The title needs a little tweaking.
Ladezel, The Elf-Lands
(Savannah, Georgia)
2610 AD
You went to the Opéle Wafflëro for two things; the food, and the fighting. Rocca Jack Hwinda found both particularly fine, tonight. His ham and cheese omelet was exactly as he liked it, the coffee had the kick of a Gulf Coast hurricane, and the inn had gotten hold of some of the good ketchup that Big Mát had liberated from the Panamanians last month. As for the fighting? The brawling had started while everybody was half-sober, which was the best kind of brawl to observe. Sober people fought too grimly and drunk ones were too sloppy about the whole thing.
It’d even spread to the inn’s workers… briefly. The Opéle Wafflëro liked to hire folk who would greet a thrown punch with a lazy grin, and they were all good at encouraging even the drunkest privateer to swing a fist somewhere else. There’d been one human lass manning the grill who had deflected a thrown chair with such easy efficiency and cool fury, that rat bastard Skinny Hermano hired her for his Hyalma before Jack could even put down his fork. He only half-regretted it — this omelet was well worth his full attention — until he realized that Hermano’s new hire had also been the one who had cooked Jack’s dinner. He shook a fist amiably in Hermano’s direction, grinned at the upraised finger offered in reply, and took another swig of coffee.
The brawl (by now cordoned off, over to one side, so as not to disturb the people actually eating) made the inn look fuller than it was, but that was normal for a Tuesday when most of the Fleets were off reminding the Panamanians to pay their damn transit taxes. Jack’s own Firepot would be out there herself, but even privateer flagships need the occasional overhaul. But that was fine; the shipwrights would be done with their hammers and spells, soon enough.