[Routine warning. Primary system boredom levels have reached 73%. Risk of reckless actions to alleviate boredom: moderately high. Suggestion: find a complex mathematical puzzle or a particularly arrogant Piltovan to insult.]
The irony of having an artificial intelligence as your one true confidant is that it invariably knows you far too well. Eos was right. The past few weeks had been dangerously quiet, a sea of tedious normality. Professor Heimerdinger's visit had resulted in a 20% increase in our academic clientele and a corresponding 50% decrease in my sanity, thanks to the constant questions about "the application of chaos theory in the fermentation of kombucha". Life on the bridge was becoming predictable. And predictability, for a soul that has danced on the smoking ruins of forgotten empires, is the slowest and cruellest of poisons.
My only consolation came in the form of wood. In my room, leaning against the wall like a silent old friend, was my jian. To Morgana, it was just 'that wooden practice sword Azra'il has a strange sentimental attachment to'. She had no way of knowing that that piece of dark, polished wood, without edge or gleam, was older than any oak in Valoran. It had travelled with me, stored in the inventory of my soul, across countless lifetimes.
Its carved runes, so worn they were almost invisible, were not for protection; they were for memory. Every scratch was a battle won in a forgotten world, every nick a painful goodbye. Practising with it wasn't about fighting. It was about remembering who I am beneath all these disposable husks the universe insists on giving me. It was my only prayer, my only constant in an ocean of change.
The calm, of course, could not last. Chaos is the natural state of the universe, and it was merely taking a nap before deciding to break some furniture. It awoke with a piece of news brought by Rixa, our silent waitress whose ears seemed to extend throughout the entire network of Zaun's sewers and alleyways.
"Bad news," she said, approaching the counter as I was polishing a glass to perfection, a meditative task. Her expression, normally a stone-faced neutral, was a shade darker. "There's a new chem-baron looking to prove himself. An idiot named Grime. He took over Smeech's business after an… 'industrial accident'."
"I see," I said, not stopping my polishing. "'Industrial accident' being Zaunite slang for 'I pushed him into a vat of particularly corrosive chemicals'."
"Exactly," she confirmed, without a hint of irony. "Word in the Sump is that he thinks Vander's 'Truce' is making the people soft. Thinks we're up here selling bottled Piltovan peace, calming their fighting spirit with chamomile tea. He wants to make an example to show there's new power in the area."
"Thank you for the information, Rixa. I'll add 'possible attack by an up-and-coming mobster' to today's problem list, right below 'we've run out of brown sugar'."
Confirmation that the boredom was about to come to a spectacular end came in the form of four children bursting through the door in the middle of the afternoon, with Vi at the lead, her face serious and her fists clenched. They looked like a small, disorganised army of crusaders.
"He's coming," Vi said, breathless. "Grime. He's gathered his thugs. Vander's on the other side of the Sump, sorting out a mess in the sumps. He doesn't know what Grime's planning. But we heard."
Powder, at her side, was holding one of her new inventions, a device that looked like a metal egg with spider legs. "I can help! This thing lets out a sticky smoke that clogs up the lungs and causes a terrible itch!"
"And I can… distract them with my devastating charm and sarcasm?" Mylo suggested, with less confidence than usual.
Claggor just crossed his enormous arms over his chest, which in itself was a statement of intent.
They hadn't come to ask for help. They'd come to offer it. Four little soldiers, ready to defend the tea shop that had, against all odds, become a second home to them. The gesture was so absurdly touching that it irritated me deeply.
"I appreciate your suicidal enthusiasm," I said, placing the glass I was polishing on the counter. "But why don't you all sit at that table over there and try Eddie's new batch of gingerbread biscuits? He got the baking powder ratio wrong, and they're a bit… explosive. The last thing I need today is to have to clean children's blood off my wooden floor. It's a dreadfully difficult stain to get out, especially from oak."
"We're not going anywhere," Vi retorted, as stubborn as a Freljordian mule. She positioned herself near the door, a small guard dog with pink hair and the determination of a mountain.
I sighed. Morgana, watching the scene from the kitchen, just shot me a look that said 'be gentle with them, or I'm putting that stew I made in your tea tomorrow'. I decided not to argue. At least the impending fight would have a loyal audience.
They arrived at dusk, like cockroaches emerging from the cracks when the light fades. About eight of them, led by a man who personified all of Zaun's worst and loudest clichés. Grime was a mountain of poorly distributed muscle, augmented with a chem-tech arm that hissed, leaked a greenish vapour, and looked as if it had been assembled from the leftovers of an industrial plumbing job. He exuded the arrogance of a man who had recently discovered that being the strongest in a room full of weaklings made him, in his limited mind, a king.
The few Piltovan customers still in the shop went pale and fled like frightened rats from a sinking ship. Our own staff braced for the worst. Lucien was as white as a ghost, Eddie hid behind a stack of flour sacks, Kaeli wielded a rolling pin like a war club, and Rixa simply picked up a heavy glass flagon. A united front of panic and determination.
Grime entered, contempt plain on his face. "So this is the famous 'Truce'," he sneered, his voice deep and oily. "Where Zaun's dogs learn to sit and drink tea with their topside masters. Vander's getting old and sentimental." He slammed his metal fist on the counter, making the cups rattle. "From today, this establishment pays a new protection tax. To make sure 'accidents' with flammable chemicals don't happen."
