Chapter Sixty-One: Friendly Place Like This

Osmund had to ask the servants about the “wood falcon” where he’d be meeting the others. It turned out to be the popular moniker of a discreet little establishment nestled between two larger, louder neighbors. He might have walked right past it, except that Nienos and the others were standing outside and making a scene.

“You deny paying customers?” the orc blustered in his broken Tolmish, looking ready to brawl. “Outrageous!”

His opponent was a tanned human woman a fraction of his size and likely ten years his senior. “We haven’t even a drop to sell you,” she said sternly in Osmund’s native tongue, waving the grizzled merc away like he was a little boy at her heels. “The Guild’s got its hands on the tap and left the whole city dry.”

At her back, a mustachioed Meskato in server’s garb gave their would-be customers a warning stare, but the Tolmishwoman was holding her own without his help. A sturdy cudgel sat propped against the door nearby—a conspicuous deterrent.

“You’re in the Empire!” Gudrun declared haughtily. “What right does the Tolmish Merchants’ Guild have telling honest people what they can and can’t sell?! There’ll be riots in this city if this goes on, and you’ll wish you’d made some friends like us!”

Osmund hurried over, fretting. His adaptable companions could roll with their share of unexpected punches, but apparently being denied booze wasn’t one of them. “Calm down!” he cried. “It’s alright! We’ll go someplace else.”

“There is no place else.” Gudrun turned and spat into the dirt as she spoke. “Those Tolmish rats are choking the life out of this city. No offense meant, Ratface.”

“And no offense to yourself,” Ratface added to Osmund.

”How could I possibly avoid taking offense?” Osmund bristled. “I’m Tolmish, and it’s not my fault!”

“S’no one’s fault ‘cept our king and his lad, leaving us to the dogs.” They turned. A pock-faced man with ruddy cheeks swayed against the building’s outer wall, his eyes lidded and distant as he mumbled in Tolmish. “Now we’ve got nothing but rotten Meskato ‘charity’. It’s a disgrace, what it is…”

The Meskato barman ignored the insult. Osmund didn’t. The man was clearly an unfortunate, someone to be pitied, and yet he felt a distaste for him. More than a distaste—a revulsion. Is there anyone in the Empire who would see me like that? he wondered. A slack-jawed foreign layabout who seemingly can’t do anything but complain?

This was such an unkind thought that Osmund was forced to stop and confront it. Had he developed a prejudice against his own people?

“Bah!” Nienos cried, throwing up a hand in frustration. “We go elsewhere! Have friend we can bother, owes me favor. Come on.”

Nienos, Gudrun, and Ratface stalked off. Osmund hesitated. So did the twins Kasri and Keldin.

“Not coming?” Gudrun called over her shoulder.

“No,” said Keldin.

Osmund had no desire to squat in a stranger’s house while drinking their illicit liquor. “Um, no,” he concurred.

The others disappeared down the street. “Sorry, Miss Florence,” Kasri sighed, watching them go. “They’re generous when they’re hammered.”

“Aren’t we all sorry,” The woman—Miss Florence—replied, in Tolmish. She was old enough to be the twins’ or even Osmund’s mother. “It’s been hard enough making it in this city with its finger-wagging liquor taxes, and now we’ve got to start turning folks away? Anyway, dear, didn’t mean to put you in a delicate spot with those brutes of yours. Who’s this?”

“I forget his name,” Kasri said, her voice monotone. “The others call him ‘Valcrest’ or ‘Little Tolmish’. He isn’t even short.”

Osmund was affronted. “What do you mean, you don’t remember my name? After all we went through together!”

Her twin, Keldin, stared into space; Osmund could never tell whether he was actually present. “Well, whoever you are,” Florence began, “it’s always good to see another one of ours with his head screwed on properly. This watering hole is mine. My husband Munir and I run it together.”

The Meskato beside her nodded wordlessly. Oh, so they’re a married couple, Osmund thought. I wonder what that’s like… Out loud, he said shyly, “I’m sorry too about our friends. As Kasri mentioned, they’re usually quite agreeable.”

“Ah, unruffle your feathers. In this business we deal with worse every day.” She stared wistfully down the street. “I hope Prince Cemil and his lot do something about those dirty coins soon. Us who’s ordinary want no part in this fight the Guild’s putting up, or any of the blame for it.”

