"If beatin' enters into this, we're out," Keani answered, watching the men out of the corner of his eye as he worked.
The chores piled up, and Keani stuck with it. Some of them were kind of ridiculous, and some of them had Keani's jaw dropping (boots were one thing, but he did not wanna be washing some dude's smallclothes!), but he did it. He washed the damned clothes, he cleaned, and he did it all without complaint. If this was a test, he was going to pass it. If this is what it took to get in with the group, dammit, he'd do it.
But doubt did start to filter into his mind, because what if Keoni was right and they were just having fun at their expense? What if after all this, they'd just be sent on their way, or never even get to meet the Jackal?
He was more than willing to weather it out, at least for the first few hours; the need to survive had trumped pride years ago. But there was so much even he could take.
It was approaching evening and Keani had just finished cleaning out a crusted cooking pot when he'd about had enough. What finally tipped him over the edge, though, was the fresh list of chores one of the men presented him with just as he was finishing up.
Setting the pit aside and wiping sweat from his brow, Keani scowled and rose to his feet.
"Okay, so this is great and all, but we came here to meet the Jackal," he said, barely holding his temper in check, "not to clean house all day. So are we gonna meet 'im or not or was this just a big waste of our time?"