Chapter 18
With the ancient troll recipe book in her hands, the pages yellowed and threatening to fall from the creased binding, Rylana left the bakery.
In the street, a wagon with a broken wheel lay tilted and unmoving on the cobblestones, its damaged cart spilling cans of beans, coconut milk, and other goods that she recognized from Jildarin’s shopping list. The deliveries didn’t usually come so late in the evening, but the curse was throwing off everything in the city.
The dwarven driver crouched by the wheel with an open toolbox, but he’d paused in his repairs to stare through the window of the diner. Shouts and thumps came from within, and Rylana groaned. What now? Rolf couldn’t have spiked the soup again, could he?
Wary, she inched closer to the building.
Before she reached the door, it flew open, banging against the stop.
A troll stumbled out, arms flailing for balance.
Someone pushed him from behind, and he didn’t find it, instead landing with a thud on the sidewalk.
An orc sprang out after him with a makeshift iron club gripped in his hands.
“That’s my tie rod!” the dwarf blurted.
Ignoring him, the orc leaped for the downed troll and started pummeling him. “This curse is your fault! Your foul gods destroyed my home!”
Another troll ran out of the diner and gripped the attacker from behind. Before he could stop the pummeling, two more orcs rushed out and grabbed him.
Rylana reached for her utility knife, but she didn’t know how to stop the melee.
She recognized the trolls as two of the diners that Jildarin had invited for the tasting, but she had no idea where the orcs had come from.
And, judging by the noises still sounding inside, these two weren’t the only ones fighting.
“Get the curse bringers!” a deep voice yelled, followed by a bang.
Rylana left her knife in its sheath—even if these hadn’t been customers, she wouldn’t have wanted to brawl with the big, muscular trolls and orcs, not unless lives depended on it. Instead, she set the book on the wagon seat and snatched up a couple of cans from the cobblestones.
“Take your fight out of my diner!” came Jildarin’s roar from inside.
“Where are the peacekeepers?” a higher-pitched voice called. Gniknik. “They crushed my dish collector!”
Where were the peacekeepers? Rylana glanced up and down the street, hoping to spot uniformed gnomes hurrying their way with their strong magical golems striding beside them. The only people in view were civilians gaping at the chaos.
Rylana wasn’t as deadly with cans as with her bow and arrows, but she cracked the orc holding the club—the tie iron he must have torn off the wagon—in the forehead with pinto beans.
Since orcs had hard heads, it didn’t pitch him backward, but it did startle him.
He dropped his club and stumbled back, giving the downed troll the opportunity to lunge to his feet.
“Run away,” Rylana urged.
Instead, the troll roared and leaped at the orc.
The other troll and orc were wrestling too.
Jildarin appeared in the doorway, dragging an orc waving a knife with him.
Though he, in his human form, was smaller than the combatants, he hefted the orc over his head.
With a roar of irritation, Jildarin hurled him into the back of the wagon, prompting more cans to tumble into the street.
Not pausing, he spun and grabbed another orc behind him.
As Rylana pegged another brawler, this time with a can of palm hearts, the pillar in the nearest intersection started gonging. Again roaring, Jildarin physically evicted another orc. Had an entire gang descended upon the diner?
They wore brown dockworker uniforms, so they weren’t random criminals out to cause trouble, but they’d stirred up this chaos, nonetheless.
Rylana grabbed two more large cans but glanced toward the intersection again before she threw.
With her luck, if the peacekeepers showed up now, they would give her a fine for brawling when she only wanted to stop this.
Two cloaked figures were jogging toward the diner, but they were too tall to be gnomes. The elves she’d spotted earlier?
“Break it up!” Rylana yelled, but most of the trolls and orcs were on the ground now, cursing and yelling as they punched and grappled.
“We ain’t got nothing to do with the curse!” one of the trolls hollered.
“It’s your gods that are doing this!” an orc cried back.
“Get all the trolls out of the city!” someone yelled from inside the diner. That person sounded human. Everyone was joining in on the chaos.
Frustrated and not sure how to stop it, Rylana threw another can. If nothing else, her aim remained reliable. She knocked a club out of a troll’s hand, sending it clattering across the cobblestones.
“Good throw,” came a familiar dry voice. Captain Tassani bowed to her before he and his comrade strode into the wrestling match.