Osmund’s ears perked up at the mention of the Guild. At the same time he felt himself an outsider, almost as he had during his first days in the governor’s mansion, but in reverse. “If you’re looking for a way to spend the evening,” the woman went on, “there’s a Meskato coffeehouse up the way that plays host to a famous storyteller. Worth a look even if you don’t speak the tongue. We’ve just sent some of our regulars their way.”

Kasri and Keldin fixed their companion with eerily neutral, yet expectant stares. “Would you like to go together?” Osmund guessed, tentative.

Kasri shrugged. “Alright,” she said.

“We could go,” Keldin agreed neutrally.

This was shaping up to be an unusual outing. “Have fun, dears,” Florence said with a smile. “Come pay us another visit sometime.”

Long benches lined two of the three closed walls of the coffeehouse. Osmund was struck walking in by the relaxed atmosphere, a far cry from the chaotic energy of a tavern. All around, people of all stripes sat in idle conversation, playing tile games or smoking nargiles.

Kasri and Keldin trailed behind, following his lead. Osmund eyed the various empty seats and weighed their options. People of all ranks and social classes blended freely here, as did various ethnic groups: he saw people in traditional Sulamese folk garb beside stately Meskato in patterned caftans, and plenty whose styles he didn’t recognize at all.

A gangly woman of about thirty in a loose flowing robe sat perched upon a high chair. This, Osmund gathered, was the storyteller. His gaze alighted next on three men seated near her. Going by their clothes and demeanor, the trio could only be Tolmish. Miss Florence’s regulars, perhaps. Were they embarrassments like the layabout near the bar, or…something else, like she was?

Osmund found that he desired to know. “Hello,” he hailed, the twins in tow. “Can we sit?”

The man nearest him gave him an errant look. “Sorry—not speak Meskato.”

“Oh!” Osmund realized he’d greeted them in his second language by habit. “Oh, yes, I’m Tolmish too, actually. How do you do?”

The man’s eyes turned bright and friendly in an instant. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Join us. The show’s about to start.”

As if on cue, the storyteller hopped to her feet. A small gesture, yet every neck turned as one.

“In a time before time, when demons were virtuous, and giants tread beneath our feet!” Impacts of her cane accompanied the clamor of her voice, plunging the room into a spellbound silence. “Back when water burned and fire slaked our thirst!”

The unknown Tolmishman leaned in to whisper, “Can’t understand a damn word she’s saying, but she’s got such energy, huh? Say, can you translate the story for us?”

“I’ll try!”

Abandoning the guise of the wizened narrator, the woman wandered about on her mat, gaze fixed into another realm, transformed by body language alone into a bold, restless youth. “Oh, it’s about a prince,” Osmund whispered as he listened.

“They’re always about princes,” Kasri muttered, sounding unimpressed.

Clack! The butt of the staff struck the ground with another thunderous tremor. “The prince angered a poor woman by breaking her jug of water,” Osmund continued as he tried to keep pace, “but she was secretly a demon in disguise, and now she’s cursed him into falling hopelessly in love with…” He didn’t recognize the word, but the storyteller had flung her arms wide and begun flapping with aplomb. “A big bird?”

“A phoenix,” Keldin supplied. “The king of the birds.”

The trio of Tolmish chortled. “These Meskato,” snorted the man nearest Osmund. “Such a riot.”

Osmund might’ve been concerned about being rude, but the other patrons hadn’t ceased talking, either. A few of them engaged loudly with the story being told, shouting encouragement and ribald jokes at every turn. The storyteller’s voice continued to rise just above the noise of the crowd. “Ansley, by the way,” the man said, introducing himself. He had curly brown hair and while he wasn’t particularly dashing, his affable smile was straightforward and honest. “Pleased to meet ya. This here’s Sigebert, and there’s Rylan.”

Sigebert waved boyishly, despite being at least thirty. He had a mop of tawny brown hair and flushed cheeks like the drunk outside the tavern, as well as a bit of a paunch. (Osmund noted a flask at his belt; clearly, he’d brought his own buzz.) Behind him, the large man called Rylan nodded silently in acknowledgment. He was young, but with a piercing stare that was hard to meet head-on.

“Halwyn,” Osmund said, deciding to borrow from the novel again. It wasn’t like his companions would know the difference. (He still couldn’t believe they’d never learned his name.) “This is Kasri, and her brother, Keldin.”

“Are you a regular here?” Ansley pinched his loose sleeve. “You look almost like a Meskato. Must have a real job, eh?”

“We’re mercenaries,” said Kasri. This time she spoke in Tolmish. Osmund raised a brow.

