Upon entering the tavern, Ghomarck removed his pointed hat. Thinning white hair flowed around his prominent eyebrows to join his full beard at collar level. Séa's letter had been signed, "Ghomarck of the circle, Royal Court of King Pharing of Omnius."

He looks like a wizard from a story book, the ones who do all the clever, magical things.

Pipe smoke thickened the dusky tavern air. Hunched, seated hummocks marked patrons who muttered woozily amongst themselves. The late hour and amount of mead consumed had bogged down previously lively dice games. Without calling for ale, Séa and Ghomarck settled at the table nearest the door.

Quavery candlelight accentuated deep creases in the wizard's face as he leaned forward across the eating-board. With gnarled knuckles he rapped the worn, pocked tabletop. In a subdued voice, he rasped, "By order of the King, we must—" He quieted even more. "—rescue a princess."

The young woman across from him set her helm on the table and folded armored arms. Séa drummed her fingers on the plating that covered her bicep, creating a tuneful accompaniment similar to rain striking a tin roof. "A princess?" Her voice rang clear in the dimly lit tavern.

"Shh!" The mage's eyes scanned the tavern interior. "Not so loud."

Doubt skewed the armored woman's face. She stage-whispered, "It sounds melodramatic, that's all. Do we even have any princesses around here? The King's a bachelor."

The wizard leaned farther forward. "I suppose that on this side of the border she's considered a comtessa or something. But she's important and she's being held against her will."

The woman's doubt reached her clear eyes, which began to narrow. "I guess I appreciate the invitation, Master Ghomarck, but I'm just a humble servant of the one-eyed god. This doesn't really sound like the sort of mission I went to school for. Plus, I'm supposed to take my turn with cow milking and butter churning next week."

Toward the end of her speech, her eyes widened and drifted downward to where a thin column of smoke rose. "Uh ..."

His nose wrinkled. "Egad. Is that a— Did you fart?"

Séa's lips compressed to a straight line. "No. The candle set your beard on fire."

Tendrils of rancid smoke wafted upward, only partially dispersed by the wizard's frantic swats at a smoldering patch of whitish chin hair.

Just then, the tavern door creaked, then slammed shut. With a flap of cloth and a puff of cool night air, a hooded figure whipped in and settled next to the armored woman. Dark eyes in an almond-shaped face gleamed for a moment in the dim light until deft hands twitched at her hood to cover her face in shadow. A wry alto voice announced, "Well, here I am." The hood twitched. "Ye gods. Did someone fart?"

"No, no, no." The wizard continued to wave smoke away.

Séa's light brows knitted as she eyed her uninvited benchmate. Besides the weather-stained black cloak, leather-clad knees protruded into visibility.

Ghomarck's lips curved upwards, revealing a well-browned jumble of teeth. "Welcome, Sir Fawk. Glad you could join us." Then his expression crumbled, and his own eyebrows scrunched as he regarded their new table companion. "Wait. You are Sir Fawk the Renowned? Slayer of Yarmond's Ogre? Bane of the Hag of Chislethwaite? And, if what I heard at the duke's table is correct, the region's most eligible bachelor?"

"Sir Fawk? Yes, yes. 'Tis I." The woman's voice danced, bright and expressive.

The knight's forehead wrinkled, but the outrageousness of the lie tied her tongue.

The wizard's eyebrows worked. "I see, I see. So, you are here in answer to my letter?"

The hood wagged up and down. "Absolutely."

Ghomarck's head wobbled in a figure eight, somewhere between no and yes. His frown remained fixed. "It's just that I was expecting ... well ... someone a bit ... taller."

Séa snapped her gaze back to the wizard. A grin surfaced unbidden to her lips, but she managed to stifle a bark of laughter. "Master Ghomarck, do you ever simply say what's on your mind, instead of going the long way 'round?"

She claiming to be Sir Fawk patted the unyielding armored shoulder next door. Callused but unwrinkled skin covered the digits that sprouted from the fingerless leather gloves. Her voice glided oratorically. "I rather agree with your sentiment, my friend. But, like the decantation of a fine wine, the wise one can't be hurried." She turned her cowled face to the wizard. "My dear Master Ghomarck, your hesitation is natural, but misplaced. You have simply neglected to consider that I might be," her voice hushed, "travelling in disguise."

The wizard hemmed, hawed, and harrumphed. "Oh. Quite. Hmm."

The tavern door burst open, and a burly man in a scarlet, tailed jacket and frilly cravat strode in, eyes roving the gloom and smoke of the common room. The hooded "Sir Fawk" dipped her cowl further down, as if to study her own lap. The man in scarlet bellowed, "Barkeep! Did some waif of a woman come skulking in here? Only a minute ago?"

The bar appeared unmanned, but it wasn't. The conical tip of a hat bobbed behind the flat wooden slab where one might expect the tender to hover. The hat marked the location of Kipsie the gnome, proprietor of the Brass Lass. His reedy, annoyed tenor called back, "Do I look like a watchdog?"

Ghomarck attempted to speak, but the ambient shouting drowned him out.

The newcomer bared his teeth and curled his many-ringed fingers into fists. A slender sword and glittering dagger adorned his belt. Plainer weapons bristled aplenty among the tavern's patrons. Only he, however, wore a coat adorned with embroidery, a cap decorated with feathers, and knee-high riding boots whose shiny leather had been tooled into floral swirls. "Bloody stubborn—" He broke off his own rant before it got going and snarled, "Got to do everything myself." After a parting glare at the tip of Kipsie's hat, he stalked around the tavern, peering at each face.

