A harried waitress emerged from the cafe’s doors, spotted Ripka and Honey standing there, and bustled right up to them. She’d piled her hair atop her head and speared both sides with two charcoal pencils. She bared her teeth at them in a forced smile.
“Got a table around back that just opened up. You want it?”
“Sure,” Ripka said.
The waitress turned on her heel so sharp she’d make a watcher look sloppy, and stormed the doors of her cafe. They were deposited at a tiny round table with precariously high stools on the cafe’s back patio. The waitress vanished, returned with a couple of matched cups and saucers, and hit them with a hard stare.
“You want it hot?”
“Uh, sure,” Ripka said.
The waitress snorted, disappeared, and returned with a piping hot pitcher full of bright eye berry tea. She doled out both mugs, then dashed them off with something from an amber glass bottle. Something that, as soon as it hit the hot liquid, sent up a steaming curl of biting alcohol. Ripka wrinkled her nose.
“What’s that?”
The waitress scowled. “That’s your heat. First tea refills are free, rest cost you a small copper grain. Want any more heat, and it’s double that. Cause any trouble, you’re banned for life.”
“Lot of people cause trouble here?”
The waitress puffed a curl of hair from her eyes and pursed her lips like she’d kissed a cactus. “Lady, there’s nothing worse for trouble than a couple of bright-upped brainiacs.”
With that pronouncement, she swept from the patio and left Ripka and Honey alone with their drinks. Ripka gave hers a tentative sniff. Bright eye berry was a common enough staple at all watcher station houses. She’d never been a regular drinker herself, she preferred her teas heavy with spice, but the bright eye taste never quite managed to offend her. She took a sip. Couldn’t much taste the sweetness of the tea over the acrid bite of the dash of whisky.
Honey stared at her cup like it was a viper rearing to strike.
“Everything all right?” Ripka asked.
“Smells sweet,” she said.
“Not a fan of the sweet stuff? Unfortunate name choice, then. Go on and give it a taste. It’s not too bad – the whisky cuts the sweetness.”
Honey gave it a taste, and a flicker of pleasure crinkled her face. “Oh. That’s nice.”
“See? Drink it slow, now, I want to get a good look at this place.”
Honey sipped quietly while Ripka leaned back, cup in hand, and took in the view. The interior of Bright Eyes Cafe hadn’t been much to look at. It’d been a cramped space, just a handful of tables and narrow chairs, the air heavy with smoke. But the patio was wider than she’d expected, and whoever owned the place had put some effort into the details. The stone walls hemming them in were crawling all over with spiny-leaved vines, sporting the tiny buds that could be harvested and roasted to make the eponymous tea. Huge umbrellas dotted the patio, dropping and faded, but well patched and providing much-needed shade. Whether by chance or choice, the patio was angled to take advantage of the evening breeze.
Ripka sighed, leaning into her seat, truly relaxed. Here, she couldn’t see the Honding family palace. Here, she could pretend the city would carry on like this forever.
“I say, it’s not right. The old Dame has got to see sense.”
Ripka searched those gathered for the voice and found the source. A man no more than twenty leaned across a table toward two companions, gesturing with every word. A rat’s tail of a beard clung to his chin, and he wore a drooping hat that the poor soul probably thought gave him a rakish air, but really just gave off the rather unappealing message that he was, as it were, limp.
His companions did not seem half so moved by the man’s words as he’d hoped they would be. To his right, a woman in a cheap beige shift with hints of ink and paint about her fingers leaned back to put distance between them and snorted. To his left, a man just slightly the speaker’s senior toyed with the rim of his cup, fingers drumming against his knee under the table. The nervous man wore a suit coat despite the steamy monsoon warmth, the elbows and hemline patched with ruddy brown to contrast the overall hue of mustard. The colors would have made most complexions on the Scorched look as if they were suffering from sand scabies, but this man was dark enough to carry them off.
“Let it go, Dranik,” the woman said. “The Dame knows what she’s about.”
“Does she?” the young man pounced. “She’s what, seventy-five? She could be going raw in the head and no one would dare point it out. We need a new system in place. A representative law code.”
“My own grandma’s near ninety,” the patched man offered, “and sharp as Valathean steel.”
“Bully for her, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I don’t see how any of this is relevant.” The woman shook her cup for a refill and clucked her tongue. “The Dame will do as she wills. It’s not for us to decide.”
“But it could be, that’s the whole point!”
Ripka caught Honey’s eye and mouthed, “What do you think?”
“Thunder, no lightning,” Honey murmured.
Ripka nodded agreement, but kept an ear on the conversation anyway. The young man’s tone was unusually earnest. She’d come across a lot of people with that kind of earnestness in their voice in Aransa. Nine times out of ten, they were just dying to tell her all about whatever strange conspiracy they’d stumbled across that week, and their evidence was always in the dying off of a tree, or the presence of game tracks where they were convinced nothing could have made them. Nonsense, on the balance.
But something about this man told her that he wasn’t prone to that particular flavor of conspiracy. For one, he was quite a deal cleaner than the usual type, and for two, there really was something afoot in Hond Steading. She thought about approaching him outright, expressing interest in the ideals she’d overheard, but that’d raise suspicion. He must meet with more like-minded individuals sometime. If she managed to cross the lad’s path at just the right moment, then maybe…
“Republicanism is dead,” a wiry-bearded man at a table near Ripka’s suspicious trio declared. The young man, Dranik, bristled all over.
“There’s no proof of that,” Dranik said.
“Fiery pits there isn’t. Look at what happened in Aransa!”
“That was a success! Commodore Ganal was voted to her post, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Voted,” the older man slurred, making air quotes around the word with both hands as he swayed toward Dranik’s table. He thumped a hand down and made all three cups jump. “That previous warden of theirs – he was voted in, right and proper, then Thratia comes along and gets him killed and scoops the city right into her pocket. Tell me, who was running against her in this fair and enlightened election?”
“That mine-master–”
“Also dead! Murdered, his sel-hub burned down around him. You think that’s coincidence, I got something shiny to sell ya.”
“Knock it off, old man,” the woman said. “It’s all just an intellectual exercise anyway. People like us don’t make these calls.”
“People like us can!” Dranik jumped to his feet and wagged a finger at the older man. “Ganal was still elected! I’d rather a contested election than a line of succession, wouldn’t you?”
“Pahh. Nothing wrong with a bloodline at the head. Got a lot of sense to pass down through the generations. Can’t elect experience like that.”
“Oh, and that’s working out well. Dame Honding’s a grand woman, I’ll grant you, but that nephew of hers is a discredit to the name. Where’s he been? He doesn’t care about this city. Hardly stepped foot in it.”