Tanner does not gawk upon entry to the Bock pallazio: not as they walk across the verdant, evening-lit grounds, nor as they step into the sumptuously appointed entry hall.  Klaus watches, dreading the inevitable moment when the ork betrays their cross-town upbringing with a display of crude amazement at the Bock’s everday, but it never comes.  Which is something of an acheivement, because even Klaus is sometimes struck by the airy space, the glittering chandeliers, the embroidered everything that is his childhood home.  Especially coming home from Barchan’s—hardly meager, his master’s home is still a far cry from the pallazio of the Elder Bock.

A footman—new since Klaus’ time—takes Tanner’s jacket.  The mustard-yellow blouse beneath is hardly fine but at least isn’t the sweat-stained undershirt that Klaus had feared.  Both the cut and the color are coarse, but just barely respectable.  Klaus wears no coat; in the city’s autumn, even the evenings are warm enough that a doublet suffices.

The Elder Bock leads the way through the sitting room.  They weave between half a dozen chairs and couches, tables that rise to knee-height on the Bocks and somewhere on the upper half of Tanner’s shins.  The sideboard still bears a row of empty wine decanters, plus one more, half-empty, sweating in a bed of ice.  A needless and abandoned fire blazes in the hearth.

Unsurprisingly, the art has been changed since Klaus’ last visit.  Atop the mandle sits a broad, green landscape with the city of Pileus in the center, emerald flags snapping in the wind, and the glittering river spilling out to the sea.  The rest of the walls are covered in various portraits, most of them Bocks, plus a few Taylors and Dunkels.  All of the ancestors and relations displayed date from the family’s time in the city.  The impression is clear and, to Klaus’ mind, a touch pedantic: this family and this city go way back.  Enough already, mom.

But Tanner pays no heed to the art, not that they have the context to appreciate its propaganda value, nor to the furnishings.  Their attention is entirely on the Elder’s shoulders, and what lies ahead.  Only when the doors to the dining room yawn open does the ork betray their eagerness, neck craned and eyes darting.  Inside, sitting midway down the Bock’s shortest dining table, sits Beulah Hill.  Three others are with her, chatting over the first course of dinner, but she steals all the attention in the room.

It is not at all strange for a jotun to draw eyes; even seated, Hill is easily a head taller than the rest of her tablemates.  Rich blonde hair tumbles down in curls and ringlets from that summit.  Her brow and shoulders are broader and stronger than any in the room, but are possessed of a certain delicate precision shared only with canyons carved smooth by the loving hand of the wind.  The lines of her gown ripple down, hugging the sinuous ridgelines of her body, quilted and beaded so that she seems to glimmer in the candlelight.  When she looks up as the trio enters, her face lights up, alabaster smile and sapphire eyes shining.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our prodigal son returns,” the Elder Bock intones drolly, and waits as the two men stand for her entry.  “And may I present his friend, Mixter Tanner Ribcarver.  They and them pronouns, if you please and assuming I correctly interpretted my son’s insistent tone of voice.”

Tanner does not respond to confirm or deny, smiling stupidly at Beulah Hill.  Klaus steps in.  “You interpret correctly, mother.  Good evening, all.”

Klaus takes Tanner’s elbow and pinches just enough so that they say, “Yes, good evening.  A pleasure to meet you.”

“Ah, but have you met us, if we haven’t been introduced?” one of the other guests, a wide-jowled ogre, croaks.  He steps forward and offers a hand.

“This is Hank Mastica, of the Pilean Herald,” the hostess supplies.

“Ah, pleasure to meet you,” Tanner repeats, sounding a little lost as they forcibly focus their attention on the newspaper man.

“And Balwin Webber, of the City Broadsheet.”

This one is a gnome, skin the color of rich loam and hair glinting like obsidian.  He scurries around the table and reaches up to shake Tanner’s hand.  “And a pleasure to meet you, Mixter—do I have that right?—Ribcarver.  I try to be careful with names.  Part of the profession and all.”

“Yes, thanks,” Tanner nods.  The names of the newspaper people have already bounced right out of the ork’s head.

“And have you met Miss Beulah Hill,” the Elder Bock asks, purely rhetorical, and gestures to the celebrity across the table.  “The… what is it this week, Beulah?  The poetess.”

The poetess extends one hand, palm down, and Tanner stumbles slightly as they surge forward to take it.  The table is too wide for the formal greeting they gave the Elder outside, so they squeezes her fingers lightly.  She does the same, and they can feel the blood rushing to their cheeks.  She smiles dazzlingly.  “And a pleasure to meet you, Mixter Ribcarver.  I didn’t know you would be with us this evening.”

“Nor did I,” puts in the last person at the table, sitting at its end.  The lady, gnomish enough to be engulfed by her chair, is busy giving the Elder Bock a look of mild and resigned exasperation.

“And last but certainly not least, my beloved wife Celeste Bock, née Taylor,” the other Bock lady introduces, and bends down to peck her cheek.  “I hope you don’t mind, dear, it seemed rude to send them home when we were just sitting down to dinner.”

“Welcome to our home,” Celeste says to Tanner, with a smile that says she’s frustrated, but not at them.  “Excuse me while I arrange another place setting.”

Tanner does a quick count.  “I’m the odd one out.”

“Somehow,” the hostess née Taylor says as she crosses to the service door, “we shall survive having a different number of people on one side of the table than the other.”

“This was never intended as a formal dinner,” Marianna says gamefully, circling the table.  “I’m sure none of our guests will go gossiping on about our unbalanced table settings.”

Both the newspeople make vague sounds of agreement, but Hill smiles like a cat.  “Oh, I’ll lambast you in the streets.  Such a shocking breach of etiquette, and from a figure of such breeding!  You should be ashamed, Em, shamed to your very core, and I am just the lady to do it.”

