Fourth son of a fourth son. In the Mootland that isn't a tragedy, it's a job description.
The Tunnelfoots have kept the same hearth for six generations, and the hearth goes to the eldest that's simply how it is. The rest get a good knife, the family recipes learned by heart rather than written down, and a kiss on the head at the gate. Gus got one thing more: his grandmother's handcart, because nobody else wanted the bother of it, and because she'd told him twice it was his before anyone thought to argue.
The trouble with the Moot is that everyone can cook. A Tunnelfoot pot roast that would make a Talabheim burgher weep into his collar is, back home, just supper on a Marktag. Gus wasn't the best cook in his village. He wasn't the best cook on his lane. So he went looking for somewhere that needed feeding, and followed the Old Forest Road east until it ran out at the river.
Talagaad was not what the stories promised. It is a scab of a town, rotting docks, mud for streets, a market where nothing is quite legal and everything is for sale. But in his first week he sold out of stew by midday, and by the end of the season he knew every gang on the wharf by how they liked their eggs.
Twenty years on the cart handles have given him forearms a smith would envy. He hauls four hundredweight of iron pot and turnip up the Rows every morning without complaint, and he has never understood why people are surprised by that.
