Now she sat sweating and drunk and hating the inside of this bar more than the road she’d crawled down to get inside. She hated the shriveled bartender and the sickly way he rubbed his hands together as he puttered around the tables. She hated the ceaseless wind outside, clapping the tavern’s shutters against the brick. She hated the rotten, pestilent stench of mushrooms pervading every crack and pore of this town. She hated the huge framed poster hanging over the mantel depicting a dark, gangly creature she’d never seen. The shape seemed to shift slightly, its bony shoulders rising and falling, its ugly face contorted in a snarl. Above the moving image, bold letters proclaimed:

HELP DESTROY THE DREDGER MENACE

REPORT ANY SIGHTING TO A CONSTABLE

Most of all, she hated the incessant gurgling grunts issuing from the man opposite her as he shuffled and shuffled and threw Celdia onto the table’s center. Made her want to pop his fucking eyeballs out.

Four, five.

Anji pressed her fingers tighter to the cards. An old deck with chipped, greasy edges. Smoke hung rank in the stuffy air, stinging at her eyes, creeping through the rafters, into the long-silent kitchen behind the bar. She scratched at her cheek, adding a layer of filth to the blood still caked underneath her nails.

I could afford a bath after this hand, she thought, blinking at the blurry duo opposite with cards held before them, at the grungy sod staring her down. Should probably buy one for him too.

Best not count your fish before pulling in the net, sprout.

More fatherly wisdom. She pictured him hunched over their little table, varnished deck in hand, in the quiet hours after her mother had gone to bed. His mischievous grin as he taught her how to count cards—strictly academic, of course. Her mother would never have approved. Anji pulled her coat tighter despite the sweltering fire. The sharp scent of boiled leather racked her nose and her breath came a bit easier.

“Final draw,” the grungy sod said. “Come on, boy, you in or out?”

Anji narrowed her eyes, feigning confusion—mostly feigning. Her hand twitched to her rough-shorn hair, but she stilled it. Somewhere along her mad dash north she’d gotten the bright idea to shave her head to look more like a stableboy and less like the girl who’d shoved a letter opener through a king’s throat, though without a mirror she couldn’t be sure if the change would be enough to fool anyone searching for her. She seemed to have gotten lucky with the Hammered Smith’s few patrons, all of whom appeared well past even Anji’s state of drunkenness, but she’d nearly corrected the man calling her a boy. The word floated to her lips, but she caught it like an eel in her fingers.

Keep it together, Anji.