Asher Converse's Arc

Chapter 6 of 30

They came back from the grove tired and dirty. The seal would hold weeks, no more. But Asher knew a fight was coming, and a fight needed a place to plan it. Right now his grain house was still just a repaired roof over an empty room. So he set his axe by the door and looked at the bare walls. "We turn this into a real bar," he said. "Tonight it's a shell. By the new moon it pours drink and holds a crowd." Tucker leaned in the doorway, thumbs in his belt, gold chains catching the last light. He was the man who'd steered Asher to this building in the first place, and he still talked like every deal owed him a cut. "You want a bar," he said. "You need three things. A counter to lean on. Something to pour. And a reason for men to stay past the second drink." He picked a splinter off the doorframe and flicked it away. "I can find all three. For a share of the till." Asher didn't take the first number. "A share of the drink money," he said. "Not the door. And you work the room, not just your mouth." Tucker grinned under his mustache and put out his hand. They shook. They worked into the night. Tucker knew every seller in The Crossing. He talked a cooper down to half price on two casks of ale by the well. He found a slab of oak from a broken cart and they set it on trestles for a counter. Asher hauled benches from the storeroom. Tucker hung his own spare chain on a nail above the taps, so it caught the lamplight. "Men drink where things shine," he said. "Trust me." By dark the room smelled of ale and fresh-cut wood. Tucker stepped outside and told three men at the well there was a free first round for anyone who wanted it. They came. Then their friends came. Asher poured. Tucker leaned on the new counter and told a story about a town up north that ran him off, then bought him drinks a week later. The room laughed. More men pushed through the door. By midnight the grain house was full. Coins clicked into the box. A wandering trader asked Asher who ran the place. "I do," Asher said. Word moved from mouth to mouth. This was the bar where men gathered, where a wizard and his fighters kept a back table. But a full room brought its own trouble. Near the door stood a man Asher didn't know, watching the wizard's table too closely, not drinking. Tucker caught Asher's eye and tipped his head toward the stranger. The bar was open. And someone had already come to see who was inside it.