The Adventurer's Guild main floor was one big room crammed with scarred sturdy tables and benches. For the morning repast, a mix of fifty or more transients and locals slurped, dabbed, and chomped. This being a seaport that served all of Dominaria, every color of mankind was represented, and not all the sailors and travelers were human. A clutch of bearded dwarves gargled in low voices, a brace of barbarians gnawed brown bread with slack jaws, and two hangover centaurs at the bar quibbled in brays and snorts.
Adira braced the bar and plunked down a thick Brycer danat. "Breakfast for six, whate'er it be. And ale. Who's your guildmaster?"
Like most coasters, the barkeep was big and brawny from a lifetime diet of fresh fish and red meat.
Before answering the barkeep wadded a towel and lobbed it at a kitchen boy. "Go fetch Fedelm, will ye? I've somewhat to tell him." He then lifted a small scale to the bar top and proceeded to weigh Adira's silver and make change. "The guild-master eats at home because his wife don't trust my kitchen. Speaking of which, have you got a husband in port, sweetie, or are you still footloose?"
Adira ignored the come-on. Everywhere her mane of chestnut hair, striking beauty, and voluptuous curves, two bulging from her old shirt, drew men like bees to honey. She took three "fisheyes" in local coin and plunked on a bench with her female crew.
"What about the men?" asked Wilemina.
"What about them?" asked Adira, peeved.
"I mean, shall we send a boy to summon them?"
"Let the bastards starve."
Breakfast was fish chowder, black bread, wedges of cheese, and dark, foaming ale. The women dug in hungrily.
Lieutenant Peregrine had set her turbaned helmet on the bench. Her fair skin was tanned dark as mahogany from desert campaigning, a stark contrast to her fair, square-cut hair.
She mumbled, "If this is pirating, I can endure it. You lot eat right fine."
"You sound like Murdoch," snorted Adira. "He makes up for years of army chow by clearing the table at every meal. I'd think love of food made him join the Seven, but t'was Wilemina recruited him. Why Murdoch chases a virgin devoted to chastity fuddles me, but many things do."
Women chuckled as the archer blushed. Jasmine Boreal, not usually one to chatter, swallowed cheese and called down the table, "Is that true, Wilemina? You've no plans to drop your bow and don a veil?"
"Jasmine, I thought you fancied Heath," teased Peregrine. "While riding, your eyes bore holes in his back."
"Never!" snapped Jasmine, suddenly serious. "Who could fancy a man with a face like a corpse and hands like ice?"
"When have you felt his hands?" asked Whistledove, impishly.
"Take Murdoch or Heath, or both!" laughed Simone. "Wilemina sleeps with her bow!"
"Forswear demeaning gossip, if you please!" Embarrassed, Wilemina grew formal. "Everyone knows the tenets of Lady Caleria. To surrender our greatest treasure to carnal sensuality robs a warrior of skill in the hunt. Murdoch is well aware of my leanings."
"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!"