Chapter 5 - Hootenanny

Mr. Grey checked the progress of his hand as it reached for the lemonware bowl of striped beans sitting in the center of a round, frosted-glass coffee table. A man with a waxed mustache, slick hair, and a silky robe already had his own fingers plunging the depths of the sweets bowl. Mr. Grey leaned back on his floor cushion. He’d wait for a less busy moment. He wasn’t famished, and there were enough beans for his whole group.

Mr. Grey sat in a ring of friends who’d adopted him into their group at a younger epoch of grey existence. They gathered around the coffee table and the warm glow of a gaslight embedded beneath. Some of the circle squatted with hands on their knees. Others, like the mustachioed man, sat cross-legged. The dozen of them had agreed, after deliberation, on striped beans as the snack of choice. Now they took turns grabbing handfuls. The gaslight rising through the frosted glass painted their arms in shadows on the tavern rafters above. The other draw on the communal beans was the roaches’ tax. The roaches, however, ran a reasonable rate tonight, so that the friend ring and the bugs got along splendidly.

Mr. Grey himself had taken a kneeling position on his hard cushion of leather. His back ran straight, his face settled like stone. His friends considered these features Mr. Grey’s hallmarks and took them as signs of his agreeable state.

From the fonts of other patrons, good humor sprung not so freely. For one thing, this was a full-blooded tavern. The warm spirits of the establishment made for warm tempers in its clientele. For another, an undercurrent of protest drifted in the air. Not seen in secret partisan signs; not heard in revolutionary cries; but felt like electricity in the atmosphere.

Mr. Grey ignored these unpleasant elements. Mr. Grey had taken his fill of Dreary and Downcast back in the workers’ prison. Mr. Grey looked for Happy, Rousing elements in the tavern. Mr. Grey was not disappointed. People watching was Starharbor’s unofficial pastime. And people watching within the peeling, stained, animal-head-patterned wallparchment of a lively tavern? That was the big leagues.

Dozens of other underlit glass tables lay like paving stones across the heated brick floor. People of every shape and size imaginable (and some shapes and sizes unimaginable) made a circus of group-rings like the one formed by Mr. Grey’s team. All cuts and cloths ever invented appeared in the patrons’ robes. Some robes were the flashy kind, depicting sprawling landscape scenes or aerial views of some embellished quarter of Starharbor. Others wore modest robes with abstract patterns of geometric lines and shapes. The fabrics were everything from fine silk, to heavily-darned and patched moleskin, to thick flannel, to heavy and luxurious velvet, to plastic. The styling of these robes often mismatched the personality of the persons who wore them, and every embedded glass table boasted robes and members of varied dispositions.

These tables, groups, and robes huddled apart from each other, separated by the tributaries of the great roach river. It roiled in chitinous waves across the floor. Servers and patrons crossed the rivers by way of beer- stained arch bridges built for the purpose. Nor were bridge crossers inconvenienced at the crossing by revenue-collecting trolls. The tavern had a flat-rate contract with the trolls’ union. The warty monsters lurking beneath each bridge were ornamental. They only raised their voices in pleasant conversation with their roach neighbors.

One server crossed the river by the nearest bridge. He approached Mr. Grey’s group. He wore his traditional server’s suit robe, with a heavily starched collar and rolled-up sleeves. The server himself rolled up to the group’s table. He asked if any members wanted a complementary bucket of hand acid for washing before departing. The group said no; they planned on a long night.

For a moment the server looked anxious. He glanced around the noisy room, and the static in the air made the hairs on the man’s arms stand. He said nothing, however, and Mr. Grey’s group had their eyes and ears occupied with cheerful discourse. After a moment the server asked Mr. Grey what he wished to drink.

Mr. Grey (who had withdrawn some shiny pebbles and calcified bugs from the treasure bank on the way to the tavern) asked the group what beverage they thought was best. The group, after deliberating, asked the server what he thought was best. The server listed the popular drinks: Cold Beer, The Maypole, Shoulderer’s Swill. The tavern special was Tar Mead: a one-of-a-kind beverage a quarter as appealing to the tastes as it was to the ear. One friend, a new addition to their group wearing a robe of golden eyes and eyelashes opening in a field of dandelion faces, said she thought Tar Mead sounded lovely. She ordered one. The server left to take her order to the bar. Mr. Grey decided he would make up his mind on the server’s return.

