No Magic Here

[Jassin Tallis]

20th April, 124 PW, Downtown: The Brass Tap

"Ah, that's not it, ye tosser. Geddit right!"

They'd been working at that random drinking song for hours, and nobody could remember the lyrics right. The kind of travesty of the arts that only someone as uneducated as Tallis would allow in his fine establishment - as it stood, the only classy thing about the place was the obsessively polished counter, complete with brass keg-taps that didn't connect to kegs anymore, since the small pumps that used to bring the ale from under the counter had long-since rusted to a standstill, being not made of brass. For a decade after the barman had been working at the the Brass Tap, it was a small oddity that the regulars were rather proud of, but now the Brass Tap was just another low-end establishment. And the locals didn't know their shanties. It was fair enough in a town so landlocked that a sailor would go crazy being that far from the sea, where fishermen were rarities with disproportionately risky jobs.

"Nah, nah, ye're still gettin' it wrong, ye tosser, come on! Jus' give it up!"

Old man Joen was the only one who could be drunk at this time in the afternoon. The afternoon crowd, made up of the unemployed and the night shift, tended to not do much drinking for reasons of time or money, but Joen the idiot noble who could afford to stagger into any bar blind drunk and lose every penny in his pocket to the drink or the thieves was a popular entertainment for the common folk. Well, he said he was a noble. And he definitely had the fancy clothing, and his coin came in fifties. But the other regulars thought he was probably just some common clerk who had delusions of grandeur, and lived in a single room with a straw mat for a chair, toilet and bed so he could make other people see those delusions too. But none of the speculation was important - right now, what was important was his butchery of the commonly-accepted verses of River-running, mumbling every place's name he couldn't remember, and substituting his own events for whatever it was the regulars couldn't remember happened in the real song.

Oh, she led me out to shmbrl, the sky're shinin' blue,
An' if, she said, I was real good I'd see somethin' good too!

"Nah, nah, t'was a priestess, no' a harlot, ye pillock! Come on!" It wouldn't be long before someone shut Joen up forcefully, so Jassin finally got up from behind the bar and walked out. The folks got pissed off when they couldn't remember words, but knew the words as sung were wrong. He stood the drunk maytend-noble up, and steered him toward the door. "Come on, Joen, it's barely noon. Ye'd better sleep it off, or ye'll be late fer yer fine civic r'spons'bilities."

"Aye, I... wait, ye -" But it was too late, the noble was out the door, and damned if it was Jassin's fault that he was so blind-drunk that he tripped on the threshold. The sober crowd cheered. Entertainment was rare for those who weren't willing to give up their jobs for the alcohol and store enough away in advance to pay for it. The barman turned back and dusted his hands. "Right, who's 'avin' another then?"

Nobody. Typical of the noontime crowd. Wastrels and misers, all of 'em. He returned to the bar and kept polishing, for want of any bloody other thing to do.

[Ikby]

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(Erasing post and my participation in this thread due to departure of thread starter)