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courtyard, because that's where you're going to be until you pay me back."
And with that the barrel-maker headed down the slope, listening as he walked
for the footsteps of the linguist behind him.
One to Go
Raymond E. Feist
The flea moved.
Jake the Rat held motionless, ignoring the irritation as the tiny bloodsucker
sought out another location where he could visit more misery upon the old
thief. Jake could feel the tiny parasite hop down his right calf toward his
ankle, already covered in scab-capped welts. Slowly, with a patience born of a
lifetime spent being patient, he moved his leg, bringing it to a point where
his gnarled fingers could lash out and seize the tiny malefactor.
"Ah ha!" he shouted in triumph as his still nimble digits struck downward,
fetching up the flea between calloused forefinger and thumb. "I have you!"
"Wot?" asked Selda.
"Damn flea that's been biting me for the last hour. I got it!"
Selda had been tending her knitting. She put down the two bone needles and sat
back in the rickety chair she had appropriated for that purpose approximately
five seconds after entering the hovel for the first time, seven years earlier.
Fixing her husband with a baleful gaze she said, "Ain't that wonderful! Now
you can set about catchin' the other thousand or so wot's still in residence
with us."
Ignoring her sarcasm, Jake held the tiny creature up for inspection. He moved
it closer and farther away under the dim light of the lantern above the table
and couldn't quite seem to get it into focus. "Damn," he muttered. "Are these
fleas smaller than they used to be?"
"No, you old fool. It's your eyes wot ain't what they was."
Not taking his eyes from the tiny bloodsucker, he muttered, "Nothing wrong
with my eyes, old woman. I
can still spot a watchman a mile away." He rolled the flea between thumb and
forefinger, very hard.
"You've got to mess them around a bit," he said as if conducting lessons on
the execution of vermin.
"They've got hard shells and if you just try to squash them, they'll leap
away. But if you roll them hard, it breaks their legs or something and they
just sit there." He did so and deposited the flea on the table. He couldn't be
sure, but he thought he saw the insect twitch. Deriving satisfaction from the
thought that the
thing might be suffering in retribution for the misery inflicted upon others,
Jake hesitated a moment, then drove a bone-hard thumbnail into the wood,
bisecting the tiny creature. "And there you have done with it!"
"Well, pleased as princesses on a shopping trip about decapitating a bug,
isn't he?" said Selda. "Why you go to such lengths about it when most people
just swat the damn things is beyond me."
"It keeps me relaxed while I'm waiting," he answered.
She knew that. She knew everything about Jake. Selda and Jake had been
together for thirty years.
They'd even had a child together once, though the boy had run off when he was
twelve. They had called the boy Jaxon. They'd heard he'd become a sailor, but
didn't know if it was so. Neither had mentioned his name to the other since
the day he had left. Both knew to do so would be to open the debate as to who
had been responsible for the boy's leaving, and both knew that would be the
end of them. So they remained silent on that one matter.
But on any other subject, they had argued so often and so repeatedly that each
could hold the argument even if the other was off somewhere. But tonight was
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different.
Jake looked over at Selda and said, "Wot? You ain't going to say something
about relaxing?"
She put down her knitting. With a scolding tone she said, "And wot good would
it do? None at all. It's a sad situation we're in, in'it? And there's nothin'
for it but for you to go off and get yourself killed, you old twit."
He stood from the other chair, as he always thought of it, her chair and the
other chair, and made his way around the table to where Selda sat, clutching
her needles in hands so tight her knuckles showed white.
"Who you callin' an 'old twit,' you old shrew?"
She jabbed at him with the needles and shouted, "You, and you are an old twit,
you old twit." Eyes rimming with tears she said, "You're going to get yourself
killed, then where'll I be?"
He easily avoided the jabbing needles and bent over her. She turned her head
aside and tried to brush him away with both hands, but he would have none of
it, circling her in his arms as he had tens of thousands of times in the past.
"It'll be good, you'll see," he said.
Tears ran down her cheeks and she said, "I'm frightened, old man." Suddenly
she leaned into him and clung to him as if fearful of letting him go. "Must
you?"
"I must. I told you, old woman, three jobs and we'd be out of this pest hole."
Showing the resiliency he had known for most of his adult life, she pulled
away and shouted, "Aye, and whose bit of thunderous wisdom was it brought us
to this pest hole, this 'Sanctuary,' out here at the edge of nowhere, in the
first place?"
"Now, don't you go starting up with me on that, old woman," he admonished.
"We should get out of the Empire, he says," she mimicked his voice. "We should
head out to Sanctuary. I
hear it's lively out there, with all manner of people wot never been this far
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