The friend with the fine robe and mustache resumed what he had been saying after the footman was out of earshot. “Which dullard among us picked this board?”

The new friend with the dandelion robe - her name was Honeydew - said, “What are the stakes on the answer? What’s the matter - click - with this particular table?” The click which came in the middle of her words was the sound of her tongue detaching itself from the roof of the mouth. She used it for sarcastic punctuation on her question.

“Nothing’s the matter. I raise my glass at our intrepid leader for choosing it.” And the man did just that. “I love the smell of food, and oysters especially. MY single scruple is that oysters come at a lot of treasure and aren’t quite as delightful when one gets only the smell, unaccompanied by the food itself.”

Another member of the party wearing a gravel-patterned robe (the group child), said, “At least we’re cozied up with the kitchens. Dragon-fast service.” And indeed, Mr. Grey’s group knew it first whenever another table ordered onion beans, or fish beans, or beans of limburger.

Mr. Grey watched Honeydew. She leaned closer to the circle and pushed a golden hair-vein from her face. “Speaking of things costing a pretty pebble, anybody here booked a highwheel lately? — click.” This time her click added emphasis as she went on, “I booked one from Smitherfield to Servants Quarter yesterday; nine calcified bugs. Outrageously expensive.”

“Whadya expect?” replied the gravel-robed boy.

“Reasonable rates.”

“People prefer the tram these days. Anyway, the highwheels are slower when the jelly’s cold.”

“Sometimes it’s just nice to go in style. You don’t ride highwheel if you haven’t got class.”

“I guess that’s what makes it cost…”

“No, that isn’t it,” said Honeydew. She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s the stoop-dwellers. And the wheelhouse full-timers. And the wolf gangs.”

“How so?”

“Tram tickets are all they can barter. It’s put private highwheels out of business.”

“I’d like to drive a highwheel. Or a tram for that matter,” said the boy. He wore a dreamy look inside of wide irises and a wider mouth. He was much better at dreaming than accomplishing.

“Why don’t we relocate to the stove?” The mustachioed man inserted himself in their talk, which was one of several smaller interactions within the large circle. “The coal fire would scare off the smell. And I’d be cozier with an ember on my face. And the shoveler at the stove seems a lively little chap.”

Whether the person mentioned was ‘lively’ is questionable; perhaps so, perhaps not. He absolutely was ‘little’. When the mustachioed man gestured at the coal shoveler, he gestured at a pipkin-stoat: dark-haired weasels which often worked in coal or shoveling industries. The stoats held all sorts of different jobs. The one rattling coal pellets into the stove at the corner of the tavern might be the same one who’d run the dragon engine of Mr. Grey’s tram earlier. One tavern philosophizer had proposed the theory (many sunrises ago, during a particularly inebriated rest in a particularly cozy corner, of a particularly stoat-less tavern) that, “…you never see two pipkin-stoats together at once! All the individual ones are, I tell you reallytruly, one very busy weasel doing every job.”

Mr. Grey said, “We can’t sit by the stove. The chairs are taken.”

“Damme! How can you tell?” asked the man with the mustache. The velvet chairs; the only real ‘chairs’ in the tavern, were high backed. They tossed long shadows across the first floor, over the roach streams and glass tables.

“There were gentlemen sitting when we came through the door. I don’t think anyone’s risen since,” Mr. Grey said in a flat way. A stranger would have thought him callous, but Mr. Grey’s friends recognized it as simply his way.

“Damme.”

“Probably aristocrats,” said the group boy. “It’s unfair. They somehow get the best seats in the place. Every night! Even though it’s first-come, first-served.”

The mouth beneath the sculpted mustache opened to speak, but Honeydew interrupted it. “What do you say, Mr. Grey?”

Mr. Grey said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

“Honeydew. What’s your take on his opinion?”

“About the aristocrats at the fire?”

“Do they deserve it? You seem like their breed. The sort who doesn’t worry over the occasional bad spin.”

