapper. I have a knack for stories."
"For making them up? We call that lying, hereabouts." The more the wife tried to befriend Taleswapper, the colder her husband became.
"I have a knack for remembering stories. But I tell only those that I believe are true, sir. And I'm a hard man to convince. If you tell me your stories, I'll tell you mine, and we'll both be richer for the trade, since neither one of us loses what we started with."
"I've got no stories," said Armor, even though he had already told a tale of the Prophet and another of Ta-Kumsaw.
"That's sad news, and if it's so, then I've come to the wrong house indeed." Taleswapper could see that this truly wasn't the house for him. Even if Armor relented and let him in, he would be surrounded by suspicion, and Taleswapper couldn't live where people looked sharp at him all the time. "Good day to you."
But Armor wasn't letting him go so easily. He took Taleswapper's words as a challenge. "Why should it be sad? I live a quiet, ordinary life."
"No man's life is ordinary to himself," said Taleswapper, "and if he says it is, then that's a story of the kind that I never tell."
"You calling me a liar?" demanded Armor.
"I'm asking if you know a place where my knack might be welcome."
Taleswapper saw, though Armor didn't, how the wife did a calming with the fingers of her right hand, and held her husband's wrist with her left. It was smoothly done, and the husband must have become quite attuned to it, because he visibly relaxed as she stepped a bit forward to reply. "Friend," she said, "if you take the track behind that hill yonder, and follow it to the end, over two brooks, both with bridges, you'll reach the house of Alvin Miller, and I know he'll take you in."
"Ha," said Armor.
"Thank you," said Taleswapper. "But how can you know such a thing?"
"They'll take you in for as long as you want to stay, and never turn you away, as long as you show willingness to help out."
"Willing I always am, milady," said Taleswapper.
"Always willing?" said Armor. "Nobody's always willing. I thought you always spoke true."
"I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man."
"Then how do you call me 'sir,' when I'm no knight, and call her 'milady,' when she's as common as myself?"
"Why, I don't believe in the King's knightings, that's why. He calls a man a knight because he owes him a favor, whether he's a true knight or not. And all his mistresses are called 'ladies' for what they do between the royal sheets. That's how the words are used among the Cavaliers - lies half the time. But your wife, sir, acted like a true lady, gracious and hospitable. And you, sir, like a true knight, protecting your household against the dangers you most fear."
Armor laughed aloud. "You talk so sweet I bet you have to suck on salt for half an hour to get the taste of sugar out of your mouth."
"It's my knack," said Taleswapper. "But I have other ways to talk, and not sweetly, when the time is right. Good afternoon to you, and your wife, and your children, and your Christian house."
Taleswapper walked out onto the grass of the cornmons. The cows paid him no mind, because he did have a warding, though not of the sort that Armor would ever see. Taleswapper sat in the sunlight for a little while, to let his brain get warm and see if it could come up with a thought. But it didn't work. Almost never had a thought worth having, after noon. As the proverb said, "Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night." Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.
He headed up the pathway to the church, which stood well back from the