Whether through dumb luck or carefully planned luck, the serving girl graciously chose that moment to return with the whiskey jug.
“Another round, miss?” she asked.
“Who wants another round?” Tasia called.
A chorus of happy cheers answered her.
“Fill everyone up again!” Tasia said. When every glass was filled, she lifted her tumbler towards the newcomer from Adessia. “To Yurick, son of Yuros,” she said loudly. “And to his king, Terin the Great. Long may he reign!”
“Long may he reign!” the crowd chanted, and they drank.
But Yurick, son of Yuros, did not drink. Instead, he took another step closer to Tasia and turned his tumbler upside down, pouring the amber liquid onto the dirt floor at Tasia’s feet. A murmur of discontent rolled like a wave through the crowd of drunken men.
“That’s no way to respond to generosity,” Tasia said.
“And calling a king of Adessia a buffoon is no way to speak about your betters,” Yurick said icily. “I don’t even think you’re an apa-apa merchant. I don’t think you know the first thing about Adessia — I doubt you’ve ever even been to sea.”
The murmurs grew louder.
“Who are you?” Yurick asked. “Who are you really?”
Tasia’s heart picked up speed, and despite all she’d had to drink, her throat felt unusually dry when she swallowed.
“It’s as I said before, my new friend,” she said, doing her best to maintain her composure. “My friend and I are simple traders who’ve had a run of good luck with apa-apa wool. Nothing more.”
Yurick reached for something at his waist, and much to Tasia’s dismay, she heard the distinct sound of a metal blade coming free from a leather sheath. The sailor of Adessia held the dagger before him,.
“Know what I think, girl?” he said. “I think you’re nothing more than common scum, a highwaywoman who robs the honest, hardworking traders who travel to the capital to sell their wares. I think you and your friend here robbed some poor merchant and took his coin.” His sea-blue eyes grew wide and furious. “We drink from blood money!” he shouted. “Blood money!”
Tasia flinched when Yurick threw his empty tumbler to the ground. The cheap glass shattered immediately, spraying shards in all directions.
In a flash, Joslyn was on her feet. She’d sat across from Tasia in quiet, judgmental silence the entire evening, but now she moved with a speed and grace Tasia hadn’t even realized she was capable of. In what seemed impossibly fast to Tasia, Joslyn came around the end of the table and placed herself between Yurick and the Princess.
“You will return your blade to its sheath,” the guard said, her back to Tasia.
“Why?” Yurick said with a sneer. “So you can rob me, too?”
A mixture of emotions buzzed through the crowd. Some voices sounded alarmed. Others were hostile, but Tasia couldn’t tell for certain to whom that hostility was directed. At her, the one who’d been buying them drinks all night and entertaining them with wild stories? Or at Yurick, for disturbing the peace?
Maybe at both of them.
She glanced around at the faces surrounding her — and wasn’t encouraged by what she saw. Some of the men she’d been drinking with over the past hour glared at Yurick. But more of them were glaring at her. She supposed she understood why; most of these men were hard-working shopkeepers, merchants, sailors, and soldiers. If indeed she was nothing more than a highway robber woman, then these same men would be her most likely victims.
Which would make it a cruel, twisted bit of humor if she were to use what she’d allegedly stolen in order to buy the same men drinks.
“I’m no thief!” Tasia shouted above the rumble of voices.
“What was the Silk King’s name?” a man called out from somewhere in the crowd.
“He was — his name was — I don’t remember,” Tasia said, desperately trying to break through her alcohol-induced fog to come up with the name of any island king other than King Terin. She knew them. She knew she knew them; Norix had made her memorize them all once, two or three years ago.
“You met a king and don’t remember his name?” said another voice. “If I ever met a king, you can believe I wouldn’t forget him anytime soon.”
“Put the dagger back into its sheath,” Joslyn said again to Yurick. “Do it now, while you still have the chance.”
“Men of Adessia defend what is ours,” Yurick recited, widening his stance and shifting the dagger from one hand to the other. “We sail the Southern Seas, we dance beneath the stars, we make our riches near, we make our riches far.”
“Put the blade away!” someone yelled.
“Stop him!” someone else shouted.
“Stop him?” said an answering voice. “What about her? Name the Silk King!”
“Name the Silk King!” several voices said together.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tasia saw the serving girl. She peered around the corner from the open doorway of the kitchen. Then the door closed, and Tasia heard a lock slam home.
“Stand up, thief, and pay for your crimes,” Yurick said to Tasia.
“I’m not a…” but the word thief was drowned out by several cries of “Stand up!”
Yurick lunged for Tasia, making a grab for her long hair with the hand that didn’t hold the knife.
In a swirling blur of sand-colored apa-apa wool, Joslyn’s blade flashed. Yurick cried in pain.
His dagger clattered to the floor and he clutched the hand that had been headed towards Tasia a moment before. Blood seeped out between his fingers. His hand dangled in an unnatural, stomach-churning way.
“You bitch!” he spat at Joslyn. He glanced down at the blood pooling at his feet, face filled with shocked fear and agony. “I can’t move my hand,” he said to the restless crowd. “I can’t move my hand!”
“Kill the thieves!” someone bellowed.
“Kill them!”
Joslyn’s voice rang clear above the growing din. “I severed the tendon that connects this man’s wrist to his hand. I will do the same to the next man who moves against us.”
For a few seconds, the crowd shuffled uncomfortably. A couple of men near its outer edge melted away into the far shadows of the tavern. Apparently at least some of them seemed to take Joslyn’s threat seriously.
But then, like an ocean wave breaking against the shore, their collective discomfort broke.
“Get her!” yelled a man beside Yurick.
Three men at three different points in the crowd lunged for Joslyn simultaneously, but the desert nomad danced out of the way with ease, her palace guard’s short sword in one hand, her dagger in the other. They both glinted in the lamplight, silver tongues flashing like lightning in a dark sky as Joslyn parried and dodged and sliced.
Tasia hunched lower on her stool, wondering if she should try to run for the door even as she found herself too paralyzed to move. Men surged forward from all sides now, but Joslyn or one of her blades always managed to stay between Tasia and the next attacker.
Then the Speckled Dog broke into sheer chaos.
Barstools flew through the air, tables were overturned, ale and whiskey flooded the dirt floor. Everywhere, men shouted — at each other, at Yurick, at Tasia, at Joslyn. The initial reason behind the fighting seemed to have lost its relevance; no one called out “Thief!” or “Get them!” any longer. They all seemed to fight simply for the sake of fighting.