Page 17 of Sun Elves of Ardani
“She’s still angry,” Kadaki said to Roshan.
“Yes,” he said disinterestedly.
“It’s not as if I was rude to her. I was perfectly calm.”
Roshan waved to someone else. Kadaki knew he was ignoring her on purpose. She’d discussed the Kleo incident with him many times already.
She struggled to bite her tongue for several seconds, and eventually failed. “It’s just that she was saying she was using magic, and she wasn’t,” she said with an irritated fling of her hand. “She was lying to everyone. Do they want to be lied to? I don’t get it.”
“Yes, some people want to be lied to,” Roshan said. “Let it go, Kadaki.”
“It’s foolishness.”
“I know.”
They went quiet and walked a little faster as they passed the area that had become known as the Ysuran quarter. Here, for the stretch of the dozen or so buildings occupied by Ysurans and their various businesses and gathering places, it was quieter, though no less populated. The Ysurans were less rowdy than Ardanians. They preferred, to put it delicately, private socializing of the one-on-one variety, and they preferred their hallucinogenic concoction, dream, over alcohol.
In the very first alley they passed, Kadaki spotted a sun elf man and woman in a passionate embrace, the man’s head buried in the crook of the woman’s neck while she palmed his groin. Kadaki looked away, annoyed that she was suddenly thinking of Neiryn again.
They kept their distance from the elves, but Kadaki stared when she spotted a few glassy-eyed men lounging on the porch of the quarter’s lounge. One of them looked in her direction, but seemed to stare through her, not really seeing her.
They always had that look to them when they were using dream. The dilated, staring eyes. The perpetual vague smile. The impression that they were definitely seeing and feeling things that were not real.
They were uncomfortable to look at. There was something about them that always struck her as mildly alarming in a way that drinkers didn’t. She averted her eyes and kept her head down until they’d passed the Ysuran quarter.
A grunt in an alleyway caught Kadaki’s attention. A group of people were huddled in the darkness. There was some kind of scuffle, then one of them was shoved violently against a wall, his back hitting it with an audible, painful-sounding thump.
Kadaki felt a spark of alarm, thinking it was another group of Ysurans attacking the locals. But when one of them produced a mage torch that lit the alley in low light, she saw that the attackers were Ardanian and the one with his back to the wall was a sun elf.
Kadaki nudged Roshan. “Is that…?”
“The mage,” Roshan finished, dismayed.
Eliyr was being held against the wall by none other than Sergio, the smith, one of the loudest critics of the Ysuran occupation. He was also a member of the council, which gave his opinions extra weight in many people’s eyes. Kadaki had found that he was the sort of person who could inspire a group to do things they probably shouldn’t, especially if they’d been drinking.
There were no flames in Eliyr’s hands yet. The Ysurans were surprisingly disciplined with their use of fire. They didn’t often wield their magic offensively unless given no other choice. Even if he did, he would have trouble fighting off so many of them at once. None of them had weapons—it was illegal for Ardanians to carry them while inside the town—but they had fists and boots, which could do plenty of damage on their own.
Kadaki watched Eliyr’s eyes dart between the humans surrounding him. He was probably weighing the pros and cons of just letting them beat him against escalating a fight that might cause further conflict between Ysurans and Ardanians in town.
Sergio seemed to be making the same mental calculations, actually.
Sergio’s hands jerked on Eliyr’s coat, slamming him against the wall again. Eliyr made the mistake of flinching, and the effect that small display of weakness had on the Ardanians was immediately noticeable. Kadaki could almost see them growing more confident, more eager for violence.
Kadaki started toward them. The humans’ voices became clearer as she came closer.
“What are you doing on the Ardanian side of town? Looking for victims?” said one of them.
“Where’d you get that scar?” said another.
“Must have made a mistake while shaving.”
“Maybe he’d like a matching one on the other side.”
“Enough,” Kadaki said. They all turned to look in her direction, and the energy of the group instantly deflated. Eliyr’s eyes narrowed on her.
“Lady Witch,” Sergio said. He gave her a cool, appraising look. He had never been outwardly disrespectful toward her, but Kadaki thought that might only be because of her association with Roshan. Sergio considered himself a follower of the god of justice, Paladius, who happened to dislike both magic and elves. “I didn’t know you were on the side of the elves. Is that something to do with being a witch? Magic folk stick together with magic folk?”
“I don’t see any sides here,” Kadaki said. “I see a group of drunk, cowardly men risking punishment for the entire town.”
