“Our taskers aren’t worried all this wine and humping like rabbits will dull their ‘Savages’ on the field?”

“As long as they can stand they’ll serve their purpose. And if they can’t you’ll watch ’em hurled at the Sicclunan front line like rocks. The taskers and whoever thought this whole machine up, they know their business.”

Evie accepts this, and though questions still form in her mind she leaves them unspoken for now.

“I can’t believe any of us will live past tomorrow, not from what I’ve seen. What I see.”

Spud-Bar throws back the entire cup of wine, ending it with a single gulp.

“It’s the rare blade that goes unchipped round here, to be sure,” they admit. “But many will live. Many have lived far past one battle.”

“Oh? Like who?”

Spud-Bar waves their cup above their heads, motioning behind Evie, who turns to look.

They sit apart from the others, around a table on a raised platform almost like a small stage. The loudest one is a stout man who must remember his fiftieth year with an increasing haze, with a great barrel of a torso and the legs required to prop it up. His mouth is more mustache than lips, and he both laughs and speaks with just the right corner of his mouth, as if the other side is paralyzed. He’s bouncing one of the chiffon-draped young men on his knee, urging him to drink from the mustached one’s cup.

Seated beside him is a squat, ugly woman with tawny hair cut into the shape of a bowl. She’s laughing like an ass brays while cradling another one of the sculpted young men in her lap. The first thing Evie notices about her is that she’s missing her left hand. The stump has been fastened off with leather straps. Four slim dagger blades and one the size of a stiletto simulate the five fingers she’s lost. It’s obviously meant to be a joke, though Evie has no doubt it’s one that’s turned lethal more than once, especially judging from the dried, crusty dark flecks still clinging to the edges of most of the blades.

The only one of them seemingly uninterested in the provided companionship is hunched over the end of the table, cradling a pint cup made of bone. He’s almost the size of the mustached one. The large, scarred arms that stretch from the sleeveless holes of the cloak he wears speak of time spent pulling sky carriages or loading ships at the port. Long tendrils of string curls fall from beneath the cloak’s hood. The only other feature Evie can discern is a bulbous nose and chin, as if they were features glued onto a comical puppet fashioned from sack.

“Who are they?” Evie asks.