Men from the Consortium’s lower ranks were sitting cheek-by-jowl with locals, and there was a scattering of shippers throughout as well. The atmosphere, luckily, was amiable, if a bit too drunken to rely on. Mirage just hoped the good humor would hold until she and Eclipse got out of there. She’d been in more than one barroom brawl, and they were never much fun. Even with all of her training, brawls were so chaotic and unpredictable that she usually ended up taking a chair to the back of the head before it was all done. Not her idea of a pleasant way to spend the evening.
The serving girl arrived with some indefinable sludge on thick pottery plates and went away again to fetch them beers. The supposed dinner was disgusting; Mirage picked through it with the point of her knife, looking for edible bits. She left most of it on the plate. The last thing she wanted tonight was a sick stomach.
Actually, that goes for pretty much any night.
Then there was a commotion at the door, and Mirage realized heavily that there was indeed something she had wanted even less.
Trouble.
A knot of men-at-arms from the shipping companies stood in the doorway, scanning the room. Mirage held still and prayed that they were looking for someone else—a friend, maybe, or a prostitute, of which there were plenty in the room. But she had barely finished the thought when the lead guard’s eyes found her and narrowed in anger.
“Oh, Crone’s stick, no,” Eclipse muttered.
“You!” The guard advanced across the room, stabbing a finger at the two of them. Just my luck. It would be the one from this morning. “I told you to leave. I told you not to show your faces!”
“We’re just having a drink and a meal,” Eclipse said. “We’ll stay the night, and then we’ll be on our way and trouble you no more.”
The guardsman bent to put his unshaven face right in front of Eclipse. “You’ll leave tonight.”
“Funny,” Mirage drawled, pulling his eyes to her. “I don’t recall any edicts from Lord Ralni forbidding us to be in this town. Nor from the mayor, either. I’d say we have as much right to be here as you do. More, given that you’re disrupting the peace and we’re not.”
His scowl warned her. She seized his hands as they reached for the front of her shirt and twisted them around, bending them backward until he was in a reasonable amount of pain. “Don’t touch me,” she said softly. The action set the guardsman’s friends off. They stepped forward threateningly, hands going to the hilts of their knives. Mirage thanked the Warrior that wearing swords inside town walls was forbidden while the meetings were going on. Even so, their motion brought the Consortium men to their feet, which in turn sparked the other company men, which had the locals looking for a quick exit.
Then, unfortunately, a Consortium man chose to take Mirage’s part. “I suggest you leave the lady alone. Unless you really need to prove to the world that you’re uneducated, drunken boors not worth the effort to spit on.”
Mirage used her leverage on the man’s hands to throw him backward into his friends, buying herself time to get out of her chair as the room exploded. Eclipse rapped the one company guard who charged for her behind the ear, and he went down like a felled log. One less in the fray. But there’s plenty more where he came from.
The tension she’d felt earlier had snapped, creating a full-fledged brawl in the space of a heartbeat. Mirage jumped out of the way of a local bent on finding an escape, but in doing so put herself in the path of another Vilardi resident too drunk to care whose side he was on. She spun out of his path and found herself face-to-face with the guardsman who had started it all.
“Bitch,” he snarled.
Mirage smiled at him and kicked him in the knee.
He went down, but someone else’s elbow caught her in the head, full force.
Void-damned brawls! Mirage growled away the stars and turned on the owner of the offending elbow, slamming the palm of her hand into his nose and then kneeing him in the stomach where his too-small leather breastplate didn’t cover. A swift punch to his kidneys as she threw him behind her finished him off, for the moment at least, leaving her still in the middle of the very brawl she had not wanted to see.
The sound of a breaking chair brought her around swiftly, but it was only Eclipse taking down another guard. He grabbed her wrist; she went along with his pull and flew out of the path of another attacker’s down-swinging fist. Eclipse kicked him in the stomach, chest, and head, and then they were gone, pushing through until they reached a wall, and then sliding along it until they found their way to the back door and made it outside.
“I hate brawls,” Mirage growled, feeling the side of her head carefully. A noticeable lump was forming.
“They’re not my favorite, either. Come on—it’s almost time to meet Avalanche anyway. He won’t mind if we’re a few minutes early.”
The brawl was already attracting a crowd of spectators outside the inn. The two Hunters eased their way out of the growing ring and took to the shadows; neither wanted further trouble. They moved to the middle of the street before they reached the Consortium inn, though. Provoking the already jumpy guards would just start another fight, this one much more serious.
They endured an extended scrutiny, but were finally passed along inside. Guards were camped out all over the courtyard, and another pair flanked the door, while a score or so filled the common room with quiet talk. Mirage found the atmosphere a relief after the fun in the Barmaid’s Bosom.
“We’re here to talk with the leader’s bodyguard,” Eclipse said to the door guards.
One of them grunted; the other nodded. “Upstairs to the second floor. Third to last door on the right.”
Not an interior room. Mirage guessed that the Consortium leader was in the room just beyond. She could imagine Avalanche trying and failing to convince him to take a room without windows and a balcony. At least they were on the second floor, rather than the top or the ground; it lessened the risk of someone coming in from outside. Still, it wasn’t the kind of setup a bodyguard would pick.
Better Avalanche than me. I might have staged a fake assassination attempt just to prove to this idiot that he is vulnerable. But if he wanted to take the job, that was his business. They were here to ask him about Tari-nakana. And Mirage most especially wanted to know why Avalanche had glanced at her like that, earlier in the afternoon.
The upstairs hallway was quiet, and dimly lit with elegant lanterns. Everything was peaceful.
Mirage stopped Eclipse with a touch.
He glanced at her and raised his hands to sign. Trouble?
Maybe. Go quietly.
They crept along the hallway, carefully placing their boots to minimize the floor’s creak. The inn was well-built and well-maintained; the floor beneath the runner rug was solid enough not to make much noise. They flanked Avalanche’s door, and Mirage put her ear to it.
Silence inside. Then a faint noise.
Mirage kicked the door in.
For just an instant, she could see a figure silhouetted dimly against the night sky over Avalanche’s balcony. Then he was gone.
She was after him in a heartbeat.
There was just enough time, as Mirage vaulted the balcony railing, to realize that the inn’s retaining wall was within reach for a good jumper. She landed well enough on its top edge to keep her balance and her momentum; her boots thudded onto the cobblestones a moment later, and then she was off down the narrow alley beyond, pursuing the just-visible figure of the other Hunter.