With one last cursory look to check she wasn’t being followed, Tavia headed quickly inside.
She slowly edged past the flurry of people discussing politics with their liquor glasses poised by their lips, and found a quiet booth in the corner where she could keep her eyes on the doors in case Nolan and his friends made an appearance.
“Can I get you something?” a waiter asked, offering Tavia a menu.
She shook her head.
“We have the best drinks in town,” he said. “Anything you want.”
Cloverye, Tavia thought. Just leave the bottle.
But “I’m fine” was what she actually said. “Really. Tek.”
The waiter nodded and walked away, though he left the menu, and if Tavia hadn’t been waiting out a horde of buskers, she would have called him back for that bottle of Cloverye and a straw.
As she looked around at the bar, she thought about how the Last Hope really was aptly named, because Tavia couldn’t imagine anyone who enjoyed fun making it a frequent choice. The music was low and far too smooth, forgetting to toe that gentle line between being quiet enough for people to order drinks but upbeat enough to let any worries fade away. It didn’t have the same violent charm as the Crook.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
Tavia closed her eyes in a sigh.
“Small world,” she said, turning on the stool. “One might say it was suffocating.”
Nolan did not look impressed, and Tavia suspected that it wasn’t just because of his new black eye, or the blood on his mouth, or the various scrapes her duplicate selves had been good enough to give him.
Behind him, ten of his busker friends glared in perfect unison.
At the very least, she was happy that the other Tavias had managed to take down two of his crew, but eleven against one was still crappy odds, and she kicked herself for spending so long watching the front entrance to the Last Hope and turning her attention from the back.
Rookie mistake.
Something Wesley would have never let happen.
Except, try as hard as she could, Tavia wasn’t Wesley. She was fast, but not fast enough. She could scout an escape and throw magic at her enemies, but she couldn’t have eyes in the back of her head like he always seemed to.
She was good, but still not good enough.
“Just tell me that you weren’t able to follow me,” Tavia said. “I might be having some bad luck, but I swear you weren’t on my tail. Save me some pride here.”
“There’s a tracking charm in the backpack,” Nolan said.”Might have been good for you to check your stolen merchandise.”
Tavia cursed, loud enough for him to raise an eyebrow. She’d have to remember to take that out after she kicked his ass. Tavia couldn’t risk Nolan following her back to the forest.
“You have something of mine,” Nolan said.
“And you have something of mine.” Tavia gestured to his black eye. “Though you can keep that. How about I keep the backpack too and we’ll call it even?”
“You’re hilarious,” Nolan deadpanned.
“Thanks,” she said. “Most people don’t appreciate how hard humor can be in the face of death.”
“At least you know that you’re going to die.” Nolan took a menacing step toward her. “I hope you’re prepared for how slow I’m going to make it. Maybe I’ll even bring your head to my underboss. I’m sure Casim would appreciate one of Wesley’s little goons as a trophy.”
“Wow.” Tavia grimaced. “That’s really graphic. I think you offended my friend’s delicate sensibilities.”
She gestured with a nod behind him and when Nolan finally turned, he came face-to-face with Karam: Creije’s most deadly fighter and the woman who was currently teaching Tavia how to kill someone in a dozen different ways.
Karam stepped forward, her skillfully embroidered clothes cascading down to her ankles in a way that was almost delicate, and so very much the opposite of Karam. Even from where Tavia stood, she could smell the peppermint salve on her friend’s sliced knuckles, something the fighters in Creije loved to use to soothe their injuries and that Karam wore every day, just in case.
“I thought we agreed that you were going to stop being stupid,” Karam said, Wrenyi accent thick on her tongue.
“I didn’t agree to anything,” Tavia said. “Did you follow me here?”
Karam crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you complaining about me saving you?”
“I don’t need saving.” Tavia leaned back in the booth. “I’m a busker, not a damsel.”
Nolan looked between them with a disbelieving scoff. “Are you two finished?” he asked. “Because we were about to kill her.”
For the first time, Karam looked at him, as if she had only just realized—or cared—that he was there.
“We have not been introduced,” she said.
“No,” Nolan said. “We haven’t.”
Karam held out a hand. “Hello,” she said.
And then she used that hand to grab ahold of Nolan’s shoulder and pull him toward her.
Without warning, Karam cracked her head against his.
The buskers broke into a frenzy as Nolan stumbled back, clutching his bloody nose. Quickly, Karam landed a kick to one of the others.
Tavia jumped up from the booth just as Nolan regained his footing, smashing a glass from a nearby table over his head. She shifted the backpack on her shoulder and slammed her foot against another busker’s knee.
He went down with a yelp.
“This is why I had to follow you,” Karam said.
She kicked a busker in the chest and as he bent over to catch his breath, she rolled across his back and punched another clean in the face.
“You are so reckless.”
Tavia sighed at the lecture, which was becoming Karam’s specialty these days.
“If you were so worried about my safety, then you could have helped me take Nolan down back in the streets before his buddies showed up,” Tavia said.
She swung her fist into the air, catching the cheek of a nearby busker, just the way Karam had taught her.
Karam took out her knife and threw it into the shoulder of another. “I thought you did not need saving,” she said.
Tavia rolled her eyes and kneed one of Nolan’s friends in the groin.
“Forget making it slow!” Nolan yelled, pulling out a knife. “I’m going to gut you where you stand.”
Tavia shook her head. “He really does like being graphic,” she said to Karam.
She reached into her pocket for a pair of mirrored glasses and slipped them onto her nose, like she had seen Wesley do a dozen times.
“Here,” she said to Karam. “Put these on.”
Karam wrinkled her face and looked at Tavia like she was starting to lose her mind, but when she saw Tavia’s hands go to her pocket for a second time, it seemed Karam knew better than to argue.
“What in the Many Gods are those for?” Nolan asked, wiping the blood from his nose.
Tavia clutched the charm in her hand, its jagged edge spiking into her palm like tiny needles.
“A way to show that if there’s one thing I have,” she said, “it’s style.”
She threw the charm down onto the floor and it exploded into a blinding light. Nolan and the others clutched at their eyes, screaming loud enough to drown out the bar’s music altogether.