A cacophony of slamming tankards hit Hastur’s ears before he’d made it all the way downstairs into the Red Bird’s barroom so he expected to find the place crowded. To his surprise, however, there was only Prishka, her father, and a handful of regulars— normal for that time of day.

Prishka was cleaning tankards behind the counter, slamming each down when she finished with a loud thunk that made everyone in the room wince in unison. The problem was less the noise and more the plainly foul mood the publican was in— no one dared speak up to ask what was amiss for fear of taking a tankard to the head for their trouble.

More confident in his reflexes than the average man, Hastur took a seat at the bar opposite Prishka and her father. The old man, Oleg, sat on a stack of crates, withered as always but seeming much more tired.

“She keep you up with this all night, Oleg?” Hastur asked as he settled in.

The old man grimaced but when his daughter didn’t immediately turn around and bludgeon Hastur with something heavy, answered, “Rotten supplier has gone and raised the prices on the ale again.”

“As if the bastard wasn’t already watering down every barrel that came into Ashtown as it was!” Prishka snarled viciously. “Now he wants me to pay more?!”

Hastur glanced between father and daughter. “Guessing going with another supplier is off the table.”

Prishka scoffed bitterly at the suggestion. “There’s only the one that deigns to deal with the drinking houses in Ashtown. Our money’s not good enough for the rest of them.”

Hastur hummed thoughtfully and mulled the problem over. Considering he was staying at the Red Bird long term and intended to keep doing business with them in the future it would be in his best interest to make sure he’d have something decent to drink when he came round. Prishka said other ale dealers refused to do business with drinking houses in Ashtown on principle, but Hastur suspected it was more like a few businesses controlled the local market and had divvied the city up into territories to keep down competition.

“How many places sell ale here in Ashtown?”

“It’s mostly us, two other inns and that brothel up just inside the wall.”

“The Black Swan,” Oleg provided without prompting and pretended not to notice when his daughter gave him a sharp look.

Hastur nodded and drummed his fingers against the bartop while he thought. Vorslav had its share of brothels, but the Black Swan was particularly popular despite its being (just barely) in Ashtown. He’d been there once or twice when he was younger, but Mike had been back several more times since.

Lonely but endowed with a decent salary after he’d started working for Count Tsarkaya, Mike had mustered up his courage and visited the brothel after hearing some guest of the count’s mention it and recalling Hastur’s own memories of the place. He’d become a regular after that, favoring one girl, Kisha, in particular.

A lovely creature with a laugh like a bell, Kisha had been well on her way to winning Mike’s heart and Hastur suspected the man might have been talked into marrying her eventually— it was a common way for brothel workers to get out of the business. Considering his own preferences in a partner and the fact that he’d wound up back here in his own body, though, Hastur was glad he hadn’t.

As it was, Mike had stopped seeing her after awhile. Count Tsarkaya’s wife, Lynia had gotten her hooks in him and he’d stopped venturing into Ashtown at all.

“That’s not too many businesses to have to wrangle…” Hastur mused thoughtfully and Prishka shot him a questioning look. “If you could band together and all refuse to buy from your supplier you could pressure him into dropping the price.”

“And what am I meant to be selling in the meantime? I’ve only got a week of stock in the cellar, that’s not much squeeze.”

There in lay the problem. “Could you all pool your resources?”

“What? Pool the ale?”

“I mean, not literally—”

Thankfully, Oleg interrupted their rapidly spiraling conversation. “Had a southern ship rat in here the other day,” he announced loudly as he could to speak over them with his weak, gravelly voice. When they turned to look at him, he continued, “Was going on about how his captain was all in knots over some new tax on imported alcohol the duke passed right before he made port. Gonna be out a load of cash because of it.”

Hastur caught the old man’s meaning right away. “We figure out a way for him to bypass the tax and we’ve got our squeeze,” he said with a vicious grin and even Prishka’s normally dour expression brightened.

She pointed a finger at Hastur and said, “You convince him to sell at a reasonable rate and figure a way to get it around the inspectors at the port. Do that and I’ll talk to the other alehouses. Shouldn’t be hard— we all loathe the man.”

