“You’re famous!”

Tanner cracks open their eyes and finds a broadsheet thrust into their face.  A familiar weight is straddling their midsection, effectively pinning them under the sheets.  “Good morning, Connor,” the ork groans, and rubs their face with a thick green hand.

Connor shifts his weight, lithe elfin body sliding around on top of Tanner, which provokes a predictable response.  He pats Tanner’s morning wood affectionately.  “Sorry about that.”  Then he settles in to sit beside Tanner and pore over the newspaper.  “Did you really tell off Elder Bock in front of a room full of guild masters?”

“Connor, what are you doing in my bed?”  Now freed, they push themselves up to sitting and contemplate their friend.  The dark-haired elf is dressed simply, in faded roughspun that is wildly out of character for him.  There’s no trace of cosmetics on his face.  So he didn’t crashland in Tanner’s bed after a long night of work, which sometimes happens when he drinks a little too much with clients and can’t quite find his way to his own apartment.

The elf gives Tanner half a sidelong glance and a whole smirk.  “You’re working for me this morning, Labor.  You know, I never thought I’d have an actual celebrity doing my bidding, but here we are.  I feel glamourous.”

“You are not making sense.”  Tanner staggers out of bed and tries to find some pants.

Behind him, the newsprint crackles as Connor waves it around.  “Did you or did you not dine with Elder Bock last night?”

“I did,” the ork answers, pulling the laces of his workpants tight and fumbling through turning them into a knot.  “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“I told you, you’re working for me today,” Connor repeats with no small measure of self-satisfaction.  “Your whole crew.”

Tanner frowns softly.  “You hired Nosh’s crew?  To do what?”

“Move furniture,” he shrugs.  “And some wine casks.  Those’ll be a bitch, they’ve got to go up stairs.  Which is why I’m so glad that I have you, because I couldn’t possibly.  But.”  He stabs the newspaper in front of him.  “You have to tell me everything.”

If they’re moving furniture and wine, it’s Connor’s guild and not Connor himself who’s hired the crew, but Tanner doesn’t say this out loud.  They make a vague sound that might be a response, might be confusion about where their shoes have gone.

Connor watches Tanner root around for shoes while lazing on their bed like a cat.  “It’s not every morning that you tell me about your wild adventures the night before.”

“It wasn’t wild,”  they say, and find their thoughts drifting towards the night before, and Klaus, and how he smiled when they parted.  “It was… kind of nice, actually.”

“Oh shit,” Connor gasps.  “I know that look.”

Tanner immediately scowls at their friend.  “What look?”

“The I-Met-Somebody look,” Connor says in awe, standing up on his knees and scooting forward on the bed.  “The Wanna-Get-My-Dick-Wet look.  The Maybe-I’ve-Got-a-Chance look.  The smitten look.”

Tanner takes a whiff of the shirt they’re already wearing and immediately regrets it.  Starts looking for something vaguely clean.  “I am not smitten.”

“You are in deep smit, my friend,” the elf declares confidently.  “Tell me all about them.  Her.  Him.”

“Him,” they answer, and wince.  They hadn’t meant to confirm Connor’s absolutely accurate suspicions.  They jam the ends of a mostly-clean shirt into their pants.  “Klaus Bock.”

“The Elder’s kid?!?” Connor all but shouts.  “Have you got a deathwish, Tanner?”

“Probably,” the ork sighs.  “But first I need breakfast.”

Down the short hall is the kitchen, which promisingly smells like breakfast, and more importantly, coffee.  Tanner’s dads are sitting at the small round table in the center of the room, empty bowls before them and newspapers spread out in front of them.  Mick reads the Broadsheet; Fenrir reads the Herald.  When Tanner walks in, all three of their eyes spear them in place.

“You’ve been busy, kid,” Mick observes drily.

Tanner has never been good at any flavor of deception, but they try, anyway.  “What do you mean?  Is there coffee?”

Fenrir turns in his seat and reaches one long arm behind him to the hearth, where the kettle is keeping warm.  He sweeps that back over Mick’s head and pours into two mugs already set out on the table.  “The newspapers say that an uruk dined with Elder Bock and a few select guildsfolk last night.”

“Caused a ruckus,” Mick adds.

Tanner barely bites back their immediate response to deny that there was any ruckus.  They take the coffee, sit, and ask Fenrir, “Did the newspapers give the uruk a name?”

Fenrir can’t help but smirk at what Tanner’s trying to pull.  “Ribcarver.”

Tanner takes a long pull on their coffee.  “Well we’ve got a pretty common name—”

“‘Ribcarver,’” Mick reads aloud from the Broadsheet, “‘who is nonbinary and uses they and them pronouns…’  How many nonbinary Ribcarvers you think live in this city, Tanner?” he asks, lowering the paper.

