—
“And this one time,” Jacob was saying, gesticulating as he was talking, “I was on this roof and there were these like five guys or maybe seven or ten, and they had halberds and flails and I had to disarm all of them before I could get off the roof. Not a scratch on me of course but one of them lost a finger, which I didn’t notice until I found it in my hood later.”
“I bet that was super cool to watch,” Isaac said dutifully, sipping his drink.
“It probably was but sadly nobody reliable can tell you about it because I was also blindfolded at the time.”
“Being blindfolded is such a rough time,” Ozzy agreed. “This one time I was on a boat with all these orcs, and they forced me to wear this blindfold with razor blades on it so I couldn’t take it off, and I escaped by headbutting them with it. It was so gross, blood all over my face and everything.” Isaac wondered if he realized that sitting in Marcus’s lap made his story seem cute instead of cool.
“You headbutted them eyes first?” Daniel asked.
Marcus kicked him. “I wish I could have seen that.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Ozzy. “This other time I was on this cliff and I’d been poisoned, so I didn’t know how high anything was and I had to climb all the way down with just my knives. Bent them all to shit but that was the only way to get to the antidote.”
“Were you poisoned with Tailtell?” Jacob asked. “I drank some of that once when I was a kid. When I woke up the six guys with me were all tied up and upside-down, but I don’t remember how they got there.”
He was looking at Silas as he talked, and Silas smiled at him. “I guess you must have done it, huh?”
“I guess, but…” Jacob shrugged. “It’s hard to say what happens when you’re poisoned.”
“Isn’t Tailtell like, immediately lethal?” Daniel asked.
“Not if you build up an immunity to it,” Jacob said immediately.
“Not if you’re not a wimp,” Ozzy said at the same time.
Daniel sighed. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t die, then.”
“Me too. I did almost die this one time when I was assassinating a nobleman in the east, I was in his house and this other guy was there, and we ended up having this huge knifefight on top of his chandelier that…”
“Wait,” Jacob interrupted. “That was you?”
Ozzy blinked. “I still have the knife you stuck in my arm.”
“Good, I want it back. I’d say I still have the bruises you gave me but you didn’t actually get a good hit in.”
“Bullshit I didn’t, I kicked you right in the nose.”
“I don’t remember it that way.”
“Do you remember falling of the chandelier?”
“That, to be fair, was the cat’s fault.”
“Yeah, it was,” Ozzy agreed. “Super not fair. We should have a rematch sometime.”
It seemed like they were going to start getting along now, rather than having to compete with everything they said. Isaac smiled, glad Jacob was making friends. Even if the friends were maybe just a little bit too much like him.
—
How Best to Use a Sword 