Free Jimmy the Hand by Raymond E. Feist, S. M. Stirling Page B

tunnel.
    ‘Well?’
he asked in a whisper.
    ‘I need a
bath,’ Jimmy said. It wasn’t something he said very often
and he’d never said it so sincerely.
    ‘Me, too,’
Larry agreed. Then asked, ‘So?’
    ‘There’s
a problem,’ Jimmy said. ‘A collar of stonework that
narrows the opening so you couldn’t pass a cat through it. It’s
pretty deep, too. Let me think about it.’
    ‘We can’t
go in here!’ Larry the Ear hissed in Jimmy’s ear. ‘This
place is too respectable!’
    It was; a
two-storey building with more chimneys than a house, the sort of
place where people respectable enough to want to wash regularly came,
but who were not well-to-do enough to afford the equipment. It had a
doorwarden; a thick-set man with a grey beard and a knotted club of
vinestock beside it, who looked like a retired trooper.
    Jimmy grabbed
Larry and pulled him close so he couldn’t be overheard. ‘We
need to get clean. Del Garza’s men are out looking for sewer
rats. Right now, we not only look like them, but we smell like them.
We have to get clean, and it would help if we didn’t look like
Mockers for a little while. That’s why we’re here,
instead of trying to get clean using someone’s rain barrel or
washing off in the Old Square Fountain.’ He turned to look at
the doorwarden. ‘Just pretend you’re someone and keep
quiet.’
    Jimmy walked up
to the man. The doorwarden’s nose wrinkled— Well, I
can’t blame him, thought Jimmy—and his eyes narrowed;
a thick-knuckled hand went to the vinewood club.
    Wordlessly,
Jimmy held up a silver coin the size of his thumbnail. I’ve
known this sort of thing to work, he thought, schooling his face
to look embarrassed and supercilious at the same time. I’ve
just never been able to afford bathing in a proper bathhouse, before.
    He’d never
been much of one for bathing in general, either; but associating with
lords and princesses, even for a short while, tended to alter your
standards. He discovered that enduring a bucket of cold water and
some soap every day or two earned him approval from the Princess
Anita, and that had been worth it. He had also discovered he itched a
lot less and felt better afterwards.
    ‘My good
man, we need to bathe,’ he said, shaping the tones of an
upper-class accent. ‘And to buy fresh clothing.’
    ‘Ye
certainly need the bath,’ the man grumbled. ‘Lousy too,
no doubt.’
    ‘Not in
the least. We’ve been out on a . . .’ Jimmy let his
expression grow sheepish. ‘Well, we’d rather our parents
didn’t find out, and . . .’ He finished in a rush: ‘You
can have this yourself?’
    Suspicion gave
way to contempt as Jimmy handed over the coin; which was fine with
him.
    ‘We were
attacked by street boys,’ Jimmy chattered on—over-explaining
made guilt look more plausible. ‘They stole our clothes and
pushed us in a sty. The maid at home gave us some coins to get
cleaned up. Please, sir, my mother is very strict and she’ll be
very, very angry if we go home in this condition.’ Jimmy had
always been good at mimicry, and the time spent with Prince Arutha
and Princess Anita had given him a wealth of new ways to speak when
he needed. He sounded plausible in the role of the son of a minor
noble or rich merchant. As long as Larry remembered to keep his mouth
shut.
    He and Larry had
more than enough scrapes and bruises to make their story seem
authentic. Knocking about in dark sewers and climbing walls and
houses had added a good share of cuts as well.
    ‘Go on
through,’ the doorwarden said. ‘You can use the baths,
but rinse off good first. You’ll have to find your own
clothes—this isn’t a tailor’s shop, lads.’
    They went
through; the doorwarden spoke a few words in the ear of the woman who
sat by bathers’ clothes so they wouldn’t be lifted, and
her scowl cleared a bit.
    ‘I’ll
not put those wipe-rags near honest folk’s clothing,’ she
said.
    ‘Take them
away and burn them,’ Jimmy instructed, as he and