It felt strange to be walking with the crowd.
Over the last couple years crowds had become a part of the scenery of the city to me. I might use a crowd to hide from a guard or a storekeeper. I might move through a crowd to get where I was going. I might even be going in the same direction as the crowd, but I was never a part of it.
I was so used to being ignored, I almost ran from the first merchant who tried to sell me something.
Once I knew what was bothering me, the greater part of my uneasiness left. Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.
As I’ve mentioned, Tarbean has two main sections: Hillside and Waterside. Waterside was poor. Hillside was rich. Waterside stank. Hillside was clean. Waterside had thieves. Hillside had bankers—I’m sorry, burglars.
I have already told the story of my one ill-auspiced venture Hillside. So perhaps you will understand why, when the crowd in front of me happened to part for a moment, I saw what I was looking for. A member of the guard. I ducked through the nearest door, my heart pounding.
I spent a moment reminding myself that I wasn’t the same filthy little urchin who’d been beaten years ago. I was well-dressed and clean. I looked like I belonged here. But old habits die slow deaths. I fought to control a deep red anger, but couldn’t tell if I was angry at myself, the guard, or the world in general. Probably a little of each.
“Be right with you,” came a cheerful voice from a curtained doorway.
I looked around the shop. Light from the front window fell across a crowded workbench and dozens of shelved pairs of shoes. I decided I could have picked a worse store to wander into.
“Let me guess—” came the voice again from the back. A grandfather-grey man emerged from behind the curtain carrying a long piece of leather. He was short and stooped, but his face smiled at me through his wrinkles. “—you need shoes.” He smiled timidly, as if the joke was a pair of old boots that had worn out long ago, but were too comfortable to give up. He looked down at my feet. I looked too, in spite of myself.
I was barefoot of course. I hadn’t had shoes for so long that I never even thought about them anymore. At least not during the summer. In the winter, I dreamed of shoes.
I looked up. The old man’s eyes were dancing, as if he couldn’t decide whether laughing would cost him his customer or not. “I guess I need shoes,” I admitted.
He laughed and guided me into a seat, measuring my bare feet with his hands. Thankfully the streets were dry, so my feet were merely dusty from the cobblestones. If there had been rain they would have been embarrassingly filthy.
“Let’s see what you like, and if I have anything of a size for you. If not, I can make or change a pair to fit you in an hour or two. So, what would you be wanting shoes for? Walking? Dancing? Riding?” He leaned back on his stool and grabbed a pair off a shelf behind him.
“Walking.”
“Thought so.” He deftly rolled a pair of stockings onto my feet, as if all his customers came in barefoot. He tucked my feet into a pair of something black with buckles. “How’s those feel? Put a little weight on to make sure.”
“I—”
“They’re tight. I thought so. Nothing more annoying that a shoe that pinches.” He stripped me out of them, and into another pair, quick as a whip. “How about these?” They were a deep purple and made of velvet or felt.
“They—”
“Not quite what you’re looking for? Don’t blame you really, wear out terrible fast. Nice color though, good for chasing the ladies.” He patted a new pair onto my feet. “How about these?”
They were a simple brown leather, and fit like he’d measured my feet before he’d made them. I pressed my foot to the ground, and it hugged me. I had forgotten how wonderful a good shoe can feel. “How much?” I asked apprehensively.
Instead of answering he stood, and started searching the shelves with his eyes. “You can tell a lot about a person by their feet,” he mused. “Some men come in here, smiling and laughing, shoes all clean and brushed, socks all powdered up. But when the shoes are off, their feet smell just fearsome. Those are the people that hide things. They’ve got bad smelling secrets and they try to hide ’em, just like they try to hide their feet.”
He turned to look at me. “It never works though. Only way to stop your feet from smelling is to let them air out a bit. Could be the same thing with secrets. I don’t know about that, though. I just know about shoes.”
He began to look through the clutter of his workbench. “Some of these young men from the court come in, fanning their faces and moaning about the latest tragedy. But their feet are so pink and soft. You know they’ve never walked anywhere on their own. You know they’ve never really been hurt.”
He finally found what he was looking for, holding up a pair of shoes similar to the pair I wore. “Here we go. These were my Jacob’s when he was your age.” He sat on his stool and unlaced the pair of shoes I was wearing.
“Now you,” he continued, “have old soles for a boy so young: scars, calluses. Feet like these could run barefoot all day on stone and not need shoes. A boy your age only gets these feet one way.”
He looked up at me, making it a question. I nodded.
He smiled and lay a hand on my shoulder. “How do they feel?”
I stood up to test them. If anything, they were more comfortable than the newer pair for being a little broken in.
“Now, this pair,” he waved the shoes he held, “are new. They haven’t been walked a mile, and for new shoes like these I charge a talent, maybe a talent and two.” He pointed at my feet. “Those shoes, on the other hand, are used, and I don’t sell used shoes.”
He turned his back on me and started to tidy his workbench rather aimlessly, humming to himself. It took me a second to recognize the tune: “Leave the Town, Tinker.”
I knew that he was trying to do me a favor, and a week ago I would have jumped at the opportunity for free shoes. But for some reason I didn’t feel right about it. I quietly gathered up my things and left a pair of copper jots on his stool before I left.
Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough.
“Four days. Six days if raining.”
Roent was the third wagoneer I’d asked about going north to Imre, the town nearest the University. He was a thick-bodied Cealdish man with a fierce black beard that hid most of his face. He turned away and barked curses in Siaru at a man loading a wagon with bolts of cloth. When he spoke his native language, he sounded like an angry rockslide.