Vi moved to stand in front of Powder. Before any of them could do something stupid and brave, I moved. I came out from behind the counter, picking up my wooden jian, which I had brought from my room and left leaning nearby. I held it casually, as if it were a walking stick, the tip gently touching the floor.
"I'm terribly sorry," I said, my voice sounding calm and dreadfully bored amidst the rising tension. "Our insurance policy does not cover extortion by third-rate thugs with noisy plumbing where their arms should be. Please remove yourselves before I am forced to redecorate this place with your teeth."
Grime laughed, a short, unpleasant sound. "Get the little girl," he ordered two of his henchmen.
Morgana, watching from the kitchen threshold, didn't even blink. I could feel her concern, but I knew, amusingly, that it wasn't for me. It was for them. She knew they were about to have a very, very bad day, and her compassionate soul was probably already mourning the pain they were about to feel.
What followed was not a bar brawl. A brawl implies an exchange of blows, chaos, a mess of violence. What happened was a lesson. A demonstration of applied physics in the field of humiliation, with a live audience.
The first goon lunged, a brute with fists the size of hams. He threw a clumsy, telegraphed punch. I didn't step back; I stepped sideways, inside his guard, used the handle of the jian to parry his arm outwards, and placed my foot behind his heel. He tripped over himself, propelled by his own inertia, and went down face-first with a dull thud that made the floor vibrate.
The customers hiding behind the tables stared, shocked. The children, speechless.
The second came with a knife, a rusty blade that probably gave you tetanus just by looking at it. He attacked with a low thrust. Instead of blocking, I spun, used the wooden blade of the jian to pin his wrist against my forearm, continued the spin using his momentum, and disarmed him with a wrist-lock that cracked loudly in the shop's silence. He howled and fell to his knees, clutching his broken wrist.
"See, children?" I said over my shoulder to Vi and the others, my voice calm and didactic. "Inertia. He supplied all the force. I just gave it a new, more painful direction to go."
I wasn't fighting; I was dancing. And they were my clumsy, furious partners. I moved with a fluidity that did not belong to a child's body, an economy of motion born from a thousand lifetimes of practice. Every step, every dodge, was calculated. It was different from anything Vi had ever seen. The street-fighting of Zaun was about brutality, about taking your opponent down as quickly and violently as possible. What I was doing was… art. A terribly efficient art.
Two more came at once. I leaped onto a table, my lightness surprising them. As one of them tried to grab me, I used the jian to strike the pressure point behind his knee, making his leg buckle. He fell awkwardly into his companion, and the two of them rolled on the floor in a tangled heap of confused limbs.
"Observe, Vi," I called out, my voice still calm. "His mistake was being off-balance. He put all his weight on one leg. Never give your opponent a foundation to topple."
Grime, furious and humiliated at seeing his men being dismantled by a "little girl with a stick", finally joined the fray. He charged, his chem-tech arm hissing. He was pure brute force, every punch capable of breaking stone. I was precision. I dodged a punch that cratered a tabletop, slipped under a sweeping blow, and used the jian not to block, but to strike. The wooden tip hit the joints of his metal elbow, then the articulation of his shoulder. They were strikes that would do no damage to a normal man, but on his augmentations, they resonated, sending painful shockwaves through his system.
He roared in frustration and tried to grab me. I let him. The moment his metal fingers closed on my shoulder, I yielded, spun inwards, ducked under his arm, locked the wooden sword across the back of his neck, and used his own weight to unbalance him, forcing him into a position where he was almost on his knees. I was completely in his blind spot, the jian pressed against his carotid artery.
"Wood," I whispered in his ear, my voice now glacial, devoid of any mockery. "Imagine if it were steel. Now, take your… employees… and get out of my sight. And spread the word in every dark hole in Zaun. The protection for this shop does not come from Vander. It comes from me. And my patience is far, far shorter than his."
I released him with a shove. He stumbled forward, turned to look at me, his face a mask of shock, fear, and humiliation. He barked an order to his fallen men, and they scrambled away like the dogs they were, leaving behind a trail of destruction and shattered dignity.
The silence in the shop was absolute, broken only by the hissing sound of the kettle, which had reached its ideal temperature.
And it was in this exact moment of post-battle calm that the door burst open, and Vander and his men stormed in, ready for war. They stopped abruptly, staring at the wreckage, the shocked customers, the dumbfounded children, and me, who was calmly wiping a speck of dust from my wooden jian.
"What… what happened here?" Vander's voice was a thunderclap of confusion.
Mylo, his jaw still slack, was the first to find his voice. "The Singer… she… she wiped the floor with them. With a stick."
Vander's gaze moved from his children, to the wreckage, to me, and back again. The worry on his face morphed into a deep, shocked respect. He had come to protect an ally and had discovered, to his surprise, that the 'child' was an impenetrable fortress.
I shrugged, walking back to the counter as if nothing had happened. "The rubbish came to try and collect itself," I said, putting the jian back in its place of honour against the wall. "I just showed it the way out. Anyone for a tea to calm the nerves? I think we've all earned a round, on the house."
Vander's protection was a useful shield. Comfortable. It kept the flies away. But there is a lesson I have learned over a thousand lives: peace that is given by others can be taken by others. The only peace that lasts is the one you forge with your own hands. That night, they hadn't seen an immortal cultivator or a master of a thousand weapons. They had seen an eleven-year-old barista with a stick. And for the first time, I think they understood that certain cups of tea come with a very clear warning: do not disturb.