Connor pats his friend on the back as he reaches forward for the fourth mug.  “You’re one of a kind, Tanner.”  There isn’t a third chair, so the elf leans up against the doorjamb into the apartment’s short hallway.

Tanner rolls their eyes.  “Okay, fine, it was me.”

“That was never in question, Tanner,” Fenrir starts, but before he can continue, Mick cuts in.

“Calling attention to yourself like this is dangerous.”  He slaps the paper disdainfully.  “You step out of your place like this, you squawk like this, and people will come looking for you.  You put a target on your back pulling this shit.”

“I– didn’t squawk,” they protest feebly.  “There was some… political… dinner conversation.”

Mick’s eyebrows nearly leap off his face.  “You think you’re qualified to make dinner conversation about politics with guildmembers, Tanner?”

“I am a guildmember,” they say sourly before they think better of it.

“Chartered guildsmembers,” Mick spits.  “Real guilds.  The ones who own everything and make all the decisions around here and who count your Labor Guild as a bad joke.  You think you get to just spout off at them?”

Tanner slumps back in their chair.  “They asked,” they say, a weak defense.

“Then you smile and you tell them they’re doing a great job running the city and you’re always so grateful to make the acquaintance of such rich and powerful and generous members of society,” Mick growls.  “And then if you’re lucky, they tip you, and then you get the fuck out of there.  That’s how you treat your betters, Tanner.  You know this.”

But now Fenrir scoffs.  “Their betters?  Please, Mick.  They’re no better than any of us.”

“You know exactly what I mean,” he snarls back.  “They think they’re better, and they have the money, and they have the laws, and they have the city watch.  And if they think for one moment that you don’t believe that they’re better than you, they will tear you to pieces.”

Tanner’s not sure what to say to that, but Fenrir answers for them.  “Well they’ll need to learn better, and quickly.  With all the upset they’ve kicked up getting themselves out from under the king, they don’t realize that the rest of us are about to get ourselves out from under them.”

Mick rolls his eyes.  “Not this again.”  He gestures at Tanner, then Fenrir.  “They get this nonsense from you, you know.  They’re going to get themselves beat to shit in some upscale alleyway because you told them stories about reclaiming our gods-damned noble ork heritage.”

“Noble uruk heritage,” Fenrir corrects mildly, his lips quirking.  The two of them may not be romantically engaged, but there’s nothing they enjoy more than bickering like an old married couple and needling each other’s long-familiar soft spots.  Tanner quietly lifts his mug off the table, in case Fenrir’s jibe tips Mick over the edge into a full-blown wrestling match.  They’ve lost more than a few kitchen tables that way.

“I’m an ork,” Mick spits at his coparent.  “That’s what we’re called in Ogrish, that’s the language everybody speaks in this city, and that’s the only language that you know how to speak, Fenrir.  If the only Uruk word you know is ‘Uruk,’ maybe you shouldn’t be throwing it around.  It makes you sound like an asshole.”

Fenrir lowers his Herald.  “I know more than one word in the mother tongue,” he says, warningly.

Tanner hears the warning; Mick does not.  “You sure about that?  Or have some fucking minotaur sailors made up a bunch of nonsense sounds and told you they’re the language of your people?  You’ve never been across the Green Sea, you’ve never met an ork who speaks Uruk, you just take this shit at face value.”

“Are you calling me a fool?” the uruk asks the ork, voice low and even.

“So I’m heading out,” Tanner interjects, careful not to actually put themself between their two dads.  “Apparently we’re working for the Roses today.  Cartwork, sounds like.  You both have a great day?  I’ll… see you at supper.”

Both fathers turn and settle their gaze on their child.  The tension in the room shifts to a new target: Tanner.  Hand on the doorknob, they smile weakly.

“See that you do,” Fenrir intones, and lifts his paper again.

“Supper’s at sixth bell,” Mick reminds needlessly, eyes returning to stare daggers at the wall of newsprint that has gone up like a shield across the center of the kitchen table.

“Okay, love you,” they say, and book it out the door.  There’s some grunts behind them that might be two versions of “Love you, too,” but they don’t stay to find out.

The job is across town in Hammer and Tongs, and so Connor and Tanner and the rest of the crew pile into the cart on top of the furniture and wine casks.  Not a single member of the crew misses the opportunity to mock Tanner’s newfound celebrity.  When the cart rumbles out of Orktown, someone declares that they were too refined for that neighborhood, anyway.  Tanner doesn’t hear the jibe, though, because they are reading their own press.

