Chapter 18
Twilight was sinking over the mundane and magical lights of Tranquility as the ferry returned Rylana and Sylin to the city.
They headed straight for the diner, Rylana's mood somber. She tried not to feel disappointed that her father hadn’t been glad to see her—or welcoming in the least. Such emotions wouldn’t be logical.
After all, she hadn’t been glad to see him either; she’d planned to avoid him altogether for as long as possible.
Not because she didn’t care but because she’d expected him to be…
exactly as he had been. Distant. Aloof. Still disappointed in what she’d become.
Not only that, but he’d accused her of showing up for money. That rankled more than the rest.
“Hm,” Sylin said, her gaze toward the diner as they turned onto Acorn Street.
A giggling couple stumbled out the front door with their arms around each other’s waists. Several teenage boys were peering in the window.
“What now?” Rylana muttered, increasing her pace.
Had Jildarin returned from his hunt yet? She didn’t know, but something told her that he hadn’t.
One of the boys snickered and elbowed a buddy. Another blurted that he had to leave and ran into the alley.
The door opened again, and, as another amorous couple exited, moans, groans, and an enthusiastic cry of, “Yes!” wafted out of the dining room.
“I thought Jildarin was figuring out how to tone down the dragon spices.” Rylana shooed away the boys and walked inside.
Right away, she flung her arm up, not to block a weapon but to block the view of all the bared flesh on display on vigorously moving bodies.
How in either hell was that man pumping his waist like that while hanging from a candelabra?
He had to be half-elven. With the grip strength of a coconut crab.
One of the moans coming from the back corner was familiar—and not sexual.
Gniknik knelt on the floor, cradling one of his ambulatory contraptions.
It looked like someone had stepped on it—or maybe kicked it across the diner in the throes of passion.
That had happened to more than one empty bowl.
Almost every booth was taken by couples—and there was an athletic trio standing up and making creative use of the walls and sconces in the hallways.
Rylana looked around for Zalani—hadn’t Jildarin left her in charge?—but wasn’t surprised when she spotted Rolf behind the counter, dropping silver coins into his bulging purse instead of the cashbox.
“Your life has gotten exceedingly strange since you started working here,” Sylin observed.
Shaking her head, Rylana stomped up to Rolf and planted herself in front of him. “What happened?”
Rolf spread his arms, his white eyebrows rising in innocence. “It was an accident.”
“An accident,” Rylana said in a flat tone, eyeing the bag of coins. It looked heavy. Were some of those gold?
“Yes, indeed. When I went to ladle up plates and bowls in the kitchen, some of the dragon spices fell into the soup pot.”
“They fell in?”
“Yes. I believe the breeze created by my passing caused the jars to tip and tumble over.”
“I do hate it when my movements result in an overly aggressive breeze.” Sylin joined them, dodging the groping hands of a couple that wanted to include her in their horizontal encounter.
“You’re a goblin, not a dragon flapping its wings. You intentionally did this.” Rylana snatched the bag of coins from Rolf’s hands.
“That’s mine!” he blurted and lunged for it, but Sylin caught his wrist in the air, squeezing enough to make him wince and halt the movement.
“If what you said is true,” Rylana said, “and this is from the copious number of diners who came in for meals tonight, then the coins belong in the cashbox.”
“Only some is from the meals. The rest is from, uhm.” Rolf looked around for support.
Gniknik walked over with his maligned contraption gathered in his arms, a bent spring dangling sadly. “He’s charging people for space in the back to have sex.”
“There are people in the back? In Jildarin's lair?” Rylana gaped at Rolf. “Are you crazy?”
“Horny people with their brains diddled by dragon spices will pay exorbitant amounts for private nooks,” Rolf said.
A moan came from a couple thrashing in a booth. Rylana rolled her eyes and looked away.
“And public nooks,” Sylin said, her eyes crinkling.
Rolf tried to reach for his purse again, but Sylin tightened her grip on his arm. He crumpled dramatically—melodramatically—to his knees.
“Your heavy is maiming me,” he blurted.
“My heavy, please,” Rylana said. “Sylin is an elf. She would blow away in a stiff wind.”
“Or the breeze caused by a goblin’s passing.” Sylin looked far more amused than affronted by the situation in the diner. Because she didn’t work there.
Jildarin would be furious if he walked in to find this. He might change into a dragon on the spot. If Rolf hadn’t looked so guilty, Rylana would have guessed this was another plot instigated by Yerin to get Jildarin in trouble with the authorities.