The mustache friend clapped Mr. Grey’s shoulder. “You’re wasting your time on Mr. Grey,” he said. “I’ll answer for him. He’s no pompous presenter.”

“You don’t answer for yourself?” asked Honeydew, with a click of joking mockery.

“If you want a treasuresome dandy…” Mr. Grey waved a hand back at the friend with the slick upper lip. He tried for a smile and a chuckle, neither of which actually developed. The friend group understood Mr. Grey. They knew this to be the closest he could get to joking, and laughed no less for the comeback’s awkwardness.

“Come on,” Honeydew went on undeterred. “Everyone’s got thoughts to toss on the stoop dwellers, or the king and court.”

“Prose has its place. But a held tongue’s at home everywhere.”

At that moment, an end came to the enchantment played by a tavern band. They’d been performing on a second floor stage, unseen but still appreciated by first floor patrons. The room’s ambient hum dropped in deference. Mr. Grey’s party heard the lead enchanter’s voice frolic through the rafters. “Our group is The Stokers. We are humble enchanters. We beg your tolerance. We take requests for enchantments. These include…” The speaker went on to list all the musical effects the performers could produce, along with their treasure fees. The band handled most typical enchantment requests; everything from a close shave, to food seasoning and flavoring, to tying one’s shoes.

Every patron at the inn heard and understood when a man paid for the band to enchant his stew with extra salt. The performers began a shanty song. Other first floor friend rings abandoned their low glass tables. Their disparate robes mingled as they danced over roach rivers and little bridges. Sawdust and cobwebs dropped onto Mr. Grey’s shoulders from the second story rafters as feet thundered the floorboards. The thunder, however, sounded less jovial than the first floor dancing to Mr. Grey’s ears. He heard it accompanied by raised voices.

“Why don’t we move upstairs?” suggested the mustache. He had accidentally picked up a roach instead of a striped bean and discovered the difference in the least agreeable way. “They sound like a lively large group.”

This time, neither of his adjective choices was in question. The upstairs group was ‘lively’, and was ‘large’. Mr. Grey said, “Honeydew, you’re waiting on Tar Mead. Unless I’m mistaken.”

She nodded and said, “We’d be waving off bats on the second story. I’d rather have the kitchen smell.”

Mustache persisted with a shrug. “So what? They’ve got a beater.”

“One. One bat beater. Not enough to keep the bats from bothering.” Most of the group agreed with Honeydew. The second story railing and rafters were lousy with bats in the way the lower story floorboards were lousy with roaches. The roaches, however, had the decency to stick to regular routes, while the bats flew wherever they pleased. A patron bothered by a bat had to wait for the bat beater. That special employee ran to-and-fro across the second floor, wielding his same-named metal swatter to remove the winged pests.

“Besides that,” added the group boy eagerly, “I think they’re a rough crowd upstairs,” Everyone in the friend ring heard now that the heavy footsteps were more than echoes of dance on the floorboards.

“Always somebody getting the mob riled,” put in another friend, wearing a beaver skin robe with an attached hat. “What’s the fuss?”

“Take your pick,” said Honeydew. She pulled a palm mirror from a pocket hidden in the sunflower eyes on her robe. “It’s more than just ballooning highwheel prices. More than the cost of every day. You’d know if you saw the faces of the rank and file; the kind who stagger through the wheelhouse doors after sunset. They’re blind to all but the flamelights. Click, click, click,” These last noises were mock disappointment. It struck Mr. Grey that, in Honeydew’s hands, the click was a marvelously expressive tool; capable of everything from real pity to supreme contempt. She went on, “Maybe tonight’s group is upset over the Fortune Auction scandal. Or reduced Wine Medo imports. This inn’s overflowing with moaning and complaining over any trifle of existence. If these whiners actually struggled out some vague contour of a spine, and put some real effort in, they’d have fewer toils in the long run.”

The mustached man gave one sarcastic clap. “Well done. Very empathetic of you.”

Honeydew snapped her palm mirror shut. She looked at the group. “That’s the way in Starharbor. Change clings to the girl with the moxie to pluck it.”

Mr. Grey said, “Not to interrupt… I think I hear a real shouldering’s breaking out upstairs.”

