Blorbo could feel time slipping away like spilled mead down a wobbly stool leg. The quest log blinked as it taunted him.

  [Jugs of Ale refilled: 3/5]

  Still stuck.

  Still two jugs to go.

  And now this mess.

  Griesa, steam still puffing ominously from her keg's exhaust, marched up to the table and jabbed a gloved finger toward Anders’s face. Her glove was greasy. “You! You belittle the craft of functional aesthetics?! You dare insult my father’s honor and my divine greasework?!”

  Anders leaned back in his seat, calm as a brick. “Look, kid. We’re not here for a lecture on chair contraption. We’re tracking a lead on items of great importance, not looking to soup up our snack table.”

  Griesa’s eyes narrowed. “It’s called true craft of shape and purpose, you square-headed nailstick!” There was a single sizzling sound coming from her hat.

  Lena was quick on her feet as she shot upright between them, hands raised. “Let’s all take a breath, shall we? We can all respect each other’s work!”

  Griesa glanced Anders up and down judgmentally. His belt pouches were sealed, and his cloak was tidy, or as tidy as an old man in his sixty who never bothered to clean his clothes could be. Not a cursed dagger, skull shard, or whispering trinket in sight.

  Griesa turned her monocle full on Lena. “You just call my work ‘work’? I don’t merely work. This isn’t hammering horseshoes. It’s sacred labor! I tune chair legs by moonlight!”

  Lena winced. “Okay! Poor choice of words from my part. But let’s not go throwing monocle glares, alright?”

  “‘Monocle glares’?” Griesa hissed. Her keg let out a slow, offended groan.

  Anders crossed his arms. “If she so much as suggests bolting a cupholder to my robes, I’m walking.”

  “Oh lord, no one’s bolting anything to anyone’s skulls!” Lena cried, clutching her head in panic just as one of Griesa’s nozzle-arms gave a menacing hiss of steam.

  “You think I couldn’t?” Griesa roared.

  “PLEASE don’t!” Lena wailed.

  Why is my every day like this…

  Marin, who had been hunched over in delight, burst into open cackling. “By the Lords! This is better than the goblin pit-fights in South Creel!” He slapped the table, [-0 HP], and finally reached for his jug with triumph in his eyes. “A toast! To unhinged craftsmen and terrified mediators!”

  He raised the jug high, tilted it back…

  A single drop rolled down and hit his tongue.

  [Jugs of Ale refilled: 3]

  “Am I a joke to you?” Griesa’s hat began to whistle as she fumed.

  It started low, a quiet fffffff like a kettle warming over coals. Then it pitched up. A soft wisp of steam puffed from the miniature door on the front of her hat.

  “Oh Lord,” Lena said. “Is your hat about to explode?!”

  Griesa snarled, eyes twitching. “He’s overheating! I told him not to get riled!”

  She yanked the tiny door open with a click, and out popped a rat.

  A soot-smudged rat wearing a teeny harness rigged with copper coils. The rat blinked blearily, then scurried up to perch atop the hat like a proud chimney sweep.

  What...

  “Kurix,” Griesa muttered, fanning him with a tiny collapsible gear-paddle, “you know better than to hold in the heat cycle.”

  Rob, who had been silently absorbing the argument like a sponge, mumbled, “Is that… an actual living rat?”

  Blorbo tensed. Surely, surely the whole tavern was about to burst into shrieks of A RAT! IN THE TAVERN?!

  Instead, a few heads turned. Someone near the bar squinted, raised a mug, and called, “Oh hey, Kurix!”

  Another shouted, “Don’t let him near the pickled eggs again!”

  A third added, “Kurix! You still owe me two coppers!”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Anders rolled his eyes so hard they nearly clattered onto the table. “You rascal! You lived life for 16 years and think your rubbish tech is something else. If your genius contraptions were really that effective, maybe one of them wouldn’t need to be cooled off by a literal rat.”

  Kurix let out a squeaky snort, steam puffing from his tiny nose.

  Griesa’s monocle glinted dangerously. “You ignorant hex-dodger! Why waste years of your life memorizing spark-words and frog-blood recipes when you could simply build a self-warming cloak that doesn’t set the wearer on fire?!”

  “Oh yes, so much more reliable than magic, clearly,” Anders shot back, arms crossed. “How’s your coffee-stirring gauntlet coming along? Let me remind you that a mage can CREATE the very coffee you work so hard to stir.”

  “I WILL SAND YOUR SPELLBOOK INTO SOUP—!”

  Marin leaned forward and tipped his jug expectantly.

  Griesa froze mid-rant.

  Without another word, she snapped open a spout on her keg, titled her hip, and sent a golden stream of frothy beer cascading into Marin’s mug. Kurix held onto her hat like a sailor in a storm, tail blowing in the steam.

  Marin beamed. “Ahhh, bless you.”