The Elder Bock settles into her seat at the head of the table and picks up her wine, unruffled.  “Oh no, there goes my sterling reputation.”

A moment later, Celeste returns through the service door, trailing a liveried servant armed with a stack of plates full of silverware.  “If I may be so bold, milady,” Mastica says, bending over his own place setting.  “I will happily slide left to make room for young Ribcarver.  I should like to continue our conversation.”

“You are a dear, Hank,” the lady replies, and in short order a fresh place setting is laid out in the center of the table, next to the one waiting for Klaus and across the table from Miss Hill.  As he settles his bulk into his new seat, Mastica gives Tanner a not entirely subtle wink.  Tanner misses it entirely.  Klaus does not.

The guests take their seats and the service door bounces open as the next course is presented.  While Hill and Webber make appreciative murmurs over the fish, Mastica leans towards Tanner.  “Forgive my presumption, dear boy, but have you been to a dinner like this before?”

The ork glances left and swallows their surprise at finding the newsman’s broad, solicitous face so uncomfortably close.  “Um.  I know what I’m about, I think.”  They gesture to the ranks of silverware on either side of their plates.  “Start on the outside, work my in, right?”

The ogre smiles and bobs his head.  “Exactly so.  Clever boy.”

A hot, confusing flush swims over Tanner’s face.  Unexpected kindness and approval from a stranger, soured by that all too familiar sting.  “Thank you,” they murmur, hesitate for just a moment, and add, “but I’m not a boy.” Given the circumstances, they skip the “Oy, asshole.”

Mastica closes his eyes and grimaces.  “Of course.  And now you see the state of my manners, Mixter Ribcarver.  Apologies.”  The newsman looks about to elaborate, but any further conversation is forestalled by the arrival of the fish.  It is smells of lemon, butter, and rosemary, and flakes apart into perfect little rectangles at the slightest provocation.

“I heard your new song,” Tanner says across the table.  “The Consort kicked the Sovereign from Her bed?”  They chuckle, to show that they think the joke is funny, and then wonder why they are forcing a chuckle when of course the joke is funny, and they must look like a buffoon.

But the poetess beams sunshine back at them.  “Oh thank you.  I hear it’s making the rounds.  But it’s not my song, really.  My friend Alex put it together.  I’ve just been singing it here and there.”

“Well it’s great,” they insist, and then their mouth keeps talking, seemingly on its own, heedless of their desire to stop.  “And a long time coming, too, right?  Because in all the stories, the Sovereign always sleeps with everyone they like, and the Consort always forgives them and welcomes them back and… I don’t know why I’m explaining the song to you, because it’s your song, or your friend’s song, rather, and… Miss Hill, I’m just a big fan and I’m very happy to have met you.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” the jotun sighs, and reaches across the table.  Between her gigantic scale and Tanner’s lanky arms, she manages to squeeze his hand again under the candelabrum.

Tanner can tell they’re blushing.  “You probably say that to everybody,” they say, withdrawing their hand before they look silly.  A glance left and right, though, show that each Lady Bock is deep in conversation with a newsman.

“Oh, I do!” she agrees, and then chuckles, somehow encouragingly, at their crestfallen response.  “Because it always is sweet.”  She glances left and right, too, and leans forward as if to share a secret.  “Listen, Mixter Ribcarver, I’m just a girl from Crusader’s Rest who sings silly songs and writes sappy doggerel and wears pretty dresses that people give me.  There’s a hundred girls like me.  The only thing that makes my life different is fans, like you, who think I’m special.  You guys lift me up.”

“You’re not just some ordinary girl,” Tanner scoffs.  “You’re… you’re…”

“Pretty,” Klaus supplies over his glass.

“Not just that,” the ork insists, even though Hill is laughing at Klaus as if his comment were a joke.  “No, you’ve… you’ve got a fantastic voice, and incredible fashion sense, and you have this knack for knowing the spirit of the city, and what we’re feeling, and what we need to hear, and you say that.”  They run out of steam.  “And that means something to a lot of us.”

Hill downs an entire flute of wine like it’s a tablespoon, which to her it kind of is.  “My voice is only passable.  I have rejections from the city opera that assure me as much.  And people like Celeste supply my fashion sense.  They didn’t always, and sure, I hit a few trends at just the right moment when I was on my own, but that was more luck than savvy.”

“But the—”

She doesn’t let them interrupt.  “Mixter Ribcarver, you’re mistaking the effect for the cause.  I’m not famous because I deserve it.  I’m not more talented than those hundred other girls.  I sure didn’t work harder for it than everybody else.  I’m famous because I’m famous.  Out of those hundred girls, one of us was going to be plucked up as some sort of exemplar of the city’s identity.  Not because that one girl was the best or the brightest or even the prettiest.  Because that was the one girl who just happened to meet the right people at the right times, wearing the right clothes, humming the right song lyric that she didn’t even write herself.  And that was me.  Lucky me.”

Tanner frowns.  “I think you’re being too hard on yourself.  You deserve your success and your fame and… all the trappings.”  Seized by inspiration, they gesture around at their surroundings, the sparkling silverware, the absolutely incredible fish course and the other diners, in their own conversations.  “You deserve to be at posh dinner parties with the most powerful people in the city.”

Beulah Hill puts a finger to the side of her nose and winks.  It’s a gesture they’ve seen in Orktown so often that it seems to tilt her perfectly poised demeanor on its ear.  “Ah ha, but now I’ve got you.  I’m here, so therefore I must deserve to be here?  But you’re here, Ribcarver.  Are you here because of your staggering talent?”

“No, I just—” Tanner starts, stops, scowls.  Beside them, Klaus guffaws into his wine.  “I mean, it was just… happenstance, for me.  This isn’t my regular, everyday life.  But you must get invited to these sorts of things all the time.”