Mr. Grey heard right. The shape of a very round gentleman crashed suddenly against a second story banister. The rail broke with a wooden crack. The gentleman plummeted with a cry. The round, heavy man hit the round, glass table of Mr. Grey’s party. He hurt none of them, but shattered the table, scattering glass rubble across the floor and into the nearest roach stream.

---

In a few tocks, the tavern ecosystem underwent a metamorphosis. So complete was this change that a potential patron; on opening the door a moment prior and suddenly remembering she’d left her treasure purse on the dragon tram ; might retrieve said purse, return, open the door of this altered inn, and think she’d entered a different establishment entirely.

The tavern presented a show of bedlam. The first floor patrons sprinted for the room’s edges or sought shelter beneath the bridges, as tables from above flew over the rails and bombarded tables below. Shattering crunches of glass and screams of patronly indignation accompanied the music of the band, which played on through the clamor. The tributaries of the roach river split and roiled. Streams that had flowed high for epochs were now dry, antediluvian beds of insect refuse, while new channels created chittering torrents between tables and around bridges. The bats in the rafters took up formations of spinning, screeching circles. They swooped down around isolated patrons in the fray, lifted them into the air, and released them to fall in spots where the fighting was most vicious. The pipkin stoat feeding the stove carried on almost unchanged. He only adjusted by switching out the regular coals with mood-setting ones. They burned with a bloodier flame, a louder crackle, and a gunpowder smell.

In those early transformative tocks after the round man exploded their table, Mr. Grey’s friend circle had scattered. Now the fighting spread like infection (symptoms include: bright eyes, flushed cheeks, rapid breath, and tensed shoulders), one of high contagion, fast developing in the face of every patron. As this infection expanded over the course of some tocks, Mr. Grey ended up beside the friend with the slick mustache. They stood at the bar. The friend brought up a silk-robed arm to shield his mustache from unwanted shaving by erupting table glass. The friend shouted at Mr. Grey over the battle roar. “Goodness, this is a jolly circumstance! Eh, Grey?”

Mr. Grey had just sidestepped one drunkard. The man careened past and attacked another patron gathering olive ammunition at the counter. Mr. Grey’s face remained unmoved. While ducking a flung tankard, he said, “Dangerous certainly. It seems excessive.”

“Quite right, quite right. We should vacate before the city bouncers show.”

Mr. Grey agreed. They moved together toward the nearest of their friends, hoping to gather the circle before making for the front door and venturing forth.

No sooner had they stepped from the bar than a flurry of bats swooped on them. Mr. Grey hit the floor in time to feel their wing-spun gust rush along his vertebrae. The mustachioed friend did not hit the floor. The bats smashed into him, took him up in a fluttering cloud, and carried him away.

Mr. Grey lost the airborne path of his friend over a fresh barrage of drinks and spraying glass. Fortunately, he spotted the gravel-robed boy and another pair of friends struggling to escape from a melee. Mr. Grey turned sharp and set a steady march toward the boy. He set a twofold goal: regroup with his friends, and avoid fighting.

Mr. Grey almost realized the first objective. But a failure of the second threw a wrench in the plan. One of the battle’s chief instigators, having fallen over the second story rail and landed nearby, rose in front of Mr. Grey. The man dusted glass and roaches from a dingy, jelly stained robe. He wore a floppy leather cap which remained on his head during the fall, adhering fast to the sweaty brow. The man noticed Mr. Grey. He proposed a row. He flung down the sweaty leather hat, picked it back up and replaced it on his bald head, and presented his shoulders to Mr. Grey in battle stance. The shoulders looked particularly sharp, even underneath the robe. Mr. Grey paused.

The shortest explanation of why the man confronted Mr. Grey in this way is: because that was how violent disputes were done in Starharbor. Combatants called each other names, threw down and picked up hats if they wore them, then engaged in shoulder-hitting.

