Inn fifty

"Come to mention it, I think he'd agree with you. He's big into letting anyone in here who'll obey his stupid 'no violence' rule. Um, not that the idea's stupid, it just... won't ever work."

Even Suitov's horrid girlfriend didn't obey the rules. Stupid Jaina. Why, he ought to... wait a minute. Weft folded that idea and put it carefully aside for later.

"I think 'won't ever' is a bit too pessimistic. Some people I'm sure will at least follow it, or at least hesitate before they break it. That's something won already."

Before watering the plant, she worked the loose earth between its roots more thoroughly with her fingers.

Weft watched from a crouch, not trying to memorise the techniques involved.

"Take, as an extreme example, some rocca slapping her friend on the back. A blow like that would knock me flying. Between two rocca it's a friendly thump. But a goblin could punch that rocca in the face, half the force, at least he could if we assume he's standing on a table or something, and it'd be completely unacceptable. And that's from one world. When you take into consideration the creatures whose name I can't pronounce who take any kind of skin-on-skin contact as a declaration of clan war, and those beetle people who think if you don't slap them around you're not taking them seriously...

"How are you going to train a bouncer to tell the difference? Or create a spell or call in a police band?"

Watering the shrub gave her a bit of time to consider.

"I think I'll happily leave the practical side of that problem to the person who came up with the idea."

"Right. And when he gets himself into a situation he can't handle, I'll have to get him out of it."

Weft touched one of the leaves. He held the stem between his third and fourth fingers, palm upwards. The plant was largely cut branches after being pruned. "It... isn't very lively, is it?" he remarked, indicating the shrub. "Is it going to die?"

"It shouldn't. That would be quite a waste of time, effort and shrubbery." It was some good-natured joking.

She got a half-grin out of Weft. "Right. Of course. Sorry. Shouldn't have asked."

He began to flick a bare twig distractedly. Maybe she was going to do some wizardry on it and make it look less dead. That would be... a little scary, actually.

It had been her plan, but Weft's explanations had not left her entirely unimpressed. She was not comfortable enough, right now, for a deept trance. It was not really neccessary, either, since there was no reason to hurry.

After a quick sideways glance at Weft she recalled a simple pattern to feed into plant growth, and gathered some of her power. She opened and closed her fingers before her, as if catching a floating seed or down, and next touched two fingers to the base of the roots. Her slight, thoughtful frown lightened again when she turned back to Weft, pure habit.

"The roots need to grow first, or the leaves won't get enough water."

"Does all this need watering every day?" Weft asked. "Where's all that water come from? That's a lot of trips to the pump."

"Just until it takes roots. There's water undergrund. It's the smaller plants that might need watering when the weather gets hot and dry. Or if." Rubbing the back of her neck she wondered how exactly weather was like here in the course of the year. She could make some guesses from the plants, of course, but the fluid boundaries might make it not as reliable as it might have been, which even then was not very exact.

"Underground?" Weft looked down. "Oh, right, a sprinkler system. Funny. I didn't think this place was that civilised."

Although the manual water-pump in the kitchen, which Suitov had kept because it was (in the magician's words) utterly delightful, contrasted strangely with some of the other more high-tech fixtures. And there was the outdoors, which had far too much nature around for Weft's liking. Too much nature with... wild... things in it. (He paid half an ear to what sounded like a large bird or something moving around somewhere nearby in the forest.)

"No, just rainwater that trickled down rather than drying up."

Sylvie tried to imagine pipes underground to water plants, and looked at Weft a bit doubtfully.

"Oh. I didn't know rain did that. Except in gutters and drains, I mean."

Weft looked suspiciously at the ground as though it might do something else weird.

"Water is quite good at trickling through very small openings."

So am I, thought Weft. A distant memory tried to catch his attention and missed.

"Still, you probably do it by magic or something, right? I mean, you wouldn't rely on rain to water plants?"

After a short pause to consider if she should call him out on making fun of her, Sylvie indicated the woods around the Inn, which had trees rather bigger than this shrub would ever grow.

"They seem to manage just fine, no?"

Weft had nothing to say to that but a slow "Oh."

It was quite clear he'd never thought about this before.

"Is it very dry where you come from?"

"No, I don't think so. It rains quite often in the city."

After a slow blink, Weft added "I don't think I've talked to you since... yes, that's right, when Sebastian was last here. You fixed him and helped drive off that ugly creature. That was good of you."