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“Where is the place you stay?” He ignores the nonsense lest it lead the man to imbibe even more before divulging the needed intelligence.
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“What? Yes. Step with me here sir. I need you.” He takes The Nameless One by the arm and leads him towards the stage.
“You must help me. My gouty leg, sir. No! Hellfire, not like that! You crush me. Have you no decency? Stand up there before me and then lend a hand down. I must be heard by everyone, you see. Easy does it.”
This is not going to end with him securing a room, is it.
He releases the arm of the graybeard and easily steps up onto the stage, then turns and bends over to lift him from under the armpits, careful not to damage him. He swings him up onto the stage.
As soon as The Nameless One begins to reach towards him, the graybeard retracts his arm with the speed of a piston.
Then he again spreads his arms wide, palm upwards.
“A SONG!” He booms, his face the very depiction of ecstasy.
He gestures up at The Nameless One and claps his hands loudly.
“Are you coming up here?” He shouts down into the crowd. His eyes are locked on the graybeard.
The man has no problem with eye contact. “Gentlemen!” he shouts.
The drunks around him quiet down almost immediately.
Again he gestures upwards.
“This signor” - he rolls the r abominably - “is a much accomplished strumpetzo! A strumpeter! I have seen him play in the finest parts. And he has come all the way to Fiddy’s - to sing a song.”
“Having done so, wherein, heretofore, contropunto, we will direct him to the BOARDINGHOUSE.”
"Wherein!" he shouts. "Wherein, I am told, that THERE. IS. ENOUGH. MUTTON. STEW."
He chooses an old barker song. It’s something you might hear in riverside camps among snowy pine forests.
His singing voice is high and clear, but it lacks any texture.
By what light have I to travel?
Winds turning me to and fro
Dead reckoning but I should know my home
To a leagueWill I be met with gain or sorrow?
Will there be others who know my voice?
Cold water like I even had a choice
To believeTurn from the hills and obey
It’s a mistake I’ve been meaning to make
Turn from the hills and obey
With each footfall, each footfall I take
“No,” he says quietly.
He climbs down from the stage, and as soon as practical, gets an iron grip on the graybeard’s bicep. Slowly and politely, he will pilot the man apart from the rest of the drunks and then beckon Morte over.
He clasps one of the man’s shoulders in each of his hands and squares him up so they are facing one another directly.
“Now. You will tell me and the skull exactly how to reach your place.”
“What? Eh? Oh.”
He rattles off a set of directions involving four different turns and several local landmarks. The lodging is a tall wooden building with green and red trimmed shutters.
He stares into the eyes of the man for several more seconds to see if he will yield any further or contradicting information.
Then he releases him. “Thank you,” he says.
It’s probably not a bad idea to depart now, before any of the drunkards do. Any landlady’s humor could only suffer from the arrival of that graybeard and such fellows as he digs with.
He turns to push his way through the crowd and out of the taproom.
letter-of-the-law
“To your right,” says Morte as they descend the wooden terrace that fronts the place.
When the light of peak fades from Sigil’s atmosphere, it does not flush red and orange as it might in most cities of the material plane. Instead it gradually dims without giving up any of its washed-out grayness.
He will allow Morte to direct him.
After walking a minute in silence, he says “What thought you of the ballad?”
letter-of-the-law
“Well, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was impressed. You’ve got some pipes on you for sure.”