The longer explanation is this. A long time ago, the king of Starharbor decided that the main cause of unrest was fighting. Naturally he implemented fighting reforms. Fighting was outlawed as a punishable offense, under the crime name of ‘Pandemonium’. These reforms banned all the old fighting forms: punching, kicking, headbutting, scratching, grabbing. Even the making of a fist came with a hefty fee. Weapons were also banned and rigorously defined: anything with a handle, anything made of metal, anything sharp, all rocks. People resorted to less conventional armaments such as large books and bathroom fixtures; and to shoulder-fighting where handy objects were in short supply. Of course, the king eventually banned shoulder-fighting too; city bouncers would drag more than a few people off to non-workers’-prisons tonight on charges of Pandemonium. The citizens of Starharbor, however, had by that time become accustomed to the art of shouldering. And they’d grown proud in their skill with improvised weapons. When spirits ran hot, as they now did, and when chairs weren’t within easy reach, as none now were, fighters would present their challenge of hat and shoulders to the enemy. The boniest shoulders were the most dangerous.

The drunk waited not for lengthy words. He had his shoulders steady and sharp. He advanced a step toward Mr. Grey, painting the floor in the guts of a roach squashed beneath his shoe. This drunk clearly ached for some Pandemonium.

The would-be assailant, however, even had he been sober, couldn’t hope to discern what Mr. Grey thought from the stiffness of his face and body. The battle-worn and roach-scarred floor had more personality to it at that moment than Mr. Grey. For all the drunken man knew, Mr. Grey might have been paralyzed with fear, or stoically resigned to destroying his enemy; or anything in between.

The glass-shattering, bat-squealing, people-shouting ruckus roared through the tavern while these two entered their standoff. One tottered with high spirited, drunken uncertainty. The other stood sickly still, like a coalless dragon engine. They needed only a catalyst to break the tension.

Had they seen the standoff, the friend ring could have told Mr. Grey’s mind. Mr. Grey’s combat experience matched his conversation experience. He wasn’t an accomplished shoulderer. His shoulders were of a balanced, businesslike boniness; and his temperament had those same qualities. Mr. Grey had never been shouldered, had never shouldered anyone else, and didn’t want to change either history. The true emotion hidden in that stone figure was worry. Mr. Grey did not know what to do next.

Mr. Grey resorted to habit. He smoothed out a few wrinkles in his robe and pulled out his pocket ticker.

The spirits warming the drunken man’s blood couldn’t prevent its running cold at that moment. His wish to tussle with Mr. Grey vanished. The drunk saw Mr. Grey as a man who didn’t flinch from a fight. Far from flinching, Mr. Grey appeared so assured of the outcome that he’d taken the leisure of checking his ticker, probably estimating how much time he’d need to thrash his novice opponent. The drunken man decided Mr. Grey was, in fact, a veteran of shouldering; so talented in the art that he’d beaten all prior opponents without a scratch, and wore not one mark of battle.

The drunken man turned and fled in search of a lesser foe. Mr. Grey watched him go. He collected himself. He put his pocket ticker away and walked toward the pebble-robed boy.

Mr. Grey reached the boy and his friends. They formed a unit to scare off other eager fighters and moved over the battlefield. The shouting within drowned out any exterior sound, but Mr. Grey imagined the bouncer bugles wailing closer with every passing tock.

Mr. Grey suddenly spotted Honeydew. She’d retreated to a corner of the tavern, crouching by the gaming tables. She took shelter beneath the target used in the game ‘Slingshots, Small Rocks, and Fat Men’. Other patrons huddled under the larger spinning-wheel table used in ‘Fool’s Snuff’. One patron kept playing through the fracas, chalking in the letters of the word ‘Rabble’ on the Hangman board.

Mr. Grey and his friends turned toward Honeydew. The four combined made a large enough force that the violent combatants - stalking like street dogs with crunching steps across the field of broken glass and squashed roaches - avoided them. As the second story band concluded its shanty enchantment, the party of friends met up with Honeydew. She stalked from beneath the gaming target, brushed dust off the hem of her robe, and said, “I’d have tried to reach the door myself, but these lowlifes aren’t choosy about who they shoulder.”

Mr. Grey nodded. “Better off safe. Better to wait for the group in this din.”

She looked at him and clicked. Mr. Grey didn’t know what it meant, as a bat squealed past in the same moment and drowned out the subtlety.