She lets a footman refill her glass and murmurs thanks.  “Fame is just another dinner party you get invited to by happenstance,” she opines.  “I don’t deserve to be here any more than you.”

“None of us do,” Klaus puts in, sitting back in his seat to allow the serving staff to take his empty plate.  “I mean, I’m here by accident of birth.  As are both my moms: a Bock in line for the clan elder title, and a Taylor with enough family money to bankroll her first studio before she was twenty.  And I’m pretty sure both Mastica and Webber were born to money, too.”

“Gobs of it,” Mastica himself cuts in, one hand on Celeste’s wrist to pause their conversation.  “Most of it started out as conquest spoils which then got compounded over generations of slave trading.  My family roots are deep and wicked.  But also entirely a matter of luck; you don’t survive a crusade any other way.”  He then gives the three of them a wink and goes back to talking with Celeste.

Klaus tips his glass towards the newsman.  “Hank can keep track of half a dozen conversations happening in the same room.  Comes in handy in the news business, he tells me.”

“All of which is to say,” the poetess continues, “when you look at things from ten thousand feet up, the people of the city choosing any one person as its poster child is totally arbitrary.  But you’re a fan because I said or did something that resonated with you, and you chose to look deeper and you chose to tell people about me, and it’s decisions like those that make my life possible.  I can’t thank the whims of the city for my life, and I shouldn’t thank my own talents because they didn’t get me here, but I can thank people like you.”  She lifts her glass.  “So thank you.”

With the meat course comes veal, potatoes, a perfectly steamed medley of vegetables, and a change of topic.  “I know your position on the Refusal, Hank, but what is done is done,” the Elder Bock declares down the length of the table.  “This city is in open rebellion.  That’s the state of the game.  And given that, the city needs to come together.  We need everybody doing their all.”

“We need a unified front,” Webber agrees, eyes wide. “If we all want to survive this, the only way out is through.”

But Mastica only smiles as he pushes another forkful of food into his mouth.  “We aren’t all going to survive this, Baldwin.  Some of us are going to die before this is out.  Pretending otherwise is just instilling false hope.  In other words, lying.  Which I prefer not to do at my paper.”

“Some of us were already dying, Hank,” Klaus puts in.  “The last round of taxes were so greuling that the city found starvation victims in the sewers.  This city loses a hundred souls a year to the convict brigades.  And I’m only twenty-two but I remember the crackdowns the last time the King was hunting for dissenters in the city.”

The ogre chortles.  “Are you suggesting, dear boy, that in our brave new world we shall have no taxes, no soldiers, and no political dissent?”

“We shall have just taxes, and a voluntary army, and the freedom to speak our minds,” Marianna insists, her voice cutting across the table, even and passionate.  “Surely you value that last one, Hank.  You can raise the torch of reason as high as you like.”

He squints at her.  “My dear Marianna.  If I can’t question the city’s actions now when the Council’s position is tenuous, I don’t expect to be able to question the city when it is calcified.”

She laughs.  “Hank, all you do is question the city.”

“And when I do, I am invited to this finely appointed intimidation session,” he says, swirling his wine to indicate the whole room.  Tanner blinks and looks around.  It hadn’t occured to them that the dinner party might have a purpose outside of, well, having a dinner party.  What exactly have they walked into, here?

“This is the least intimidating dinner party I’ve been invited to in some time,” Beulah opines with a dazzling smile.  Tanner mirrors it, silently thanking her for deflating the tension in the air.

“Don’t fault our hostess for falling short on the intimidation factor,” Mastica tells the poetess, a sly smile playing across his features.  “It’s not her fault if she’s not very good at it.”

The Elder Bock only snorts.  “Hank, you have never been, nor will you ever be, a Bock clansman, so I doubt you will ever get to witness the full height of my powers of intimidation.”

“He could marry in,” Celeste suggests with a quiet smirk.  “We’d be relations, Hank!  Come on, I can find you a cute and stupid Bock clansman sure to get you in trouble with Marianna.  The last one burned down a workshop while blackout drunk, and since he couldn’t remember doing it, he refused to take responsibility for it.”

The newsman puts his hand on hers fondly.  “While I do have a weakness for cute and stupid, my dear, I think I shall pass on your kind offer.”

Tanner takes another long drink of wine, considering the rest of the table.  One moment they act like enemies, the next like they are all old friends.  Perhaps this is just how round-eared folk interact when they forget there’s a point in the room.  

The ork glances left to Klaus, but the young man is watching the proceedings with a slight smile playing across his lips.  As if the jibes and taunts are theater.  But the stakes—the fate of the city and the lives of the everyone in it—are far too high for this to be entirely meaningless.  Tanner had been expecting these movers and shakers to discuss city politics with some sort of sober detachment, but given the number of empty decanters along the sideboards of two rooms, sober took its leave of this party a while back.

“I’m not looking for your cooperation, Hank, or even your agreement,” the other Bock rejoins.  “I know I’m getting neither.  And trying to intimidate you is only going to backfire on me.  But I like having you over to hear your thoughts.  You have a facility for digging up potential scenarios far worse than I ever imagine, and I like to be prepared.”  She lifts her glass to him.

With a chuckle, the ogre responds in kind.  “In that case, you should know I think your timing of this whole affair is off.”

“How?” Webber squeaks incredulously.  “The king’s armies are all halfway into Verdanta, depleted and demoralized from the war.  The royal coffers are empty.  He’s alienated all his allies.  We will never see a better opportunity than now.”