  [Jugs of Ale refilled: 4]

  Once the tankard was full, she clicked the spout shut, gave a polite nod without so much of a gander at Marin, and immediately turned back to Anders. “—AND ANOTHER THING, you pointy-shoed waste of a summoning circle, when’s the last time any of your magic didn’t end with a house collapse or a mild demonic infestation?! There’s a reason we DESPISE magic users in Nokia!”

  A few patrons turned from their tankards and bread bowls, casting wary glances toward the arguing duo and the steam-hat rat perched atop Griesa’s head.

  “Are they…” someone whispered, “magic users?”

  Then the murmurs kept piling up, one after another.

  Kurix let out a high-pitched “meep” of agreement and began preening his whiskers atop the hat.

  Wait. I didn’t know that. I thought only the Baron was obsessed with keeping magic users away from his doors. Well, by employing another magic user.

  Then—

  Pop!

  A feline head emerged from Rob’s lap, followed by a slow, languid stretch. A single paw extended, claws flexing in and out with a deliberate shk-shk-shk. He didn’t blink. Didn’t purr. Didn’t even look like he belonged to anyone. Lena caught sight of him and visibly stiffened. Even Anders subtly angled his legs away.

  Blorbo, with sudden dread, realized: Oh no. He’s awake.

  I almost forgot he existed.

  Tabby narrowed his eyes at Kurix with all the focus of a born predator. His tongue slid out in one slow, deliberate lick across his whiskers. He hunched slightly, and his ears twitched.

  Kurix stiffened. His tail stood up like a bottlebrush.

  Griesa turned—and screeched.

  “YOU HAVE A CAT?!”

  She took a full step back, clanking noisily. Panels flew open on her keg-armor. Springs boinged. Tubes wriggled. With a dramatic hiss, she whipped out a contraption the size of a chamber pot, covered in bells, blinking lights, and an aggressive-looking broom on a swivel mount.

  “STAY BACK, FELINE! I have a certified Anti-Cat Displacer!”

  Tabby meowed, entirely unimpressed.

  “DO NOT EAT KURIX! I will not let another cat swallow him ever again!”

  That seemed like a declaration of war for Tabby.

  He launched.

  One moment he was a loaf on Rob’s lap, the next—a furry comet, eyes locked on rat-shaped destiny. Lena shouted. Kurix shrieked and tried to retreat back into the hat. Griesa screamed in horror and yanked the trigger on her contraption.

  It exploded into action with a DING! and a rotating broom began to flail violently in random directions, accompanied by a cloud of lavender-scented powder and a blaring foghorn noise for some reason.

  Tabby didn’t as much slowed down.

  He has the Invincibility buff from Lena! It’s useless!

  “HE’S GONE FULL PREDATOR!” someone yelled from a nearby table, diving under a bench. The crowd, which did not bat an eye at the rat, now erupted in chaos.

  Tables were tipped. Drinks were spilled. Folk ran screaming from the tavern. The owner was nowhere to be found.

  What? You did not run from a rat, but you’re running away from a cat?

  Kurix barely managed to dive back into the hat-hatch, slamming the tiny door shut behind him just as Tabby landed with claws outstretched, skidding across Griesa’s shoulder.

  “NOOOOO!” Griesa wailed, trying to swing the broom-cannon backward without braining herself. “Please stop him! I’m sorry! I won’t call you names again!”

  Ducaz grinned and did nothing. Rob pushed his stool back, halfway rising, but someone was closer and quicker.

  Blorbo stared, horrified, internally shrieking: I’ve told you. You can’t beat the cat. That menace is INVINCIBLE!

  But Marin didn’t try to beat the cat.

  Despite his barrel chest and lumbering size, he moved as smoothly as a bear-shaped shadow slipping between the candle flames. He drained his freshly-refilled jug in one massive gulp, slammed it down on the table edge to catch Tabby mid-leap—and snapped it down, upside-down, trapping the beast in one go.

  Clink.

  He had caught the cat in a perfect pin.

  Tabby meowed, indignant.

  The tavern froze.

  Then slowly, slowly, Griesa turned. For the first time all night, she looked away from Anders and Lena. Her monocle fogged up.

  Her cheeks flushed a delicate rose.

  “Y-y-you…” she stammered, clutching her breastplate. “You’re… handsome!”

  Rob blinked. Anders choked on air. Lena whispered, “Oh no.”

  Marin, still leaning over the upturned jug with one big hand planted on top, gave a casual shrug. “All in a day’s work of a Knight.”

  “I am already eighteen, just so you know!” Griesa declared to Marin despite nobody asking.

  Only then did the Tavern Owner popped his head from behind the tavern counter where he’d apparently been hiding under. “Nobody dates my daughter until she turns 21!”

  “Sure,” Marin said. “But can I have another refill?”

  What even is going on? There are too many people to keep track of!