Okay, will you sharks stop circling for a while? 
Be grateful that Nalia came through for me in the pinch.
LXXV. Neither Fish nor Fowl
Nalia sighed as she stared into her tankard of wine. What a long day it had been! She was starting to get used to it, she supposed, but that might not be an altogether good thing. She glanced over at the counter, where Tisha was talking to the innkeeper and another guest, a bookseller. Anomen was drinking ale with Minsc over in another corner, and who knew where Jan had gotten to. The mage tried hard not to feel like the odd one out in the group, but sometimes it wasn't easy. Like now.
Aw, face it. It was those guys this afternoon that had really put her into this funk. She'd gone back to the stable to check on Brownie because she'd been worried that part of his harness might be starting to chafe him. The slightly red spot she'd noticed on his neck had vanished, though, so it had probably just been an insect bite after all. She'd been stroking his mane and treating him to a carrot when the boys had come in. The mage hadn't paid much attention at first; they looked just like the farm boys she'd seen around all her life at home.
The biggest one of them had cleared his throat and spoken in a voice that still squeaked a little every now and then. "Er, ma'am? My name's Dirbert. These here are my friends Valsben 'n Neler." He had jerked his head right and left as he named his companions. "We want to be adventurers like you and yer friends… real strong an' powerful, like."
"Yeah! I want t' be a ranger and protect the village!" the shortest one (who was still easily five inches taller than Nalia) had chimed in.
"I want t' be a great warrior like me dad!" the third one had added. He affected a scraggly little goatee. After all the real beards Nalia had seen on her own companions, she'd been severely underimpressed. Maybe she ought to have recommended Jan's Turnipex….
"I knows we can, guys!" Dirbert had said impatiently, retaking the conversational lead. "But everyone says we're all too young an' all, ma'am."
"Bull! That's wot I says t' that!" the short boy had muttered.
"Shaddup, Valsben. I'm doin' the talkin'," Dirbert had ordered. "Since... since you're already an adventurer an' all, ma'am, I was hopin'... I was hopin' you might maybe... maybe buy some swords for us? Some bastard swords?"
"And some ale, Dirbert! Don't forget the ale!" Neler had piped up.
"Yeah, we wants t' be real men!" That had been the irrepressible Velsben.
"Er... swords and some ale, then. If... if we give you th' money, ma'am, would you buy us some?" All three had looked at her expectantly after Dirbert had finished his stumbling request.
Nalia had been too stunned at first to say anything. These guys couldn't be more than a year or two younger than she was. How come they were "ma'am"-ing her? "Miss", maybe, but "ma'am"? She didn't look that old yet, did she? Something had snapped inside her then, and the de'Arnise heiress had laid into the three louts standing in front of her with a vicious glee.
"Adventurers? You?" she'd spat. "Better go crawling back to your mommies' coattails, boys! You don't have a clue what being an adventurer is all about! You think it's all beer, skittles, and a little fancy swordplay, don't you? Don't you?!" she'd shouted, voice spiraling upwards.
"Let me tell you what it's really like out there in the big wide world," she hissed. "You wanna know how I ended up here, doing this? I watched people I'd known all my life have their throats ripped out in front of me, I saw trolls bigger than all three of you put together laughing while my father's servants bled to death on the floor! You think you're ready for that? It's worse'n watching hogs get stuck, and the smell is unbelievable! But I lived to tell the tale because once I stopped puking I got up and went back to fighting; it was simple math, me or them. You think you wimps have got those kinds of guts somewhere in those sorry frames?"
She had glared at them, and they'd recoiled, and somewhere she'd been fiercely glad of it. "Are you telling me you want to be hungrier, filthier, and more tired than you've ever been, even during spring plowing? That you want to have to watch every rock and tree for possible ambushes? Do you have any idea what it's like to be sprayed with acid that burns away your flesh before your eyes, to hear the squishy rip as somebody pulls the damned arrow out of your side? Ever thought what it would be like to be at the other end of the hunter's bow? Do you realize that if you get drunk, you're probably going to get your throat slit while you sleep? That you'll count yourself lucky to get even a flea-infested mattress to sleep on?"
Nalia had shaken her head slowly. "Nah. Quite clearly you haven't thought anything through, any of you. Go home until you're ready to grow up, and then maybe we'll talk." She'd turned on her heel then and stalked out of the stable. The mage had spent a while down on the riverbank below the inn, sitting on a log and tossing pebbles into the clear water until sundown. Now she was still trying to figure out why exactly she'd done it.
