“Yes?” I said, with a little bit of a nervous tone.

“That’s my niece Meg,” he said, emphasizing the word niece. “My sister’s only child. She is not a whore. If you treat her like one you’ll be lucky if it’s the guard that deals with you. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” I said quickly. “And I’m not rude to women. Where I come from most people think men who do that are scum.”

“Then we’ll have no trouble,” he said with satisfaction.

“None from me,” I agreed, raising my glass and taking a little sip from it. Then I started eating. The food was good. It wasn’t fancy, but the bread was still soft and the stew was well cooked if light on seasoning.

“This is good,” I said after putting away about half of it. Another few men had walked in and sat at a table in the meantime. The bartender had taken them mugs and then gone back behind the bar.

“Glad you like it,” he said with a smile. “My wife is the cook.”

“Well, my compliments to the cook,” I replied, smiling as well. “Getting back to what we were talking about, anything else I should know about Parisi? Anybody who might need help doing something?”

He thought for a minute, and I took another bite of the stew. It didn’t seem to bother him that I was eating while we talked.

“Well, you never know when the Mayor might want something done for the town, bandits or monsters or such.” He gave me the once-over. “You don’t seem like you’d be all that helpful with bandits or monsters.”

Monsters? I thought with an internal ‘gulp.’ Monsters are a thing here?

“I’m not a soldier or anything, no,” I said, nodding. “What kind of monsters do you have around here? Just curious.”

“The usual,” he said. “Wolves in the forest, maybe the occasional wildcat or a bear.”

I relaxed a little bit. Those didn’t sound very monsterish. Maybe it was just a translation th…

“Besides that, goblins in the hills past the north end of the town. And slimes, of course, like anywhere. Nothing bigger than that, not nearby anyway.”

Goblins. Slimes. Uh huh. So much for not very monsterish.

“What…” I had to swallow and took a drink of the beer to cover it. “What kind of goblins?”

“The regular kind,” he said with a confused look. “Nasty little buggers.”

“Where I’m from we haven’t had goblins for a long time, just stories,” I said, thinking frantically. “What are yours like?”

He laughed. “That must be nice. They don’t have the nerve to come anywhere near Parisi, of course. But people who go hunting or looking for herbs have to be careful. As for what they’re like, they’re ugly little bastards…” He gestured about waist-high. “…who live in caves or under big tree roots where they’ve dug out dens. They can talk, but almost none of them can sing, and a good thing too. They don’t use weapons other than rocks and clubs, but they breed fast. Where you see one there’s ten you don’t.”

I was a bit thrown by the idea of singing goblins. It took me a second to realize that he meant not many of them could Resonate - in other words, they mostly couldn’t use magic. Otherwise they sounded like goblins from umpteen different fairy tales and/or popular culture stories.

“Okay, that sounds like the stories,” I said. “What about the slimes? Regular slimes too?”

“Yes,” he answered, still looking amused. “Little balls of goop about so big?” He held up his hands, cupped. They might have held a basketball. “Mostly hunters bring back the green ones around Parisi.”

I wanted to ask about what ‘the green ones’ were like, what the other kinds were, and why hunters brought them back to the town, but I didn’t want to look too ignorant. At least not right away.

“Sounds like it’s pretty safe around here,” I said.

“It is, so long as the guards keep the bandits down,” he replied, reaching for a glass to polish.

“Get a lot of those?” I asked after another big spoonful of stew. I was almost done with the bowl, I realized with surprise.

“Depends on the season. It’ll be harvest time soon.” He looked aggravated as he considered this. “They’ll rob the farmers if they can catch them out with money from selling their crops, or ambush the caravans that move around trading in the fall.”

“Sounds bad,” I said, frowning to show I wasn’t a fan of bandits either. “Guards can’t always catch them?”

He made a sweeping gesture. “Parisi is surrounded by forests. It’s a great place for a village with the roads and the river, but it’ll take a hundred years to get it big enough to have the people to cut down all those trees. Until then the bastards can hide within a few miles of here and if they’re not dumb enough to have fires in the daytime, nobody’d ever know they were there.”

Deforestation isn’t a thing here, I thought. Or at least, nobody realizes that it’s bad if you get carried away.

