Isekai Hero Bartender

"I don't care how handsome you are, you can't just come visiting single women's houses in the middle of the night like this. Especially not in a rainstorm."

"Even if he brings a chaperone?"

"I am a lady."

Lady Talia somehow both looked down her nose at Wynnie and closed her eyes at the same time. It was a very aristocratic move.

Still, she’d invited us in. It’d gone downhill since then.

The inside of Lady Talia's cottage was warm. Surprisingly warm, considering there was no fire burning in the hearth. I wondered if maybe she was part fire mage.

"You realize your plan is idiotic, right?" She fixed me with a stern glare. "Anything you do to upset the balance of relations with pirates could bring untold damage onto the town."

"But I didn't even tell you the extent of my plan!"

"You don't need to. I've heard enough."

She’d barely heard anything. After she'd invited us in, she put some water in the kettle for tea and let us sit on a small and surprisingly uncomfortable loveseat. Then she'd given me a chance to share my idea.

I'd only gotten a few sentences in. What I'd said was, "There are four pirates staying at the Breakwater Inn. I'm going to trick them into committing a crime that is punishable by jail time. Then, you and the other deputies in town can arrest them before they cause too much trouble."

I didn't get any further than that.

I tried again to plead my case.

"Seriously. It won't be difficult at all, and it won't put anybody in danger."

She shook her head violently. "Messing around with pirates puts everybody in danger. And not only that, but you want to encourage them to commit crimes? What kind of damned fool are you?"

"He's a Reborn fool!" Wynnie blurted.

That hushed the room for a minute. It was tough to say whether it was a good hush or a bad hush, but at least it halted the progress to absolute nowhere that we were making before.

Lady Talia fixed me with a measured gaze. She studied my stature, as if looking for some kind of hint about whether I was actually Reborn or not. And maybe I was reading into things a bit, but she seemed to linger on my jaw and chest, maybe a little longer than was strictly necessary.

"The Far Shores, you said?"

"Sort of. A bit farther," I mumbled.

"Do you have any artifacts?"

I checked my pocket for my phone. There was nothing. In our haste to exit the inn and skulk about at night, I’d left my phone on the bedside table.

"I have one on my nightstand. I also have some keys, but you probably wouldn't think they're anything special. Not unless you're particularly wowed by Ford's best-selling sports car, the Mustang GT."

"I have no idea what that is, and I'm not sure I care."

"You shouldn't care,” I admitted. “It’s a modular, not a Coyote."

Now that was a reference. Of course she wouldn't get it, but neither would most people who didn't care about classic American muscle cars. Or pony cars, if you wanted to get technical.

Really niche reference.

The rising whistle of the kettle took the focus away from my odd tangent. It sounded a little like a train—another thing people of this world wouldn't know about. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a desperate jet of steam shooting out from the closed spout.

Three mugs sat nearby, all with metal tea balls to strain the tea. I had no idea what we were about to drink. It was a fantasy world. She was a dragonkin.

For all I knew, she was brewing up mouse skeletons and onyx. Bones and stones, if you will. Or, I don't know, beef jerky water or something.

I wasn't expecting Earl Grey, is my point.

"What I suggest you do is have a cup of tea to warm your bones, then go back to the inn and treat the pirates like any other guest. So long as everyone in town plays nice with them, we won't have to deal with any real trouble."

"What do you mean by real trouble?"

She sighed as she heaved herself up from her comfortable chair. Her voice traveled across the room as she went over to the stove where the tea was beginning to boil.

"Many years ago, when I was first cutting my teeth as a deputy in this town, I thought we could stand up to the pirates. We resisted their collection fees and jailed one of their collectors."

Wynnie looked at her expectantly. "What happened?"

"This was before you came to town. What happened was we got our asses handed to us."

"But there's only four of them. There’s four of you." Wynnie looked as though she both understood what was being said and was trying to figure it out in real time, too. "They look tough, but not that tough."

"The collectors aren't the same as the enforcers. The enforcers are much worse. They burned the shops, trashed everything, stole from townsfolk, and left more than a few people in need of healing magic. It was a disaster."