“You’re looking the wrong way, Baldwin,” Mastica chides.  “Look inward, not out.  The city Council rotates its membership in eight months.  A brand new crop of lesser guilds joins the body, and Marianna’s allies shuffle out.  Not to mention, the charter guilds tend to change leadership when the rotating seats turn.  Salters, Haberdashers, and Skinners are all looking shaky: poor health in the case of the Salter guildmaster, poor politicking on the part of the Haberdasher Don, and the Skinner guildmaster is simply poor.  That’s six seats thrown into the air, and no matter how unified the Council chose to be in their declaration, I sincerely doubt the decision was unanimous.  In eight months,” he predicts with grim certainty, “the Council reneges on its rebellion, hands over a few troublemakers for the gibbet, and everything returns to normal.”

“You think Marianna can’t woo six guildmasters?” Baldwin laughs shakily, but his eyes are on the woman in question.  The little gnome’s body language is all desperate hope papering over bone-deep fear.  The Broadsheet has been a strident supporter of the rebellion, and if anybody qualifies as a troublemaker for the Council to hand over, it’s the Broadsheet staff.  Baldwin Webber’s life is on the line, probably more than anyone else’s at this party.

“The thing about guildmasters,” Mastica grunts, “is that when a personage of sufficient standing chats one up, all the others get jealous.  Our dear Marianna will have to juggle all fifteen.”

The Elder Bock puts a hand on Webber’s and a winning smile on her face.  “That’s what I do best, Hank.  And the other thing about guildmasters is that they’re all terrified of losing their own support.  Because they can get swapped out just like Haberdasher’s going to be.  And the rebellion is incredibly popular with the people.”

Mastica snorts, nearly chokes, and lifts the back of his hand to his mouth.  “Excuse me.  Apologies.  I’m sorry.  Are you suggesting that The People, capital T, capital P, are going to carry this rebellion on their backs?”

“The People, all caps, are clamouring for the rebellion,” Webber insists.  “They are eating it up.”

Hank points a piece of meat, speared on his fork, at the other newsman.  “Well, the editor of the Broadsheet would know all about all caps.  And crass demagoguery.”

“I suppose I should join you in the Herald’s constant fear mongering!”  The gnome lands a fist on the table, causing the service to jump and caltter, then cringes at his own behavior.  All the fight flushes out of him.

“Of course not, Baldwin,” the ogre smiles wide, relishing this opportunity to deliver a coup de grace.  “You’d decimate your circulation.”

“For a critic of the rebellion, Master Mastica,” Tanner says into the ensuing silence, “you don’t seem… offended by the very idea.  That’s most of the detractors I’ve heard.  In fact, you seem to take a certain perverse enjoyment in talking about it.” 

“Hank takes a perverse enjoyment in talking about most things,” the Elder Bock says.  “And the more perverse he can be about it, the more enjoyment he takes.  Which is why Hank loves the rebellion, don’t you, dear boy?”

The ogre chortles in response.  “It is, at the very least, the most newsworthy thing to happen in decades.  I am very eager to see how it all falls out.”  He lifts his glass.  “It’s shaping up to be a fantastically terrible fight.  Well done, Elder Bock.”

The salute is not quite a gesture between equals, but there is something in the ogre’s demeanor that is lacking in his gnome colleague.  A certain confidence, a lack of concern as to how the Elder might respond to a jibe, and then Tanner nearly snaps their fingers at the realization.  It’s independence.

The Broadsheet has voiced its full-throated supported of the rebellion since the Refusal was declared.  And Baldwin’s demeanor all night has been all but sycophantic to the Elder Bock.  Baldwin Webber is in her pocket.  Hank Mastica is not.

The plates and most of the silver are cleared away, and the dessert course is wheeled in.  The scent of lavender rolls across the room as the tray rolls up to far side of the table.  The cake, yellow and dusted with sugar, looks large enough to feed twenty, and is supplemented with crystal bowls of minced fruit and nuts.    Tanner watches surrepticiously as the other side of the table is served first.  The latter seem to be toppings for the former.

“Mixter Ribcarver,” Webber says as he transfers a thin slice of cake onto his plate, “You’ve been entirely too quiet this evening.  Which is understandable, given Hank’s normal conversational volume.  What do you make of all this?”

Tanner opens their mouth, closes it, considers for a split second.  If Webber is Bock’s minion, when he voices a question, it is the Elder who wants the answer.  The ork decides to misunderstand the question.  “It’s a lovely dinner.  I’d always heard good things about Bock hospitality, it’s nice to know my sources are reputable.”

“Ha!” Mastica nearly shouts.  “A nimble dodge, even in its transparency.”

The Elder Bock smiles at Tanner over her cake.  “If I know Master Webber, he is hoping that you will make a statement,” she says, voice dripping with amusement.  And there it is, Tanner thinks: the mistress backing up her minion’s play.

Webber smiles as if he’s in on some sort of joke.  “Do you have any politics?”

The question seems innocuous, but with Bock and Webber double-teaming Tanner (if they actually are, and Tanner’s not imagining intrigues where there are none) the situation takes on a darker cast. Especially the light-hearted amusement in their voices, as if they are toying with the ork from the poor side of town.  As if they’re both amused at the very idea that Tanner “had” any politics.  As if nothing could possibly exist between their pointed ears.

“Well,” they start, and then take advantage of the cake’s arrival to stall for time.  “I’m not sure you’d like to hear it at your table, Elder.”  They’re not sure they want to speak it at this table, for that matter.  Tanner calculates exactly how much trouble they can get into for being themself in this place.

Klaus’ eyebrows bounce up and the corners of his lips quirk.  “Think you can outdo Master Mastica’s ‘we’re all going to die’ screed?”  Now the cute boy is intrigued, which destroys all the pros and cons the ork has tallied up.  The wine might also have something to do with Tanner’s sudden desire to throw all caution out the window.