The pebble-robed boy said, “We should go.” He tossed his curly hair at the exit doorway. The rest of their friends had already regrouped at that location, including the one with the raven hair and mustache, whose robe looked torn and whose face looked scratched. The other half of their ring motioned for Mr. Grey’s party to wade through the tavern floor battlefield and escape with them.

Mr. Grey’s party attempted to do so. They failed.

They had crossed a half-dozen bridges and navigated most of the shouldering drunks, when a fresh buzz filled the heady tavern air. The band kicked up a rousing battle march enchantment; typically used to numb small cuts and bruises. The tempo of the rhythm section maddened the swirling bats. Every clang of the cymbals made the bats twitch as though electrified; every thrum of the bass saw them swooping. The bats plucked and tossed combatants with wild abandon. They descended on the smaller streams of cockroaches and gobbled the defenseless insects. This, of course, enraged the roaches. The individual streams suddenly merged into a massive, ongoing torrent of roiling waves; angry, wing-capped breakers; tossing chittering sprays of roachfoam into the air; bisecting the first floor.

In the chaos of the drunks, and the bats, and the roaches, Mr. Grey’s small group split. Mr. Grey, the boy, and Honeydew remained together. They took shelter beneath one of the bridges, next to a dry bed of the old roach river.

Their sheltering bridge stood separated from the exit by the torrential waves of bugs.

---

“That’s it then?” asked the boy. “Now we wait for the bouncers to show up?”

He’d looked at Mr. Grey when asking, but Honeydew answered. “I’m not waiting.”

She started crawling from beneath the bridge. The boy grasped at the elbow of her dandelion robe to hold her back. She tore it free and gave him hard eyes. In a meeker tone he said, “Look at it out there…” and waved his hand.

The tsunami of bats and roaches, the yells of anger and fear, and the bright gunpowder fire of the furnace; none of it painted a welcoming scene.

Honeydew said, “It’s only rodents.”

“Actually, bats are-” began the boy. He stopped on noticing her expression.

The stove glowed like resolve in the face of Honeydew. Meanwhile the shadows of the flapping bats clouded the boy’s features. Neither shadow nor light dared touch Mr. Grey. Both friends looked at him, expecting a tiebreaker.

Mr. Grey noticed their stares after a moment considering the scene. He said, “We’re safe from the bats under this bridge. But, probably not from the bouncers. They’ll likely haul every patron down to the prisoners’-prison.”

The pebble-robed boy seemed to think Mr. Grey’s words wise. Honeydew clicked impatiently. She leaned closer and said, “Let’s chance a run. Seriously! It’s just bugs.”

“They’d report you to their union,” said Mr. Grey. “They’d make existence miserable anytime you visited a roach accommodating business.”

Honeydew lost a little of her fire. She clicked, frustratedly this time. “Your suggestion? I’m not sleeping in a bouncer’s tank, waiting for them to figure out I wasn’t involved.”

Honeydew and the boy argued back and forth for some moments. Neither could convince the other of a plan, or enroll Mr. Grey definitively on their side. Mr. Grey ignored their talk. He held his expression still, except for the eyes. Those grey marbles followed the room’s chaotic motions with interest and unusual animation. They darted to and fro with the shouldering fighters for a time; they moved on. They went up, up, up towards the grey eyebrows, and crashed down in synchronization with the rising and falling waves of roaches. They moved on. They rolled in wild circles with the fluttering bats in their aerial cartwheels. For a long time, they watched the bats.

Mr. Grey returned his attention to his arguing friends when Honeydew addressed him by name. “What do you say, Mr. Grey? We could barter with those meatier fellas. Have them block the stream in exchange for a little fortune.” Honeydew swiped an arm at a pair of portly gentlemen breathing heavily after an intense shouldering match.

“Maybe,” said Mr. Grey, without conviction. “I did have one idea.”

“Yes?” said the eager boy.

“What if we get the bats to lift us? We could fly them across the river.”

The other two considered. Honeydew shifted in her crouched posture. “It’s possible.” A doubtful click followed. “How do we land gently? And on target?”

“Likely there wouldn’t be any choice in that.”

“And they’d rake us in the doing.”

“You make excellent points. It was only a thought,” said Mr. Grey. His voice dwindled in the tavern tin.

