Chapter Text
"Made from genuine colossus eel, this, you won't find better anywhere in the eight oceans, and you know -"
Seonghwa squinted at the thin, grey cord being brandished in his face.
"Looks like plain old d-donkey leather," he slurred dismissively, waving it aside.
Yeosang wasn't a man to let his mercantile spirit be dashed by such a petty objection.
"It's not about what it looks like, is it? With eelskin around your neck, you're sworn safe from sorcel-singers."
Seonghwa cawed raucously.
"Sorcel-singers? Sorcel-singers? I'm already sworn safe from them because - they - don't - exist." He punctuated his last words with emphatic thumps on the iron-ringed cask between them. Yeosang tilted his head.
"Many a brave rogue would disagree with you there."
"Have you ever heard one?"
"I couldn't. I'm always wearing my necklace, you see," Yeosang replied mildly.
Seonghwa choked on his clank of hollands, apparently speechless with laughter.
By the Empress, he's hocused... Wooyoung thought with a smirk.
"How much?" he asked.
"Three cobs. But in honour of the happy day, I'll let you have it for two."
"You're a rattler if you waste good coin on such stretches for brats," Seonghwa mumbled sleepily, settling back against the whitewashed wall and letting his eyes close. Wooyoung ignored him and opened his purse, fumbling for the golden discs with a difficulty that showed he was none too sober himself. Still, why should he be? Seonghwa's wedding deserved a spree, and his brother would be far too busy in his marriage bed to want to leave the harbour for a sennight or more. Wooyoung could be as crawsick as he dared get by sun-up, and nobody to answer to but himself.
"Trading with slimey slubbers like that'll give you warts," someone sneered behind him as he slipped the trinket on. Wooyoung didn't know the singer, but he recognised the song. The hand that pulled his dagger from his boot didn't hesitate, and he had it at the man's thick neck in seconds.
"Say that again and warts'll be the least of your damned worries, dunghill!"
"Trouble?"
Mingi's deep, reassuring voice at his side.
"This cull wants to start some."
Wooyoung breathed heavily, heart thumping with the thrill of conflict.
"Tavern rules. No trouble in here. Be merry or be gone," Mingi said, soft but insistent. Outnumbered, the man spat in his face and stalked silently towards the door.
He never made it there. A quarrel pierced his neck and he dropped to the floor, dead in an instant. Wooyoung whipped around. Seonghwa, balanced easily atop the wooden bench he'd been dozing on, lowered his crossbow and swept the room with an arrogant glare.
"Any more graceless curs here with a will to insult my husband?"
Ragged cheers rippled across the crowded room as Mingi wiped his face with his sleeve, smiling up at his beloved. Port Holdstrand would be a duller place without the Cormorant and most of them were sharp enough to appreciate the inn and the man who kept her. After a curt nod from him, two sturdy potswillers appeared from the kitchen and dragged the lifeless corpse to the harbour, where it would sink without a trace - along with all the rest.
Clanks were filled up to the brim, bone dice pattered on the table tops once more. A fiddler struck up a merry tune and Seonghwa, wide awake again, pulled his laughing spouse into a wild jig. More revellers joined them, kicking up the sawdust on the floor. A knot of people surged around Yeosang, pressing coins into his hands and pouring eager questions into his ears. The commotion was over, forgotten. Seonghwa had dealt with it, like he always did. He loved his family fiercely, he protected them and he always would. Wooyoung guiltily refused to listen to the jealous whisper in his head. The one that said that if Seonghwa was born to play the hero, what part was left to him? He leapt up on to the bar and raised a toast to the crowd below.
"To the spliced, may your fortune be doubled, not halved. And to the rest of us... let's get floored!"