7: WALK INTO A BAR

Thurvishar chuckled and shook his head. “You do realize how lucky we were, yes? Because you were quite wrong about how the magic worked there.”

“Ah well. No harm done, right?” Kihrin cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, I know. Thank Taja—” Kihrin stopped himself.

An uncomfortable silence followed.

Thurvishar picked up his papers and began to read.

(Senera’s story)

It was winter in Kishna-Farriga.

The three women—Senera, Talea, and Xivan—arrived in a location tucked away on a rooftop with a shielded street view. Relos Var had shown Senera the location years ago, in case she’d ever needed to come there herself. She’d made a few trips, but had found the many customs too strange to feel comfortable.

Senera had brought her pet dhole, Rebel, because this seemed like a long-term mission. And also because while Senera could have hired someone to look after her dog, Rebel could only be considered domesticated by the most generous standards. Her pet tugged at her leash, excited to be outside, a little nervous at the noise and activity from the nearby cobblestone street. Behind them, rows of brightly colored buildings comprised the largest city on the continent, the famous trading port and entrepôt that drew the rich and poor, gods and mortals, free men and slaves. All came to be either its beneficiaries or its victims.

The city smelled almost sweet and clean, welcoming woodsmoke and baking smells carried along with the ice and snow. It was a lie. Most of the year, Kishna-Farriga smelled like dead fish, unwashed bodies, and naked greed—in contrast to her birth city, the Capital City of Quur, which always smelled like spices, sunbaked tile, and despair.

The port city was shockingly covered with snow, which hadn’t done much to slow down activity on the docks. Merchant ships plied back and forth, delivering their wares and picking up new cargo before sailing out again. The snow did, however, simplify Senera’s job. The trio hadn’t even needed to change clothing before they’d headed through the portal to their destination.

Senera had made Xivan and Talea disrobe temporarily before their arrival. Underneath their fur-lined tunics and thick winter coats, they now wore several new glyphs marked into their skin—a glyph for understanding languages and, in Xivan’s case, a glyph to hide her unique status as a deceased but still entirely animate being.

Of course, neither glyph would be worth the ink Senera had used to paint them if Xivan or Talea decided to draw That Damn Sword (Senera’s private name for Urthaenriel). The thing made her skin crawl. She honestly didn’t know how anyone could stand to hold it.

“Why can’t we go directly to the Vale of Last Light?” Xivan asked.

“Because I’ve never been there before,” Senera responded.

“Yes, I suppose that makes sense.” Xivan gazed at the scene before her. “I admit I thought Kishna-Farriga would be more … I don’t know…”

“Whiter,” Talea said.

“Whiter?” Senera raised an eyebrow. “There’s snow everywhere.”

“No, I didn’t mean—” Talea bit her lip.

Senera sighed. Oh. That kind of “whiter.” “No, that’s farther south. Kishna-Farriga has had too much contact and intermingling with Quur, Zherias, even the Manol.¹ Even once we’re farther into the Free States, you’ll find a mix of skin tones. Trust me when I say none will be as ‘white’ as a Yoran’s coloring.”

“Let’s find shelter,” Xivan said.

Senera knew the duchess couldn’t possibly be cold. More likely, she was showing consideration for her two mortal companions. Or just realized standing around in the snow acting like the cold was someone else’s problem didn’t qualify as normal behavior.

Senera pointed. “There’s a tavern over there.”

Honestly, Senera wanted to go inside as quickly as possible. Not because of the cold but before she spotted a slave ship, or some wealthy merchant enjoying his newest purchase, or the next slave batch being taken to the auction house.

Before Senera succumbed to the perpetual burning desire to level significant swaths of a city like Kishna-Farriga to the ground. A temptation made all the more problematic because she was powerful enough to carry through on the impulse.

She loathed this city almost as much as she hated Quur.

Conversation stopped as they entered the tavern and gave themselves time to adjust to the poor lighting. Senera pursed her lips and again considered the possibility Taja just didn’t like her. The tavern chatter died; a room full of dark-skinned Quuros sailors turned to regard them.

While more egalitarian than its equivalents in Quur, Kishna-Farriga often sheltered travelers. In this case, they’d walked into a bar that catered to Quuros visitors and Quuros tastes. Every woman in the room worked there in a “professional” capacity—either selling drinks or themselves.

Next to her, Talea tensed.

Xivan headed for the bar.

Noise started up again, but regular conversations didn’t resume. The entertainment had just arrived. “Hey there, pretty things, why don’t you come over here?” “Well, now, ladies, come to keep an old man warm?” “How much for all of you?”

“I assume you take Quuros metal?” Xivan asked the bartender eyeing them warily from behind a polished wood counter.

The bartender chewed the question over. “I can. But no dogs allowed in here.”

Xivan pushed three thrones across the counter. “Three plum wines. Keep the change, and forget the dog.”

