If the smell was bad, the people themselves were even harder to take. Four times she'd caught someone trying to pick her pocket. Even when she threatened to turn them into toads-truthfully, an empty threat-criminals continued to plague her.
The front doors to the tavern swung inward, and Mialee cast her gaze over the smoke-filled room again, hoping to see her old teacher, the wise and ancient Favrid. The man was impossible to miss. He was almost seven feet tall, had flowing white hair to his waist, and a tendency to outrageously mismatch the colors of his silk robes.
Mialee wasn't at all surprised when the old man didn't stride through the doorway. Instead, she directed her gaze downward to see a gang of three rough-looking halflings. One strutted in an outlandishly expensive-looking suit. Behind him tagged a burly, nearly five-foot male in an undersized vest, torn pants, and a rope tied around his waist. He would call the halfling in the suit "sir" every chance he got. Bringing up the rear was a red-haired female in hand-sewn fur clothes and a fur cape. Wrapped in all that fur, Mialee half expected the fire-haired little woman to bark like a dog as she passed the far end of the bar.
The halfling dandy called out to the barkeep for a round of ales and headed to a darkened table in the rear. The redhead followed, while the halfling giant waited at the bar to carry the drinks. The Silver Goblet wasn't lavish with its waiters. In nearly two days, Mialee hadn't seen anyone working in the tavern except the bartender/owner and a few bitter, angry dwarves hauling trash and struggling to repair the soot-streaked, smoking fireplace. Every one of the dwarves looked as if he'd been rolled in ashes, and none of them were tavern employees. The whole place ran on Gurgitt, who never stepped out from behind the bar. Rumor held that there was a Mrs. Gurgitt in the kitchen, who cooked like a madwoman and liked to set rat traps. Mialee heard them snapping all night. She tried not to let her mind jump to any conclusions.
One last halfling entered, slamming the wooden slats of the swinging door back a little too conspicuously, and the bard beside her jumped a little too high. She frowned at the man beside her, lost in his third ale, then decided to frown at the halfling instead. He was a fat, bearded little fellow wearing a cloak sewn together from semi-tanned animal hides much rattier than the redheaded female's. Next to a brown eye patch, one monocular orb studied Mialee for a split second, then followed his companions into the tavern.
Another thief, Mialee concluded. This was where Favrid had to meet her? Why in the name of holy Elohnna did it have to be in this lawless hellhole? Why did that halfling stare at her just now?
Mialee had been stared at plenty of times in her hundred years, but something about the halfling's gaze made her check for her purse. The small, leather bag hung safely from her belt. Mialee had been traveling for years since she struck out on her own, but generally tried to avoid cities if she could help it. She'd take open tundra over a place like Dogmar.
Favrid actually loved places like this. During her apprenticeship to the old elf, he'd consistently found ways to arrange their lodging in the most crowded and malodorous section of the biggest city around. Lacking a city, he'd make do with a large town that thought it was a city, as was the case here. Favrid claimed to revel in the diversity of experiences and people. The old man insisted it taught him far more than any book he'd read or any lecture he'd witnessed.
But Mialee also knew the old man’s sense of humor. He knew she hated staying in cities. He was probably just trying to teach her a lesson about humility, or observation, or odor control.
So she waited.
Mialee hadn't drunk anything stronger than milk in decades. She'd tried wine a few times in her youth, and the result had always been headaches and general disaster. Some elves had the constitution to consume alcohol as freely as humans, more were completely immune to its intoxicating effects. A few, like Mialee, had an almost allergic reaction to liquor that greatly enhanced the effect of intoxication, but also accelerated it through her metabolism at dizzying speed. In short, when Mialee drank, she became twice as drunk in half the time and finished the experience with ten times the hangover. Her mother told her to enjoy it, at least while Mialee was young. It ran in the family, evidence of "royal blood" or some similar nonsense.
Mialee respected her mother, but sometimes wondered if the woman was insane. Waiting for her old teacher to show up in the chaotic, smoky tavern, she speculated that insanity might be something that happened to every elf in old age. Elders probably kept it from anyone under five hundred.
Maybe her old mentor had been trying to teach her a lesson by meeting in the tavern under the Silver Goblet sign. Or maybe Favrid had simply forgotten their appointment-he was over a thousand years old. Mialee sighed and stared at the door, willing Favrid to walk through.
The doors remained still. Mialee waved to the barkeep, who was busy pouring golden liquid into a fluted glass. The hulking man nodded and waddled over to her with the glass still in his hand.
"Gurgitt, do you have any water that I could actually see daylight through?" asked the elf woman.
A wide smile cracked the man's thick, black beard, and he set the fluted glass on the bar in front of her. "I can do better than that, mistress elf," the barkeep rumbled conspiratorially. "This here is from the gentleman." He jammed a finger in the musician's face and added, "and it's coming out of your pay."
Mialee recognized when someone was paying too much attention to her. She supposed that all those years staying in cities with Favrid had taught her something, after all. She pushed the glass back to the barkeep.
"Save it for someone who will appreciate the vintage. Maybe a cup of tea?"
The barkeep shrugged, nodded, produced a funnel from somewhere beneath the counter, and waddled off to return the liquid to its bottle.
The bard shifted to look at her, and Mialee readied herself to disappoint him. She had hours of study remaining tonight if she was going to finish her spellwork.
"Ow!" Her barstool squealed as the half-elf's hand moved behind her with surprising speed.
Mialee whirled in her seat, very nearly falling to the floor. To her surprise, the bard's hand steadied her before she went over. She shrugged off his grip.
The bard held a halfling ear in his other hand. The ear was attached to the halfling with the eyepatch. Mialee noted with mild disgust that the patch looked like the dried ear of some large canine. The little man clutched something tightly to his breast. Something, Mialee noted, with two familiar leather straps.
"Ow! Devis, what are you-OW! Ow, ow, ow, ow!" the halfling cried. The little scoundrel had nicked her pouch of spell components. She arched an eyebrow at the smelly, pint-sized thief.
The halfling snarled and recovered some grasp of his vocabulary.
"Devis, what the hell!" he boomed in a surprisingly deep voice.
The bard simply stared at the little man, and Mialee actually saw him make a slight, rolling 'get on with it' motion with his finger. He was scheming all right. The halfling and half-elf were blatantly in cahoots.
"She's just begging to be robbed. Look at her!"
"I am," the bard replied, "and I don't think she's very happy with you right now, Hound-Eye. You see," he said through clenched teeth, "my new friend…" (he twisted the halfling's ear at the word "friend")"…and I just happen to be named together in a prophecy. Big, local legend. She and I, and some schoolteacher. And maybe we should just be left alone."