It may have been warm in her cottage, but that wasn't why my blood was boiling. I hated hearing about people who wanted only to pillage and destroy. The smart part of me knew I shouldn't get involved, but the part of me that had slain the demon king in my last RPG campaign wanted to play the hero.

And besides, I was beginning to believe that my Reborn destiny was bigger than running the best bar in the kingdom.

"Well, I'm not just going to stand by and let these people trash my new home. There will be four pirates outside of the Breakwater Inn tomorrow evening. All four of them will have broken the law, and you might want a little backup to help you bring them to jail."

"If you think they'll go quietly, you're mistaken. Backup won't be enough."

She handed me a mug of warm tea, and I gripped it so hard I worried I might shatter the ceramic.

"The only reason you'll need backup is to carry their bodies."

"What? You better not be suggesting what I think you're suggesting!"

"Drew, you promised you wouldn't do anything stupid."

In retrospect, my claim might’ve sounded more confidently violent than I’d intended. “I’m not gonna like, stab them through the heart with their own swords or anything,” I explained.

“Why are you being so vague? It’d be easier if you just told me your plan.”

Wynnie huffed. “He won’t even tell me!”

“Admittedly, I’m a bit fuzzy on the law around these parts. What I have in mind might be, um…” I didn’t want to say illegal. With crime, there was no sense admitting before committing. “It might not be cool.”

An exasperated growl came from Lady Talia’s chest, and she rubbed her brow.

I tried the tea. It was still nearly boiling hot and hadn’t had time to steep, so it was hard to taste anything besides pain. But there was something. A relaxing, floral blend that warmed me to the core. I wasn’t sure if Solus-El had them, but it reminded me of chamomile and mint.

"What is this? It's delicious."

"Chamomile mint," Lady Talia replied in a friendly tone. Then her voice was stern again. "And if I jail them, then what? What will we do when the enforcers come to take their toll and retaliate?"

"Can’t we like, call in for help? Where I’m from, we’d just call in SWAT or the National Guard or something."

"What?"

"Don’t you have a local militia? Maybe an army? Doesn't the Crown give a damn about its port towns?"

She made a disgusted scoff and batted away the idea with a flick of her hand. "They value ports. But not Seaport. We're too small."

"Not too small to serve as a safe harbor for the crown's rumrunners, though. We did them a good turn, sheltering their valuables so they could continue trade and diplomacy elsewhere. To me, that says we're a strategic location that deserves to be defended.” I took another scalding sip and winced. Lady Talia’s attention remained riveted on me. “If pirates run rampant here, then that's one less place the kingdom can consider safe when it needs shelter on the high seas."

"Wow. I never thought about it that way," Wynnie said, looking at me appreciatively.

She wasn't the only one, I noticed. Even Lady Talia had stopped glaring and started tapping her chin thoughtfully. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she descended deep into calculating thought.

"I suppose there's something to that."

"I'll make sure they break the law and don't resist arrest. If you jail them, then together we can raise enough forces to fight back against the pirates. You'll see. I've done crazier things back on my homeworld."

In video games, mostly. And I’d gotten pretty wild during some RPG one-shots when the main game was on hold. It wasn’t like I’d ever fought crime before.

After a few long, tense seconds, the tension in the room relaxed. Lady Talia’s weight shifted in her chair, and her shoulders fell slightly.

"I’m still not sure I buy that you're a Reborn. Nor that you should carry out your scheme. It sounds safer to abandon it.”

I could hear a but coming, and I didn’t mean a fart. The dragonkin didn’t let me down.

“But ever since your strange arrival, I’ve seen the commitments you’ve made. The Breakwater looks respectable again. Wynderriel here’s been a different person altogether, popping up around town instead of hiding out. Smiling more.”

The elf squeezed my hand and bumped her shoulder into mine.

“Does that mean you’re in?” I asked.

“I’m not promising anything, but it’s not a no.”

"For this to work, just make sure you and your deputies make a few extra rounds by the Breakwater tomorrow. What you do from there is your choice. But I hope you find the fighting spirit you had when you first took on this job and do the right thing.”

