Chapter 7: Desperate Measures, Part 3

Heaving another sigh, Rath told him. By the end, poor Toph looked so stressed on his behalf, Rath would have bought him a drink if he hadn't needed to focus on what he was doing. "Come on, stand in line with me, so I don't go mad or panic and dash at the last moment."

Toph shrugged. "I've never know you to dash from anything, but I've got nothing else to do until tonight. Got work at Wynri's place."

"Since when are you the pain sort?"

"Pain, no, but what's a little silk rope here and there? Oh, hang on, I'm hungry. You want something?"

Rath shook his head, laughing softly. "I never refuse food, but since when do you have money? Steal that from the constable, along with his wife's affections?"

"That woman only loves herself and has no interest in loving anyone else—it's my favorite thing about her," Toph said, then darted over to a nearby street vendor to cheerfully haggle for his lunch. He returned a few minutes later with steaming pies that smelled of chicken and gravy and good vegetables. "As to the coin," he said, when Rath gave him a suspicious look. "The others bet I'd end the night in the stocks and they'd have to come pay the bailiff to let me out in the morning. But I stayed the whole night free as a rat, and they all had to pay up."

Rath gave his head a playful shove. "The constable is still going to have your nethers for a coin purse when he finds you."

"Che," Toph said and wolfed down several bites of his pie, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before adding, "He's busy with all the out of town rabble, and by the time he can go back to dealing with local rabble, he'll be mad at the most recent stranger in his bed. He'll have forgotten all about me." A quick grin. "Again."

"You're playing with Fate," Rath replied. "Be careful or you'll wind up in a noose."

"I will, I will," Toph replied easily. He finished his pie and pulled out a tattered kerchief from one of his jacket pockets to clean his face and hands.

Rath finished his own and was clean and ready as they stepped onto the common bridge, threading carefully through the crush. He would have loved a chance to lift a few purses, but the congestion made it too dangerous. Easy pickings, but if they got caught, there was nowhere to run.

When they were finally through, he resisted the urge to check his own coin. Nothing drew a thief's eye faster than being told precisely where the money was kept. "I can't wait for this to be over. I've walked more in the past two days than I have the past two weeks. What's a person got to do to be left to honest labor and a pint or two at the end of the day?"

"Kill your father and sell his body to—" Toph snickered when Rath clapped him upside the head.

"Stop talking about murder. It's ill-luck to do it so often, and I've had about all the bad luck I can take right now—and if I'm going to get ten slick for punching people, then I need all the good luck I can find," Rath said, then added with a mutter, "since divine intervention ain't likely."

Toph smiled, reaching out to squeeze his arm. "Come on, you'll do fine. I've seen the way you sling around grain sacks and move those barrels. You can clobber a few country idiots and take their flags without a sweat."

"Maybe," Rath replied, then their talking faded off as they reached the top of High City, where the pavilion and the royal castle were located.

The pavilion was teeming with people like fish in a barrel with most of the water sloshed out, and there was so much racket, Rath could barely hear himself think. He wasn't one for dashing, it was true, but right then, he was ready to start a new habit.

"What do the signs say? I don't know the marks." Toph asked in that small voice of his that rarely cropped up, since it was hard to make Toph feel insecure about anything. Rath had always loved and admired the trait. But Toph's inability to read, though it was something he shared with most of Low City, always upset him.

Rath squinted at the signs, but they were hard to read with the sun shining in his eyes, and his vision was not really the best at long distances. There were three signs lined up evenly across the pavilion, and only then did he notice the crush actually had some sense to it: enormous, bulging, writhing lines. The signs had letters and circles of colors beneath: red, blue, green from left to right. "Uh. The first one says 'ages 20-25', the second 'ages 26-30', and the last '31-40'." He winced, unable not to notice that line wasn't even half as long as the other two, and the first one was half again as long as the second.

Not surprising, really. The stupid tournament was a young person's folly. But it was humiliating all the same to see how glaringly out of place he was going to be. "You may want to wait for me here."

"How is that better than just staying with you? Come on. You're going to turn white if you keep thinking instead of doing."

"That doesn't make any sense," Rath groused, but let Toph drag him along. They pushed and shoved and swore their way through the crush until they at last reached the back of the line.

"Ho, Rath!" A chorus of men greeted congenially. Men he knew from the docks and his preferred pub. "Did you get dragged into this stupid bet, too?"

"What bet? No, you know I don't gamble. It's bad fate for my family."