“I didn’t even say this stuff,” they grouse, gesturing with the Broadsheet as if it cradles a steamy pile of dogshit.

Connor only smirks.  “Well, when I read the article, I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, that sounds like Tanner.’”

“Fuck you,” the ork replies amiably.

“Hey, not my fault that you have a habit of making out with your shoe,” their friend points out.  “I mean, if you’ve got such a taste for leather, we do have some Roses who specialize in that sort of thing.”

“Seriously, I am being slandered in the press, here,” Tanner insists, and jabs a finger at an offending passage.  “Look at this.  At no point did I say the Labor Guild was going to ‘rise up and force our way into city hall.’”

Connor frowns softly.  “No?  Because you’ve said that to me before.”

“I have not!”

“Sure you have,” the elf says, bobbing his head.  “What is the turn of phrase you like: that the Council had better accept you on their own terms before you force them to accept you on yours.”

Tanner stills for a moment.  “I think did actually say… something like that,” they admit slowly.  “But not… I mean, this makes it sound like we’re going to storm the actual building with torches and pitchforks.”

Conner touches one finger to his nose.  “To be fair, you have actually suggested that as a strategy before, although you were quite drunk at the time.”

Tanner crumples the Broadsheet between their knees.  “What did the Herald say?  Webber’s got an agenda to push; Mastica wouldn’t.”  They look around at the other dozen members of Nosh’s team.  “Any of you have today’s Herald on you?”

Connor scoffs.  “You think anybody in this cart gets the Herald?”

“I get the Herald,” Tanner protests.

“Your dad gets the Herald and you read his cast-offs,” their friend corrects.

But a folded-up copy of the Herald does manifest, thrust into Tanner’s face from up front.  It is brandished by Boss Nosh, who is sitting beside the driver.  The ogre taskmaster, pot belly stuffed into work clothes indistinguishable from the rest of his crew, settles his gaze on Tanner with mild reproach.  “I make sure to get a copy whenever the guild gets press,” he explains.  “Which we prefer, Ribcarver, to be press releases vetted through the guild press office.”

Connor snorts.  “Wow Tanner, you are not doing well with guild masters right now.”

The ork ignores him, already scanning through the article.  They made the front page here, too, but the treatment is hardly glowing.  Whereas the Broadsheet makes them out as a frothing anarchist who beguiled their way into the party, the Herald presents them as a low-brow bumpkin who wandered in and had to be gently corrected of their misapprehensions.

Connor leans in to read over Tanner’s shoulder.  “Oh look, you’re ‘surprisingly articulate!’  That’s the good stuff.  That’s what rounds say about points when they agree with what you said, but they still need to make it clear that you’re not one of them.”

“This doesn’t read like agreement,” Tanner says, shaking his head.  “This looks like I’m some kind of… coarse halfwit.”

The elf lays a sympathetic hand on their shoulder.  “I mean, I’d give you three-quarters wit, at the very least.  Oh look, we’re here!”

Hammer and Tongs is a guild neighborhood.  Admittedly, all of Pileus is a guild city, but Hammer and Tongs is the neighborhood with streets lined with workshop after workshop.   The upper floors are all used as living spaces for the shop masters, their families, and their apprentices.  Journaliers sleep elsewhere, where the rent is cheaper.

The streets are cobbled and swept clean.  The shop masters have recently started putting out large potted plants a couple steps into the road, which encourages the horsecarts go a little slower.  If shoppers don’t have to keep an eye out for wheeled threats to their lives, they’re more likely to look into the shop windows.

Tanner hops down from the cart after Connor and looks around with no small amount of disbelief.  “The Roses are setting up shop here?”

“Madam Labell thinks they’ll pay a premium if we don’t make them come to us across town,” the elf says with a shrug.  “Which I’m all for, because nobody likes receiving housecalls.”  Then he claps his hands and says, “Okay, so why don’t you guys unload the cart while Tanner and I go upstairs and unlock everything and make sure doors are open and all that.”

Nosh gets down off the cart with a heavy grunt and gives the elf a wordless yet somehow pitying look.

“Ahm.  If you think that’s the best way forward,” Connor coughs.  “You’re the professionals and all.”

The boss waves both elf and ork away and starts directing the rest of his crew to unload in an orderly fashion.  Connor grabs Tanner’s hand and all but yanks them through the street door and up the stairs to the second-floor apartments.  “Okay, so now you’ve got to tell me all about him,” he says, pulling a keyring from his belt and unlocking the inner door.

“Him?”

“By all the gods, Tanner, him.  Him.  This Bock boy you’re all in a dither about.”

