and a few maudlin ballads for the tavern’s lonely hearts. They’re good musicians and popular with the crowd, which is just as well really, or they might suffer more than the friendly abuse they already get for that brightly dyed hair and those colourful clothes and pierced ears and noses. Gurd pays them with free drinks. Quite a good scam really. Makes me wish I played an instrument.
Despite all the jollity Gurd is looking as miserable as a Niojan whore and fails to respond when I clap him on the back and ask him if he remembers the time we faced fourteen half-Orcs in the Simlan Desert with only one knife between us and still came out on top. He looks at me gloomily then asks if I’ll come and see him tomorrow.
I nod, though it’s not something I’m looking forward to. The talk I imagine will be about the cook, Tanrose, with whom Gurd thinks he may be in love. As an old bachelor who’s spent most of his life wandering the earth as a mercenary, Gurd finds this very confusing. He can’t make his mind up what to do, not wishing to offer her his hand in marriage and then find out that what he thought was love turns out later to be merely an infatuation with her excellent venison pies. He frequently asks my advice on the matter, even though I’ve pointed out that I have a poor record in affairs of the heart. Still, lending him a sympathetic ear is always a good thing. Makes him more tolerant when I’m late with the rent.
People laugh, dance, gamble, swap stories and talk about the day’s scandalous affair. By the light of the oil lanterns Palax and Kaby work up a furious rhythm which has the whole tavern either dancing or stamping their feet. I bang my tankard on the table in time to the beat, and shout for more beer. All in all, it’s a fine night in the Avenging Axe; more fun with the poor of Twelve Seas than I ever had with the aristocrats at Palace social functions. I end up hideously drunk, which would be fine but, just as Gurd and Makri are carrying me upstairs, Praetor Cicerius arrives. He is Turai’s most famed Advocate and a man of great influence in the city. He informs me that I have to come up to the Palace and interview Princess Du-Akai right away.
It takes me some time to realise what he means, and for a while I keep trying to tell the Praetor it’s no good. I’ve heard the rumours about his wife but I don’t do divorce work.
“There are no rumours about my wife,” retorts Cicerius, who is not the sort of man you can have a laugh and a joke with. He’s around fifty, thin, grey-haired, austere, and is famously incorruptible. I invite him to join in an obscene Barbarian drinking song I learned from Gurd. He declines.
“Why don’t you sort things out in this city, Praetor?” I demand, suddenly aggressive. “Everything’s going to hell and the government’s about as much use as a eunuch in a brothel.”
Colour drains from the Praetor’s face. Gurd and Makri abandon me in disgust. The Praetor’s two servants pick me up bodily and bundle me outside and into a landus, which Cicerius is allowed to ride at night as part of his senatorial privilege. I begin to enjoy the experience, and start bellowing the drinking song out the window as we ride through the quiet streets of Pashish. Cicerius looks at me with contempt. Let him. I didn’t ask him to come visit me.
“No use looking at me like that,” I tell him. “If the Princess chopped off the dragon’s head, it’s her fault, not mine. Bad thing to do. Poor dragon.”
I fall asleep, and have only dim memories of being carried into the Palace. The servants are insulting about my weight. I insult them back. I’m not the first man carried drunk into the grounds of the Imperial Palace, though I may well be the heaviest. I’m deposited in some building I don’t recognise and the servants start forcing deat down my throat. Deat is a hot herbal drink. Sobers you up. I detest it.
“Gimme a beer,” I say.
“Get him sober,” says
Despite all the jollity Gurd is looking as miserable as a Niojan whore and fails to respond when I clap him on the back and ask him if he remembers the time we faced fourteen half-Orcs in the Simlan Desert with only one knife between us and still came out on top. He looks at me gloomily then asks if I’ll come and see him tomorrow.
I nod, though it’s not something I’m looking forward to. The talk I imagine will be about the cook, Tanrose, with whom Gurd thinks he may be in love. As an old bachelor who’s spent most of his life wandering the earth as a mercenary, Gurd finds this very confusing. He can’t make his mind up what to do, not wishing to offer her his hand in marriage and then find out that what he thought was love turns out later to be merely an infatuation with her excellent venison pies. He frequently asks my advice on the matter, even though I’ve pointed out that I have a poor record in affairs of the heart. Still, lending him a sympathetic ear is always a good thing. Makes him more tolerant when I’m late with the rent.
People laugh, dance, gamble, swap stories and talk about the day’s scandalous affair. By the light of the oil lanterns Palax and Kaby work up a furious rhythm which has the whole tavern either dancing or stamping their feet. I bang my tankard on the table in time to the beat, and shout for more beer. All in all, it’s a fine night in the Avenging Axe; more fun with the poor of Twelve Seas than I ever had with the aristocrats at Palace social functions. I end up hideously drunk, which would be fine but, just as Gurd and Makri are carrying me upstairs, Praetor Cicerius arrives. He is Turai’s most famed Advocate and a man of great influence in the city. He informs me that I have to come up to the Palace and interview Princess Du-Akai right away.
It takes me some time to realise what he means, and for a while I keep trying to tell the Praetor it’s no good. I’ve heard the rumours about his wife but I don’t do divorce work.
“There are no rumours about my wife,” retorts Cicerius, who is not the sort of man you can have a laugh and a joke with. He’s around fifty, thin, grey-haired, austere, and is famously incorruptible. I invite him to join in an obscene Barbarian drinking song I learned from Gurd. He declines.
“Why don’t you sort things out in this city, Praetor?” I demand, suddenly aggressive. “Everything’s going to hell and the government’s about as much use as a eunuch in a brothel.”
Colour drains from the Praetor’s face. Gurd and Makri abandon me in disgust. The Praetor’s two servants pick me up bodily and bundle me outside and into a landus, which Cicerius is allowed to ride at night as part of his senatorial privilege. I begin to enjoy the experience, and start bellowing the drinking song out the window as we ride through the quiet streets of Pashish. Cicerius looks at me with contempt. Let him. I didn’t ask him to come visit me.
“No use looking at me like that,” I tell him. “If the Princess chopped off the dragon’s head, it’s her fault, not mine. Bad thing to do. Poor dragon.”
I fall asleep, and have only dim memories of being carried into the Palace. The servants are insulting about my weight. I insult them back. I’m not the first man carried drunk into the grounds of the Imperial Palace, though I may well be the heaviest. I’m deposited in some building I don’t recognise and the servants start forcing deat down my throat. Deat is a hot herbal drink. Sobers you up. I detest it.
“Gimme a beer,” I say.
“Get him sober,” says
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