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Swept along in the exodus, Raider had stumbled his way to Ahmet’s back gate, where his staggering entrance had been greeted with a slurpy dog kiss and wagging tail. At least someone had wanted him.
In truth, several someones had greeted him with (less sloppy) kisses, but everyone had seemed so … uninspiring … after the Curator.
Usually, Raider liked soft, easy, and flirtatious. Seth had put him in a strange mood.
Raider’s mood right now was little better. Sleeping drunk meant sleeping like the dead. The absence of dreams was marvelous. Waking as stiff as a corpse was not.
Raider rolled his left shoulder carefully and stretched his spine.
Kahve. That was what he needed.
Clothes might also be a good idea, though his were not in evidence. Ahmet, however, had left him a thigh-length skirt of green-dyed linen.
When he put it on, the skirt revealed itself to be slit to the hip on each side. Raider tried to gauge how it looked, but his neck was too stiff to allow a good view. He trusted that it was magnificent.
Jutting back from its main room and kitchen, the tavern had two wings, one for guests and one for Ahmet. These sections made a three-sided enclosure of Ahmet’s courtyard, with a gated mudbrick wall dividing it from the alley. The gate, through which Raider had staggered last night, was almost always open. Ahmet did most of his cooking (and gossiping) in the courtyard.
Raider emerged from the kitchen to find Ahmet, wearing a leather apron over his striped robes, stoking the fire under the spit in the middle of the open space.
Ahmet’s heavy-jowled, tawny dog, known improbably as Jasmine, didn’t budge from his hopeful place by the cook, though he did give his whip of a tail a wag at Raider’s arrival. Jasmine guarded the courtyard from riffraff, which, naturally, did not include Raider.
Not that there was much to steal, even with the motley goods crammed along one wall: a spare bed, a broken table (that Ahmet had been saying for years he was “about to fix”), rugs, pots, and the ifrits only knew what else.
Ahmet made a grand gesture toward the spitted meat. “Pork tonight, as requested.”
“I requested it for breakfast,” Raider reminded him grumpily, making his way to the social side of the courtyard. There, beside a bench, a low table held a steaming carafe and several glass cups. “And what about my sesame seed cakes?”
“There’s kahve,” Ahmet informed him, flapping a hand in the general direction of the carafe.
“You’re horrible, Ahmet. And it wasn’t a request, it was a deal. You promised me.”
“I did no such thing. And there are almond biscuits in the jar, so stop being a child. You’re awful in the mornings.”
Grumbling, Raider bent to pour himself a cup of kahve and extracted four biscuits from the pottery jar.
“Mind the slit on that skirt please,” Ahmet said.
Raider glanced down. He’d loosened up enough on the walk from his room to get a decent look. The skirt revealed a flattering section of his flank.
“You’re the one who took my clothes. I’ll make no apologies to you.”
“They stank.”
“The pants were clean!”
Ahmet shot Raider a they-most-certainly-were-not look over his heavy shoulder. Raider decided not to argue the point.
Settling on the low bench beside the table and leaning back against the wall, he extended his legs and crossed them at the ankles. He held out a biscuit.
As Jasmine trotted over, Ahmet ordered, “Don’t give him that. He’s getting fat.”
“Too late. I already promised. Some of us keep our word.”
Ahmet rolled his eyes to the heavens.
Jasmine’s powerful jaws looked capable of biting Raider’s hand off, but the dog’s teeth closed with extreme gentleness on the offered biscuit. Then, as though Raider might change his mind and snatch the biscuit back, Jasmine spun away and trotted to the kitchen with his prize.
“Ridiculous,” muttered Raider.