“I’m not in a dither,” they say defensively, and follow Connor inside.  The apartments aren’t large, but there are windows thrown open onto the street that let in fat golden sunbeams.  Despite the ventilation, the empty rooms still smell of fresh paint.  A deep red glows on every wall.

“But he’s cute?” prompts the elf as he goes about opening every door in the place.  “Or given it’s you, he’s smart.”

Tanner slips their hands into the pockets of their dun work jacket.  “Both,” they admit with a sheepish smile.  “Bright eyes, night-dark hair, this… amazing smile that he doesn’t use very often, but when he does…  And very clever.  Fun to talk to; sharp wit.”

“Well then, sounds like you’ve hit the jackpot,” their friend beams back at them, and it’s only then that Tanner realizes they’re grinning like a fool, too.  “So do you want to fuck him, or just have long, deep talks with him?”

The ork pulls their shoulders inward, in what might look like a shrug but also just so happens to end with them looking crumpled and uncertain.  “I dunno,” they say after too long of a pause.

Connor smirks.  “So both, but you’re not yet to the point of saying it out loud.”

That gets Tanner to uncrumple a little.  “Fuck you,” they giggle.

There are heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, and Connor reaches forward to grab at Tanner’s elbow.  “So listen, this isn’t the place or time to talk about it, but you need to be careful romancing somebody that high up the social ladder.”  When Tanner tries to protest, the elf cuts them off.  “No, shut up.  Later, we’ll hit up a tavern and I’m going to give you a thorough talking-to, alright?  Because you can very easily get yourself all sorts of fucked up with this, and I can give you some pointers, okay?”

There isn’t much that Tanner can say to that except “Okay, I guess.”  Because then the rest of the crew comes plodding into the room carrying wine barrels, and it’s time to get to work.

Work is interrupted for Klaus with the jingle of the bell above the door and a familiar squeal of “Nicky!”  The guts of Barchan’s workshop are blocked off from the showroom but still sit close enough to hear the jingle-jangle of incoming business.  Or in this case, leisure disguised as business.  The master of the shop looks up from his worktable and casts a weary look to where Klaus is sorting gemstones.

The jotun’s already enormous eyes are magnified behind his close-work glasses, making them seem as big as dinner plates, larger even than the horns that curl around his ears.  His is the face of aggreived resignation: he hates having the woman in his shop but he loves how she spends her family’s money.  And his face says one thing further: go take care of this lucrative nuissance, Klaus.  She’s your friend, after all.

Klaus carefully wraps the stones up in velvet and goes to transfer them to the safe, but Barchan holds out a hand for the packet instead.  “I’ll lock them up.  If you take too long, she will start wailing, and that is the last thing I want to hear today.”

“I’ll try and keep her volume down, master,” the apprentice apologizes, trying to keep the smile from showing on his face.

“Just make sure she buys something expensive,” Barchan tells him.  “We can’t get rid of those citrines.  Sell her on those.”

“Yes, master,” Klaus murmurs deferentially, and slips through the door.

The showroom is filled with glittering displays, themselves lit by shining balls of light suspended above each case.  The lights are snippets of Barchan’s sorcery, redirecting sunlight falling on the roof to shine down on the jewelry.  Those, and not the actual jewels, are half the reason that Klaus wanted to apprentice under the old artisan.  The room still feels large to Klaus’ dwarvish-gnomish frame, but that impression is quashed by the centaur standing in the middle of it, bending over a display to examine its contents and trying not to knock anything over with her hindquarters.

At Klaus’ entrance, she looks up and beams, trotting over to wrap her arms around his head.  “Nick Nicky Nicky!  I’ve missed you so.”

The dwarf hugs the centaur girl back, but laughs as they finally part.  “I don’t think it’s been a whole week since you were here last, Jewels.”

“Feels longer,” she says, clopping a step backwards to make a little space.  She spares a glance behind to make sure she’s not backing into anything.  “We used to see each other nearly every day before you went and got a boring job.  Ooo, what’s that?”

“These are citrine earrings,” Klaus says loud enough to overhear in the next room over, and then adds quietly, “which Barchan wants me to sell you.”

Jewels pumps the tumble of blonde curls that swirls around her shoulders.  “Nicky, you know those will just disappear in here.  I need an accent.  Something dark.  Emerald or sapphire.”

The dwarf replaces the pendant stand and waves her towards the emeralds, which just so happen to be on the other end of the showroom from the door into the workroom.  “Those citrines are a steal, but it’s your money.”

