A PerfectlySimple Purchase

By morning, I’d decided the fault lay with my memory.

I had returned to the Cock & Swallow expecting the triumphant reception owed to a promising artist. Emmi had offered me a discounted room and asked me to stop rubbing myself on the furniture. Somewhere between the applause and the barn, drink had apparently improved my recollection of how famous I’d become.

It hadn’t improved my circumstances.

Still, I wanted that feeling again. An entire room singing something I’d written. People coming up afterward to tell me how much they’d enjoyed it. For a little while, I’d known exactly why I’d left Redfork, and I intended to earn another night like that.

Preferably one I could remember all the way to bed.

Emmi had been a pleasant surprise, too. I thought of her broad shoulders and generous curves, and the prospect of being gathered against that magnificent bosom made it difficult to resent the price of the room. She’d laughed at my story. It was a beginning, even if the story had largely consisted of reasons she ought to keep me away from her stools.

But first, trousers.

I was finished with the filth and the exposure. I would buy proper clothes, visit a bathhouse, and sit in steaming water with a tankard of ale until I felt capable of being taken seriously. There was nothing unreasonable about this plan. Most people managed some version of it without swearing anything to anybody.

Outside, the morning air was crisp enough to make me reconsider how widely I ought to stretch. I did it anyway. A few elderly passersby regarded the scarf with expressions suggesting they’d already found something to complain about over breakfast. I adjusted it and set off with Rufus toward the Middlefolk Suburbs.

I stopped the kindest-looking person I could find and asked where a fellow might purchase some essentials.

“Tiddlewick Lane, love. Right here in the Subs. You’ve got Odds, Sods & Sundries on one side and Bits, Bobs & Bollocks on the other. Choose wisely, though. They don’t like each other much, and neither’s up for the other’s sloppy seconds.”

I thanked them. A city with competing shops seemed an excellent place to buy trousers. I assumed competition would encourage helpful service.

I found Tiddlewick by following the noise. Merchants called from their doorways, each apparently convinced I had come to the lane with a desperate need for whatever they were holding. Before I’d gone far, a massive figure in black outside Bits, Bobs & Bollocks spotted the scarf.

“PANTS! Get your pants here! Best in the Twins! Easy to put on and easier to remove, if you catch my drift!”

“Don’t listen to that tosser!” someone shouted from across the street.

I stopped between the shops. Rufus stopped beside me.

“His seams come apart if you breathe!”

“Your seams couldn’t come apart if a sailor paid them!”

A goblin appeared in the doorway of Odds, Sods & Sundries, looking personally offended by the existence of the opposite pavement.

“Ask him why he’s only got one arm! Other one crawled off rather than spend another day attached to the miserable bastard!”

The enormous shopkeeper lifted his remaining hand.

“Come over here and I’ll show you how much of it fits up your arse!”

“You’d charge admission first, you penniless old scrote!”

They paused long enough to look at me. I became acutely aware that I was about to make a political statement with my shopping.

Bits, Bobs & Bollocks had specifically mentioned pants.

I edged toward its door.

“There’s a sensible customer,” the man in black called.

Across the road, the goblin’s face tightened as though I’d just spat into a family heirloom. He began an account of his rival’s business practices that grew less credible and more anatomically ambitious as I stepped inside.

The shop had everything.

Grappling hooks hung near cooking pots. A battering ram occupied space I would have expected to be reserved for a counter. There were snare traps, contraceptive charms, and several objects whose purpose I understood well enough to avoid demonstrating an interest in them while Rufus was watching.

And there, among all those possibilities, stood a rack of trousers.

I could have wept.

The shopkeeper suggested a dark brown pair from the front. I thanked him, then selected several others as well. After so long without any choice in what covered my backside, I intended to exercise some taste.

By the third pair, taste had begun to hurt.

I turned in front of the changing-room mirror. The back looked good. I tried a stance suitable for a man delivering a chorus to an appreciative audience, and the fabric pinched somewhere I would have preferred it to respect.

I shifted my knee. Worse.

“Another pair, perhaps, sir?”

The voice came from just beyond the door, so quietly that I hadn’t heard its owner approach. I jumped and caught myself against the wall.

“Possibly.”

I opened the door enough to find him waiting patiently outside. At close quarters, he was even bigger than he’d appeared in the street: an elderly satyr with heavy features, broad horns, and an immense frame dressed entirely in black. His coat hung empty at one shoulder. Beneath it, the rest of him looked capable of moving the battering ram without assistance. Age had put creases in his face and a shuffle in his step; it hadn’t made me eager to argue with him.

“Woody,” he said softly, by way of introduction.¹1

It was difficult to reconcile that careful voice with the man who’d just offered to insert his hand into the competition. Perhaps all his shouting was reserved for people who weren’t buying anything.

I looked down at the trousers currently trying to divide me.

“You know what? I think you were right the first time. Those dark brown ones from the front should do it.”

“Right away, sir.”

