Light and music cascaded onto the street outside Le Poule Enchante. Legacy felt her cheeks grow tight and hot. Her lips split into a smile. Dozens of dark shapes moved behind the frosted black-paned windows. A good crowd tonight.

Le Poule Enchante had many reputations in the city of Alderbridge, all held in poor opinion by those who were not already patrons there.

It was the brothel with the most beautiful cocottes that, frustratingly, were never available to propositions.

It was an orphanage for girls of the worst breed who would not be taken in elsewhere.

It was a tavern for women without etiquette. Rumor has it, they ride the rag unceasingly and they supplement the drinks with iron to make up for it.

It was a place the authorities would have burned down a decade ago if it weren’t for two factors. First, that the orc matron who ran it had the ability to swindle her way through every loophole in the laws of the imposition. Second, that said orc matron had been a mercenary before the imposition, and kept the preserved heads of the men who wronged her in glass jars behind the bar between the rum and the wine. The second might have been an exaggeration. It was only one head, and Augusta once assured Legacy that she really didn’t want to hear the story.

To Legacy, Le Poule Enchante was home. A place that embraced her for what she was, fed her, and gave her a bed to sleep in. In exchange for her services, that was.

The bell on the double doors tinkled as they entered, but it was barely audible over the raucous music and laughter from within the tavern.

“It’s Legacy!” she heard a cry from a table near the center of the room. A hand reached through the crowd to grab hers and she was whisked off by Emma, a portly human with long blonde hair. She half enjoyed-half endured the commotion of small talk and banter that followed, continually aware of Augusta tapping her foot by the entrance.

After what she considered to be an appropriate length for menial banter, she excused herself. Sidling back to Augusta, she couldn't help but feel like a puppy returning home covered in something foul. Augusta grabbed her by the bicep.

“Now that yeh’ve gone and done yer thing, can’t we get on to it? Colette means to speak with you about another mark. And, yeh’ve promised this one dinner,” she tilted her head towards Letha who was taking in the room with wide eyes.

“And puddin,” the girl chimed.

“Ay! Simmer down you ungrateful tick!” Agusta moved to box at her ear.

“Another mark?” Legacy started, moving between them. “Already? Wouldn’t it make more sense to lie low for a month or two?”

Augusta shrugged. “Ask her yourself, she’s coming this way.”

She followed Augusta’s gaze. The orc matron of Le Poule Enchante was like a beautiful rain cloud incarnate. True, when you had tusks protruding from your lower jaw, it was hard to ever look pleased. But the corners of her blackened mouth did seem to tilt especially downwards. Legacy ignored the way her stomach veered at the look she gave them. All would be forgiven when she saw what she brought home.

“What’s this then?” Colette said, looking Letha up and down with a gesture like she was scattering corn for chickens.

Letha, who had begun to seem more and more spritely by the moment, jumped backwards at the low rumble of the orc’s voice.

“An adoption?” Legacy said with what she hoped was a sheepish grin.

“I ain’t got beds for every streetwalker.”

“She is pretty. She’ll do well,” she offered.

“That’s what you said about the last one and her cons have yet to make a profit,” Colette said.

Legacy raised her eyebrows and clapped her hands twice. “Pish posh, chin up! That’s why we call it an investment.”

Colette looked down at Letha and flared her already enormous nostrils. “She looks frightened.” As if on cue, the damned girl tucked herself into a ball behind her skirts. “Shyness will not do for the work we need.”

Legacy rolled her eyes. “I’d say it's a touch more scare than shy, considering you look like you could eat her with that scowl.”

“And might,” the orc glowered.

She clucked her tongue and turned to shake the dress she’d borrowed from Augusta from the child’s grip. “Now then. Nothing to fear, sweet. Colette is a vegetarian.” She shook her head at Collette and raised a palm for help. “What, six years now, isn’t it? It’s done wonders for your skin.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The orc crossed her arms. “The answer is no.”

Well, sometimes an act of kindness could be encouraged by something shiny. Legacy cleared her throat and flaunted the ring– their ring– gently rocking her hand from side to side so it would catch the light.

Colette’s face split into a hungry smile.

Better than a blood sorcerer’s charm.

The matron of Le Poule Enchante pulled an eyeglass from a pouch at her leather waist belt. “Sit, darling,” she said to her, tilting her head towards the small table closest to them, just out of sight from the windows to the street. When pleased, the orc’s voice always made Legacy think of a lion’s purr.

Legacy slid the ring carefully off her finger and set it into Colette’s steely blue palm. Even held up between the orc’s sausage sized fingers, the diamond looked gargantuan. Colette examined it through her ocular, her expression crossing the spectrum towards exuberance with each passing second.

“She can sleep in your bed,” the orc finally said, looking up at her with a smug expression.