Jildarin remained in the thick of it, lifting and hurling trolls and orcs in an attempt to separate the fighters. Rylana lowered the other can she’d been about to throw, not wanting to hit allies.
Finally, as the battle wound down, with Jildarin and the elves managing to separate the trolls and orcs, two uniformed gnomes appeared in the intersection with a pair of golems striding after them.
“Halt your fighting,” one called, waving a mechanical device in his hand—a fine dispenser.
He and his comrade wore rumpled uniforms, sleeves and hems torn, and their caps missing and their brown hair tousled. They looked like they’d broken up numerous fights today. Thanks to the curse, they probably had.
As the golems strode toward the puffy-faced and bleeding combatants, Rylana shifted from throwing cans to tossing them back into the wagon.
The arrival of the peacekeepers took any remaining belligerence from the fighters.
The orcs and trolls hurried away, throwing glances at the fine-issuing device.
The elves didn’t seem to be worried about the peacekeepers mistaking them for combatants and crossed their arms and waited.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Jildarin told them. He also met Rylana’s eyes and nodded. “Once I clean up the kitchen, I can sauté mushrooms and other vegetables if you desire to stay,” he added to the elves.
Rylana winced. She didn’t want the elven captain sticking around. She was glad Sylin hadn’t come out to help, though she did notice that a shuttered attic window overlooking the street had been opened slightly.
“More ruffians remain inside and unconscious,” Jildarin informed the peacekeepers, pointing into the diner.
They eyed him, as if they weren’t certain if they should assist him in cleaning out the ruffians or if he might have started the trouble.
But they ultimately nodded and sent the golems in to carry out the fighters.
Since Jildarin had won the Golden Whisk, there had been fewer patrols coming by the diner and looking suspiciously at him.
Hopefully, the peacekeepers no longer expected him to turn into a dragon at any moment and need to be kicked out of the city.
Rylana lifted the recipe book from the wagon seat, glad it had survived unscathed, and stood beside Jildarin.
“We thank you for your offer of a meal,” Captain Tassani told him with a bow, “but we must return to our search. We seek a known assassin.”
“Come back later if you wish to dine,” Jildarin said, thankfully not mentioning that he knew Sylin and that she hung out in the area frequently. Too bad the elves had already figured that out on their own. Even as the pair walked away, Rylana grimaced, certain they would be back.
“What happened?” she asked Jildarin, though she could guess.
“The orcs came in to eat, and I did not think there would be any trouble, but when the last of their party entered, he sprang upon the trolls, accusing them of being the cause of his woes. These are our groceries.” Jildarin picked up a dented can of beans.
“Yes, unfortunately some of them collided with the heads of orcs.”
“Hm.” He examined the dented can, then placed it in a crate in the back of the wagon and hefted the load to carry inside. “That should not affect the flavor of the contents.”
Rylana also grabbed a few items, telling the dwarf she would send Gniknik out to help him with repairs and that there would be a tip.
Hazard pay, she called it, something she’d sometimes received as a mercenary.
Right now, delivering groceries in Tranquility wasn’t all that different from maneuvering across a battlefield.
A hint of smoke hung in the air, promising another fire burned nearby, and green vapors continued to waft from the storm grates.
“I do have some good news for you,” Rylana told Jildarin as they returned for another load.
All except one of the orcs had slunk off.
He was slumped against the wall by the door and appeared unconscious.
The peacekeeper with the hand device, perhaps believing someone needed to be fined for the battle, tucked a slip of paper into his belt.
After warning everyone in the area not to give in to the urge to break the law, even though these were fraught times, the gnomes and the golems departed.
“Good news is needed,” Jildarin said. “Though the trolls enjoyed my meal, especially the squid-ink bread, one said it was a popular recipe and that loaves had already been left on offering pedestals to no avail.”
“Plopping down a loaf of bread on a temple table may not be enough to alleviate the curse, regardless, but I have a new recipe for you to try.”
“It involves rye?”
“I… didn’t look, but, according to the heading, it’s for sacred bread.”
“Hm.”
“Unless we’re fortunate, though, and baking it happens to be enough, I think I’ll need to find Vormalt again and wring his neck for information.”
“Should we locate him outside of the city, I could incinerate him.”