The man howled as a chair leg caught him in the mouth, splitting his lower lip and sending a shower of blood flying, but he lunged towards her again. Chih stepped back, because whatever was happening was well beyond their scant authority as a historian or a spiritual adviser, and a firm hand grabbed the sleeve of their robe, hauling them back and towards the curtained doorway to the kitchen.

“Welcome to the riverlands, cleric,” said the waitress with grim amusement. “You need to learn when to let your tea go.”

She dragged Chih into the kitchen where a tired cook was chopping up a thumb of ginger while occasionally stirring a large pot of boiling rice.

“What’s happening?”

The waitress only rolled her eyes, pouring them a fresh cup of tea.

“If the big fucker wins, we’re probably in trouble, but that’s not going to happen.”

Chih took the tea—smoky and dark like they had been hoping for—and peeked through the curtains at the mayhem sweeping the front room.

The big man and the young lady had smashed their way through one of the tables and two more chairs, leaving the floor littered with wreckage. The man clutched his arm and reeled back to the center of the inn, bawling curses that echoed off the high rafters. To Chih, this would be the perfect time to make themself scarce, but the young lady only closed the distance, her fists clenched.

“What impudence!” she said, with the kind of diction that could get away with saying things like impudence. “People who abuse those smaller and weaker than themselves deserve the lowest, cruelest halls of the dead king!”

He took another swing at her, a right hook that wound all the way back and came forward with enough force to level a city. It would have broken the young lady’s skull to pieces if she was there when it landed, but of course she wasn’t. In a swirl of silk like a storm, the young lady leaped into the air, throwing the end of her stole over a rafter and lofting herself up like an acrobat.

The man, propelled by his own uninterrupted rhythm, grunted as he lurched forward, and delicately, the young lady’s pointed foot pushed off his shoulder, swinging her back. When she swung forward again, it was with all her weight behind her heels, directed perfectly at the man’s head.

He went down like a felled tree, practically shaking the inn to its foundations. The young lady calmly let go of her stole, coming to land with a feather’s grace on his chest. Her face was still but there was something restless about her eyes that made Chih think of hunting hawks, of endless hunger and winter-sharp ferocity.

“So,” Chih found themself saying, “do we clap, or do we run?”

The waitress patted them on the shoulder.