Sandon cleared his throat, then seeing Benjo was not going to give him any privacy, he stepped into the small storeroom and behind the wall. Benjo gave a loud guffaw from where he stood. "All right then," he said. "You be like that."
Sure that he couldn't be seen, Sandon quickly slipped off the robe and clambered into the old clothes and then stepped out from concealment, wrapping the apron around himself. He held the robe, looking for somewhere he could hang it.
"No, no," said Benjo. "Give that here." He took the proffered robe, and holding it at arm's length in one hand, deposited it unceremoniously in the storeroom. Sandon still had been given barely a chance to get a word out.
"But what about my padder?" he asked.
"You've got it out the back there?"
Sandon nodded.
"Oh, it'll be fine. You can go out and check on it every once and a while if you want, but I don't think it'll go anywhere. Plenty for it to eat out there." Benjo gave a great belly laugh, then immediately sobered. "Take these and sweep the bar. Wipe down the tables, and when you're done there, we'll see about getting you something to eat before the crowd starts. Not much else to do in Bortruz, see? Everybody ends up at my place some time or other."
Sandon could easily imagine that was the case. And if so, Benjo had every reason to be jovial and full of his own importance. Sandon reached for the rag and broom and headed out into the bar proper, with Benjo still standing there, his fists on his hips watching him. Sandon caught him shaking his head as he left, muttering something to himself. "Strange times we're living in. Strange times indeed," Sandon thought it sounded like.
As he entered the bar, Milana looked up at him from behind the counter, pursed her lips, favored him with an assessing look, then nodded and gave him a smile. He returned it easily. If it wasn't for her, he might not be standing here at all.
The bar proper was a broad unpartitioned room. The bar itself, polished wood, stretched along one side and Milan stood propped at one end behind it. The only other thing that broke up the broad expanse of floor was a haphazard cluster of tables, both high and low. Stools sat around the high ones, and rough wooden chairs around the lower ones. Windows ran along the front of the room, currently shuttered, and the little light that remained struggled through the cracks. Broad double doors sat closed at the center. Sandon grunted to himself, tossed the cloth on one of the higher tables, then set to with the broom. Who would have thought it? Sandon Yl Aris reduced to wearing someone else's old clothes and wielding an old broom in a miner's bar. He smiled to himself. It was a far cry from life in the Principate and the Guild rooms, but then a lot had happened to change the way he viewed things over the past few weeks.
Milana stood watching him for a while, then pushed herself from the bar and started lighting lamps and setting them on shelves in the room's corners. She had obviously caught his smile, because she stopped in the middle of what she was doing and turned to face him.
"Tchardo," she said. "I have the name right?" When he nodded, not interrupting his progress across the dirty wood-stripped floor, she continued. "I don't know anything about you, and dressed like that, you could almost be a normal person, except for the beard of course, and your hair." She peered closer. "And that scar across your nose, but I just want you to know, we're simple people here and we don't want any trouble."
He stopped what he was doing and leant on the broom, meeting her gaze. "I don't mean any trouble, Milana," he said quietly, genuinely.
She nodded at that, then turned back to busy herself with lighting the rest of the lamps. Sandon went back to sweeping, once again struck by how much he had been removed from so much that went on in the world. Milana finished with the last of the lamps and returned to her position behind the bar. She was joined a few moments later by Benjo, who giving an appraising look at the room and at Sandon's progress, nodded to himself. Within moments, he was in yet another conversation with Milana, who did little more than nod or make little sounds of agreement in response to the constant torrent of words.