With that, I chugged the rest of the tea she had made. I really shouldn't have, but I wanted to emphasize my heroic speech with an act of pure, unbridled bravery.

It scalded all the way down. My mouth filled with blisters as though I'd just eaten a slice of pizza too soon from the oven. A growl of pain died in my throat and emerged as a whimper.

Wynnie, seeing me chug my drink with an air of finality, went to do the same.

However, she had an advantage. With a delicate, extended finger, she touched the surface of her tea. Cool blue energy radiated from the contact ripple. Ice coalesced at the surface, and steam rose as she flash-chilled her tea to a drinkable temperature.

Then, she drank it quickly. Not quite a chug as I'd done, but that was probably the smart thing to do, anyway.

Despite my burning mouth and the fire of determination in my belly, the chamomile mint tea was having an effect. Everything felt… fuzzy. And nice. Even on the uncomfortable love seat squeezed next to Wynnie, I could imagine falling fast asleep.

I stifled a yawn. Now was no time to get drowsy. We had a town to protect and pirates to thwart.

Still, it gave me an idea. “Mind if I get some chamomile and mint from you?”

“You have trouble sleeping too?”

I was about to explain that I wanted to make a syrup with the herbs, but something paused me. Had Lady Talia just shared a vulnerability with me?

Sure, insomnia wasn’t the biggest weakness to cop to, but it was a start. Not only that, but it gave us a common ground on which to commiserate.

“Yeah, a bit of trouble. Sometimes more. Every now and then, I feel like I’d need enough chamomile to knock out a horse.”

She sighed. “Fine. This is from my personal stash, so I can’t spare much. But I wouldn’t want to leave a fellow night owl in the lurch.”

She rose and returned to the kitchen. I tried not to watch her lithe form as it passed, but I didn’t try hard. She wore only a thin robe cinched tightly around her toned frame. It showed off her narrow waist and shapely buttocks.

The fabric rode up her legs as she reached for two cloth bags in a cupboard, revealing the barest hint of underbutt. It was over too soon.

She deposited a bit from each bag onto a flat parchment until there was a mountain of dried herbs in the center. Then she folded the parchment up to hold them all securely. Her hips swayed as she crossed the room back to me.

“Here.”

She handed me the packet, bending down low enough for me to see cleavage held in check by her robe. The smell of lavender mixed with the tisanes she’d given me. That was her scent, I suspected.

Heat rushed to my loins.

“Now, don’t do anything colossally stupid with that.”

Mild arousal mixed with exasperation and annoyance. It was time to leave before things got even more confusing.

"Good day," I said, standing and heading toward the door.

"It's the middle of the night," Wynnie reminded me, following close behind.

"Oh, duh. Good night, Lady Talia. I hope I can count on you."

She locked her intense focus on me, once again evaluating what kind of person I must be. I’d barged into her house in the dead of night, suggested I might mess with pirates, and then played on her dragonkin sense of fairness and law.

Also, I’d obviously incinerated my mouth and subsequently requested the gift of some tea. Truly, I’d knocked this one out of the park.

I could practically feel my persuasion roll fighting it out against her wisdom save.

Only time would tell if I'd been successful.

We made our exit after some short goodbyes. Then, Wynnie and I collected ourselves back on the pathway in front of her house. There was a slight bounce to her step since we'd left the cottage, all fifteen or twenty paces away. The moonlight revealed hopeful features.

"So, what do you think? Can we count on her?"

She smiled. "You heard when she mentioned that she was single for no reason, right?"

I did. It had seemed a little odd. Back on Earth, there’d be a pretty simple explanation for why she mentioned it. This wasn’t Earth, though.

"Yeah. Is that, like, a thing in this world? Is it particularly weird to meet with someone at night if they're single? Or maybe a dragonkin cultural thing?"

“She also called you handsome.” Wynnie giggled and leaned in. "She wasn't telling me. She was telling you."

Okay, so it wasn’t some strange, local nighttime custom. And it wasn’t just a dragonkin thing.

Maybe my persuasion had advantage.

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