The man winked, and then began to down his ale in a single, continuous gulp, and Lila, sensing the challenge, did the same. Her cup was half the size of his, but to be fair, he was more than twice the size of her, so it seemed an even match. When her empty mug struck the counter an instant before his own, the Veskan laughed and knocked the table twice with his closed fist while murmuring appreciatively.
Lila set a coin on the bar and stood up. The cider hit her like a pitching deck, as if she were no longer on solid ground but back on the Spire in a storm.
“Easy now.” Alucard caught her elbow, then swung his arm around her shoulders to hide her unsteadiness. “That’s what you get for making friends.”
He led her to a booth where most of the men had gathered, and she sank gratefully into a chair on the end. As the captain took his seat, the rest of the crew drifted over, as if drawn by an invisible current. But of course, the current was Alucard himself.
Men laughed. Glasses clanked. Chairs scraped.
Lenos cheated a glance at her down the table. He was the one who’d started the rumors, about her being the Sarows. Was he still afraid of her, after all this time?
She drew his knife—now hers—from her belt and polished it on the corner of her shirt.
Her head spun from that first drink, and she let her ears and attention drift through the crew like smoke, let the Arnesian words dissolve back into the highs and lows, the melodies of a foreign tongue.
At the other end of the table, Alucard boasted and cheered and drank with his crew, and Lila marveled at the way the man shifted to fit his environment. She knew how to adapt well enough, but Alucard knew how to transform. Back on the Spire, he was not only captain but king. Here at this table, surrounded by his men, he was one of them. Still the boss, always the boss, but not so far above the rest. This Alucard took pains to laugh as loud as Tav and flirt almost as much as Vasry, and slosh his ale like Olo, even though Lila had seen him fuss whenever she spilled water or wine in his cabin.
It was a performance, one that was entertaining to watch. Lila wondered for perhaps the hundredth time which version of Alucard was the real one, or if, somehow, they were all real, each in its own way.
She also wondered where Alucard had found such an odd group of men, when and how they’d been collected. Here, on land, they seemed to have so little in common. But on the Spire, they functioned like friends, like family. Or at least, how Lila imagined family would act. Sure they bickered, and now and then even came to blows, but they were also fiercely loyal.
And Lila? Was she loyal, too?
She thought back to those first nights, when she’d slept with her back to the wall and her knife at hand, waiting to be attacked. When she’d had to face the fact that she knew almost nothing about life aboard a ship, and grappled every day to stay on her feet, clutching at scraps of skill and language and, on the occasion it was offered, help. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Now they treated her more or less as if she was one of them. As if she belonged. A small, defiant part of her, the part she’d done her best to smother on the streets of London, fluttered at the thought.
But the rest of her felt ill.
She wanted to push away from the table and walk out, walk away, break the cords that tied her to this ship and this crew and this life, and start over. Whenever she felt the weight of those bonds, she wished she could take her sharpest knife and cut them free, carve out the part of her that wanted, that cared, that warmed at the feeling of Alucard’s hand on her shoulder, Tav’s smile, Stress’s nod.
Weak, warned a voice in her head.
Run, said another.
“All right, Bard?” asked Vasry, looking genuinely concerned.
Lila nodded, fixing a sliver of a smile back on her face.
Stross slid a fresh drink her way, as if it was nothing.
Run.
Alucard caught her eye and winked.
Christ, she should have killed him when she had the chance.
“All right, Captain,” shouted Stross over the noise. “You’ve got us waiting. What’s the big news?”
The table began to quiet, and Alucard brought his stein down. “Listen up, you shabby lot,” he said, his voice carrying in a wave. The group fell to murmurs and then silence. “You can have the night on land. But we sail at first light.”
“Where to next?” asked Tav.
Alucard looked right at Lila when he said it. “To London.”
Lila stiffened in her seat.
“What for?” asked Vasry.
“Business.”
“Funny thing,” called Stross, scratching his cheek. “Isn’t it about time for the tournament?”
“It might be,” said Alucard with a smirk.
“You didn’t,” gasped Lenos.
“Didn’t what?” asked Lila.
Tav chuckled. “He’s gone and entered the Essen Tasch.”
Essen Tasch, thought Lila, trying to translate the phrase. Element … something. What was it? Everyone else at the table seemed to know. Only Kobis said nothing, simply frowned down into his drink, but he didn’t look confused, only concerned.