“You know a lot about bandits,” I said. “Were you a soldier?” Something about him had a bit of a fighting-man aura.

He laughed. “I was, yes. I retired and the Duke, Powers bless him, gave me a little pension. I used it to start this place.”

I realized, again with surprise, that I’d finished the food and the beer. Fortunately it wasn’t that strong, or maybe my new body was more capable of holding its liquor than my old one probably was. I dug into my pocket and came out with another copper. “Another beer, please. And keep the change. Sorry, what’s your name? I should have asked.”

“You can call me Keeper,” he said. When I looked confused, he laughed again. “My family’s been innkeepers for a long time. That’s really my name, Peter Keeper. My older brother inherited the family inn, so I started this one.” He grabbed my mug and filled it up again, snapping up the copper and putting it in the box.

I saluted him with the mug, happy with how well I was getting on so far. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Keeper. You keep a nice inn. I’m Chris.”

“Thank you kindly, Chris,” he said. He looked in my bowl and saw it was scraped clean. “More to eat? You’re a good customer so far, I’d have Meg bring you more bread on the house if you like.”

“I’m good,” I said. I don’t know if it was the beer or the food but I was feeling pretty full. I’d have to nurse this mug, but it didn’t feel right to be asking him questions if I wasn’t drinking. I was a little sad that Meg didn’t have an excuse to come back out, though.

“Well, you let me know if you want anything else. We probably…” I don’t know what he was going to say, because suddenly two large men, each wearing what was either a big knife or a short sword, walked through the door, talking loudly and cheerfully. A smaller man wearing fancier clothes than I’d seen so far was behind them. Keeper stopped talking and shook his head.

“Excuse me, Chris,” he said, sounding irritated. I just nodded and he went over to the table where the three men had sat down.

“What’ll it be?” he said, his voice neutral.

“Your best wine, your best beef, and your best wench!” said one of the men loudly. He was a big bald-headed fellow who just screamed ‘bullying thug.’

“I’ve told you before, Garlack, we don’t have wenches here. If you want that you can go to the Pub. And if you want fancy, you can go to the Duke’s Arms.” Keeper sounded like he’d dealt with these three before and hadn’t enjoyed it. I was willing to bet they were with the caravan that had been coming behind me.

“Pah,” said the other large man. “We’ve been coming through Parisi for years and I don’t care that the tables are nicer and the plates are pewter at the Duke’s Arms, your food is better.”

“Thank you,” said Keeper, at least somewhat more pleasantly. “We’ve stew on, bread fresh this morning, and there’s a pork roast with potatoes that should be about done. If you want wine, I have a good strong red from Chagny.”

The two big men - Maybe bodyguards? - ordered the stew. I couldn’t hear the smaller man, he didn’t bellow every word. Keeper got their drinks, then walked back and stuck his head in the kitchen. I was sitting at the end of the bar not far from the door, and I could have sworn I heard him say something about, “Miranda, you bring…” before he returned to his spot behind the bar.

“That the merchant from the caravan?” I tilted my head toward the table with the trio.

“Yes,” said Keeper, still looking a bit irritated. “He spends money, but he’s had those two on his heels for years and they think they’re the biggest frogs in this pond. Best steer clear of them.”

“They ever start trouble?” I said in a hushed voice. Tavern brawls were all well and good in a tabletop RPG, but in real life they tended to get you concussed with a chair or stabbed.

“More than once some local got too much beer in him and went outside for a fight,” he said quietly. “But if you mind your business, they shouldn’t bother you.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m not looking for a fight.” I took a drink of the beer. It was kind of growing on me.

“You’re not equipped for one, either,” he said, some of the humor returning to his voice. “Not unless you’re a Song Mage in disguise.”

“You got me,” I said, smiling and hopefully not sounding too nervous. “You and Guardsman John both figured it out.”

He laughed, his face once more quite cheerful. “Well, don’t I feel better knowing that. They start anything, you let them have what for, all right?”

Once more, I saluted him with my mug. “My pleasure.”

We chatted about nothing in particular for a minute. I was trying to figure out how to get him to give me a lead on some other ways to make money that didn’t involve bandits, monsters, or shoveling something heavy and/or disgusting when Meg strolled out of the kitchen carrying a big platter loaded with plates.

