The Mosaic

Chapter 22

Laelia knew three things to be true: There was bravery - and maybe stupidity - in loyalty, pain in love and truth in wine.

With the amounts of alcohol the men here gulped down, they must be searching for the world formula. Or at least some alchemic secrets - perhaps they expected to find a solution for turning things to gold at the bottom of the bottles passing around. Their clay cups barely touched the tables long enough to be refilled.

Laelia huffed, giving up on shutting out the drunken slurs and merry laughters that rumbled deep from slouching men. Why would they take something to dull their senses? Something to enhance one's senses, now that would be amazing. She'd work on that. Tucked away into a corner, Laelia observed her surroundings.

The tavern was surprisingly large. From the outside it was a low building, ducking away from the wind that swept land inwards from the sea a few miles away, with rough stone walls, grey and cold. A wooden sign above the door swung from side to side with a tired creak, a crudely painted dragon giving the tavern its name.

The Red Dragon. Very original.

Warm orange flowed out of the windows, drawing golden squares onto the ground in the darkness. Muffled noises and dull laughter found their way outside, promising a stuffed room and drunk companions.

Inside were tables, a counter and an awry carpentered stage at one wall - who would even so much as set a food onto it, Laelia could not imagine. The whole construct looked as if a one eyed chicken had visited the tower of Pisa and decided to built it from wood. And much lower. While drunk. With two left hands.

Wait, chicken did not have hands. Laelia grinned at the thought.

The imminent danger of the stage collapsing into a dusty pile of crooked wood and broken limbs did not seem to concern anyone. At least not the few musicians producing tunes that only sounded slightly better than the stage looked, or the singer and two dancers that seemed to have thrown together random colorful pieces of cloth to an outfit that did not even try to appear modest.

Negligence, her mother had said, was a sin. This inn was a den of negligence. From a carelessly chosen, too common to be meaningful name, over that leaning stage and the woman behind the counter scrubbing the used clay jugs with a rug that simply rubbed the dirt from one side of the jug to the other. Laelia felt like she caught half the viruses she knew just by looking at it. Her mother would say the only salvation for this place would be burning it to the ground.

On the table next to her, a group of raggedy looking merchants was gambling. Or rather, playing 'find the best cheater'. Laelia was fairly sure she had counted more cards than there were in the game on the table, and even more under it. That didn't seem to bother anyone though. Or perhaps they were too drunk to count anyways.

Laelia had never been to a tavern. Of course. Laelia huffed. Respectable young ladies of high standing do not mingle at all with anyone who could not name his family's noble origins in the blink of an eye without a stutter, or impress with palaces, gold and silk, a trading empire or a position of power. Un-think-able. The girl could practically hear her mothers special lecturing voice, that somehow reminded her of the suppressed clatter of porcelain cups when you would orderly place them back onto the saucer after taking a tiny, tiny sip of tea.