Jan appeared out of nowhere then. "Hey, Nally, why so glum?" He plopped down next to her with his own tankard.
She sighed. "Feeling my age, I guess, Janno."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Don't think I got that one, girl. Run it by me again."
Nalia gave an exasperated sigh. "That's just it, Jan. The problem all neatly wrapped up in that one word, girl. I'm not anymore."
Jan suddenly turned red. "Um, er, I think that may be more information than I needed to know, even as your tutor, Nally. Uh… maybe you should talk to Tisha…."
"No! Not like that, you gutter-minded gnome!" she hissed. In a normal tone she said, "I just mean that… well, here, you listen to my story for a change, okay?"
"All right," Jan said.
She stared at him, waiting for the inevitable additional comments, but they never came. Finally she told him all about her encounter with the local yokels, gathering steam as she went. "And I'm not sure just what it was about them that drove me crazy," she said afterwards. "Apart from their obvious idiocy, that is."
The gnome chuckled. "I'd've bought the stuff for 'em. A clear case for thinning out the herd if ever I heard one. Let 'em go get killed before they breed."
"Jaaa-aaan!" Nalia protested, then laughed. "Okay, I'll confess, the thought did cross my mind afterwards, too. But they might hurt somebody else, not just themselves."
She sighed. "Look, it's just… I feel out of place a lot, like I'm the tag-along baby sister of the group. Even Tisha's so much older than I am. Yet those boys were almost my age, but I felt like a granny compared to them, I've been through so much lately. I never even fit in with most of the girls at school; they all seemed so shallow, like they couldn't think about anything but jewelry, clothes, and ballrooms. At least my father taught me that I could be more than some trophy wife. I know you think I'm stupid for wanting to help people, Jan, but at least I'm not blind to the problems that exist in this country. And now… take that party at Keldorn's. I mean, if it hadn't been for you, and Winthrop and Delaine, and Sir Waleis, who seems like a nice enough guy, I would have been bored stiff. Yak, yak, yak, yak, like a bunch of hens, most of the women, and even some of the men."
"Well, Nally…" Jan said hesitantly, "if you'll promise not to tell Tisha or Ano, I think I can show you how to have a much better time at these parties and do a little redistributin' of wealth to more worthy causes."
Nalia was taking a sip of her wine at the time, and hastily sat down the tankard, snorting with laughter. "You mean?"
"Yep," the gnome nodded with a grin, holding up a pair of tiny scissors. "I've got one of the nicest button collections in Athkatla. Gold, silver, even some with jewels in 'em, all off of fancy dress duds. I'm right at waistcoat level, see? And long as you only take one, nobody ever thinks they had it lifted, just that it worked loose and fell off somewhere."
"See, I'm keeping score. I only take buttons off of certain people, I've got a list. Remember I was telling you about how my Uncle Gerhard's crazy? Well, he had a whole bunch of patients' families who oh-so-conveniently decided not to pay their bills. No court was gonna believe us over a pack of nobles; they all claimed his dementia had been coming on for a long time and he'd just forgotten to document their payments. So I've kept his ledgers, and every time I see the chance, I take a little installment. There's a couple of really careless and ostentatious old bats that've worked off their whole debt, a snip at a time. I've still got a long ways to go, though. So, if you wanna do a good deed by Unk and keep yourself interested at these snobby affairs at the same time, I could use the help." He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair expectantly.
Nalia felt herself smiling, then grinning as she contemplated the possibilities. It was really only giving a bunch of grasping old tightwads their just deserts, so why not? "Sure, I'd be happy to collect contributions to the Gerhard Jansen Foundation at our next formal affair!" she said with a snicker. "Thanks, Jan, I needed that."
The gnome shrugged. "Yeah, well, if makes you feel any better, I'll be sixty-seven next month, and I still haven't found where I fit in yet either." He looked down at the table. "Fact is, I think we've all been surprised at how well you've adjusted. And, um, I won't take any shortcuts anymore, okay?"
"Aw, Jan, did you have to go all nice on me?" Nalia asked. "Now I've got to go unglue that burr from the bottom of your pony's saddle!" She instinctively fell back on the barbed repartee the gnome seemed to favor, and it seemed to work; he raised his head again and grinned.
"Say, did I ever tell you the one---" he began.
"Spare me," she said, raising her hands and laughing with him. "I don't mind growing up, but I refused to be aged before my time by your withering tales!" She grew serious for just a moment more. "Thanks, Jan. Guess I just needed to realize that I'll figure out this adulthood thing as I go along. Everybody else seems to, why not me?"
