Skif sawed at the bread — better bread would not have held up under the treatment he gave Kalchan's loaves, but this stuff was as heavy and dense as bricks and just about as edible. Every slice was thriftily measured out to the minimum that the customers would stand by means of two grooves cut in the tabletop, and once cut, was “buttered” with a smear of fat and stacked up waiting to be slapped onto a plate. No one ever complained that it was stale; Skif was not certain it would be possible to tell a stale slice from one freshly cut off of these loaves.
When the bread was done, it was time to go get plates again; business was picking up.
Skif could not imagine what brought all these customers to the Hollybush, unless it was that Kalchan's prices were cheaper than anyone else's. It certainly wasn't the food, which would have poisoned a maggot, or the drink, which would have gagged a goat. And Maisie was no draw, either; plain as a post, with her dirty hair straggling down her back and over her face, she skulked among the tables like a scared, skinny little starling, delivering full plates and empty mugs while Kalchan followed in her wake, collecting pennybits and filling the mugs from his pitcher. Only Kalchan dispensed drink; the one time that Skif had dared to do so in Kalchan's momentary absence, his cousin had left stripes on his back with his leather belt. No one actually ordered anything — there wasn't anything to order by way of choice. You sat down at a table and got beer, bread, and stew — or beer alone, by waving off Maisie's proffered plate or sitting at the fireside bench with the steady drinkers. When customers were done, Skif came around and collected their plates and mugs. If one wanted more, he waited until Maisie came around again and took another laden plate from her; if not, he took himself off. This way Kalchan never had to worry about a customer complaining he hadn't been served when he'd paid, or about a customer sneaking off without paying. The only exceptions to this rule were the folk occupying the two benches in front of the fireplace. They got beer, period, and signified they wanted refills by holding up their mugs to Kalchan. When they were done, they left their mugs on the floor — which were usually claimed by another bench warmer before Skif could collect them.
Skif made his rounds in an atmosphere thick with smoke and the fug of unwashed bodies, grease, stale beer, and burned food. Light came from tallow dips held in clamps on the wall, and from the fire in the fireplace. It wasn't much, and all the smoke dimmed the light still further. He couldn't have made out the faces of the customers if he'd wanted to. They were just an endless parade of dark-shrouded lumps who crammed food into their mouths and went their way without ever saying anything to him if he was lucky. Every so often one would fondle Maisie's thigh or breast, but if Kalchan caught him at it, he would have to pay an additional pennybit for the privilege.
There wasn't any entertainment in the Hollybush. Kalchan didn't encourage self-entertainment either, like singing or gaming. Most of the customers didn't know each other, or didn't care to, so conversation was at a minimum. As for fighting — it was wisest not even to consider it. Kalchan discouraged fighting by breaking the heads of those who fought with the iron-headed club he carried at his side, and dumped the unconscious combatants outside. The drunks here were generally morose and quiet, and either stumbled out of the door on their own two feet when their money ran out, or passed out and were unceremoniously dumped in the street to free up space for another customer. Once in the street, an unconscious, former customer had better hope that friends would take him home, or the cold would wake him up, because otherwise the thieves would strip him of everything of value and drop him in a gutter.
Difficult as it was to believe, customers kept coming in, all night long. The benches and tables were never empty until just before closing; Skif and Maisie never had a moment to rest. He'd tried once to reckon up how much money — in the tiniest of coins, the pennybit — Kalchan took in of a night. There were four pennybits to a penny; beer was two a mug, bread and stew were three for a plate. Just by way of comparison, a mug of good, clean water from something other than a pump in dubious proximity to a privy cost two pennybits (but it wouldn't get you drunk — and a mug of sweet spring water was three) and a bun like the one that Deek had bought him this afternoon was a full penny. So you could have something wholesome, though not much of it, for the same price as a full meal in the Hollybush. Evidently, bad as it was, there were enough people who felt they were getting value for their money to keep coming. The two fireside benches sat four each, and the four tables accommodated six eaters. Unless they planned a night to get drunk, the tables cleared pretty quickly. Skif figured that there were probably a couple hundred customers in here over the course of a day.
That was where Skif's grasp of numbers broke down — but he reckoned that the Hollybush brought in a couple hundred pennies in a night, and maybe a third of that during the day. Uncle Londer obviously had a good thing going here. His costs were low, buying cheap as he did, and the hire of his help was even lower. Maisie was a half-wit; Uncle Londer paid some relative of hers for her services. Whatever he paid, it wasn't much, and she never saw any of it; all she got was food and a place to sleep. Skif's labor was free, of course, and he seldom ate here. And the cook —
Well, he didn't know what the cook got. He never saw her getting paid, but she stayed, so she must have been getting something. It couldn't have been that much; even he could cook better than she did.
Maybe the attraction for her was the unlimited supply of beer. He never saw her without a mug somewhere nearby, and she had the yellowish color of someone who was drinking herself to death, although her shuffling footsteps were steady and she never seemed drunk.
The upshot was, this place was mostly profit for Londer, that much was for sure. Skif wasn't going to feel at all guilty about vanishing in a moon. Uncle Londer could just find himself another boy or do without.
What Kalchan was getting out of the situation was less clear; certainly he had Maisie's dubious charms to enjoy whenever he cared to, he did get real food rather than tavern swill, and he had his own special butt of drink that no one else touched, but what else was he getting? Every night after he locked the front door, he waddled down to his father's home with the night's takings, and came back empty-handed except for the box that held his own dinner. He slept in the common room on a greasy featherbed piled high with blankets that were stored during the day in the unused staircase. Was Londer splitting the profit with his son? If he was, what in Havens was Kalchan spending it on? It wasn't clothing, it wasn't women — not even the shabbiest streetwalker would touch Kalchan with a barge pole without a lot more up front than the penny or two Kalchan was likely to offer.
It had occurred to Skif lately that maybe Cousin Kalchan was just as stupid as he looked, and Uncle Londer gave him nothing in return for his labors at the Hollybush. If so, he didn't feel in the least sorry for him.
By the time that Kalchan dumped the last of the bench warmers outside and locked the front door, Skif was absolutely dead on his feet. Not tired — he'd had that nap in the wash house — but aching from neck to toes and longing for a chance to sit down.
Kalchan threw the bolt on the front door, and waddled out the back; when Skif heard the door slam shut behind him, he dropped down onto a bench to rest for a moment. The cook brought in three plates of stew and bread, and dropped them on the table. Skif took one look at the greasy, congealing mess, and pushed it toward Maisie, who had come to rest across from him and was already shoveling her food into her mouth as if she was afraid it was going to be taken from her at any moment. The cook had brought her own mug and picked up the beer pitcher that Kalchan had left on a table, shaking it experimentally. Finding there was still beer in it, she took it, her mug, and her plate to the fireside and settled down facing the remains of the flames, her back to her fellow workers.