[Sharp Tongue Pub] Of Azos, Chupras and Rakvas (Liar)

[Lucas Arias]

Winter 85, 511 AV

After spending all of five days at the Palace of the Supplicants just to become a temporary citizen, get a place to stay and a bit of food, Lucas‘ mood had deteriorated even more if that was at all possible. He didn’t know what had gotten into him that he had exchanged Syliras for this hellhole where selling food was illegal, people cut off your hair and monks abused the citizens. He was convinced that Nyka was the worst city in Mizahar …

… until he stumbled across the Sharp Tongue Pub quite by chance. He was surprised to actually find a pub in a city full of monks that he simply stood there and stared at it like an idiot for a moment. He rubbed his eyes and blinked a couple of times to make sure that they were working correctly, but the building was still there so he figured that it had to be real. He hesitated for just one moment and then he walked in.

If selling food was illegal in Nyka, then selling alcohol was probably illegal as well which meant that he had just found a lifetime source of free alcohol – or stumbled across a gathering of criminals, both of which were exciting possibilities. There was a huge grin on his face now. Everywhere around him people were drinking, exchanging insults or engaging in a battle of wits. This place seemed like a dream come true in a city that he had already renamed to shyke (and that was the nicest word he had been able to find!).

If he had money, he would buy this place! By Kelwyn, he wouldn’t even mind working there, even though he generally hated work! This was the Ukalas!

He slid on a barstool and announced, „Beer!“

And since this seemed to be a place where insults were appreciated, he asked the bartender, „Do you know what Eypharians call somebody that they really hate? I have a ton of highly original swearwords that I’m willing to share with you, Sir, and I know a thousand jokes and ways to surprise people!“

[Liar]

The man behind the bar turned to the command with his eyebrows raised. Then he saw the boy that sat before him, with the strange hair and the soft face, and he peered. Yeller was no exception to his city’s reputation for xenophobia, but he was always eager to meet a clever mind, where ever it was born. He removed his rag from where it had been wiping the inside of a glass mug, then filled the same mug with his own brew, a thick yellow wheat beer that frothed heavily despite the expert pour. He gave Lucas a nod of suspicious acceptance, smiling as if he did not want to. But there was a shine in his eye that dared the stranger to prove his wits, to impress the regulars. Yeller would respect an original set of insults in Common rather than some jibberish from a world beyond his, but he was willing to oblige. He met the eye of the man who sat beside this newcomer, then slid the mug across the counter. A low chuckle erupted from the man beneath the barkeep’s eye. Without a word to Lucas, Alex Eolla asked his regular, “What do you call a fresh foreigner with a knack for surprises?” The chair whined beneath him as he adjusted to take a look at the boy. There was a mischievous grin on his face, made sloppy by the fat that hung from it. “Dead meat.” Yeller neither laughed nor frowned, but shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I don’t know, either.” He turned to the fresh foreigner, whose name he did not know. “Do you?”

[Lucas Arias]

Lucas looked at the glass mug for a moment, then he took it, nodding his thanks to the man behind the bar as he did so. It didn’t taste half bad as far as he was concerned, besides it was free! In Syliras he’d usually been forced to spend his meagre savings because the various bar owners didn’t believe that he was a government official whose duty it was to inspect their alcohol. Nyka was fanatastic!

As he heard the bartender’s question, he put the mug down again. He turned to the man to whom the question had been directed. As he heard his answer, he rolled his eyes and let out a fake yawn as if he were bored.

In his best imitation of a typical annoying, bureaucratic and useless government official he replied, „Your opinion has been duly noted, numbered and ignored. I could probably come up with a couple of better answers to that question if you are interested. You can of course adress me with ‚Sir Dead Meat‘ if you want to, but I’d prefer to be called Lucas.“

Really, he’d thought this was the Sharp Tongue Pub, not the „Let’s make Lucas fall asleep with uncreative insults“ pub!

„By the way“, he said as he turned to the bartender again. „The word was ‚Chupra‘. It’s somebody that has sex with goats. Apparently those Eypharians have issues with goats or sex or both.“

He shrugged his shoulders. It seemed as if those Nykans didn’t appreciate Eypharian insults as much as he did which was a pity since he had learned quite a few from his various four and six armed acquaintances in Syliras!