“No it’s not,” she laughs.  “But Daddy won’t notice.”  When they arrive at the emeralds, they both make a show of holding the various jewelry up to the centaur’s face and admiring the resulting looks in the many mirrors that festoon the showroom.  “So you had an interesting night, I hear,” she tells him quietly.  “Anarchists over for dinner.  And Beulah Hill.  How is she?”

“Same as always: gorgeous and blithely collecting patronage,” he tells her.  “I hardly exchanged words with her, really.  My attention was elsewhere.”

“On the anarchist!” Jewels laughs, and exchanges emerald drops for emerald dangles.  “What was your mother thinking?  Everybody’s going to be talking about it for days.”

“She was thinking everybody would be talking about it for days.”

“Were they terrible?” she asks hungrily.  “Rude and pushy and ill-groomed?  I mean, they were like, a literal ork from orktown, right?”

“They are a literal ork from orktown,” Klaus confirms with a slight nod.  “But they were… really quite nice.  Well-spoken.  Surprisingly well-mannered.  Admittedly, their clothes were a little… rustic.  I’d like to see what they’d look like in a properly fitted doublet.  What?”

Jewels is staring at him, perfectly-lashed eyes nearly as wide as Barchan’s behind his glasses.  “You’re into them,” she breathes.  When he doesn’t respond, she presses: “Are they cute?”

Klaus glances behind him to make sure they’re alone in the showroom, and then shares a soft smile with her.  “Yes.”

She swats his elbow.  “That’s not a proper answer.  Details!”

The dwarf gropes for words.  “They’re tall?”

“Everyone is tall to you, Nicky.”  She holds up one earring and then another to the gentle curve of her earlobe, not really looking at either of them.

“And… they have nice shoulders,” Klaus goes on hesitantly.  “And arms.  Muscles, but not the… not the bulky kind, you know?  The sort of lean and long kind.  Really nice ass.”  A weight comes off his shoulders at this confession, and he realizes that he’d been dithering around with other details in order to avoid it.  “Really nice ass,” he repeats.  “Full lips, strong brow.  Sort of a… respectable face.”

Jewels cocks her head to the side.  “A what, now?”

“The kind of face that engenders respect,” he says reasonably.

“That’s not a thing.”

“No, like—” the dwarf gropes in the air before him as if he could grasp the words he’s searching for.  “You look at them, and you trust them.  They just have that look about them.”

“Wowww,”  Jewels plops the earrings back in their displays.  “You have it bad.”

“Look, they held their own at a table with Frank Mastica, Beulah Hill, and my mother for the better part of an hour,” Klaus points out, heavy emphasis on the last of the trio.  “And given all that, they were charming the whole time, both unflinching and self-effacing when either was called for and… surprisingly articulate.”

“And had a nice ass.”

“A really nice ass.”

“Okay, so: do you want to have, like, deep conversations with them or do you want to fuck them?”

Klaus rolls his eyes.  “Well, I definitely want to fuck them, but I think I might also enjoy their conversation.”

“Kinky,” Jewels responds approvingly.  “So are you going to see them again?  I mean.  Given your current circumstances—” She flicks her hand around to indicate the showroom, the adjacent workspace, the apprentice bedroom upstairs, and the entirety of Barchan’s enterprise. “—are you even able to see them if you want to?”

But Klaus is now staring out the window.  “I’m seeing them right now.”

“Like tonight?  How’d you swing that with your master?”

“No,” the dwarf clarifies, and points out the window.  “That’s them.  Across the street.”

Tanner and the rest of the work crew is taking a short break, sitting on wine barrels that have come off the cart but haven’t gone up the stairs, yet.  The conversation has finally drifted away from the ork’s adventures in high society the night before.  

The current topic is the recent plantation raids: Pilean citizens striking out from the city in the dead of night to torch noble plantations and bring their enslaved workers behind the safety of the city walls.  The first impromptu expeditions were successful and scuttlebutt says more are brewing; the workers are debating how soon it will be before the plantations wise up and the raiders stop making it back to the city.  

But mosty Tanner is enjoying a respite from being the center of attention.  It’s tiring downplaying the constellation of tensions that actually was present around that dinner table just to disabuse everyone of the seemingly inevitable assumption that it was some kind of shouting match.

Tanner had a slightly awkward dinner with a cute boy last night, and everybody wants to make it into a production.

Which is when a centaur bursts out of the workshop across the street, squealing in excitement, and plows directly into the carriage and cart traffic.  Horses rear and neigh in alarm as they halt in their tracks to let her pass.  The centaur bears down on the laborers with a manic gleam in her eye, and it’s only at the last moment that the ork sees that she is dragging Klaus behind her.