“The more the merrier,” Legacy beamed.

“Really had him in your pocket, didn’t you pet?” she asked her.

Legacy felt her nose scrunch up for all her amusement. “Heavens, no!” She gasped in feigned affront. “I’m saving my honor for marriage. I’d rather say I had him around my finger.” She waggled her digits with a mischievous smile.

The remark earned her another tusky grin from Colette and a chortle from Augusta, who was standing to block any view of their table from the front door.

“Come,” Colette said. “I need to speak with you in my office. I have a job for you. An important one.” She looked at Letha who was shifting from side to side a few spans away.

“Ay, Marie!” she shouted towards the bar top where the tall, Elven kitchen maid flipped her long black dreads around her equally long neck. The elf was leaning across the counter to flirt with a surprisingly well-dressed gentleman. “Get this kid something to eat!”

Marie presented them with an ebony middle finger without bothering to look in their direction.

So. They were quarreling again. Legacy couldn’t help but wonder what had gotten between them this time.

“I’ll do it meself,” Colette grumbled, her painted indigo eyebrows threatening to blend into one line. She plopped Thomas Burgeon’s diamond into her waist belt. “My office. Twenty minutes,” she barked at Legacy and Augusta. “You’ve done well. Have a round, you two.”

The orc matron looked at Letha with a hawklike stare before a corner or her mouth quirked up. “Come on, then.” She held out her hand to the girl, who took it with a timorous glance in Legacy’s direction.

Legacy ushered her forward with a flip of her fingertips.

As they watched the two walk towards the kitchen, Augusta elbowed her in the ribs. “That girl will only last half a night with the way you kick in your sleep.”

“At least I don’t turn the sheets into a gas chamber.”

“Ay, that was only one night after bad scrapple.”

“Is there even such a thing as good scrapple?”

“‘iffen you fry it just right.” Augusta shrugged. “C’mon. There’s a beer with my name on it. My arms are stripped cabbage from all that paddling.”

They pushed their way up to the bar, which was slightly more crowded than the usual evening crowd. Augusta sat on a stool and set her freckled elbows on the resin sealed wood of the counter.

“Pale Armeen,” she said to Lenore, the other bar maiden.

“We’re out.” Lenore said, not bothering to spare Augusta a glance as she filled six mugs and set them on a platter for one of the waitresses. Though she did have the time to spare a few stabbing looks at Marie, who was still flirting at the far end of the bar.

The permanent halo of frizz around Augusta's hairline bounced as she laid her head on the bar. “What in the three hells do you mean ‘we’re out’?”

Lenore said nothing, keeping busy by tending to the other tavern goers.

“What does she mean we’re out?” Augusta repeated, this time to Legacy.

Legacy tried to hide a smile.“I’ve never met such a petite elfie who could clean an ale keg herself.”

Augusta did not like the joke.

“Lenore!” she raised her voice over the chatter and music. “What do you mean we’re–”

“Had it on special tonight,” she called out to her, this time filling a series of shot glasses with ale for a party of gnomes. “Sorry!’

Augusta’s voice turned to a whine. “Lenore. Yer out of my beeeer?”

“And yeh tore me dress,” she nodded towards the heap of fabric and caging Legacy had dropped by the door.

So that’s where she got it. Lenore always did have lovely taste.

Legacy stepped forward to rescue the situation. “Oh, Lenore, dear. A merlot and a special, if you please.”

Marie picked that moment to dump a glass over the head of the gentlemen she’d practically been pressing faces with since they arrived. Whatever he’d said or done, a mystery. She turned to the dwarven woman waiting on Lenore and served her instead. Lenore looked between Legacy and Augusta. Then she heaved a sigh.

Her mouth twisted, and she winked an eye. “Anything for you, Legacy.” She poured two drinks and thrust Augusta’s at her, sloshing a third of it on the counter. “Fix me dress.”

Augusta batted her eyes and pulled away with a scowl.

Well, social skills weren’t for everyone. But there were about a hundred things Augusta did well that made up for it.

They sat thigh to thigh at a booth. And clinked glasses.

“To the Merry Maidens.”

Augusta’s singular toast. The thing she lived for. The cause she would die for. What Legacy would give to have such a passion for anything.

Having a wee slice of passion for everything did not count.

“The Merry Maidens,” Legacy agreed. A moment spent celebrating a triumph should not be shared with lamenting an ineptitude.

The wine warmed her from the inside out. She felt it in her cheeks before her head for all the smiling she could not stifle. Their friends came to join them, congratulating her on the ring and gloating over the usual cons of the day. Falsified pregnancies. Simple purse snitches. And the classic, “Pay me or I’ll tell your wife we took the skin boat to tuna town.”

She forgot about Thomas Burgeon and focused on the perfection that was the very moment she was in.