‘You must think me an idiot, Pick. Both of you!’ When neither objected to that assertion the Falari snarled and took the jar from Blend, raised it defiantly to his mouth and downed the rest of the contents in a cascade of gulps, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbing as if he was trying to swallow a cork.
A fearless idiot,’ Blend said, shaking her head.
Antsy sucked on his moustache ends for moment, then thumped the empty jar on to the tabletop He belched,
They watched as the wench delivered the bottle of white apricot nectar. A brief conversation with the woman ensued, whereupon she flounced off with a toss of her knobby head. The pleasantly plump woman and the Mekhar both poured a healthy measure of the liquor. With a bold toast in the Malazans’ direction, they sipped.
‘Look at that,’ Blend said, smiling, ‘such handsome shades of green.’
And the woman was on her feet, was marching over.
Antsy set a hand oh the grip of his short sword.
In Malazan tainted with the accent of Seven Cities, the woman-with a hard frown-said, ‘You trying to kill us or something? That was awful!’
‘It gets better,’ Blend said with an innocent blink.
‘Really? And when would that be?’
‘Well, embalmers swear by it.’
The woman snorted. ‘Damned Mezla. This is war, you know.’ And she spun about and walked, a little unsteadily, back to her table.
The server was simply waiting in the wings, it turned out, as she arrived at the table moments after the Seven Cities woman sank down into her chair. More conversation. Another toss of the head, and off she trundled.
The bottle she showed up with was of exquisite multihued glass, shaped like some giant insect.
‘This is for you!’ the server snapped. ‘And I ain’t playing no more no matter how much you tip me. Think I can’t work this out? Two women and a man here, one woman and two men o’er there! You are all disgusting and when I tell the manager, well, banning the likes of you won’t hurt us none, will it?’ A whirl, nose in the air, and a most impressive stalk to the restaurant’s nether regions or wherever it was managers squatted in the nervous gloom common to their kind.
The three Malazans said nothing for a long time, each with eyes fixed upon that misshapen bottle.
Then Picker, licking dry lips, asked, ‘Male or female?’
‘Female,’ Antsy said in a thin, grating voice, as if being squeezed from below. ‘Should smell… sweet.’