Hob Stoutbarrel's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Hob walked away from the square with the scale wrapped tight in his fist and no place to sleep. The sun was already low. He had two nights to drill the Vanishing Coin until his fingers stopped thinking, and a body that had not eaten since morning. A cold rehearsal in an alley would buy him stiff hands and a head full of nothing. He needed walls, a floor, and quiet. He turned toward the inn at the edge of the craft row, the one with the smoking chimney and the thatched roof, where he had once watched a fiddler trade a song for soup. The common room of the Weaver's Rest smelled of onions and wet wool. Hob stepped onto a stool at the counter so the innkeeper could see him. He laid out what he had: no coin, a trick worth watching, and two nights of work in trade. The innkeeper, a wide woman with flour on her sleeves, said beds cost silver, not patter. Hob asked for one minute. He pulled a battered brass button from his pouch, set it on the counter, and made it crawl across the wood and climb her knuckle. A drover at the next stool laughed. Two farmhands turned on their benches. The innkeeper watched the button, then watched the room fill its cups again. She told him he could have the storeroom cot if he worked the floor every night through the week and washed pots after. Hob said yes before she finished. He ate bread and gravy standing up, then climbed to the small attic above the storeroom, where a square window opened onto the roof. He needed a flat surface and steady light to drill the pass. From his pouch he took the prop he used for rehearsal: a polished gold disc, etched with fine filigree, heavy enough to feel honest in the palm. He set it on the sill in the moonlight and ran the move. Pinch, turn, breathe, release. The selkie scale stayed wrapped in his other pocket; he would not waste it on practice. The disc vanished, returned, vanished again. His fingers found the shape of it. Below him the common room laughed at something he had not done. He had a roof for six nights, a cot, and hands that were starting to remember. The cost was clear and waiting. Every night this week he owed the room a show, and every show was a night not spent alone with the trick that would decide his name.