“No, I just want to get some cake before I’m kicked out,” they reply, to the general amusement of the table.  Tanner knows they’re going to open their big mouth, they can feel it bubbling up inside them, a terrible giddiness.  They ladle something treacly across their cake and top it with a dollop of cream whipped to firm peaks.  When they look up, the whole table is waiting expectantly.  They smile and shrug as if they’ve been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  “I’m in the Labor Guild.”

“Oh ho!” Mastica chortles as he shovels a wedge of cake onto his plate.  “Oh ho ho!”

“Now I have an anarchist at my table, Beulah,” the Elder Bock says with practiced levity.  “More fuel for your campaign to shame me in the streets.”

“In her defense, she didn’t know I had unspeakable politics when she invited me in,” Tanner laughs, because that is what everyone else has been doing all evening: saying scandalous things and laughing about it.  And it wasn’t like the ork was expecting to be invited back, anyway.

Webber leans forward.  “Are you really in the Labor Guild, Mixter Ribcarver?  Not just having us on?”

They put a hand to their heart.  “I am.  I’m a certified journalier, completed my apprenticeship in Boss Nosh’s crew last year.”  But at their words, the table’s reception suddenly grows cooler.  The thrill of scandal evaporates into the air.  “Something I said?”

“It’s one thing to claim to be in the Labor Guild,” Beulah explains, leaning forward conspiratorially as if no one else can hear, “It’s quite another to start throwing around their most sacred words.  Journalier.  Apprenticeship.  Whatever you do, don’t say anything about completing your ‘masterpiece.’”

“To some of us,” Celeste puts in from her end of the table, voice cool and liquid, “our masterpieces all but define who we are.  They represent whole years of our lives, and are the capstone for decades of education and sacrifice.  My masterpiece was worn in six royal courts, witnessed three weddings of state, and mourned at ten funerals of name.”

Tanner knows when they are receiving a warning.  “That’s very impressive,” they say, “It must be very beautiful.”

The tailor smiles in acknowledgement, and then half-shrugs.  “It’s decades out of fashion, now.”

“My masterpiece is an illuminated tome of scripture,” Webber shares with no small measure of reverence.  “I invented a means of printing in gold in order to produce it.  It sits in the city cathedral, under glass, its pages turned once a day.  When the faithful read it, the illustrations move to re-enact their stories.”

“I’ve seen it,” Tanner exclaims in awe.  “We used to call it the magic book.  I didn’t know that was yours.  It’s gorgeous.”

“My masterpiece looks like shit,” Mastica croaks, “but it was the first book printed with movable type and woodcuts.  Totally surpassed by today’s pressworks, but in its day, it was cutting edge.  My old master laughed at me when I told him what I had planned.  Didn’t laugh when I presented it to the guild masters.”

“I don’t have a masterpiece,” Marianna Bock says, “but my clan has produced hundreds—at the very least—by hands now living and long dead.  When a dwarf invests their work in a thing, they invest their life into it.  So the masterpieces of Clan Bock are the crystalization of our clan, our people, our history.  To sully the legitimacy of a masterpiece is to denigrate our very existence.”

Tanner puts up their hands.  “Point taken, esteemed guildmembers.”

“It’s almost a compliment,” Webber muses to the Elder, “to have daylaborers ape our most venerable institutions.  I do understand the impulse.  But it’s like making up your own religion just to feel something that you can call the divine.”

“Watch it, Baldwin,” Mastica growls.

The other newsman looks a bit surprised, and then waves away whatever protest his colleague was making.  “I wasn’t talking about that, Hank.  I just mean it’s perfectly natural for citizens outside the guilds to want something similar.  They see what we have—our history, our traditions, our professional kinship—and they want the same.”

But Tanner frowns.  “With respect, Master Webber, that’s… not even half the picture right.”  Again, the table looks askance at the ork, but there’s no anticipation, this time, and no giddiness bubbling within Tanner.  The ork waves his hands as he tries to explain: “All the traditions and the history and the… secret rites and things, you can keep all of it.  I’m not denigrating any of it; I think it’s great that you’ve got that, and that it’s meaningful to you, but that isn’t what we want.  We want a guild so we can have a seat at the table.  The Council table.  At city hall.”

Webber rocks back in his chair as if struck.  “And you see, that sort of crass political gamesmanship played atop sacred responsibilities is what is so foul.  Why do you think you deserve a place at the table if you are not first initiated into the traditions that safeguard that most sacred of duties: the rule of the city?”

Tanner nearly wilts, their stomach roiling around the too-rich, too-sweet, too-much feast they’ve stuffed into it.  But then they catch Beulah Hill’s eye, sees the barest trace of a hopeful smile on her lips, and they find the words.  “I didn’t say we deserve it,” they correct, and the celebrity’s smile blossoms.  “I said we want it.  We want to be part of the city, more than just the backs that move cargo around.  We want to take part in the decisions about this city’s future, especially now, since we’re apparently thumbing our noses at the king and hoping he blinks.”

Webber makes as if to cut in, but Tanner leans forward.  “In this city, only guildmembers get a say.  We don’t have the money to buy our way into apprenticeships of the existing guilds, not that we’re young enough to start apprenticeships in the first place.  All those initiations that you claim are so important have been made inaccessible to us.  So if you won’t let us into your guilds, we’ll make one of our own.”

“You can’t just make a guild,” Webber sputters.

“You did,” Klaus laughs.  “The Clerks aren’t exactly a charter guild.  You got yourselves added in, what, a hundred years into the city’s history.”

“We incorporated one hundred and twenty-two years after the charter,” Mastica puts in helpfully.

“So the Labor Guild is just following in your august footsteps,” Tanner smiles, sitting back in their chair.  “If anything, that’s the compliment.”