Three thrones was significantly more than plum wine should cost even considering the import costs and whatever the current exchange rate happened to be.

“Three wines coming right up.” Then he paused. “No disrespect, but you ladies sure you’re in the right place?”

Talea snorted as she sat down. Backward, so she faced the tavern. She rested one hand on her sword pommel while she kept the other on a dagger hilt. For anyone with a lick of sense, everything about the Spurned warrior screamed, “If you touch me, I will kill you and then use your flesh as bait to catch my dinner,” but these people didn’t seem sensible. All the Quuros sailors likely saw were three women who’d come in alone, never mind that two of them wore mail and made no effort to hide their arsenals.

Senera didn’t sit. They weren’t going to be here that long.

Xivan smiled at the bartender’s question. “It’s out of the snow, so yes. Now perhaps you can help answer a question?”

A drunken sailor sauntered up. He seemed the sort of large, wide fellow who comfortably won any bar fight he might happen to pick.

Talea stood and blocked his path.

“Hey, rose petal, now you’re a pretty thing, aren’t you? Come sit over at my table. I’ve got a lap you could warm up nice.” He grinned as he looked Talea up and down.

“No, thank you,” Talea said.

Senera rolled her eyes. She really was just that nice to everyone, wasn’t she?

“Go sit down,” Senera told the man.

“Bitch, I wasn’t talking to you.”

Senera exhaled. She’d been in situations where diplomacy and her goals had required her to play nice, pretend to be meek, act like the good little slave. She excelled at it.

She wasn’t playing by those rules today.

“Do you have any idea how many bones are in the human hand?” Senera asked the man.

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Hey there. Hello. Could you maybe not kill anyone?” the bartender asked Senera. “I just cleaned up this place.”

Senera glanced back at the man, mildly surprised. He’d actually recognized the real threat. “I’m not going to kill a soul,” she reassured him. “And since you asked nicely, I won’t even spill any blood.”

Meanwhile, the sailor had focused his attention on Senera rather than Talea. “Damn woman, those are some fine shakers you got there. Hey, Grakire, come over here. Maybe we can get two for one.”

“My mistake,” Senera said. “I was too subtle. What I should have said was, ‘Sit your ass back down before I break every fucking bone in your hands, so you can’t jerk yourself off unless your friend Grakire helps.’”

The sailor blinked at her, dull bovine confusion. “Shit, a little girl like you? I’ll show you—”

The sailor stepped toward her; Rebel lunged forward, growling. And that’s when the sailor made the worst mistake of his entire life.

He started to kick the dog.

Before he had a chance to finish the motion, he began screaming. A sound filled the air, like someone breaking a bundle of small branches, all at once. A popping, snapping sound. His hands visibly distorted as he held them to his chest, sobbing.

Talea moved for her sword as men around the tavern stood, angry murmurs filling the air.

Xivan didn’t draw her sword. She didn’t seem interested. She picked up a mug of plum wine from the counter and drank while watching the crowd.

Senera glared, hands on hips. “Do you lot think I couldn’t do the same to you? Sit down and finish your damn drinks. We don’t want trouble, so don’t make any.”

The tavern stilled.

If they hadn’t been proud, drunken fools, they might have listened to her. But they were drunk. They were Quuros. And they were most certainly fools. They just couldn’t stand the idea of some Doltari woman telling them what to do. Which struck Senera as incredibly witless in a land where you never knew if a god-queen had just walked through the door.

Again: fools.

Not everyone stepped forward at once, but three men seemed eager to avenge their fallen comrade.

Senera broke their kneecaps. It was easier than trying to do the finger bone trick to three men at once.

They fell to the ground, which naturally made them scream all the louder. The men behind them paused as it finally started to sink in they’d pay dearly for a victory. Assuming they could win at all.

Which they couldn’t.

“Go. Sit. Down.”

Chairs scraped across the floor as various customers remembered they’d left games and drinks unattended or they had something better to do.

“I never liked Mabrik, anyway,” one man muttered.

Then everyone returned to their drinks and conversations. Someone, possibly the previously mentioned Grakire, collected Mabrik and took him back to another table, while others helped remove the last three fallen men.

Xivan turned back to the bartender. “So how does one get to the Vale of Last Light from here?”

“The Vale of Last Light?” The man was visibly taken aback. “Why would you want to go—” He paused and glanced over at Senera, at Talea, and apparently leaped to conclusions. “What I mean is, you take the main road east toward the mountains. It’s just nestled at their base. Can’t miss it.” He made a face. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go there, though. It’s not a nice place.”

“That’s all right,” Senera said. “We’re not nice people.”

“Thank you.” Xivan nodded to Senera and Talea, and all three left together.

Rebel wagged her tail and rubbed up against Senera’s leg.

“Is that going to happen everywhere we go?” Talea asked Senera.

“Oh no,” Senera said. “Most bartenders aren’t nearly that helpful.”