Joslyn chuckled. “Can’t say I’ve ever tasted donkey piss.”
“Well, it sure isn’t palace wine.”
“What palace might that be, my dears?” asked the dart player Joslyn had identified as an Imperial soldier. He had sauntered over and now rested his palms on the edge of the table. “They building palaces in Terinto these days? What do they build it from? Apa-apa dung?”
Joslyn stiffened, one hand automatically dropping beneath the table.
But Tasia turned to the soldier with a broad grin. “Oh, no, of course not. Still not any palaces in the desert. To the south, though — have you ever crossed the Gulf of Adessia and visited the Adessian Islands? Most magnificent palaces in the known world.”
“Is that right?” asked the soldier. “And how would you know — did they invite the two of you in for a drink?”
“Something like that,” Tasia said. “We’re friendly with a silk merchant there, and he is close to a tailor, and the tailor works for one of the island kings. So we got an invitation to the palace to show the tailor our apa-apa wool.”
“And what use does a king of an Adessian island have for apa-apa wool?” the soldier asked. “It never gets cold enough for frost in the Adessian Islands.”
Tasia glanced at her guard, hoping the woman could think of something quickly.
“For when he travels to the port cities of Terinto to negotiate trade routes with the tribal elders,” Joslyn said easily. “Desert nights are remarkably cold.”
“Sounds like a tale I’d like to hear more of,” said the soldier. “Are you two lovelies here by yourselves? I hope you’ll let a poor old Emperor’s soldier buy you a drink.”
“An Emperor’s soldier!” Tasia said. “How about that. We’re the ones who should buy you a drink. Have you spent time in the East?”
“Spent time in the East?” The soldier laughed and held up his left hand, wiggling his thumb and first two fingers. The last two fingers were missing. “I didn’t just ‘spend time’ there, lass. I left two of my fingers there to watch over the place until I got back.”
Tasia reached around behind her and grabbed the stool on her other side, dragging it around so the soldier could sit at the end of the table. “Now that’s a tale I want to hear.”
Joslyn watched her do it with a disapproving frown on her face.
18
“…and so then I said to the king, ‘But that’s what makes it apa-apa wool!’” Tasia lifted her overfull tumbler of whiskey at the same time to emphasize the punchline of her joke, and some of it sloshed over the rim, dripping down her fingers and onto the wooden table below.
The crowd of men gathered around her all laughed, and one of them — the fruit merchant, if Joslyn’s assessment could be trusted — raised his own tumbler high.
“To the Silk King of Adessia!” he declared.
All the rest of them raised their own glasses and tankards. “To the Silk King!” they shouted in a broken chorus.
Everyone drank, and the ones with a stool to sit on around Tasia slammed their drinks down hard against the table when they finished. It was the fourth or fifth such round they’d shared together — Tasia had lost count — with more men joining them each time.
Tasia looked around at the faces of her new friends, her face flushed with alcohol and the stuffiness of too many bodies in too small a space underground.
“Another round?” she asked, lifting her empty tumbler.
“Another round!” the men agreed.
The serving girl, having heard the boisterous group finish their latest toast, reappeared on the periphery. She looked both anxious and eager at the same time, Tasia thought. Anxious because everyone was getting so thoroughly sloshed, eager because she probably hoped there might be another silver in it for her and the Speckled Dog. And so, regardless of if she worried over how much the patrons had to drink, the girl reappeared with the clay whiskey jug a few seconds later, refilling all the empty tumblers.
Tasia pressed a third silver penny into her palm. “This should be enough for this round and another one, don’t you think?” Tasia asked in a low voice.
The girl smiled, nodded, and scurried away, the silver disappearing between the folds of her skirt.
The only person who didn’t look like she was having a good time was, of course, Joslyn. Tasia supposed she could understand why the guard refused any alcohol after her first few sips of ale with her meal, but she didn’t understand why the woman had to be so morose about it.
Tasia reached across the table and squeezed the guard’s forearm. “Don’t look so glum, dear,” she said. “I’m sure the Silk King will save you some mutton the next time we go.”
“Save her some mutton?” asked a flabby man with a bulbous nose and stringy hair to Tasia’s left.
She turned to look at him — and immediately wished she hadn’t. He spun dizzily in her vision for a few seconds before she managed to blink him into solidity. When she did, she saw that he was grinning.
Hoping for another story from the great apa-apa merchant, Tasia realized.
“Ah, yes,” said the Princess, swirling her whiskey in her tumbler. “There was mutton for dinner the last night we dined with him, but my traveling companion Joz here — ”
“Which king of Adessia?” a deep, accented voice asked behind her.
Tasia gripped the table’s edge, using it to stabilize herself before she turned to face the questioner.
Faces two rows deep flickered with shadows cast by the nearest lamp. All of them peered curiously at Tasia, waiting for her to answer the question.
“Who’s asking?” she said.
“I am,” said the same voice, except now the voice belonged to a mouth that was moving. A mouth with full lips proportioned just right, sitting above a square, chiseled jaw that had just the lightest coating of yesterday’s beard on it.
What a beautiful specimen of a man, Tasia thought through her fog of whiskey.
“And just who are you?” she asked, mainly because she wanted to see the mouth move again.
“I am Yurick, son of Yuros,” the mouth said. The owner of the mouth took a step closer to Tasia, and now the lamplight revealed straw-colored hair above sea-blue eyes. A beautiful specimen, indeed. “And I am a sailor for King Terin the Great, King of Bird Isle, King of Sandtree Isle, Protector of the Calsin Channel. So I ask again, who was this King of Adessia who you see fit to make the butt of your crude jokes?”
The men around him shrank back into the shadows a few paces, sensing trouble.
Even drunk, Tasia sensed it, too.
She tried to laugh it off. “Oh, not your king, good Yurick. We were nowhere near the Calsin Channel.”
“Then where were you?” he asked.
Tasia waved her hand dismissively even as she searched her sluggish mind for some facts about the Adessian Islands that would help her escape the trap she’d laid for herself. “We were somewhere far more remote. The easternmost islands. Very small.”
“The Calsin Channel is between the easternmost islands,” Yurick said. “Are you insulting my king, or just lying to all of us?”