“I’m a goodly goblin increasing the revenues to the diner.” Rolf tried unsuccessfully to extract his wrist from Sylin’s grip. She might not be heavy, but she was strong. “I don’t deserve maiming.”
“Look,” Rylana said, “if you help me get all these people out of here before Jildarin comes back, I’ll have the diner’s cashbox split what’s in this bag with you.”
“But I earned it all.”
“You didn’t earn it. You exploited people by drugging them. We should give it back.” Rylana looked around, wondering if any of the couples had the wherewithal to even know how much they’d paid. She well remembered that the dragon spices affected one’s mind as well as one’s libido.
“Half is fair.” Rolf pushed himself to his feet.
Zalani stepped out of the kitchen with her face flushed, her hair down, and her dress rumpled with a few buttons unfastened.
She gripped the hand of a burly man who probably had orc blood but managed to have a broad, handsome face regardless, and they walked toward the dining room.
He wore a pleased grin. When Zalani spotted Rylana, she halted and pointed her companion toward the back exit, then made shooing motions.
Still grinning, he bowed to her and headed that way.
“Did you have the soup?” Rylana guessed.
“Uhm, let’s say yes.” Did Zalani's cheeks redden even more as she glanced at Rolf? “Do you know when Jildarin is returning?”
“Any minute,” Rylana said, though she had no idea. Maybe his hunt would keep him out all night. Or maybe he would let his brother talk him into the wine gathering afterward.
“He won’t be happy about this, will he?” Zalani looked around the dining room with wide eyes—maybe it hadn’t been as busy and chaotic when she’d slipped away for her rendezvous. “I shouldn’t have…”
“Not during work hours, no.” Rylana couldn’t manage more censure than that. After all, she’d also succumbed to the soup’s allure when she’d been told better. “We need to get these people out of here, and clean up the mess they have to be making in the storeroom.”
In Jildarin's lair. She winced.
The cry of someone’s climax came from a corner, and Rylana glanced toward the front window, half-expecting to spot Jildarin striding toward the door. But only the teenage boys were back out there with their noses pressed to the glass.
“You and Rolf and Gniknik, get all those people out of the hallway, kitchen, and storeroom. Tell them Jildarin is coming, and he’ll be in his dragon form. And furious. Then clean up the best you can.” Rylana rolled up her sleeves. “Sylin, will you help me roust the people out here?”
“Did you say roust or rouse? Because the latter is sufficiently handled, I believe.” Sylin still looked amused. Of course. She didn’t care about helping and winning the trust of the dragon owner.
“You know what I said. Come on.”
“I’m not grabbing any naked body parts,” Sylin warned but did follow Rylana toward a couple that had finished and dozed off under a table.
“Do you only assassinate fully dressed people?”
“Ideally. Even if they’re nude, I don’t usually have to grab anything to do my work.”
Shaking her head, Rylana pulled a sleeping man out by his boots. Sylin hefted the woman over her shoulder, her elven strength coming in handy. Rylana had to drag her load across the floor and into the street.
“You boys, go home,” Rylana told the peepers. “The boss is on his way back.”
“The dragon?” One of the taller boys lifted his chin. “He can’t change in town. I’m not afraid of him.”
“I’m a little afraid of him,” one of the others whispered.
“I think I see him flying toward the southern edge of the city now.” Rylana pointed down the street, though she didn’t see anything in the dark sky.
Most of the boys swore and sprinted into the alley. The one who wasn’t afraid hesitated, realized he was alone, and then slunk off in another direction. Sylin laid the sleeping woman down against the wall, eliciting a groan.
“The ones who are still engaged won’t be as easy to evict,” she warned.
“We’ll do it anyway.”
“Does this really fall under the purview of a bookkeeper?”
“It does tonight.”
Back inside, Rolf and Gniknik were maneuvering a snoring woman onto a long flat board with wheels.
Some contraption the gnome had made to carry cargo?
Rolf pointed at her chest when it jiggled, jostled by the movement.
Gniknik slapped his hand out of the air and told him to grab her by the shoulders.
They used the wheeled device to push the woman out the door.
Zalani, who was throwing a bucket of water on a couple still engaged, had to step aside so they could pass.
An irate man lunged for her. Rylana stepped in, caught his arm, and twisted it behind his back, forcing his nose against the wall.
“No attacking the staff,” she said. “Take your lady friend, and go home.”