“I think it’s a good plan,” said the boy. He rubbed the sleeves of his gravel-robe together anxiously. “Better than anything else we’ve got.”

Honeydew shrugged. “Alright. But we need some kind of bat lure.”

“What lures bats?”

“Caves?” suggested Mr. Grey. When his eyes had tracked the whirling patterns of the bats, he’d noticed that they flocked nearest to the sooty brick chimney which the stove flue ran up; and the earthenware bowls atop the stone shelf by the bar; and other earthy materials around the room.

“I’m not wearing stone musk today,” said Honeydew. She didn’t say it sarcastically; stone musk was the trending scent.

“I think I could lure them,” said Mr. Grey. He said it in his usual rhythm, though quiet and hard to hear. His two friends were paying attention and did hear it.

“I say, you reallytruly could,” said the boy. He snapped a finger and beamed.

“You’re just their type,” added Honeydew, passing her eyes over Mr. Grey from top to toes. “But they’d still rip our robes to rags.”

“Probably only mine,” said Mr. Grey. “You two could grab my legs. If it even worked. It might not.”

Honeydew shuffled her shoulders. “It’s your back-skin. You decide.”

“It’s worth a try,” said the boy. “Besides, we’ve got to act soonish.”

The Pandemonium had raged on throughout their brief exchange and planning. The two heavy men they’d seen shouldering earlier had evidently teamed up. The pair now lifted the bridge under which the three crouched, for use as a weapon against another party. A hail of tankards clattered off the floor around them. The three saw they would soon be in the fray unless they acted.

Honeydew said, “You’re up, Mr. Grey. Wear your stoniest look.”

Had she met him?

The moment the two large men pulled the bridge up and Mr. Grey rose, several of the bats swooped on him, intrigued by the new statue which suddenly appeared in the crazy space. Mr. Grey enhanced the effect by sticking his arms directly sideways while maintaining the most rigid of faces and postures. Every bat in the immediate airspace flocked to him.

An oversight caused a problem. The bats preferred to roost than raise him. Dozens hung upside down from Mr. Grey’s arms and fell instantly asleep, despite the pitch of music and battle.

After waiting a moment, Mr. Grey solved this problem. He shook his arms. By then a wild ivy of bats sprouted across him, and not an atom of grey showed between their fury bodies. At the slight motion of this supposed statue, the whole gathering of shadowy, leathern shapes exploded into flight. The nearest combatants yelped and ducked for cover. The bats instantly swarmed back with an indignant, squeaking ‘whoosh’. They grabbed Mr. Grey by his arms, and his shoulders, and his little mustache, and lifted him bodily into the air. Honeydew and the pebble-robed boy each took a foot.

Over the battlefield the three flew, in a stormcloud of whirling, twirling, biting, scratching, screeching, cheeping, beady-eyed, leather-winged bats. Above the heads of men and women bashing each others’ chests with their shoulders. Across the field of grimy floorboards, broken glass, and low-floating, stove-smoke haze. Past other units of bats, whirling in Ferris wheels or swooping down in attack patterns. Among the band’s soaring notes, still thumping out that glorious battle march. Most importantly, beyond the rolling waves of the great roach river.

When the bats had the trio beyond the surging roaches, Honeydew swiped at one close to her with a pointed fingernail. It fluttered off with bloody screeching, and its pain spooked the colony. The bats dropped Mr. Grey and his friends. The winged beasts then dispersed into broken, fluttery strings. The three fell in a jumble on the other side of the river beside the exit door.

The fighting on this side of the tavern had dwindled as the patrons fortunate to wind up near the door filtered out. The three friends regrouped with the rest of their party at the exit. They were hailed by the friend with the mustache. He shook Mr. Grey’s hand and said, “Damme Grey! Bloody good show.”

Mr. Grey was bloody, and wasn’t good. He put on his best usual exterior, but his robe’s many frayed cuts and the jagged scratches on his face stole his statuesque gravity.

Honeydew said, “I’m not the least bit nicked.” She glanced admiringly at her dandelion-eye robe. Then she remembered Mr. Grey. Honeydew gave him a grateful and pleased click.

As one, the friend group fled.