Book 06 - Red Iron Nights by Glen Cook Page B

He has one big blind spot. He thinks my
problem with horses is a joke. Boy, do they have him fooled.
     
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15
    We stopped to have supper, my treat. Which strained my budget
severely. Playmate ate like a horse, but not cheap hay.
“You’re on expenses, Garrett.”
    “I was just figuring on cleaning the Watch out of pocket
change, not driving them into bankruptcy.”
    He got a good laugh out of that one. Simple pleasures for simple
minds.
    Tinkery Row is all light industry, single-family operations that
produce goods without producing much smoke. The nastier stuff is
down south, the nastiest across the river. The air gets chunky and
takes on flavor when the wind is from the east, past the smelters
and mills. Their stench can make you long for the heavy wood and
coal smoke of winter or the rotten garbage of summer.
    Tinkery Row is four blocks wide and eight blocks long,
approximately, measuring by normal city blocks. There aren’t
many of those in TunFaire. There never has been any planning
applied to the city’s growth. Maybe we need a good fire to
burn it all down so we can start over and do it right.
    Playmate insisted on sticking with me. He said he knew the
neighborhood and knew Linden Atwood. I gave up. I needed to spend
some time with somebody who wasn’t going to give me a lot of
hassle.
    I let him lead but insisted on setting the pace myself. My legs
weren’t long enough to match his prodigious stride. He
strolled. I scampered. Once we got into Tinkery Row he chatted up
people who still had their doors open hoping for a late sale. I
huffed and puffed. Tinkery Row is a safe neighborhood. The villains
stay away because the natives have this habit of ganging up.
Justice is quick and informal and applied with considerable
enthusiasm.
    Everyone seemed to know Playmate. Nobody knew me, but my
feelings weren’t hurt. That’s a plus in my line. I
puffed out, “You spend a lot of time down here?”
    “Grew up here. One street over. Pop made tack.”
Which explained the interest in horses, maybe. “But I changed
in the war. Came back too nervous, just couldn’t fit in. Kind
of slow and timeless around here. People don’t change. Get
fixed in their ways. I could probably tell you who is where doing
what right now, though I haven’t been around for months.
Right now Linden Atwood is having supper with his missus at home.
His sons are having supper with their families, and his apprentices
are eating bread and cheese while they clean the shop. About a
half-hour from now they’ll start drifting into the Bicks and
Kittle. Each one will buy a pint of dark. They’ll all go into
a corner and nurse their pints for an hour, then somebody will say
he’d better get on home and get to bed ’cause he has to
make an early start in the morning. Old Linden will tell him to
stay, have another on him, and he’ll buy the round.
They’ll all sit another hour, find the bottoms of their mugs
at the same time, then they’ll get up and go home.”
    A thrill a minute, life in Tinkery Row.
    It was the longest speech I’d ever heard from Playmate.
While he made it he led me to and into the corner tavern with the
name I found unfathomable. Most taverns do have odd names, like
Rose and Dolphin, but that’s because most people can’t
read. A sign with a couple of symbols will hang over the door,
serving as both name and address. Bicks and Kittle didn’t
have a sign, and when I finally asked Playmate about the name, he
told me those were the families who ran the place.
    Some mysteries just aren’t worth unraveling.
    Playmate studied the layout. The place wasn’t crowded. He
held me back while he chose a table. “We don’t want to
trespass on the regulars.” Apparently they became disturbed
when casual trade usurped their traditional tables. Playmate chose
a small one in the middle of the small room. It appeared less
shopworn than most.
    Playmate ordered but I paid. He asked for the dark beer.
“You can get any beer you