“Uh, hey,” is the best that Tanner can manage.  By the time the two get across the street, the whole crew is on their feet on instinct; the ork tries to surrepticiously smooth down their work clothes.  They’re covered in sticky sweat and moving dust; their hair is almost certainly a haphazard mess.

But the dwarf’s attention isn’t on Tanner, at least at first.  He swats the centaur’s flank.  “Six gods, Jewels, you nearly got us killed.”

The centaur waves her hand dismisively.  “They always stop in time.  Trust me, I know how hooves work.”  Then she turns, beams, and puts forward her hand.  “You must be Tanner.”

“Uh… no?” says the ork singled out by the centaur, who is in fact not Tanner at all, but Georgina, the other ork on Nosh’s work crew.

Klaus reaches up to redirect the proferred hand towards Tanner.  “Jewels, this is Tanner Ribcarver.  Tanner, this is my nitwit friend, Julia Premio.”

Tanner takes the hand as delicately as they can, worrying over how filthy they are and how scrubbed-clean she is.  “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Premio.”  They then introduce the others around the little semi-circle of stunned laborers.

“So you all work together?” the centaur asks, eyes sparkling.  “That’s marvellous.”

Connor laughs.  “Oh hells no, I wouldn’t last a day doing all this heavy lifting.”  He buffs his nails on his roughspun shirt and examines them with exagerrated bluster.  “I’m the client.”

Nosh snorts.  “Your mistress is the client, Voraci.  You’re just the messenger.”

The elf rolls his eyes.  “Can’t just let me have this, even for one day,” he sighs.  “Anyway, me and Tanner go way back to diapers and you’re the Bock boy, right?”  He takes two steps to get a view of the dwarf unobstructed by the centaur, and very plainly checks him out.

“I am… a Bock boy,” Klaus stammers uncertainly, not at all sure about this once-over from a stranger.  “Er, Bock man.”

“Tanner,” Nosh interrupts, stepping backwards.  “The rest of us are going to get back to it.  Take five to chat with your friends, alright?  It was nice meeting you both, Miss Premio, Mister Bock.”  The rest of the work crew starts hefting barrels and grunting them up the stairs.

Jewels pulls a face.  “Did we get you in trouble?” she asks, as if that might be somewhat exciting.

“No, that was Nosh telling me to get to work in five minutes,” Tanner explains, a little easier now that they have less of an audience.

“And removing the other workers before they say or do something stupid,” Connor puts in.

“Which they wouldn’t,” the ork insists.  “But the Boss still worries.  That’s why he’s the Boss.”

“Speaking of getting back to work—” Klaus starts, glancing back at the workshop across the street.

But Jewels blows a raspberry to interrupt him.  “Look, I’ll buy all those damn citrines.  That’ll shut him up and it’ll all be fine.  I wanna get to know your new—”

“They’re not my anything!” Klaus blurts, suddenly panicky and red-faced.

“—friend,” Jewels finishes with a giggle.  She puts her fists on her forehips.  “So tell me about yourself, Tanner.  Spare no details in the five minutes you have allotted.  Make sure it’s impressive, though, because I have very high standards as to who gets to associate themselves with my bestie.”

“I’m not sure I can… do that?” Tanner stammers, but at her expectant look they give it a try, anyway.  “I’m, um, twenty-five, I’m a journalier laborer—”

“Is that a good job?” interrupts the centaur.  “Does it pay well?  Do you have your own place?”

Connor answers for them: “Yes, no, and no.”

“I live with my dads in Orktown,” they say, a litttle defensively.

“Orktown, huh?” Jewels says, appraisingly.  Suspiciously.  “Tough neighborhood.  Wild neighborhood.  You go tear up the town at night?”

“Gods, no,” Connor guffaws.

“I don’t really go out that much,” Tanner says with a little shrug.  “I like to read.”

“Oh gods,” Jewels turns towards Klaus in mild horror.  “It’s like they were made for you.” 

This does very little to assauge the dwarf’s embarassment.  “Jewels, I’m going to take you back to the shop now,” he growls, “and murder you.”

“I mean, if it helps,” Connor puts in, “Tanner’s been mooning over Klaus all morning.”  He is only slightly staggered when the ork’s backhand impacts his shoulder.

“Really?” Jewels squeals, and reaches down to crush Klaus against her flank in a hug.  “This is so exciting!”

“Klaus!” comes a shout.  “Klaus, what are you doing over there!?”  Barchan stands outside his shop—dwarfing his own front door at his full height, in fact—and is shouting across the street.  “Talking with ruffians!”