“Yes,” he agreed, leaving out the convenient fact that he couldn’t swing a sword or use magic or even hit a target. A server wearing a silver tray approached to offer him a tiny coffee capped with an impenetrable layer of foam. Osmund distractedly accepted it with a few coins. “Between jobs at the moment.”

“Mercenaries!” the inebriated Sigebert exclaimed, a little too loudly. “What an adventure!”

They’d forgotten all about the storyteller. (Osmund caught a snippet that sounded like “magical quest”.) “We’re stuck toiling at the docks,” Ansley said, gesturing at his mates. “Handling shipments and whatnot. ’Course it barely pays, and they work us like dogs.”

“How awful,” Osmund remarked.

“Awful? I’ve been worked like a dog all my life! The lot of the common man. Least now, I’m seein’ a bit more of the world. Gotta look on the bright side. That’s easy in a friendly place like this.”

The sentiment made Osmund smile. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said. “Coming to Şebyan was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Hah, usurper queen and all?”

“And all!”

The storyteller withered to her knees in a graceful display, at odds with the brutal motions of her arm as she drove an invisible object into her ribs, once, then again repeatedly. Ansley and Sigebert cheered for her enthusiastic acting. Even their unreadable companion Rylan cracked a smile as the woman rasped like a dying animal.

“What’s happened?” Osmund asked Keldin, in case he was still following along.

“The pretender stabbed the phoenix forty times and killed it.”

The plot had progressed way too much; he had no prayer of jumping back in now. “So what’s your story then, Hal?” Ansley asked, and Osmund blinked at the new nickname. “What’s inspired such love for your new home?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got our share of those.” The man smirked. “The Church of Tolm didn’t have much use for odd ducks like us. But here? The Meskato don’t care, long as a man pays his taxes.”

Osmund nodded avidly. “I’m, well, something of an odd duck myself,” he admitted.

“Let me guess.” Ansley sat back and fixed him with an assessing look. “Either you’re a no-good dirty heretic like me, or you’re a stick-rider.”

“S-second one.”

For some reason, this made him turn and grin at the big fellow—Rylan, who just averted his eyes. “Well, you don’t have to worry about judgment from us,” Ansley said. “From one odd duck to another: well-met.”

Osmund recognized the nascent bloom of some warm feeling. “I’m very happy to have met you all,” he gushed. “People weren’t usually so…accepting, on the Isles. I felt rather alone for most of my life.”

He half-expected this vulnerability to be met with scorn. “Don’t be a stranger, then,” the man said breezily. “Come down to the harbor sometime. When we’re not pestering Miss Florence at the ’Falcon, we’re waiting for work. Ask for ‘Mylo’s men’.”

Sigebert beside him suddenly lurched. Osmund thought he was going to fall out of his seat—or vomit—but thankfully he made it onto his feet, flask in hand. “I gotta get home,” he babbled. “Gettin’ late… Promised Ro I’d help mind Alice.”

“Family man,” said Ansley fondly. “C’mon Siggles, you’ve had a sip too many already, put that thing away.”

The two Tolmishmen helped their companion stagger to the street. (Rylan was shouldering most of the burden.) “Remember, Hal,” Ansley called over his shoulder. “Mylo’s men!”

The cramped coffeehouse burst into applause and exclamations; the storyteller had just finished her tale.

“How did it end, anyway?” Osmund asked of the twins.

Kasri shrugged dismissively. She’d been absorbed in her little coffee. “The prince found someone’s daughter to marry and succeeded his father. That’s how they always end, right?”

On the main road beneath the collapsed awnings of shops, Osmund parted with his mercenary companions for the night. He started up the hill towards the house, delighting in the urban patter of human life: the click of shutters closing, the clop-clop of an unseen horse conveying its rider across the dewy cobbles. How wonderful it was to be alive in the wider world! Then a shape moved in the darkness and it returned all at once—flashes of some forgotten nightmare.

The sting of a blade in his gut. His bloodied body lying abandoned in the mud. Osmund instinctively reached for the phantom wound. His heart began to race.

That had been a dream. But this wasn’t. And Cemil wasn’t here to wake him. He was utterly alone.

Before his panic escalated, his adversary in the shadows stepped into the light. Then it yowled, licked its paw and rubbed its face. Osmund laughed reflexively, overcome with relief. 

He stooped down to stroke the cat’s furry head, turning again for home, and the safety of its sheltering walls.