"Just see he doesn't lean too far and tip you over," jibed Simone, and everyone laughed.
"Be you Adira Strongheart?" demanded a loud voice.
Calmly, Adira regarded a big-bellied man bearing an oak club. The weapon was substantial, for the thick head was drilled out and weighted with lead. Behind him waited two men just as big and also armed. A sheriff and his deputies.
Lithe and lethal, Adira slid off the bench to set her back against a post. Gently she shifted her cutlass scabbard jammed in her sash. Patrons of the bar watched the exchange, hoping for a fight. Simone nodded to the Seveners to mop their bowls and get clear of the table. When she stripped the bangles from her wrists, they knew a fight was brewing.
"I'm Captain Strongheart. Thirty-six days out of Palmyra, though we came overland. What is it?"
The sheriff's fat face, wreathed with a gray beard and framed by a brimmed leather hat, was stamped in an official frown. "What d'ya know about the death of our sage, a woman named Hebe, three days ago?"
"Not a damned thing," retorted the pirate chief, though she smelled trouble spelled Johan. Casting about for time, she asked, "Who are you?"
"Fedelm. Sheriff." He waggled his club, the badge of office. "Rumor has't you know somewhat of her death."
"Rumor has a big mouth but little brain." Adira was doubly irked that the barkeep had both cozened her and sicced the sheriff on her. The pirate queen watched idlers drift up to listen. So far, no one looked perturbed except the sheriff. To judge by hard looks, Fedelm was not popular.
Still, Adira ordered, "Simone, pipe grog, will you?"
A deputy clamped a hand on Simone's silk shoulder to keep her seated. The black pirate bumped the man back with her generous rump. Sashaying to the foot of the wide stairs, she shoved two fingers in her mouth and whistled "Grog call" loud and shrill.
In less than a minute, the stairwell resounded to clunks and clatters. Into the hall thumped the grizzled Virgil and natty Murdoch, both red-eyed, Heath, the pale archer, always with his ebony bow, and, ducking the lintel, the great orange-black tiger Jedit Ojanen. Many patrons goggled at the last. Once the bleary men saw Adira braced against a post by three bullies, their hands fell to swords and an axe. Onlookers backpedaled out of reach.
As tension crackled in the room, Adira raised a hand. "Back your sails, lubbers. Sheriff, I'm friendly as a fork-tailed mermaid, but if you don't claw off half a cable, we'll tangle spars."
"We'll fare worse than that!" The sheriff flaunted his authority before the audience. "You'll come quiet and answer our questions! Hebe was well-liked in this port, and whoe'er kilt her will sink for't, mark my words!"
"D'you hear your own blather, you slime-whiskered codfish?" Adira might warn her crew to stand easy, but a captain could indulge a temper. "You said this Whatsername was killed three days past! We just broached your headland yestereve! Look yonder! How many talking tigers does this town sport? Think we've waltzed around unnoticed for three days?"
Suddenly a man called from the back of the crowd, "Don't listen to her! Hebe was murdered by a black hand!"
"Magic murder!" called another spectator, very loud. "We had to bash the door to splinters! It was locked tight with magic!"
"Who speaks?" demanded Adira. "Show yourself, flap-lips!"
No one stepped forward. Some in the throng turned in curiosity as the first voice crowed, "Poor Hebe was poisoned and strangled, I heard!"
"And burned with acid or fire!" echoed the second. "Horrible way to die! Some bastard must pay with hands or head!"
"A good woman cut down in her prime!" came yet another voice. "One of our own venerable elders, beloved by everyone!"
"Belay that bilge!" Thinking fast, Adira couldn't decide whether to name Johan or not. Even pursuing him was dangerous, for strangers might condemn his enemies by association, and Adira hadn't yet gauged the town's loyalties. Buzzard's Bay verged on the Northern Realms, so the populace must know of Johan. The locals might loathe the tyrant or else encourage his southward conquest. Northerners had served in Johan's doomed army, and Adira had been instrumental in destroying them.
Now three begrudging loudmouths shifted position behind the crowd while trying to rouse it. Adira's anger evaporated as she smelled a trap. Why stir up trouble, unless…
"Round 'em up, Fedelm!" called a disguised voice. "Lock 'em up! We'll help corral 'em!"
"Thump "em!" urged someone unseen. "Bash their heads in! Make 'em pay for hurting Hebe!"
Adira's Circle of Seven had closed ranks around the table.
With a hand on his belted boarding axe, Virgil growled, "No one's locking me up!"
"Hush, you guppy!" snapped Adira. "Sheriff, let's step outside, free of these hecklers. We're plain innocent, but we can-What's this muck?"
Fluff like dandelion seeds floated above the crowd. People wrinkled noses, and a few sneezed as the thistledown bobbed in the air. Someone laughed.
Then came growls.
"It's not fit," carped a man who'd hitherto kept silent. "Strangers creeping into town and killing our folk!"
"Drive 'em out!" said a fishwife. "Whip 'em out of town!"
"A pox on all foreigners!" rasped a dwarf. "They don't belong in Buzzard's Bay!"
Adira and her Circle turned just as ugly and vulgar. Virgil shouted into a man's face while Simone shrilled blistering curses. Heath curdled his nose at being called "stinking baby-stealing elf-kin" by a fisherman. Peregrine tugged on her helmet only to have it slapped off. Sister Wilemina was grabbed by a braid.
The storm broke. Yelling "For Yerkoy!" Murdoch drew his broadsword and punched a man aside the head. Wilemina whipcracked her knuckles into a woman's nose. The knee-high Whistledove, fearful of being trodden, scaled a post like a monkey but was knocked off by a hurled beer mug. Simone the Siren snarled and flung mugs off the table, full or not, one, two, three. The air grew thick with flying furniture, mugs, weapons, fists, and a few people.
Adira Strongheart fought more fiercely than anyone. Gargling epithets, the pirate queen tilted on one leg like a stork and rammed her boot into the sheriff's fat gut. The man whooshed and collapsed like a punctured bladder, but his deputies waded in to swing leaded clubs at Adira. She snatched behind her back to grab her matched daggers but clutched them pommels down with the blades laid along her forearms. Quick as a cobra, she jumped at one deputy, landing inside his defenses, and hammered a dagger pommel between his eyes. Stunned and blinded, the man reeled backward, until someone jostled him into Adira. Tangled, she couldn't strike the other deputy, so instead she caught and propped the drooping deputy just as the second deputy swung. With a fearsome crunch, he walloped his companion's head. Adira leaned around the staggered man and shot out her right arm. A silver pommel bashed the deputy's jaw and clacked his teeth shut.
Yet despite her magically induced battle fury and so much noise it was impossible to think, Adira knew she'd been tricked somehow. These locals were not real enemies. Swearing, ducking to avoid flailing fists and knives, she shouted in her hurricane-besting bawl, "Seveners! Don't kill-uhh!- don't kill anyone! We're all bewitched!"
"What?" Furious but fuddled, Virgil knew enough to drop his fighting axe lest he split a skull. A blond bruiser with a doubly braided beard charged. The scruffy pirate snatched both braids and pulled as he raised his knee. Knee smashed nose, so blood gushed. Splashed with crimson, Virgil let go the squawling man and sought another victim. He found two who swung meaty fists and only dodged one. The other fist bowled him clean over a table, so he clattered amid fallen benches.