Séa flicked her eyes from the dandy to Ghomarck, who had begun to massage his own temples. She glanced at her seatmate.

And glanced again. From under the shadow of the hood glowed an overlarge jaw. Green skin covered it and orcish tusks curved upwards. "Whoa," breathed the knight.

"Back me up?" The orcish jaw didn't move much as the cowled woman wheedled. "Please?"

A sense of displacement from reality made Séa go slightly cross-eyed. Loud strangers and dubiously bold women aside, why am I here? she thought. Oh, yes. The letter. She snapped her head to the wizard. "Ghomarck, what's the full plan? At this rate we'll be here all night, what little remains of it."

"A moment, Lady Séa. It will quiet down in a moment." The wizard's eyes shifted here and there around the room.

The bulk of the angry aristocrat loomed up behind the wizard. Below his feathered cap, beads of sweat dotted his brow. His chin disappeared into his fluffy cravat and a fashionably tiny mustache quivered on his upper lip. His fists roved as if ready to brawl.

Séa uncrossed her metal-plated arms and laid them on the eating-plank by her sturdy helm. She laid cool eyes on the angry dandy and arched an eyebrow as if she addressed one of the younger acolytes. "Nothing to see here, citizen."

The scarlet-jacketed fellow's gaze riveted to her. His snarl faded, and a contrite note colored his reply. "I suppose not."

A swift cloud of puzzlement crossed Séa's mind. He listened to me? Me? She glanced down at her armored self. A pewter amulet in the shape of a war hammer rested on her chest. It was the symbol of her patron god, Torugg One-eye. The amulet's bland surface cast no reflections, but the room's candles and lamps created miniature dull echoes from every other scrap of the plate mail on her sturdy body. Maybe he mistook me for an actual knight.

The dandy spared the briefest of glances for the knight's hooded seat companion. His mouth dropped in a moue of disgust, and he took a step back. He muttered, "She's not here." He lurched for the exit. "Thrice-shelled trickster. Knavish doxy."

The moment the door banged shut, Ghomarck gushed, "Sir Fawk, by my word, that sudden facial transformation was deftly done. Such a sudden change could only be magical, yet I felt no stirring of the weave."

"Thank you, thank you. No magic involved." The hooded woman peeled off her orc mask and stuffed it away somewhere under her cloak. Her tones floated in innocent perplexity. "I wonder who that man was?"

Séa's eyebrows rode high on her forehead. "Never saw him before. I guess the smell of burnt beard repels bullies."

The unshadowed lower half of "Sir Fawk's" almond-shaped face split into a cheeky grin. "It is pretty rank. But now we can get down to business, yes?"

The knight heaved a sigh. "Yes, business, by all means. But Ghomarck, you're not seriously thinking this is the actual Sir Fawk, are you?"

The wizard stroked his beard, and in particular the chunk of it that had recently frizzled in the flame. He deliberately enunciated each syllable. "I don't care." He rapped the tavern table with his knuckles for emphasis. "This is a quest of utmost urgency, and the only thing that matters is if he – or she – is competent. And, of course, if he will do it."

"I am," cooed the hooded woman, "lightning in a bottle." Her voice pepped up. "So what are we doing and how much are you paying me?"

Séa threw up her hands. "So, you hire a strange woman because she appears at the right time and sits down with us? I grant you that just about anybody's better than Sir Fawk, but this is ridiculous." With a metallic clatter, Lady Séa grabbed her visored helm. "King's seal or not, I can't just leave the Priory. I'm going to bed." She began to unsit. Not to belabor knowledge obvious to knights, but whilst encumbered with plate mail, the process of unsitting requires modest planning and a modicum of patience.

The wizard winced. In a low, hasty voice, he said, "If you help, the King will fund the construction of a new Temple of Torugg."

The knight froze, then settled back to the bench in slow motion and with quieter armor clanks. Delicately, she placed her helm back on the tabletop and covered her pewter amulet with a metallic hand. "Torugg be praised." She pierced Ghomarck with the same steely look she had used to repel the aristocrat. "You might have mentioned that earlier."

"What about free agents like Sir Fawk?" chirped the woman. She nudged her hood back far enough to reveal a nose of olive tone that changed slope at the halfway point. Her shadowed eyes reflected in miniature the room's lanterns and candles. "I'm going to need at least two chests of gold to, you know, bestir myself."

"You can have half my share," Ghomarck said. "I don't know, volumetrically, how many chests the gold will occupy, and some of the reward may be in the form of gemstones or property."

Séa thought she detected a sparkle of interest in the woman's animated eyes, but the woman scoffed, "Meh. Maybe."

The lady paladin drummed metal-encased fingers on the tabletop and narrowed her eyes. "Chests? Isn't that a lot of treasure? Why does the King care so much? Who is this princess?"

The wizard's face drooped. "Chantelle of Mevia. It has been secret, but she and the King are betrothed. There is also a secret peace treaty between Omnius and Mevia. If the marriage is consummated, the agreement will come into force, and the Uncivil War will cease."

"Ah!" A sense of rightness chased all doubts from from Séa's mind and her cleft chin lifted.

"I'll take a share equal to yours, master wizard," said the hooded woman, "but I want half in advance."