Fabian studied the two men in the doorway over the rim of his ale cup and took his time about it.
Mercenaries, they were dressed as. Common roughnecks, hired muscle, nothing worth a second glance. It was a reasonable disguise and would have fooled most people without a reason to look closer.
Fabian had every reason to look closer.
More like soldiers, he scoffed to himself. The proud royal guards would never stoop low enough to truly mingle with the common folk.
The posture gave them away first, that particular upright stillness that no amount of shabby clothing could fully conceal, the ingrained habit of men who had spent years being shouted at to stand correctly until it became the only way they knew how to stand.
Then the hair: cropped in that specific, practical manner favoured by the royal family's swordsmen, not a length worn by choice but by regulation.
And finally the positioning — two inside, which by the standard procedure of the royal guard meant two outside, placed to cover the exits and prevent exactly the kind of quiet departure Fabian was currently contemplating.
They always came in pairs. They always kept backup at the rear.
What he did not know — and this was the part that occupied him most as he sat very still in his corner — was what precisely he had done.
The list of possibilities was, he would be the first to admit, not a short one. An offended nobleman. A slighted family. Some lady of considerably higher standing than he had perhaps bedded at the time, whose name he may or may not have retained past the morning after.
Potentially several such ladies.
He reached beneath his chair with the ease of a man simply adjusting his seat, retrieved his old cavalier hat, and settled it low over his brow in one smooth motion. His face slipped obligingly into shadow.
"Ain't no lad called Fabian here."
Lilly said flatly. She planted herself before the two guards with her arms folded and her expression communicating, with admirable stance, that she had neither the time nor the inclination for this particular visit.
Fabian took a slow, appreciative sip of his ale.
Good girl, he thought.
"Either order something or shoo away," Petal added, planting herself squarely in the doorway with her arms crossed. "You are blocking the entrance for paying customers."
Fabian, meanwhile, had quietly assessed his options.
The back door was accessible, barely. A direct path to it from his corner would take him through the middle of the room, and a man making a run for a back door in a crowded tavern attracts precisely the kind of attention a man running from armed guards cannot afford.
He could wait. He could let the girls manage it. Debt collectors visited the Red Rose every other week for one reason or another, and Lilly and Petal had developed, over the years, a perfectly adequate system for dealing with them.
He took another sip of his ale and stayed where he was.
"Then you won't mind if we search the place," sneered the first guard.
He shoved Petal aside as he said it. She stumbled, caught the edge of the bar, and barely kept her feet.
Fabian's hand tightened around his glass.
He kept still.
Calm down Fabian…Do not get into even more trouble then you're already in…
"Oi!" Lilly stepped forward. "Nobody searches anything without a warrant—"
"I don't take orders from a whore."
The second guard caught her by the arm.
Thud!
Fabian set his empty glass down on the table. The sound was not loud. In a tavern full of conversation and scraping chairs it should have been nothing at all. And yet somehow — in the way that certain sounds carry when they are made with sufficient intent — it landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water, and the ripples of silence spread outward from his corner until they had swallowed everything else.
Every eye in the tavern turned toward him.
He rose slowly, and settled his hat a fraction lower over his brow. In the dim and amber light of the tavern his green eyes caught the flame of the nearest lamp and held it.
"Now," he said, in a voice so light and pleasant it sat rather badly against the silence around it, "that is not how you treat a lady."
He took lazy steps toward them, and stood right between the girls and the tall brute who had the nerve to call himself a noble guard.
The guard did not release Lilly's arm.
Fabian cursed inwardly. Every eye in the tavern was already on him, and these two particular idiots were looking for him specifically, which was a combination of circumstances he would have preferred to avoid.
Still, guards were not a beloved presence in this part of the city. He had that much working in his favour.
He reached into his purse, found a copper coin — his funds were in a sorrier state than he'd imagined — and set it walking across his knuckles, back and forth, back and forth…
"A question for a question," he said pleasantly. "You are looking for a man, and I am looking for an answer. So — will you play a game with me?"
The simpleton guards exchanged a look. The first one frowned.
"What game?"
"Simple enough." The coin vanished between two fingers and reappeared at the other end of his hand. His smile caught the dim light of the tavern lamp — his teeth, at least, were still one of his finer qualities — though the shadow of his hat brim kept everything above his jaw in comfortable darkness.
Trap set. Bait ready. "Answer my riddle, and I will show you exactly where this Fabian the Rake is hiding."
The second guard grunted.
"Unless," Fabian added, almost as an afterthought, "you are too stupid for riddles."
"Take that back, you rat!"
"Woah, woah." He raised both hands in cheerful innocence, the coin balanced on his thumb. "I will take it that you agree, then? Like honourable men?"
The two guards looked at one another. It was not a look exchanged between men doing a great deal of thinking. And in that moment of mutual distraction, their grip on the girls loosened.
Fabian caught Petal's eye. Then Lilly's. A small nod — barely more than a tilt of his chin.
They understood immediately. Both slipped away toward the back of the tavern without a word, which confirmed, as far as Fabian was concerned, that they were considerably cleverer than anyone who underestimated them deserved to know.
Things were about to become considerably warmer in the Red Rose, and he saw no reason to have them standing in the fire with him.
"Well then," said the first guard, crossing his arms with the impatience of a man who was beginning to regret agreeing to this. "What is the riddle?"
Fabian flipped the coin into the air, let it spin once in the lamplight, and caught it without looking.
"Riddle me this, gentlemen." He glanced up for the first time, his eyes clear and level beneath the shadow of his hat brim. "What is the difference between a soldier and a whore?"
The two guards in their mercenary's clothing went very still. He watched the recognition settle over them, the slow, uncomfortable realisation that their disguise had been seen through some time ago and they had simply not been informed.
"One sells their body," the louder and prouder of the two said at last.
Fabian clicked his tongue.
He looked down at the copper coin resting in his open palm. The smile had gone from his lips.
"Both sell their bodies," he said quietly. "For coin. For status. For land. For a lord whose name they may not even know." He closed his fingers around the copper. "But only one of them is a killer."
The tavern held its silence on his words.
Fabian did not look at either of them. He looked at the coin in his closed fist, and even through the fabric of his glove he felt it — that phantom sensation that had never quite left him, the thick warmth and the distinct copper, blood dripping from the head of his lance.
Drip.
Drip.
He clenched the coin tighter and turned away from it, the way he always did, and turned away from the guards as well.
"Since you were wrong," he said over his shoulder, already moving toward the door, "I am afraid I must bid you both a very good evening."
He almost made it.
The guard grabbed his arm. Distracted by the memory, Fabian realised it a beat too late.
He stumbled. One step, no more, but one step was enough.
His hat tipped forward. Then it fell.
Both guards stared at him. He watched the moment of recognition cross their faces — the beauty mark beneath his left eye, stark and unmistakable in the lamplight, as famous in certain circles as his name.
"It's him," the first guard breathed. "He has the mole under his eye — it's Fabian the Rake!"
Fabian stood very still for precisely one second.
He looked at the guards. He looked at the door. He looked at his hat on the floor, which he would have very much liked to retrieve and almost certainly was not going to have time to.
"...Fuck,"