„Anyway, why don’t you tell me what kind of insults are especially popular around here? If I am going to live here, I should be familiar with your culture. We can turn it into an insult trade of sorts if you like.“

[Liar]

Yeller smiled. “If you insist,” he shrugged, eyeing the man beside Lucas with less appreciation than before. He wiped his rag over the bar even though it was already clean, mulling over his opinion of the Arumenic offering. It clearly tickled him that the foreigner seemed so keen on Nyka and her culture, when previously he had been so intent on another one. Whether he was an adventurer or a flatterer did not matter; he was catching on quickly, and that was respectable enough. He waved his hand in Syliran’s general direction. “I think you think you’re special, with all that fire on your head, burning your brain to ashes. I think you think you’ve got wits, though that’s yet to be decided, and I think you think the beer is free.” It was and it wasn’t, depending on how you play. His rag ceased its dance over the twice-polished table and he hung it on his belt, scrutinizing his customer’s appearance, his reaction to the jests. “How old are you, boy? You look like you’ve never bedded a woman, you who stumbled across the world from somewhere and kept your sweet face bare as a babe’s. You look like a dandy or an actor, who should know the taste of cunny, and yet...” Here in Nyka, the actors were whores, but he did not expect Lucas to know as much. “Do you shave your cheeks for the goats, chupra? Is that it?” His grin was a glare and a challenge at once. He paused, chuckling softly, then added, “I do want to hear you fairy-language, boy. Give me another, but give it to me clever.”

[Lucas Arias]

As Yeller called him special, Lucas wondered whether he’d just received a compliment or been insulted, and then he came to the conclusion that both was probably the case. „At least the fire on my head keeps me warm in winter“, he remarked. „As for the beer being free, I’ve heard that selling food is illegal in this city, so if your beer isn’t free, I’ve either stumbled across a secret gathering of criminals or you want something else in return.“ He took another sip because he really didn’t care what the man said. He was thirsty.

„I’m seventeen“, he replied and put the mug down again. Comments about his age always irritated him a little. He couldn’t help it. „And I’ve already been with a woman. She had four arms!“ What he didn’t say was that the woman in question had worked at the Golden Dragon, and he hadn’t actually slept with her, but only kissed her and touched her. It was kind of embarrassing. „As for my face …“ He touched his cheeks, and then he grinned. „What can I say, both women and goats love that kind of look!“

As Yeller informed him that he did want to hear fairy-language – why did he call Arumenic fairy-language anyway? – Lucas looked rather surprised. He’d thought that the man wasn’t really interested in goat-lovers and similarly inclined people, probably because he wasn’t very good at foreign languages, but as it was he was quite happy to oblinge.

„Alright, Sir. Here’s another one. No, I’ll give you more than one. For Eypharians you would likely be chupra. If you were a woman, they might also call you Khur-va. That’s a fang in a crotch or a crotch with fangs or something like that, either way it’s not particularly pleasant. A Symenestra would just call you Azo which means meat. Feel free to think about why they consider you meat. A Benshira would call you Rakva, but then they call everybody Rakva. You might also be Benachag. Apparently Benshira love locusts just as much as Eypharians love goats.“

„As for what I should call you, you tell me.“

[Liar]

A few more eyes had settled on them. The man who had dubbed him Dead Meat had vanished, leaving an empty chair on either side. The room on whole was still rolling with conversation, but a halo of turned heads surrounded the stranger, dared him to defeat their leader, to prove his worth. They chuckled at chupra and khur-va, familiar only with the name of the race that had been spoken to them, and how it sounded more like the Common word fairy than any real group of people. Their titters turned to disapproving murmurs at the mention of symenestra, but they were soothed by more talk of southerners. Yeller wallowed in a long look of consideration before he answered. He wiped the table before him, poured himself a slow, tall glass, and drank a hard gulp of it. “I want your wits, Lucas.” He paused after he said the name. It wasn’t an unusual one, even to this place of isolation and superstition, but neither did he seem to approve of it. He pondered for a second, then tried another name. “Pedant. I want your wits, Pedant, not your definitions. Your words escape me. I can’t remember them unless you insult me properly.” He smiled a smile that suggested he was not as daft as he played. “Have at it, and you’ll have earned my name—and that beer of yours.” As he gestured at Lucas’s glass, a voice called out from the table behind him. “The riddle!” It insisted, “Make him guess the riddle!” “No need for that,” he replied, never taking his happy eyes from his most pertinent patron. “What’ll it be, are you going to find out where my pride is hiding and take a decent stab at it, or would you prefer to guess at a riddle? Learn my name, and you’ll have paid for tonight’s entertainment, at least.”

[Lucas Arias]

As he noticed that their conversation had already attracted the attention of a few people, Lucas couldn’t help but grin (even though he was still trying to figure out what in the world Eypharians had to do with faeries). He liked having an audience (only as long as things were going well of course), and he had already begun to wonder what kind of jokes and riddles he could entertain them with. Foreign swear words would only be interesting for so long, before his audience inevitable demanded to hear something different. Maybe he’d tell them a few things he had heard in the Rearing Stallion.

