“Ah, actually, given that it was my tea, I feel that I have cause to be upset here as well,” they said, approaching the tense pair. “Why don’t you let the young miss go get us both some more tea, and then I can help you get cleaned up?”

Up close, the man was even larger than he looked from a distance, but Chih ignored their instinctive urge to pull back. Their shaved head and indigo robes screamed cleric in almost every corner of the empire, and no one really needed to know that the Singing Hills abbey was more about history than it was about religion and common aid.

“Why don’t you get us a round of dark smoky tea, my dear?” Chih continued brightly, turning to the waitress and ignoring the man’s glower. “Something nice and hot, and I’ll get this fine man cleaned up.”

The miner’s grasp loosened on the waitress’s wrist, and Chih was just congratulating themself on a neat job when the man turned and shoved them hard in the chest. Chih fell back against one of the tables, the hard edge jabbing painfully into the small of their back.

“Mind your own damned business, stinking jackal-cleric,” he snarled, his face going red, and Chih was just beginning to calculate how very badly they might have played this when the young lady in pale blue slammed to her feet.

“How dare you!” she cried, her voice like a clarion chime. “How dare you lay hands on a young girl who only tripped, and again, how dare you abuse a cleric, a holy person!”

Chih could practically feel the situation slip sideways on them. If the man wasn’t going to be swayed by the kindly intervention of a cleric, the chances he could be moved by a young woman with only outrage on her side were very low.

“Shut up,” the man snarled, turning towards her with a maddened gleam in his eye. “Shut up, shut your fucking mouth—”

“Miss,” Chih said urgently, “perhaps it would be best if—”

“What barbaric manners, what lack of respect!” the girl said, unheeding. “The beasts of the field act more correctly than you do, and—”

Chih barely sidestepped as the man roared with fury and charged, and whatever good intentions they might have had were soundly ruined as they tripped over a stool and landed flat on their rear. Above them, Almost Brilliant shrilled in panic, and Chih was just regaining their feet when the slender young woman picked up a chair and threw it straight into her attacker’s face.