“Damn it, I told her…” muttered Keeper, suddenly looking very tense. I could see that his grip had gone tight on the mug he was cleaning, like he was worried. Or like he was about to whack somebody upside the head with it.

Meg approached the table with the three men, not exactly sashaying, but looking pretty casual. “Here’s your food,” she said, starting to set plates down on the table.

“I thought you said you didn’t have wenches!” said Garlack or Garlic or whatever his name was. His volume had not moderated one bit. “Is this that skinny slip of a girl who was here last year?” His eyes were roaming up and down Meg’s nicely curved form in a way that would have gotten a drink thrown in his face in a bar back in America.

“That’s my niece,” said Keeper, not quite bellowing but with steel in his own voice. “She’s family, not a wench.”

“Not my family,” said Garlack with a crude snort.

Then he reached out and swatted Meg on the behind with a loud ‘clap.’

Meg let out a shocked sound somewhere between “Ow!” and “Oh!” and dropped the platter, which fortunately she had just finished emptying. Garlack let out a bellowing laugh. Meanwhile, I could have sworn I heard Keeper let out an honest to God growl behind me.

I heard him move and suddenly he was next to Garlack with something that looked like a billy club. His arm was drawn back to bash the jerk’s head in, but Garlack had apparently been expecting this and swung a long, heavily muscled arm and caught Keeper in the gut before he could bring the club down. Keeper folded like a book, falling to the floor and making a retching noise.

Then he got up and gave Keeper a solid kick in the ass, which was all he could reach with the man curled up like a baby. “Too slow, old man. You didn’t want people enjoying her, you should have kept her in the kitchen!”

Meg was crying incoherently and had fallen to her knees beside her uncle, trying to help him. The whole thing had happened so fast I didn’t even know what to think, let alone what to do. I was just staring, open-mouthed. This got Garlack’s attention for some reason.

“Got a problem, boy? Going to come rescue this damsel in distress?” He stepped over Keeper and put his hand in Meg’s beautiful blonde hair. The braid was tight and she let out a whimper when he worked his fingers in. “Tavern wenches are tavern wenches, boy, she’s not worth your blood.” He tried to sound friendly, but the sneer on his face told me he was really just mocking me.

Nobody had moved, which meant nobody was going to go for the guards. Garlack might beat Keeper to within an inch of his life. Or just to death. This was not my world and apparently he didn’t give a damn about what might happen if he did. I was too terrified to so much as blink, but then Meg let out another sound of pain and something inside me… exploded.

“Let her go and get out,” I said, standing to face him. My voice didn’t break, thank God.

“Or what?” Garlack looked even more amused at this.

Yeah. Or what? I’m a fucking Song Mage. Nobody’s singing, everybody acts like they’re few and far between, There has to be something. Something I can do!

“Or I’ll sing you a song,” I said. I winced inside. Where the Hell did that come from? I had no idea how to even use my power, let alone knowing whether it would do anything. This wasn’t even a bluff, it was just suicide.

He roared with laughter. “Oh, the Song Mage is going to sing! I’m so sorry, Master Mage, I didn’t know!” He sort of idly kicked Keeper again, then slung Meg down on top of him by her hair. She screamed and then let out a choking sob when she hit the floor. “But I guess I’ll get what’s coming to me now, won’t I?”

That thing that had exploded inside of me started to glow red-hot.

And it began to… hum. Inside my head. It wanted out.

Almost too fast to follow my internal vision flashed over my character sheet. Shadows might scare him, if it was night, but it wasn’t, and I didn’t know what else they could do.

Domain: Thought.

The words were huge in my mind’s eye. I held out my hand toward him, unconsciously going full Jedi Master, and let that hum into my voice, filling it with Breath.

Slow Thoughts, I whispered inside, trying to reach out and do… something… to his mind. To the silver river of thought I could almost feel moving through his head once I started to sing.

Garlack opened his mouth to laugh, but then froze. His eyes went glassy and his jaw slackened. He looked like somebody’d shot him up with about a pint of Thorazine.

The room went absolutely still.