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Primrose knew that their little town was unusual. Somehow, all the wives and families whose men had run off to chase gold or Opportunity, whatever that meant, had congregated in Quarrycrest. The town had a woman as their sheriff, a woman as their mayor and pastor, a woman ran the general store, and Primrose herself ran the saloon and hotel in town. They did have a man as a teacher at the town school and two strapping fellows who were clearly queer for each other lived a bit outside of town and helped keep the communal town livestock in line; aside from that, the only males in the town were children or passing through.
Quarrycrest had slowly been growing in notoriety and size due to its unorthodox nature, which attracted men who thought they could run matters better. H’aanit’s skill with a gun and her exceptional ability at breeding hunting cats and dogs had taught some of the more insistent menfolk to think twice about making trouble in her town. Trouble that seemed to find itself primarily in Primrose’s saloon, but such was only expected. Tressa brewed fantastic alcohol and good booze made otherwise smart men stupid.
Of course, other sources of trouble occasionally wandered in as well, like the young man with silver hair who took a seat at her bar.
“How can I help you?” Primrose asked as she idly cleaned a glass. It was after the afternoon rush, which was a bad time for a wanted man to make an appearance, but Primrose generally had a low opinion of men’s intelligence.
“Just a mug of whatever’s cheapest,” Therion, the Prince of Outlaws murmured.
“Mmhm,” Primrose said. “Payment first.”
Therion’s one visible eye narrowed.
Primrose gave him her most charming smile. “Men have a tendency to think that they can drink and run because I’m a lady. Pony up first, and then you get your alcohol.”
Primrose didn’t let go of Therion’s eye until he snorted. “Fine.”
After money exchanged hands, she put the standard offering of Tressa’s brew in front of him with a smile.
“Enjoy,” Primrose said sweetly as she went back to organizing her bar.
Therion simply grunted what may have been a “Thanks.”
A few minutes later, Primrose looked up from cleaning the counter when she heard someone else enter and couldn’t entirely quash a smile when she saw who it was. “Sheriff! You missed all the fun earlier.”
Therion tensed, although it was visible only in how his fingers cradled the mug a little tighter.
“You have a very different idea of fun than I do,” H’aanit drawled. “I’m glad it didn’t get rowdy enough for you to need me.”
From the confused look that briefly passed over Therion’s face, he clearly had as much trouble parsing together H’aanit’s extremely thick northern burr as most people who were new to town. H’aanit had been one of Primrose’s first friends in town, so she had learned early how to translate the sometimes almost-unintelligible words that came out of the woman’s mouth.
“You should’ve seen Eliza take this fellow Alfyn to task. Said he was a doctor, but he was no better than your run-of-the-mill snakeoil salesman. He’s going to be working as a server for about a week here to pay off his debt--the man certainly liked his drink enough. I don’t take ‘medicine' as payment, I take cash.”
H’aanit shook her head and took a place on the stool next to Therion.
“We’ve been getting a lot of charlatans lately,” H’aanit sighed. “First that Ali character, claiming to be a merchant from the Far East with rare and unique collectables, now a ‘doctor’?” H’aanit spit into a pail near the bar that Primrose had provided for just that purpose. “We’re women, not fools.”
The final statement was clearly meant for Therion, who gently drummed his fingers on the mug. Primrose wasn’t sure if he had learned to hear through H’aanit’s accent, but he had at least caught the drift of the statement based on her tone.
“Did you catch any worthwhile rumors?” H’aanit asked Primrose.
Primrose smirked slightly. “The usual. Gold in the hills to the east. Bandit lairs to the south. Nothing we haven’t heard before; the only interesting development is that the newest outlaw of the month is a kid.”
H’aanit nodded as her hunting partner, Linde, slunk underneath the saloon door and wandered over to her mistress. H'aanit scratched the hunting cat’s head and cooed something that Primrose had no hope of translating before Linde left her side and sat down next to Therion, fixing him with her unblinking, feline stare.
The outlaw ignored her, continuing to sip his alcohol.
H'aanit spoke: "How about you, stranger? Heard anything useful in your travels? Your clothes're dusty enough to say you've been quite a few places."
Therion ignored her, so Primrose said, in her most saccharine voice, "How rude, not answering the sheriff. Maybe we should have you arrested to teach you some manners. Men seem to need to be reminded of common courtesy so often."
"A life on the run'll do that, I suppose," H'aanit added. "Can't afford to make nice small talk when wearing the mark of a wanted man."
Therion visibly tensed as Primrose gave him a smug smile and H'aanit and Linde both stared at him, unblinking.
"I can tell you that there has been a shake-up among outlaws," Therion murmured. "I'm sure you've heard of Darius. He's dead."
"That's good," H'aanit commented. "He was a mean one. Thank you for taking care of him."
"What makes you think I did it?"
"Because he was known to possess the rare and valuable dragon stones, which you are carrying on your person," H'aanit pointed out.
"You'll get your next drink for free if you stick around," Primrose added. Darius had been a vicious bandit, and Primrose was cheered by his loss.
Therion's eye narrowed. "You go from threatening to arrest me to offering me free drink."
"Linde likes you," H'aanit replied as she accepted a glass of her own from Primrose. "So you can’t be all bad. Sometimes people do stupid things when they get down on their luck."
Therion looked completely baffled and a little angry.
“I’ll still arrest you if you hang around too long,” H’aanit said as Linde worked her hardest to get Therion to pet her. “But we make our own laws in this town and no one who comes looking for you here will ever know you passed through.”
“It would be even easier for me to avoid the law if you could get this off my wrist,” Therion said and jangled the Fool’s Bangle pointedly.
“I’m sure it would,” H'aanit agreed. “But only the person with the correct key can open it, and I’m sure you’ve learned that any attempt at lock-picking fails.”
Therion looked away and into his drink.
Linde finally succeeded in shoving her head underneath Therion’s hand and getting him to reflexively scratch her between her ears.
“Don’t make any trouble and me, Linde, and Hagen will ignore you,” H’aanit said. She stood, looked at Linde, then looked to Primrose and said, “Send Linde to get me if you need me. Tressa’s expecting a shipment from that man Leon and I want to make sure he doesn’t whisk her away with talk of the high seas. She’s too good of a merchant to leave us quite yet.”
Primrose chuckled as H’aanit exited, and barely kept herself from laughing when she saw Linde had her entire head in Therion’s lap, purring hard enough that the buckle on Therion’s belt was jingling from the vibrations.
“Women are strange,” Therion muttered as he continued to pet Linde.
“You don’t know the half of it, boy,” Primrose said. “If you steal anything, I will shoot you, but I won’t kick you out until the evening rush. Don’t need you robbing my customers blind.”
Therion scoffed, but a smile played across his lips.