“Oh, Master Barchan, I wanted to see these citrines in full daylight!” Jewels shouts back gaily.  She holds her fingers up next to her ears as if there are citrines hanging from them.  After decades in his profession, the jeweller can barely see three feet ahead of him, certainly not well enough to distinguish citrine points from a backdrop of blonde across the whole street.  “They’re beautiful!”

The jotun scowls at them long enough for a few horsecarts to pass.  “I have daylight inside the showroom,” he grouses, and starts lumbering across the street.  “That is the whole point of the sunballs that I made, the very cornerstone of my business, and you see fit to take the very expensive jewelry outside where anything—”

Barchan stops in the middle of the street, staring at Connor like he’s seen a ghost.  The elf smiles warmly.  “Good morning, Master Barchan.”

“Do— do I know you?” the hulking jeweller stammers.

Conner’s smile broadens to his best shit-eating grin.  He checks for oncoming traffic and steps out into the street to offer the jotun his hand.  “Mister Voraci, sir; at your service, sir.  It seems like we’ll be neighbors.  Or at least, my mistress will be.  I’m not sure if she’ll have me working at this location or somewhere else.  Today I’m just setting up shop.”

Barchan takes the elf’s hand gingerly.  “Setting up shop here!?” he gasps, then struggles to change tack.  “I mean.  What… what kind of shop?  Those apartments have no ground floor storefront, that wainwright runs the whole block.”

The elf smiles and answers confidently, “Oh, we’ll be running a brothel upstairs, sir.”

“Across the street from my shop!?” the jotun all but howls.  “This is a respectable neighborhood!  I have been here for longer than you have been alive, Connor, and we have never had anything so—”  The jotun stops and looks from the elf to the others.  Licks his lips apprehensively.

Jewels leans towards Tanner and asks, quietly, “Did I miss the part when your friend gave Barchan his first name?”

Tanner slides their hands into their jacket pockets.  “Nnnope.  Connor’s pretty good about meeting his clients on the street, but his clients sometimes, well… let’s just say I’ve seen this dance before.”

The jotun looks down at the little elf before him, his whole body tense and nearly shaking.  He then expels one explosive “Bah!” and turns on his heel, marching across the street and stooping down to squeeze through the entrance to his shop.  A moment later, the door slams closed.

“It’s like you banished him,” Klaus observes in wonder as the elf saunters back towards them.

“Not permanently,” Connor replies with a wink.  “That’d be bad for business.”

“So you’re a whore?” Jewels asks in the same way a child might ask if someone were a lion tamer or a knight on a quest.  “Oh, oh, are you with the Roses or the Lilies?”

“Roses occasionally have pricks,” Connor answers with a well-practiced line.  “Lilies never do.”  He then smirks towards Tanner.  “Which is why we’ll win out in the end.”

“Yeah, the city council will admit the Roses right after it admits Labor,” the ork snorts.  “On account of their having boy whores.”

Jewels subtly gestures across the road.  “And you’ve… fucked Master Barchan?” she asks, desperately trying not to titter.

“I am a professional,” the whore answers, smoothing his dusty shirt as if it were silks, “and it would be in violation of our guild oaths to share our clients’ names without their approval.”

“Which means yes,” Tanner translates.  They take a slow step towards Klaus while everyone’s attention is on Connor.

Jewels holds her hands up as if playing with dolls.  “But… how?” she breathes.  She jams her imaginary dolls together.  “He’s so big and you are… not.”

Connor merely lifts his eyebrow.

“This coming from a centaur,” Klaus observes drily. “How many gnome boyfriends has your brother blown through, again?”  He looks sidelong at the approaching Tanner and gives them a look which he hopes is encouraging.  He takes his own slow step away from Jewels and towards Tanner.

Jewels waves a hand.  “Yeah, but my brother gets off on tha— ohhh.”  She folds her hands closed, dolls forgotten, and looks over at Barchan’s shop again.  “I’m not sure I want to know any of this.”

“Well, you don’t really know anything,” Connor reminds her, his tone sliding smoothly from consolation towards gentle warning, “because I haven’t actually said anything.  Right?”

“Right,” Jewels agrees, in a bit of a daze.  Finally she shakes her head to tumble the last of the unwanted information out.  “Voraci.  That’s an ogre name, but you… don’t look like you’ve got a drop of ogre blood in you.”

Conner smiles blithely, slipping his hands in the back pockets of his pants, a pose that shows off his lithe body to advantage, and comfortable enough that he slips into it without thinking most of the time.  “Oh, no, my family was just owned by ogres for a few generations.  I’m pure-blood alfar.”  He runs one finger up the length of his right ear.

“An elf!” the centaur exclaims, beaming.  “Really?”

