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In another corner was a ring, from which great thumps echoed. Giants were boxing. The bartender said they favored that over wrestling.
Over the last five weeks, Aurelius had spent scant little time with the other races of Ardora. The Ardoran nobility was exclusively human, and you never saw giants in polite company—save those garden parties where they might be off in the distance, tending to the orchids.
It appeared he had been missing out.
The Bunch was practically writhing with potential for mischief, a tinderbox awaiting a spark. Without knowing the full complexity of giant culture, even he could see the little factions and divisions among the tables. One piece of gossip, shared in the right ear, and the whole place would ignite—fists thrown and tables broken and hair yanked.
He mournfully sipped an enormous mug of unfermented grape juice.
The most infuriating part of his increasingly nontemporary abstinence was that it had damn well worked. At both the Ardoralia and the Gipedo Thanatou stadium, and in the little snippets since, he had been spared that animal loss of control when met with the prince.
He still didn’t cede to the ridiculous idea of Mesti punishing him with wandering vigor, but the fact remained that the treatment was working.
And so, it had to be maintained. Particularly now that he’d finally caught his break.
And besides, even if he didn’t believe in the five divine illnesses, those at the nearby table certainly did. For why else would five humans, all cloaked in hoods, come to a pub for giants?
It was all so obvious now. Once Teigra had got the name of the pub, the rest had cascaded out—the secret whispers at the edges of society, hinted at in shadows but never directly addressed.
Two days a week, The Bunch reserved a long table for humans: Thursdays for the farmers, Tuesdays for the fighters. There were no questions asked. No names taken. And you absolutely didn’t say why you’d come. For every person there already knew. They came to drink. To fight. To fuck. To do anything and everything to coax a lick of heat from their gray souls.
For if the cure for wandering vigor was abstinence, then the cure for ashen passion was excess.
The crown prince sat with four other people, three men and one woman, at a table at the outer edge of the crowd, quite near the band. Aurelius didn’t need to see Calix’s face to know which was him. He was the only one that might just have passed for a regular patron.
Aurelius breathed deeply.
Right here, right now, was the most consequential moment of the whole mission. Just as it was the most dangerous moment of the whole mission.
At the Ardoralia and the Gipedo Thanatou and the scant moments at parties, his interest in the prince could be explained away. Those were public events where people were supposed to mingle. It was perfectly reasonable that two children of rulers might find some time to talk, and that a herald of a hated polity might seek the company of a man influential enough to change that.
Even if Calix knew that Aurelius was trying to seduce him—and by now, Aurelius was certain that he did—it was still being done in the open, in such a way that observers would think nothing of it.
But here?
No, this was something else entirely.
Talking to the prince here would be an admission to Calix that seducing him was Aurelius’s main purpose in Ardora. It would also show the extreme lengths that Aurelius would go to get the prince alone. It would show his willingness to pry into the darkest and most secretive corners of Calix’s life.
To a soldier with a secret, that would move Aurelius from “annoyingly persistent” to “clear and present threat.”
And if Zosime found out?
Aurelius shuddered to think.
But all that danger was necessary. Time was slipping by. Xiber could cross for Vaticily any day now. If he wanted to secure a military alliance, he had to make his move now. Because if he wanted the biggest of prize, he had to take the biggest of risk.
He scanned the room. He had options.
One was to innocently stumble into the prince when he went for more libations, parsing a cute comment about how we simply have to stop running into each other like this. It would be easy, if obvious. As subtle as a two-handed tit grope.
But he could do better than that.
The sound of the crowd faded as he focused in on the fighters. The biggest man at the table lifted his head, revealing his hooded face to the orange-flickering brazier in the center of the courtyard.
It was indeed Calix.
And he was... smiling.