“A guild is only a guild if it shepherds esoteric knowledge, if it can educate its members to do things that others can’t,” the gnomish newsman insists.  “The Clerks incorporated when literacy was rare.  We were specialists who could read and write for those who could not.  Now we print and bind and half a dozen other things, but they are all things that you cannot do, Mixter Ribcarver.  What is it that Laborers can do that I cannot?”

The ork shrugs.  “I dunno, can you unload a ship?  That is, can you coordinate with a team of six or seven other workers to turn out the entire hold of a clipper, without damaging the cargo or the clipper, in the four hours of wharf time that its captain paid for?  Can you pack up the contents of a manor house in such a way that none of it comes to harm as you transport it across the city and unpack it into the client’s new home?  Can you do that to a house as large as this one, and do it all in a single day?  Can you clean a house as large as this?  Do you know how to get a wine stain out of a rug, Master Webber?”

But the newsman scoffs.  “I may not know such things now, but I’m sure I could learn them easily enough.  None of these are secrets.”

“Neither is literacy, but that was enough to make you a guild.”

Webber rubs his forehead as if Tanner’s words are giving him a headache.  “Celeste, Hank, help me out here,” he groans.

But the tailor Bock shakes her head—“I’d be adrift without my house staff”—while Mastica makes a show of eating his cake and watching Webber squirm.

“Marianna,” the gnome pleads.

“I will say this,” the Elder Bock intones carefully, and the table quiets for the evening’s hostess, “a guild controls its secrets, its techniques, its training.  The Clerks were incorporated not because they proved themselves worthy but because they made themselves necessary.  The city needed clerks, and only the Clerks Guild could supply them.  Thus they were incorporated.  The city undoubtably needs its laborers, and we are lucky to have them.  Honest, hard workers are the backbone of this city.  But not all the laborers in this city are in the Labor Guild.  Laborers are, strictly speaking, easy to come by.  And until that changes, I don’t see much of a future for your nascent guild, Mixter Ribcarver.”

For a moment, Tanner considers leaving it there, letting the lady of the house have the last word, and talking about the cake (which is incredible).  But there is something about the way the Elder looks at them from the head of the table, and something in the self-satisfied sneer on Webber’s face as he looks on.  Something that says “your betters have spoken, so now you must concede,” and isn’t that the point that they’ve been trying to make the entire time?

So Tanner says, “Oh, I completely agree, ma’am,” and bobs their head as if agreeing.  “We don’t have the numbers to take action now.”

“I’m glad you can see reason—” Webber starts to say.

Tanner doesn’t let him.  “But much as Master Mastica shared with you a scenario that you might not have foreseen, you should know that the one thing that reliably makes our membership rolls swell is an uncertain future.  So it may be sooner rather than later that the Labor Guild does represent enough of the city’s laborers that it makes itself, as you say, necessary.”  They lift their last glass, just now filled with a wine so sweet they can smell it as they tip it towards Webber.  “Or, if you want to curry favor with The People, capital T, capital P, you incorporate us on your terms before you’re forced to incorporate us on ours.”

Hoots of laughter and flecks of cake explode from Mastica’s face.  His fork thrust into the air like a trident, he chortles and wheezes, banging on the table, until he gets control of himself again.  “Marianna,” he asks with watery eyes, “where did you find this gem?”

“The front stoop,” the Elder replies with airy resignation.  She allows a footman to take her empty plate.  “If I may shift the topic for a moment, Mixter Ribcarver, I’m afraid I need to ask you to clarify a point of etiquette for me.”

The ork pastes a smile over their sudden apprehension.  Now is when the Elder puts the uppity interloper in their place with some high-class puzzle of manners.  Or kicks them out of the house with a smile on her face.  “I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

“Normally at this point in the evening the party splits up, with the gentlemen enjoying cigars and brandy in the library while the ladies return to the sitting room,” she says.

“Where we enjoy cigars and brandy,” Celeste puts in from the other end of the table.

The Elder acknowledges the interruption with the smallest quirk of her lips and brow.  “I’m afraid I do not know where to direct you, Mixter Ribcarver,” she explains.  “Would you like to join us in the sitting room, or go with Klaus to the library?”

“Well that’s…” Tanner starts, and then smiles.  “That’s a point of etiquette I myself haven’t yet had to clarify, ma’am.”

“We have better brandy in the library,” Klaus offers, with a tip of his head that says “Let’s go.”  Tanner is not about to say no to that. 

The library is across the entry hall, lit by yellow lamps and filled with the scent of old books and cigar smoke.  Bookshelves line every wall, and Tanner’s fingers itch to run across their spines.  Klaus leads the way and Mastica follows after.  The other newsman apologizes for his need to abandon the party early, makes his goodbyes, and is out the front door.

“Do you think Webber just didn’t want to be in the same room as me?” Tanner asks with a chuckle as Klaus pours.

The other newsman claps them on the back, says, “Not you, but me,” and reaches forward to pluck the fullest glass from the sideboard.  He ambles his way through the room’s furniture and selects a broad scarlet and mahogany chair sized for a jotun.  “You must forgive Baldwin, he often finds himself lacking in stamina.”

Klaus schools his lips away from the stupid smile that wants to smash his face as he hands the ork their drink.  Somewhere in this room is the humidor with the imported cigars, and Klaus wracks his brain to remember where it is.  He spies it across the room on a desk, and barely suppresses the impulse to skip over to fetch it.

Tanner takes their tumbler and finds a seat at one end of a couch.  “I feel like I’m doing a jigsaw missing all the side pieces.  He and the Elder are… allies?”

“He’d like to frame it that way, I expect,” Mastica snorts into his snifter.

