“That’s him?” Everett hesitated.

“That’s him, Dad!” Rose exclaimed, gesturing with her notebook. “Go get him!”

“Right. You stay here, don’t get in the way.”

“Yes, sir!” She crouched down under the listing round table, her small size allowing her to fit completely beneath.

Everett worked his way across the tavern, stepping over suspicious fly-blown objects on the sawdust covered floor, squeezing between swaying drunk patrons, and ducking under a sailor’s arm who was slurring through a tale about a sea serpent off the coast of Kharighe. His audience, four inebriated tradesmen, scoffed and chucked as they sloshed ale in all directions.

One slosh splashed on Everett’s boots, but, well-experienced in the perils of his task by now, he simply ignored it.

Finally, after a couple of minutes, one trod-upon foot, an elbow to his ribs, and a shoulder collision that had made him stagger, he made his way to his target, who was standing at and taking up the whole center section of the space at the bar. Straightening and bracing himself, Everett reached up to tap the man on the shoulder, cleared his throat, and asked in a loud and clear voice, “Irving Winston Parible the Fourth?”

The man was a veritable mountain, with shoulders that spanned a good five feet. Monsieur Parible was heavy to the extreme, with plenty of blubber, but also the bulging muscle of of least six good-sized men.

At first, Everett thought that the man had not heard him and started to speak again, but then he saw a shoulder twitch and the man began to rotate, glacially, with the shifting of his heavy boots, which must have taken entire cows of leather to cobble, making the wooden floor creak and complain.

Peripherally, and with some anxiety, Everett realized that all about the tavern patrons, some of whom probably had not been washed since birth, had grown quiet and still, and all had turned to watch. Their alcohol laden breath added to the drifting smoke and the natural reek of the tavern, producing a toxic miasma that stung his eyes and made his exposed skin itch.

Monsieur Parible’s turnabout took quite some time, and when he did finally come to rest and settle his massive feet, the entire building gave a little shake.

Everett cleared his throat and asked again, “Irving Winston Parible the Fourth?”

Everett’s target raised his eyebrows, which in and of itself took almost two minutes. Monsieur Parible’s eyebrows were like two extra large horse brushes and were matted with cockle burrs and bits of dried asparagus, or anyway some sort of once green vegetable. His head seemed the size of Everett’s chest and his jaw like a block and tackle, and his face was a cross-hatch of scars. One of his dinner-plate-sized ears was missing entirely and his left eye pointed in an odd direction.

“Yah? Whut ufit?”

Monsieur Parible’s voice sounded like five gallons of big stones dropped down a deep well.

Onto a pile of brass cooking pots.

“I have something for you,” Everett said in a rush. “Now, if you’ll just stand still for a moment —”

“I ain’t payin’no alley money.” Monsieur Parible declared, he words coming out like an avalanche as he began to raise his fists. “Mabel done done me wrong.”

“Oh, I assure you, Monsieur Parible, this has nothing to do with your marital difficulties. I’m here to provide you with an Inspiration —”

“I AIN’T PAYIN’ NO ALLEY MONEY!”

Everett ducked just in time as Monsieur Parible’s arm swung in a tremendous arc, an unstoppable timber that mowed down four men who were not as quick to get out of the way. Then everyone was running and shouting and cursing and punching.

And plenty of kicking too.

As Monsieur Parible’s arm continued on, inexorably drawn on by its own mass over Everett’s head, he leapt up behind it, reaching as high as he could, and succeeded in having the palm of his right hand make contact with Monsieur Parible’s forehead.

Experiencing the brief tingle that signaled a successful spell Inspiration, Everett dropped immediately to the floor as the tavern erupted in a free-for-all that sent mugs, tables, chairs, and patrons flying in all directions.

Monsieur Parible blinked, froze for a long moment, then let out a roar and charged, happily not directly in Everett’s direction.

Scurrying on hands and knees through the cataclysm and dodging flying missiles, both inanimate and animate, he hurried back to Rose and her island of magically induced safety. She and her table remained in place despite the fact that some of the walls and part of the roof were disintegrating as Monsieur Parible continued to charge about in a rage.

“Got him,” he told his daughter.

“Yes, Dad. I saw. I marked it down. Are we going home now or do you want to do some more?”

“We’d better do at least one more.” Everett ducked to save his head from a hurtling spittoon; Rose’s magical bubble of safety did not extend to him. “ If we don’t stay at it, we’ll never get caught up. Who’s next?”

“Mademoiselle Mabel Ludavine Rosewater.”

Everett groaned.

Women of any age group, girls to crones, were the absolute worst. They were much more frequently and much more energetically given, in his experience, to face slapping, eye gouging, gut punching, groin kicking, foot stomping, headbutting, or simple eardrum bursting, outraged yelling to summon a seeming unending horde of enraged, weapon-wielding relatives, at least when smacked smartly in the forehead by a strange man.

There was nothing for it though.

It was his job.

“Alright, let’s go.”