“They prefer alfar,” Tanner puts in, all but automatically.  Klaus stands next to them, and they are both smiling slightly and wondering what exactly to do with their hands.

“Other alfar prefer alfar,” Connor retorts.  “I couldn’t give a damn.  It’s just that ‘pure-blood elf’ sounds silly.  The ending comes off anticlimactic.”  He smirks, strikes a pose, and Tanner steels himself for the punchline.  “And when I make something come off, it’s a climax.”

Jewels shouts with laughter; Klaus covers his mouth in amused horror.  Tanner wants to yank away the hands that cover his smile.  “You owe me alcohol for setting up that joke,” they tell their friend.

Connor touches his nose and points at Tanner.  “Tonight.  I’m going to give you that talking-to.”

Tanner can see Klaus about to ask what they’re getting a talking-to about, but a blast of trumpets sounds behind him.  The four turn to find a commotion at the far end of the street, a tumble of people crowding around a short procession marching down the street.

“Red tabards,” Tanner observes.  The King’s colors.

Connor points.  “Surrounded by city watchmen, though.  Like an... escort?”

“Why are city watchmen escorting royal courtiers through the city?” Jewels asks Klaus, who shrugs.  “Is this bad?”

Klaus puts more force into his shrug, flinging his arms out to release his rising tension.

But then the procession draws near enough that they can hear the familiar cadence of a crier’s recitation.  One of the figures in red holds a scroll before them like it’s a shield, and reads from it in a strong, practiced voice.  “…his disappointment in the denizens of a city which has, through its long history, been ever faithful to the crown which granted its charter.”

“Your king desires nothing more than to believe that the Lord Mayor, the city council, its guildmasters, and its advisor the Elder Mariana Bock have led the people of this city astray.  He is prepared to stay the totality of his incredible wrath when these criminals—or their heads—are delivered to him to face justice.

“However, as even royal patience is not inexhaustible, while these traitors remain in power, the King in his wisdom finds it necessary to declare the city of Pileas to be in open rebellion.  Your charter is suspended.  Your protections are withdrawn.  The royal armies, fresh from their victories over Verdanta border lords, return home with all speed.  Pray that you depose the lying charlatans who sit in the Guildshall before his swift retribution visits certain doom upon you all.”

The crier falls silent but the procession marches on at a stately pace.  A few moments later, he begins again from the top: “Hear ye, hear ye, by order of His Royal Majesty, King of all Skogland.  The king and his court has received a treacherous and heretical missive dispatched from your city council entitled the Refusal of Subjection, in which that traitorous body claims with deceit and fallacious argument the bonds of liege and subject can be ignored—”  The procession turns a corner a few blocks away, and the crier’s voice dwindles into the background noise of the city.

“Well that’s fun,” notes Connor as the crowd follows the criers and their escort around the distant turn.

“That’s posturing,” Klaus responds.  “Fresh from victory is… a very cheery exaggerration.”

Jewels wraps her arms around her friend’s shoulders.  “I’m sure it is, honey.”

The dwarf looses a drawn-out sigh and lets himself be comforted, leaning back into the centaur.  “I mean, Mom’s been threatened before.  She’s threatened all the time.”

Tanner gulps, folds their hands into fists, uncertain what to do.  Of course.  That was his mother’s head that the crier had all but joked about.

“This might be the first time she’s been threatened by somebody with an army, though,” Klaus notes with a wan smile.  “She’ll have to mark her calendar.”

“What was all that ruckus?” asks Nosh from the windows above them.

Tanner looks up.  “The King responded to the Refusal.  Apparently we’re officially in open rebellion, now.”

The ogre looks nonplussed.  “Well if the King said it, it must be true, right?  Listen, you coming up here to work, or you finding another job?”

“I’ll be right there,” the ork responds, and takes a half step towards the ground floor door.  When Nosh disappears from the window, though, they turn to face Klaus.  “I gotta go, and I’m sorry about… your mom and all of that.”

Klaus shrugs from the embrace of his friend.  “It’s kind of part of being in my family.”

“It was nice seeing you again, though,” Tanner says awkwardly.  “I wasn’t sure I would get to.”

The dwarf rights himself a little.  “Me neither.  Or me too.  You know what I mean.”  He pauses a beat.

Tanner stands there.

Klaus opens his mouth.  Closes it.  Tries: “I mean, I wish we could… do this again.”

“Me too,” the ork says immediately, a touch rushed.  They give him a tusky smile.  “Um.  Were you planning on going to… Mastica’s thing?”

“I mean, no,” he answers honestly.  “But if you’ll be there, I can change my plans.”

“All right,” Tanner says, backpedalling toward the door, all grins.  “I’ll see you there.”