Klaus sits, not at the other end of the couch as Tanner had hoped, but in a chair that puts the three of them in an even triangle.  He is the host, it’s only polite, Tanner tells themself.  The dwarf clarifies: “My mother is Webber’s patron.”

The other newsman takes a cigar and a lighter from the humidor that Klaus profers.  “Your mother owns his press,” he says darkly, and lights the cigar.  “In.  All.  But.  Name,” he adds between puffs.  Once he is wreathed in fragrant smoke, he sits back and sighs melodramatically, “She stole him away from me.”

“You were broken up for years prior,” Klaus corrects lightly.  “And if I recall the gossip correctly, you’re the one who threw him out.”

“Missing puzzle pieces again,” Tanner says, and waves off a cigar.  They’re not entirely sure how the fat little bundles work, and they’ve had enough of muddling through social customs they’ve only ever read about for the evening. “Were you… business partners, or—”

The dwarf closes the humidor and sets it aside, feeling foiled and just slightly ignored.  Tanner chose to follow him into the library, not go with the women, but now they’re refusing fine cigars and really, Klaus is just reading too much into everything and he should pay more attention to the conversation or else come across like some sort of halfwit.

“First he was my apprentice,” Mastica is saying, words ever so slightly slurred, “because he abandoned his family’s trade and got himself kicked out and he wanted to be a newsman and he came to me and he was adorable.  Like Celeste said, I have a weakness for the cute and stupid.  And then, because there are rules about fucking your apprentice, I let him do his journeywork far too early.  We had half a dozen years together, both of us on the Herald, before he decided to get all… sentimental.  And then we weren’t together any more.”

“And then,” Klaus concludes around his own cigar, “my mother stole him from you.  When you were neither collaborating nor cohabitating.”

“Fine, fine,” the ogre accedes, sinking lower in his oversized chair.  “Use facts against the newspaper man.”

“That makes more sense,” Tanner says, and sips at their brandy.  It’s warm and smoky and richer than anything they’ve tasted in a year.  The events of the evening start to square up in their recollection, either with the introduction of the missing pieces or the introduction of liquor.  As if they haven’t drunk enough already.  “She was playing the both of you.”  Tanner coughs to cover the surprise at their own words.  They hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but at this stage of the evening, the ork’s lips are profoundly lubricated.

“She was, she did,” the newsman agrees, tilted slightly in his chair.  “She knows I can’t resist her table.”

Since Mastica doesn’t seem perturbed about it, Tanner says it all out loud, to see if they get corrected: “The Elder can more or less dictate what Webber prints, but she can’t get you do to the same, nor control what Miss Hill sings or says.  So she invites all of you to a dinner party where the topic of conversation is the rebellion.  Webber will definitely do a story about the evening.  Because you know that Webber will do that story, you will also do a story in the Herald.”

“I am physically incapable of letting Baldwin have the last word,” the ogre agrees wearily.

“The two biggest dailies in the city run the story, and it involves Beulah Hill, so people start asking her, and she says…” Tanner trails off.  “Shit.  I just realized another bit.  But, first: she says the city needs to present a unified front or else we’re all going to die.  And that goes everywhere in, what, three days?”

“Day and a half,” Mastica says with a wave of his cigar.

Klaus is smiling at Tanner, perhaps a little drunkenly, but they’ll take it.  “What’s the other thing you just realized?” he asks.

The ork blushes.  “She was using me, too.  That’s why she invited me to dinner.  Somebody who’d flatter Hill enough to leave an impression, and then she’ll say there was this nice point-eared kid who said we all have to band together, rounds and points, in a united front.  Because even Elder Bock has point friends at her parties.”

The dwarf lifts his glass and sing-songs, “I tried to warn you.”

“But!” Mastica sputters, surging forward from his seat to slosh the dregs of his glass at the ork.  “You turned the tables on her.  Labor Guild, ha!”

“It wasn’t a joke, or some sort of rhetorical maneuver—”

But the newsman isn’t done.  “Miss Hill is not as easily manipulated as Baldwin and I, something that I don’t think our honorable hostess quite understands.  All the talk that she spreads about banding together will now be infected with further talk about what the points get out of banding together with we round folk.”  He slumps back against his massive chair.  “Which might… might actually get dear Marianna in a bit of trouble.”

Tanner looks from Mastica to Klaus, who explains succinctly, “Clan Bock does not approve of the Labor Guild.”

“Well some do.  We have a few Bock members.”

The dwarf wobbles his head a little over his brandy.  “You have members with the Bock surname, which is not exactly the same as being clan members in good standing.  Not to mention, there are far more Bocks in incorporated guilds, in this city and all the way back to Dwarfheim, than there are listed on your rolls.”  He takes a long drag of his cigar, eyes half-lidded.

“Marianna has to play the game on more levels than the rest of us,” Mastica tells the bottom of his glass, and then passes it to Klaus, who refills it.  “City.  Kingdom.  All of Auriculania.  Which is probably the only reason we ever succeed in pulling one over on her.”  He favors Tanner with a broad wink.  “Like you did this evening.”

Tanner finds himself blushing, and also finds his snifter being refilled. “Oh, thank you.”

“I admit I am slightly disappointed to hear that you only now realized you were being used as a prop,” Mastica admits, settling back into his chair with his refilled glass.  “Only because the story in my head was better when your sabotage was premeditated.  But I suppose I needn’t present those events in their exact order when I write this up.”

“You’re going to put me in the story?”

The newsman bursts into laughter and roars, “Mixter Ribcarver, you are the story.”

“And here you thought it was just dinner with a celebrity,” Klaus says, his voice an exact match for his mother’s at peak forced levity.  Tanner can’t help but frown softly at the dwarf’s demeanor, which seems to be alternating between encouragement and bristly.  Did they do something wrong?

