“Too sweet,” he said.
“I told you he wouldn’t like the zzar,” Vedoran said.
“He’s a pup, doesn’t know what he likes,” Skagi said, reaching across the table. He took Ashok’s drink and poured the contents into his own tankard, which was already half empty. “Share your brew with him then, if you can pry your fingers away.”
Vedoran handed Ashok a goblet of red liquid. Ashok sniffed. The aroma was sharper, not sweet at all. He took a drink and felt all the moisture leave his tongue. He coughed.
“Doesn’t like that one much either,” Chanoch observed, but Ashok shook his head.
“No, I like it,” he said. He sipped again to confirm his first impression. “What is it?”
“A Cormyrian wine,” Vedoran said. “Highly acidic. Tatigan brings a few bottles in for the tavern twice a year.”
“Charges a pretty price for it too,” Skagi added.
“Who is Tatigan?” Ashok asked.
“He’s a merchant. Human, like most of them, but he deals in rarer goods,” Skagi said. “Exotic wines, but weapons too, and poisons. Whatever you need, he can find it. Rumor is the Watching Blade himself buys from Tatigan.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Cree said. “He wears spectacles with green lenses in them. He says it’s because he doesn’t like the colors here.”
“He’s a strange one,” Skagi agreed. He touched his tankard to Ashok’s goblet. “Drink. Vedoran can get himself another.”
“My thanks,” Vedoran said sarcastically. Ashok tried to hand him his goblet back, but he waved it aside. “Finish it,” he said. “It’s a welcome change to find someone who doesn’t enjoy piss and almonds.”
Cree and Chanoch laughed. Skagi made a rude gesture but laughed as well. Vedoran headed to the bar.
When he’d gone, Chanoch elbowed Skagi. “You’re holding your temper,” he said. “I’m surprised you didn’t set him down for that.”
“That’s because he knows Vedoran would be the one putting him on the floor,” Cree said, snickering.
Skagi choked on his zzar. “Put me on the floor, eh? It’s not too late to turn on
“If you can catch me,” Cree said.
Skagi opened his mouth to retort, but then his face fell. “Got a point,” he said. “You are too godsdamn fast for your own good.”
“Vedoran’s a fine warrior,” Cree said, addressing Chanoch. “I’ve seen Uwan watching him. If he’d only take the oath, swear faith to Tempus, I think he’d be a Guardian by now.”
“Why doesn’t he take it?” Ashok asked.
“Won’t say,” Skagi replied, shrugging. “Ask me, he’s just being stubborn. He’s a warrior-of course he should follow the war god. What else is there to think about?”
Ashok swirled the wine in his goblet. “Maybe he doesn’t see the warrior god as you do.”
Chanoch scoffed. “Uwan follows Him,” he said. “That’s all I need to hear. Tempus’s will, and Uwan’s, be done.”
Cree groaned. “By the Blade, Chanoch,” he said. “Do you ever tire of rutting at Uwan’s leg like a pup?”
Skagi choked on his zzar again. He bellowed with laughter.
Chanoch looked affronted. “You don’t feel the same loyalty?” he said.
“We do. But we’re more graceful about it,” Cree said. He took a long swallow of his own zzar.
Vedoran returned to the table then, and the conversation subsided. Ashok listened to Darnae’s song. She was playing something livelier now-a tune she wasn’t as skilled with, Ashok noted. He felt the rhythm falter at times, but the tune was still beautiful, and she played as if her private enjoyment of the music was more than enough for her.
She hit another sour note-loud enough to make Ashok glance up at the dais. A crash and the sound of glass breaking followed.
“Godsdamn, shut it up!” came a voice from below them on the second level.
A shadar-kai with wild black eyes snatched another glass from the bar and hurled it up at Darnae. The glass shattered against the dais, spraying shards across her stage.
Darnae abandoned her instrument and backed against the wall, shielding her face with her hands.
Ashok stood up.
A human man standing behind the bar reached out to lay a hand across the wild shadar-kai’s wrist before he could grab another glass. “Easy, now. You’ve had too much of the fruit,” he said. The calming gesture poorly masked the anger in the human’s expression. “Leave it alone, friend.”
“Tell it … stop its screechin’ then,” yelled the shadar-kai. He jerked his wrist out of the human’s grip. “And don’ you touch me.”
“Where you going?” Skagi called after Ashok, but he was already on the stairs.
The rest of the bar patrons had gone quiet watching the scene. Ashok saw the uncertainty in their eyes. They didn’t know which side to support, he thought. The barkeep was not one of their people, but the shadar-kai was clearly out of control. Ashok could see the wildness swimming in his eyes, and he knew what the fruit was.
It grew in the dark caves in purplish clusters near the underground rivers. Some of his own enclave mixed the juice into drinks or ate the fruits whole for the giddiness they induced. The lightheaded feeling was the closest many of them could come to relaxing their minds. Physically, the drug sped up the heartbeat, and taking too much could cause reflexes and nerves to become ragged, as he was seeing in the wild shadar-kai.
He walked up to the bar, leaned against it, and motioned to the human with his empty goblet.
“More wine,” he said. “The Cormyrian.”
The silence was loud in the room. The human stared at him, his mouth agape, and didn’t move. Next to Ashok, the wild shadar-kai wore a similar expression, but it quickly shifted to irritation.
“I was ’ere ‘fore you, friend,” he said. He swatted at Ashok as if to push him out of the way.
Ashok grabbed the shadar-kai’s wrist and held the man’s arm extended in the air. With his other hand he calmly slid his wine goblet across the bar. He didn’t look at the shadar-kai; he never took his eyes off the barkeep. “You do have the Cormyrian?” he asked.
The human nodded, glancing between the two men uncertainly. The wild one struggled in Ashok’s grip, his teeth clenched like a furious animal; but his mind was too sluggish to do more than pull ineffectually at the hand that held him captive.
“Then I’d like some more, please,” Ashok said, his tone conversational.
The barkeep pivoted, took a bottle off the floor behind him, and uncorked it. He poured the red liquid into Ashok’s goblet. The aroma wafting from the bottle made the hairs on Ashok’s neck stand up. The wine’s scent conjured the same inexplicable sensations the music had.
He took a sip, aware of his captive growing more and more agitated. His gray face had turned red with rage and humiliation. He clawed at Ashok’s fingers with his free hand, but the fruit had dulled his strength, and Ashok barely felt the stings. The wine held all his attention.
“This is indescribable,” he told the barkeep. He spoke carefully, aware of the rest of the tavern listening. Darnae came down the stairs in small, hesitant steps, watching him. “I never knew … there was so much more,” he said. “It’s not like wielding a blade or taking pain from a dagger cut, but it’s similar enough, isn’t it?”
The barkeep just stared at him.
“Yes,” Ashok continued, talking mostly to himself. “By itself, the wine would do nothing. But taken together … this city … All of it keeps you sane.”
Ashok’s heart pounded. His body hummed with the tension of exquisite restraint, the feeling starting in his chest and funneling out to each of his limbs. The hand that held the struggling shadar-kai could have crushed the man’s wrist, but Ashok held the pressure in check. He wasn’t fighting himself anymore, only enjoying the sensation of control, the suspended time between inaction and action. His body was on fire and yet serene at the same time.
Carefully, he put down the goblet and released the man’s arm. The shadar-kai stumbled back from the bar.