He noticed the pause after Yeller said his name and furrowed his brow. Did the man not like his name? Was it that unusual? As he proceeded to call him Pedant, the failed squire frowned. He was not pedantic, thank you very much! „I did insult you properly, in more than one language“, he informed Yeller just in case the man was a little senile and forgetful. „But if you like I can try to come up with something that is more to your taste.“ He was about to say something when somebody behind him mentioned a riddle. He turned around to see who it was and wondered whether he wanted to hear the riddle or not. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe they’d just use that riddle to make fun of him, but then again, if he managed to solve it it would cement his reputation as Mizahar’s greatest riddle solver!

„You have pride?“ he asked and grinned all over his face. „I already know where it is hiding. It isn’t too far below the surface, and I could find it easily, but that man over there really seems to want to hear the riddle, so why don’t you tell me that riddle, and I’ll try to solve it?“ He drank from his beer again, wondering if he’d be able to get another one out of the man for free. He was a little thirsty!

[Liar]

“Where?” Yeller asked, not quite as ashamed as he sounded. His hand flew to the opposite arm, and then his stomach. “Not here, or here? Certainly not here.” His palm slapped against the square of his own chest. “I’d hope not!” He laughed, and the faces around them seemed to echo him. The hall held fast to its usual mumble, but there were smiles on their eyes, full of anticipation and amusement. Whatever Lucas was doing, he was doing it right. The patron who had suggested the riddle in the first place urged the bar owner on, and so he raised his hands in submission and said, “Alright, alright. The riddle it is. It’s not a very good one, but an old man wrote it for me once and I can’t say I’m not flattered. Only the newcomers don’t know it by heart,” he added with a wink. The rhythm bellowed from the base of his throat and, for a moment, quieted the whole room. It was a hint, in itself. “Like the shine of Syna’s power, the color of Her namesake’s flower, the man who speaks so that he’s heard whose words are neither hard nor slurred.” They were talking again before he had begun; some could not be amused by anything, not even the happy cries of their favorite bartender. Yeller did not seemed to mind. A man at a booth raised a pair of fingers at him, so he reached under the bar and pulled out two more tall beer glasses. He filled them from the tap, slapped them on the table in front of Lucas, and then stole his half-full pint right from under his nose. He tipped it under the spigot and was topping it off as he shrugged to the pair of men in the corner. “Why don’t you deliver these drinks to those men, while you’re thinking about it?”

[Lucas Arias]

„I could tell you where your pride is“, Lucas claimed. „But it would be more fun to let you find it out for yourself as you don’t seem to have any idea. I’ll give you a hint though. It’s not in your chest. The weird thing you feel when you touch it is just your heartbeat. And your stomach is just demanding more food I’m afraid.“

He shrugged his shoulders and waited for the riddle. As he heard it, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes a little. It was a weird riddle. The shine of Syna’s power? The man definitely didn’t look like one of those sun loving goatboys that were commonly called Ethaefal, and he didn’t seem to suffer from jaundice either. And while he was speaking and being heard, Lucas wasn’t sure what that had to do with his name.

As he filled two more beer glasses, Lucas thought that his wish for more drinks was coming true, so he looked at the man incredulously when he asked him to deliver the drinks. Since when was he working in this pub?

Since he did need time to think about the riddle, the failed squire complied though and walked over to the men in the corner. „Your drinks“, he stated curtly and put the glasses down in front of them before he walked over to the bartender. „Your name is either ‚Yellow‘ which I doubt since you don’t have yellow hair and your skin looks fairly normal as well, or you are „Yeller“ because that’s what a man who wants to make sure everybody hears him does. I’d like to hear you yell at somebody, Yeller, and do your name justice.“

„By the way, why did you take my beer? It was still half full!“

[Liar]

“Half-empty, more like. Now it’s full.” Yeller grinned, sliding the topped-off mug at Lucas. He pulled his damp rag from his belt and wiped away the little slick that had been sloughed from the beer’s head in its crossing, and left it on the table. Nodding to a man who had approached the bar with three fingers raised, he continued to Lucas as he began to fill the order. “Yeller, Yellow. They sound pretty much the same, don’t they? Though you might ask around here if there’s anyone who’s called me Yellow and still has a tongue in his mouth.” With a wink, he knocked the first filled mug onto the table and began on the next. “But I never truly yell unless there’s trouble. If I lived up to my namesake every day, it’d lose its effect!” It took one more moment for the white foam to blossom just right in the glass, and then Yeller put it on the table and began on the last. But the countertop was slick, the beer’s brother unattended; they collided and tipped in a mess of noise, and the bartender looked up with a frown. “Petching benachag,” he muttered, then realized his ineloquence and added, “Petch.” Then he laughed, a loud and lively laugh that gave substance to his name and made a few patrons look twice in their direction. “You’ve got me saying your fairy-words, Pedant. Hey,” Whatever offense was taken by the name, Yeller wore a friendly smile as he waved to Lucas, the rag, and the dripping mess. Then he started started filling the order all over again. “Would you get that?”