Hastur nodded. “And the brothel?”

“I’ll—” Oleg began to volunteer, but his daughter cut him off.

“You handle them. You’ll want to talk to Korva— she’s managing things there these days, last I heard. You know where it is?”

“I’m familiar,” Hastur answered vaguely but Prishka didn’t ask more questions. Instead, they buckled down and talked numbers.

~~~

“So, what’s the job? Where’d you send Royko and Gav?” Jasna asked, trying to sound casual while she followed Hastur down the road towards the docks. It hadn’t been that long since the man had taken over the crew, the Harpers now, but he’d already organized them into watch shifts that patrolled the street and checked in on the businesses under their protection.

Whatever doubts she’d had about the strange man, he had at least proved he had experience with this sort of thing. Now he had a proper money-making job for them and the young woman was practically vibrating with excitement. Part of her was a little bitter at how easy it was for him to land a gig, the benefits of age and, frankly, his imposing size, she supposed. The rest of her buckled down and watched his every move to learn, though, so she peppered Hastur with questions as they walked.

Luckily, he didn’t seem bothered by it. “I sent the pup and the others off to help Prishka collect a cart for the job. Royko’s on watch at the port.”

“Watching for what?”

“We’re going to be moving some cargo off a ship and up into Ashtown, so our girl is figuring out when shift changes are for us,” Hastur explained, then filled her in on the rest of the details while they walked.

“So we’re going to meet the captain to strike a deal for all the ale slingers around here? You even know which captain? Which ship?”

“Nope,” he admitted blithely. When he saw her look of disbelief, he added, “It won’t be hard to figure out. That sort all hang around the same sort of place. Bet you my last sovereign he’s been complaining about it long and loud in one pub or another on the waterfront.”

It was a little annoying how right the man was, Jasna thought when, sure enough, they found their man in the very first pub they ducked into along the wharf. A few round about questions to the bartender and a couple coins passed from one hand into another got them a nod in the direction of the very captain they’d been looking for.

They approached the man’s table and Jasna fell in behind Hastur as they waded deeper into what she could tell was a crowd of the captain’s own people. Conversation dropped off when she and Hastur entered their midst and the little hairs at the base of Jasna’s neck stood on end as she sensed some of them shift their chairs to block them in.

They wouldn’t be getting to the door in a hurry.

The sailors, men and women alike, all had long hair that hung in intricate plaits down their backs with all sorts of odds and ends woven in among the strands. Jasna could see coins and rings, gems, colored glass, and a multitude of bones. One woman sported what looked to be a row of crow skulls running from the back of her head all the way down to the end of her braid where it terminated at her waist.

The captain was easy to spot with his long, jet-black hair interwoven with gold beads and coins the likes of which Jasna had never seen before. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he was striking all the same— so much so his looks didn’t matter at all when it came to holding one’s attention. Surrounded by the most beautiful people in the world, one would still find their eyes drawn to his deeply tanned face and startlingly blue eyes the color of the sky on a hot summer day and more vivid than any Jasna had ever seen before.

His clothing was rich but practical in its cut, made up of many layers with a dizzying array of colorful patterns under a stark black coat. His people were all dressed similarly, though none quite so elaborately as their captain and a thick, cloying cloud of blue smoke hung over the entire group while they ate, drank, and smoked out of small curved pipes. The scent was unfamiliar to Jasna and made her head swim a little, but she forced herself to pay attention as Hastur seemed completely un-phased by it all and helped himself to the last chair at the captain’s table.

Jasna could have cut the tension with a knife as she took up her place standing behind Hastur, sweat trickling down her back, fighting the urge to keep her hand on the hilt of her knife where it hung from her belt.

If Hastur felt the same he didn’t show it. Instead, he leisurely took out his own pipe, packed the bowl while the eyes of the crew burned into him, then deftly lit it with a match he discarded into the ashtray at the center of the table.

The gang leader exhaled a cloud of silvery smoke that rose into the air to mix uneasily with the bluish cloud that hung overhead, then said, “I hear you’ve got some alcohol that needs moving.”