The ogre leans forward, nearly out of his chair.  “But I must say, all evening I have found you so suprisingly articulate, dear b—”  He stops himself, at least, but then wrinkles his noise at the corner he’s painted himself into.

“Person?” Klaus prompts with all the aggreived patience of an overworked tutor.

Mastica waves his brandy as if it could dispell the suggestion.  “Ugh, so pedestrian!  There’s no good parallel for the cheerily avuncular use of ‘boy.’  Even swapping in ‘girl’—which wouldn’t do, anyway—but swapping it in introduces an entirely different connotation.  Nor ‘child,’ nor ‘kid.’  There must be an alternative that conveys the right sense of—”

“Precisely calibrated disrespect?” Klaus offers with a smirk.

The newsman points his thick finger, cigar pinched across it, at the dwarf.  “Exactly that! Bravo, Mister Bock.”  He then rounds his finger at the nonbinary ork.  “The next time somebody gets frustrated with the necessity of shifting their language around you, understand that your ‘simple request’ is actually making us all re-evaluate the power dynamics of our every word choice—which we have been quite comfortable with for some time.”

Tanner puts up their hands.  “Oh, believe me, I know.  You don’t get to the place I’m at without re-evaulating every single interaction in your life, over and over again, until you’re sick of it.”

“So you’re also in politics,” the newsman chuckles, settling back into his seat.  “In any case, your conversation is a pleasure which I should like to enjoy again.  I hold a salon every Saturday afternoon at my home just off Edacio Square.  Consider this an open invitation.”

“Well, thank you, sir,” the ork says, and for all the ogre’s stumbling over their gender, they’re touched by the invitation.  “I don’t get out to that side of the city very often, but I’ll make the effort.”

The ogre waves a hand at Klaus.  “Sometimes this one shows up.”

“And Miss Hill has attended more than once, hasn’t she?” says Klaus.  “I think I’ve seen her there.”

“I think so,” Mastica says, musing.  “It’s not really her speed; not a good venue for patronage.   We are—ah ha ha!—more suited to pedantry than patronage.”  He waggles his eyebrows at Klaus, to get the dwarf to acknowledge his joke.

The dwarf gives him the barest nod in return, takes a pull of his cigar, and asks Tanner, all innocence, “How did you find Miss Hill?”

“Oh, she was… really nice,” the ork replies, and feels a smile curling their lips.  “More down-to-earth than I thought she’d be.”

“And pretty,” the dwarf says with a smile.

“Well, yes, gorgeous,” Tanner agrees.  “Was she wearing one of your mom’s gowns?”

“It’s considered poor taste to wear a tailor’s work to their house,” Mastica notes.  “Mostly because they’ll feel the need to make alterations over the canapes.”

Klaus nods in agreement.  “Although I’m pretty sure she was wearing one of my cousins, instead.”  He leans back, composing his affect into the very picture of unaffected composure.  “So you think you’ve got a chance?”

Tanner’s nose is very pleasantly situated over their brandy, and they don’t particularly want to move.  So they say into their glass, “A chance for what?”

Klaus and Mastica both chuckle.  “For the girl,” the ogre croaks.

The ork lowers their glass.  “You’re asking if I think I have a chance with Beulah Hill?”

“Yeah.”

Tanner laughs.  “Of course not.  Nor… interest,” they add with a shrug.

More tension than Klaus had realized was there uncoils out of the dwarf’s shoulders, and he all but collapses back into his chair.  “Oh,” he sighs, too loudly, and covers: “I just thought, given your enthusiasm to meet her, you’d be… starstruck and smitten.  People usually are.”

“Starstruck, yes,” Tanner agrees, “Smitten, no.”  They cast a glance over at Mastica, figure he’s aired enough of his dirty laundry already that flying a bit of their own won’t matter much, and explain.  “No, last year she had a song going around about… well, about a lot of things, but one of them was about defining femininity for yourself, and that was… it was the right song at the right time for me, and it meant a lot in my… never-ending quest to figure myself out.” 

“Oh shit,” Klaus exclaims, leaning forward.  All those bristles are suddenly gone from his demeanor.  “The ‘softer than me, soft as me’ one?”  When Tanner nods, the dwarf chortles.  “That’s hilarious.  That song made me realize I wasn’t a woman at all.  There’s the line that’s about the soft that people put on you, right?  And I thought, I’ve got no soft besides the soft that people put on me.”

“You’re softless,” the ork grins.

“I am,” Klaus agrees, scoots forward another inch, and mirrors Tanner’s smile.

“Aren’t you two adorable,” Mastica croaks from his enormous chair, across which he has stretched his body nearly horizontal.  And there is hardly anything to be done after that sort of interruption.  For the first time in the whole evening, the conversation turns casual.  When the cigars are spent, they stand to rejoin the ladies, make a seemingly never-ending series of goodbyes, and head out the door.

“You sure you want to walk home, alone, this late?” Klaus asks, looking uncertainly out at the city from the stoop.  He hugs his upper arms.  Apparently this late, even a woolen doublet doesn’t cut the creeping chill of the river mist.

Tanner shrugs into their work jacket.  “I’m a big scary ork, nobody’ll make trouble.  Don’t worry about me.”

“This morning I had very different expectations of what the day would bring,” the dwarf says with a chuckle.  “I am…” he starts, stumbles, finishes by rote: “…very glad to have made you acquaintance?”  He winces.  “That sounded terrible.”

“I had fun, too,” says the point-eared anarchist.  “I’ll see you at Mastica’s salon?”  And then they turn and head down the path to the gate, which is not at all what they want to be doing, and Klaus turns and goes inside, which is not at all what he wants to be doing.  Both of them shelter the smallest hope that the other will turn around and say something, but neither do, which only makes the both of them that much more eager to see the other again.