Cal Rook entered the city with sore feet, an empty stomach, and the quiet confidence of a man who had absolutely no plan.
That was not entirely fair. He had part of a plan. The first part was to get inside the city. He had managed that much, which already made the day better than some he had lived through. The second part was to find work. The third part was to use whatever coin came from that work to buy food, clothes that did not look like they had been through a barn fire, and maybe, if fortune was feeling especially generous, a pair of boots that did not hate him personally.
He stopped just inside the street and took a slow look around. The city was busy enough that nobody paid him much attention, which suited him fine. Cal was used to being overlooked. He was a human man around thirty, with a shaved head, a short beard, and the general look of someone who had done a lot of jobs without getting rich from any of them. He had worked docks, carried messages, loaded wagons, swept tavern floors, guarded caravans, repaired things badly, and once spent three days assisting a man who claimed to be an alchemist.
Cal still did not know what the man had actually been making. He only knew it had smelled terrible, stained his hands green, and exploded on the second night.
“Never again,” Cal muttered to himself.
A passing woman gave him a strange look. Cal gave her a polite nod, as if talking to himself in the street was a normal and respectable thing for a grown man to do. Then he kept walking. He needed work. Honest work would be best, though he was old enough to know that honest work and good pay rarely walked into the same room together. Still, he liked to start with optimism. Optimism was free, and Cal had learned to appreciate anything that did not cost money.
His first instinct was to find a notice board, a market, or some sort of guild hall. His second instinct, which was usually louder and less sensible, was to find a tavern. Taverns had food, drink, gossip, employers, liars, thieves, mercenaries, and people desperate enough to hire strangers. In Cal’s experience, that made them dangerous, useful, or both.
Usually both.
After a little wandering and only one wrong turn that led him into an alley he immediately decided was none of his business, Cal found a tavern with enough noise coming from inside to suggest it was either popular or currently being robbed. He hoped for popular. He had nothing worth stealing, but thieves were rarely polite enough to believe that without checking. He paused outside the door, brushed some dust from the front of his shirt, and tried to make himself look like a man who belonged somewhere.
It did not work.
“Right,” he said under his breath. “Food first. Work second. Trouble never, if possible.”
Then he opened the door and stepped inside. The warmth and noise hit him at once. Voices overlapped. Cups struck tables. Somewhere, someone laughed too loudly at something that probably was not that funny. Cal let his eyes move across the room, taking in the exits, the bar, the tables, and the sorts of people who looked like they might either offer work or start a fight.
He preferred the first kind. He made his way toward the bar and leaned one arm against it, careful not to look too desperate. Desperate men got cheated. Proud men got ignored. Cal tried to land somewhere in the middle.
“If there’s work to be had,” he said to whoever was listening, “I’m looking. I can carry things, guard things, find things, fix some things, and talk my way out of trouble more often than not.” He paused, then added, “And when that fails, I can usually take a punch well enough.” Cal gave a small shrug. “Not much of a boast, I know. But it’s honest.”
He glanced around the tavern again, hoping someone nearby needed a man with no special talents, no grand destiny, and no better options. There had to be work somewhere in this city. And if there wasn’t, well. Cal had been hungry before.
