Artyom had been in plenty of seedy taverns and spoken with even seedier information brokers. It was the sort of business that attracted those only interested in money, power, and the kind of dirt that would get them even more of the first two, but thankfully the man from Earth knew just how to speak their language.
“You’re the guy who can hold half a barrel’s worth of pee in him, right?” asked the woman with a single bulging eye. “Even stood in the back alley for five whole minutes to let it all out right after you got into town.”
“What the actual hell are you talking about?”
This was the first time any of them had opened a conversation like this.
“Word on the grapevine is you came from Freeacres after drinking all of their rancid cherry sparkle and needed to get it out of you.”
Artyom could only stare at the woman. He tried to work his jaw to respond, but no fitting words came to mind.
The man in orange shouted from where he sat at the bar, “if it was so rancid, how could he drink an entire barrel of it? But I heard the stream with my own ears, some of the bricks back there were sawed in half!”
Some of the other patrons turned away from the discussion and began whispering amongst themselves.
Artyom gritted his teeth and stayed his tongue. If he were to respond to such obvious goading, it’d be seen as a sign of weakness. But no broker would dare say something as ridiculous as this! If this was an attempt to throw Artyom off his game to get the advantage in the negotiations, it was working.
But not for long, as the man from Earth shook off the awkwardness and continued. “Enough about me, I want to know where the hero is. What’s your price?”
“Price? What kind of woman do you take me for?!”
Many more of the patrons in the bar looked their way, and for the first time here, Artyom felt his cheeks redden.
“I just want to know about the hero, can you tell me or not?” he asked, the red starting to grow more strongly, but out of rage rather than embarrassment.
“Go easy on him, Peppa,” shouted a younger woman sitting at one of the tables. She had bright green hair and very similar features to the blonde one. “He’s obviously used to doing things with money, you saw how he paid for his meal with a gold coin.”
“Buzz off, sis, this is my conversation!” the blonde woman shouted back with her eye bulging out even more. She quickly turned back to Artyom and began sizing him up. “But she’s got a point, you are rich. Are you a prince or something?”
“Hero. Where is he,” said Artyom, slamming a fist into the table and making it shake.
“You’re going to have to pay for that if you break it,” said a voice from behind him.
Artyom turned around to see the barman carrying a massive platter filled with twenty tamales arranged into a tall pyramid. The smell of freshly cooked corn flour wafted in the air, carried alongside by the more modern scent of an oily deep fryer.
The plate slammed down onto the table harder than Artyom had struck it and produced a clang that filled the entire tavern. A small bowl was placed more gently beside it and the barman began to fill it with a purple and brown liquid from a bottle.
“I don’t know what those Teccans eat this stuff with, but defrutum goes really well with it. That’s why your money doesn’t work with my Skill, right? You’re Teccan?”
“He must be a Teccan prince!” exclaimed Peppa. “Always gets his way by coin or strength, and now he’s on tour of our kingdom!”
Artyom looked between the woman and the food in front of him. He was incredibly close to letting his building frustration take over and doing something very foolish, but his hunger was mostly to blame for that. Mostly. He was getting nowhere with the conversation, so he’d might as well take care of something else.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
He grabbed a tamale, unwrapped the corn husk still around it, and bit through half of it at once. He only took a second to chew before swallowing it mostly whole.
Running since the night before, fighting an entire war band, burning through all his magic… it left him exhausted on a level beyond physical, or even mental. But just like those two types of exhaustion, what he felt could also be remedied with food.
Both of Peppa’s eyes were bulging now as they took in Artyom already on his fifth tamale. He’d barely taken any time between each one to breathe, yet he was working his way through the meal as if they were a handful of miniature grapes rather than the full hand-sized masses of corn and filling.
As Artyom was about halfway through his meal, enough sense had returned to him for an epiphany to strike.
He stopped eating for just long enough to look back at Peppa and realize that despite having that sort of look, she was no information broker. She really was just a nosy gossip!
He wanted to beat himself up for missing the not-so-obvious. A Fairytale world this might not have been, but the common folk still acted like it was on the surface. Was it all just an act, however? What did it take to push someone so seemingly innocent, albeit annoying, to become a monster?
Artyom shook off the thought. He wasn’t likely to find the answer here, nor was it his concern. He only had one thing on his mind, and an idea was beginning to form on how he’d get it.
“I don’t just have a massive thirst, but an appetite to match,” said the man from Earth while chewing on his twelfth tamale. “And I’ve been all over, so I’ve seen, eaten, and drank it all.”
“Where else have you been?” asked Peppa, a needling smile starting to form on her lips.
“Oh, so many places. More than you’ve ever gone.”
“I’ve been around plenty myself, seen too! Why, I was once in the county’s capital and even dined with the Count himself!”
“Hmm? Which one?” asked Artyom, as he picked up the bowl of defrutum and began to down its contents.
“Which one? Which one?! Our Count, of course!”
“You mean, your Count. I’m from far away, a land you’ll likely never even know about. I’ve met more Counts than you’ll ever hear about in your life!”
At this point, Peppa was beginning to turn red herself. “Oh yeah? Well, well… I’ve met someone who knows the hero! I’ve met him, and by the sounds of it, you haven’t.”
“Oh, I guess you’ve got me beat there,” said Artyom with an uninterested shrug. He looked over his side and noticed a mug of grape sparkle he must’ve missed and took an idle sip from it. His face twisted into a mild disappointment. “But you probably don’t know much about him, what he’s doing, or even where he is right now.”
“He’s going to be attending the Count’s party in the capital tonight, of course! Just half a day’s journey by horse on the Eastern road. Only the most sophisticated and famous of the land are permitted entry into the Count’s manor, and the hero is one of them.”
Jackpot. Artyom couldn’t help but smile, but out of a flicker of petty spite, decided to hide it with his mug and continued. “And I suppose you weren’t invited, then.”
“As if you would be either,” Peppa scoffed.
“Wouldn’t I?” Artyom asked, putting the mug down and flashing a wickedly smug grin. It emanated a sophisticated malice that struck the blonde woman straight in her ego.
She visibly wilted in its presence.
“If I ever stop by here again, I’ll let you know how it was.”
Peppa immediately regained some of her vigor and nodded back. “I’d love to hear about it, then I’ll be the talk of the town!”
Artyom shook his head, but didn’t say anything more about his thoughts. Instead, he polished off his plate and drank the rest of the grape sparkle before letting out a loud burp and getting up.
The rest of the tavern’s customers stared at him with wide eyes as he walked towards the exit.
Before he left, the barman stopped him. “Hold on, don’t you want your change?”
“Do you know how much you owe me?”
“It’s uh… no?”
Artyom shook his head. “Keep it and use it to buy a round of drinks for everyone.”
The tavern erupted into cheers, and the man from Earth took that as his cue to leave.
“Wait, is that even enough change for a full round?”
“I don’t know, do the math.”
The saloon doors swung closed and Artyom walked away before anything else could be said.
The sun was just a bit before its apex at that point, about an hour or two before noon. There was only one road that led out of town to the East, and according to Peppa, it would take half a day for a horse to get to the capital from here. And in Artyom’s case, about the same.
“One step closer, maybe I can put this whole thing behind me before tomorrow?”