Marr is in the street fetching a keg and sees you before you see the inn sign.

The answer pulls itself out from the wood.

A man comes out of a side door with a keg hugged to his chest and his mouth already full of a complaint, and he sees you before you see the sign over his head. Thick arms. Apron that was white this morning. He looks at Hal, then at your feet, then at the dress, and he sets the keg down on the stones hard enough that ale slops.

"This is not a drop," he says to Hal.

"She flagged on Green Road. I said the Nail. I didn't say you were pretty."

The man clicks his tongue. "Hal. You two coming in or advertising on my step?"
Face turned to you, eyes on your chest before continuing. "Because if you stand there in that rag the watch will decide you are common and I will have Pell on me for a woman I didn't file."

Hal looks at you once, not unkind, and he has already decided he is not staying for whatever this becomes.

"I sleep on my own bench," he says. "She's Charlie. She hasn't got coin." He clicks the mule. The cart rolls toward whatever alley takes a crate overnight, and then it is you and Marr and the keg and the spear-man pretending he is not listening.

"In," Marr says.

You follow because the port wall already has a woman in it and the dress you have on is doing that job without a hole. The taproom is low and warm and already half full. Men at the long table. A girl older than you look moving mugs with her mouth tight. The sign inside is just a bent nail hammered into a beam.

Marr boots the keg the rest of the way to the bar and points at a stool behind it.

"Trays. You can stand. You can fetch. After the bell service changes. You have no paper and you walked in looking like you came off a village slot, so I am not breaking a man's fingers for a feel. You want a bench in the back after close, you take the work as it comes. You don't like it, the wall is two minutes and they have plenty of rope and eager men."

"I—" Your voice is hers and quiet. "I can carry."

"Good."

He puts a tray in your hands. Four mugs. The first trip across the room the hem crawls and a man on the end of the bench puts his palm on the back of your thigh as if the tray came with that. You keep walking because the mugs slosh if you stop. The second trip someone pinches through the stained skirt. The older girl catches your eye and does not rescue you. She mouths something like a warning and keeps pouring.

The bell goes while you are at the far table.

It is not loud. It does not have to be. The room changes temperature. Hands that were testing become sure. Marr is rolling the new keg into its cradle and he sees it happen and he does not come around the bar.

A man with sawdust on his sleeves turns you by the hip, tray and all, and sets you against the keg Marr just fought from the street. Wood at your belly. The rag is already up. His fingers find that you have nothing under it and he makes a pleased sound as if that was a price listed on the wall.

"Marr," you say.

Marr does not look up from the tap. "You walked in. You work."

The sawdust man is already opening his trousers with one hand. You could run. The door is there. But the words of Marr linger. You stay because the alternative is the port with the lamps over it and you have already done a hole today. He puts the head of his cock against you and you are still slick from the road and from being handled across the room, and he shoves in with a grunt that the table hears.

He fucks you on the keg.

Short, working strokes, the tray still in your left hand until someone takes it off you so the mugs do not die. Your breasts spill the neckline and flatten on the wood when he pushes you down. The stains on the skirt are against his hips. A man at the table watches your face and drinks. The older girl keeps pouring. Marr counts something on a slate and does not come to stop it.

You make a noise into the keg. It is her, your voice. The man holds your waist because you are her size and easy to hold, and he finds a rhythm that knocks your hipbones on the rim. Someone else laughs. No one says a kind thing and no one says a cruel speech. They treat it like extra with the ale.

He lasts longer than the cap did. You hate that you notice. When he comes he stays planted and finishes in you with his mouth on the back of your shoulder, not a kiss, just breath, and then he pulls out and slaps the keg instead of you as if the keg did the work.

You stay bent because your legs are not good. His spend slides down the inside of your thigh onto the floorboards Marr will make someone mop. The rag is around your waist. Your chest is bare to the room until you hitch the neckline with a hand that trembles.

Marr finally looks over.

"Bench is through the back. No latch. If you leave before morning don't pinch the trays. If you stay, you do the slop bucket at dawn and we talk about whether you are staff or just tonight." He points the chalk at you. "And put your tits away when you walk through my room. I have a reputation to keep."

The sawdust man is already sitting again, doing up his trousers, asking for another mug. The older girl sets it down without looking at you. Through the front door the well-square lamps are still going, and the woman in the civic port is still there with a handful of other exposed women now, hands through the rings, and you are inside, used, not on that wall yet, which is the only good thing in the sentence.

The back room is a bench and a crate and a blanket that has been on other bodies. No unused cloth. Nothing to test your curse. You can hear the tap from here. You can still walk. Morning is slop and Marr's guide and whatever Wellmark does with a woman who has Lenna's face and no name in a book.