He shuffled off. I waited in the changing room, reflecting that I had spent a surprising amount of time making this purchase more difficult than necessary.

The brown pair fitted. I bent a knee, turned, and bent the other. Everything remained covered and reasonably comfortable.

I put the scarf away.

Twenty jades. I would have had trouble explaining to the missionaries how much pleasure I took in paying it.²2

Once decency was restored, I gathered a few other necessities. A local map cost fifty jades, which seemed steep until I remembered how long it had taken me to find a city I was already meant to be returning to. Four days’ worth of rations and water added another thirty-two.³3⁴4

I chose a smoking pipe for three jades and a book of matches for seven. The matches came twenty to the book. At that price, I intended to appreciate every flame.⁵5⁶6

A new backpack cost another twenty. I brought the whole pile to the desk, where Woody dealt with my purchases in the same quiet, patient manner he’d used to rescue me from my own trouser selection. Rufus waited by my feet while I packed.⁷7

That left three hundred and eighteen jades, five days of food and water, and a respectable amount of cloth between me and the public. I was ready for my bath.

There was just one thing I wanted to know.

“Say, Woody. What’s the beef between you and those folks across the street?”

His expression changed so quickly that I wished I’d waited until I was on the other side of the door to ask. The patient shopkeeper disappeared. His jaw tightened, and the hand resting on the desk began to curl.

“Those craven…”

He drew a breath through his nose.

“Wankers.”

I kept hold of the backpack.

“They took her. I know it was them.” His voice dropped again, but there was nothing gentle left in it. “They took my baby.”⁸8

“Your baby?”

“Luscious, thick lips,” Woody said, gazing past me. “Big, perky tits. Dark green hair that cascades in waves over her skin. Lovely pale green, her skin.”

I stood frozen, head tilted, blank stare.

“Small nipples for her cup size. Those little pepperonis—”

I had asked about the shop across the road.

“—and a waist you could put your hands right around. Then those hips. You see her from behind and think, well, that’s a woman who understands the purpose of a thong. Then she turns around and you remember the tits.”

His bottom lip quivered.

“The left one’s just a little—no, her left. My right when she’s facing me—”

I couldn’t tell whether I ought to offer sympathy or ask him to draw a curtain around the conversation.

“—you just want to dive into it and stay awhile.”

“DAD! Fucking hell!”

The shout came from somewhere across the shop, with the exhausted force of someone who had heard quite enough about their father’s sex life.

Woody sighed at length, as though the interruption had robbed the world of something beautiful.

“My lover,” he said. “My little nymph-tress.”

“Right.”

There were several questions I could have asked. I chose the one least likely to produce another description of her breasts.

“Why do you think they took her?”

“That flea-bitten green ballbag across the street practically danced around in her thong the day after she disappeared.”

I waited to find out whether there was more to that explanation.

There wasn’t.

“Have you asked him about it?”

“What? No. I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

The color was rising in Woody’s face. I had seen what the two shops would do over the sale of a pair of trousers. A missing lover seemed likely to encourage considerably worse behavior.

“No,” he whispered. “I have something far more sadistic in mind.”⁹9

I glanced toward the door. A short while earlier, I could have left with nothing more serious ahead of me than choosing how hot I wanted my bath.

“Sir. Excuse me. What if I went over and talked to him?”

Woody stared at me.

“Why would you do that? He’s a goblin! The only thing to do with gobl—”

“Sir!”

He stopped. I hadn’t intended to shout, and the silence afterward made me very conscious of the difference in our sizes.

“Sorry. Sir. If I could convince him to give her back, you could save that plan for another rainy day.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Keep planning,” I added. “Make it perfect. No point rushing something you’ve put so much thought into.”

It was an appalling argument. I was encouraging a furious old man to improve a plan I didn’t want to hear about, in the hope that he’d delay carrying it out. I held his gaze and tried to look like someone who knew what he was doing.

Woody considered it.

“Yesss,” he said at last. “Yes.”

I began to breathe normally again.

“You have until dawn tomorrow. Then the deal’s off.”

I had no idea whether the goblins had taken her, where she might be, or how anyone’s underwear had become involved. I couldn’t leave Woody to settle those questions with whatever he considered sadistic. I told him I’d find the missing nymph, and made the promise before I could improve it into something less binding.¹⁰10

I stepped outside. The goblins across the street were watching me with a degree of hostility I hadn’t expected to acquire while buying a backpack.

I kept my new trousers moving.

I needed to think. I had until dawn to find a missing woman and convince a furious satyr to postpone whatever he’d been planning. So far, my qualifications consisted of having asked one question and then being unable to leave the answer alone.

A bath would help.

I pulled out my map with an enthusiastic flick, enjoying the competence implied by knowing where to look. The nearest suitable establishment appeared to be the Steamy Beaver, in the Pink District.

Perfect.

I checked the way, called Rufus after me, and set off. I could work out how to keep my promise in the bath.