Page 40 of Renaissance Bear

But your brotherdidbreak his pointy nose,the bear said with tremendous satisfaction.

Jon grinned. "Yes, he did. And I wouldn't have hated doing it again myself, but that wouldn't be chivalric."

The bear snorted dismissively.Chivalry is for humans.

"Which I am most of the time!"

No,his bear said.You are a shifter who lives in human form most of the time. That isn't quite the same.

That seemed insightful enough that Jon decided he'd better stop talking to the bear, particularly out loud, and instead consider what it had to say. He was back at the tavern,alternating between playing with the minstrel group and serving beers, while Laurie lurched around on a leg that was fully healed but still had to be braced.That, of all things, was what made Jon decide the bear was right. Shifters might live most of their lives as humans, and might be very human in most ways, but they really weren't quite the same. It was an interesting thought. Probably not one that mattered very much, but interesting just the same.

The last set piece of the day for the Court actors was at five. Jon pretended he wasn't waiting anxiously for Alis to come by the tavern after that, mostly by running himself ragged serving drinks and bantering in Ye Olde English with patrons. Although it turned out one of the patrons was an actual medievalist, and pointed out thatOldEnglish was nearly a different language from modern English, and that their mock-Shakespearian was just playing with early modern English.

Then the guy looked into his drink, sighed, and said, "I'm a lot of fun at parties," which made the girl next to him laugh out loud. The next thing Jon knew the two of them were walking off together, chatting happily. He was still trying to decide if that had been a very clever pickup line on the guy's part, or if the dude had just gotten really lucky, when Alis arrived.

She was in a denim skirt and green bandeau shirt, her thick curling hair bouncing around her shoulders, and looking about as far from the Red Princess as she could get. Jon saw her first, watched her searching the busy tavern for him, and got to see her face light up when she found him in the crowd. She glanced down, and a minute later his phone buzzed. He balanced a drinks tray, checked the phone, smiled, and nodded toward her: the message had said,I'll hang out until you can get away.

Alis gave him a thumbs up and retreated to the edge of the tavern's property, perching on a tree-stump seat there, and Jonwent back to work with a vengeance. If he could get everybody's drinks to them fast enough, they'd go home sooner, right?

You should feed them apples,his bear suggested.Autumn apples that make them dizzy.

That's kind of what beer is,he told the animal cheerfully.Some of these are even actually apple cider.

We should have some apple cider!

The idea was tempting, but there were too many puzzles to solve. Having a dizzy head wouldn't help.Maybe later,he promised the bear, which agreed happily. Lucky for Jon, bears didn't have a great sense of time: 'later' could mean never, and it wouldn't think anything of it.

It was a solid half hour before the crowd started to thin. One of the other tavern swains waved him away, and Jon went to grab a couple of Thunder Bear root beers for himself and Alis, only to discover, when he got to her, that his wretched brother was already there with root beers. Worse, Alis was laughing, and laughed harder when Jon arrived, although she did tilt her chin up for a smiling kiss. "Believe it or not," she said preemptively, "he's not telling stories on you. He was telling me about how he broke Argent's nose a couple years ago. God, I wish I'd seen that."

"The bastard cheated," Laurie said. "Flashed something in my eyes. I wanted to get him down so I could see what it was, but I still don't know, so I couldn't go to the faire committee to complain."

"He did that t—!" Alis broke off and took a huge swallow of root beer that ended up sending her into a coughing fit. Both the brothers stared at her in consternation as she waved her hands, evidently indicating she was okay, and finally, with tears streaming down her face and possibly some root beer streaming from her nose, she said, "Hedidthat to you?" hoarsely.

Jon, worriedly, said, "Are you okay?" and she nodded, wiping root beer off her nose.

"Yeah, I just, uh, don't like cheaters. It's really good root beer." She scrunched her whole face, nose wrinkled, mouth pinched, eyes closed, before she stretched it all the opposite way and added, "Although not so great through the nose. Ow."

"Here." Jon handed her one of the root beers he'd brought over. "This one doesn't have cough and tears and snot all over it."

Alis burst out laughing and carefully traded the drinks. "Neither did Laurie's before I lost control of my face. There's got to be some way to get proof. I'm fi…aah, I'm fine. Somebody must be filming those fights. From the right angle a camera could catch it."

"Dozens of people film them, but we can't go around absconding with everybody's phone to check their footage," Laurie said. "You go to all of them, right? As a courtier? Maybe you can get the other ladies and court members to record them?—"

"With phones we're not supposed to have in character?"

"Oh, dammit. Right. Well, Jon, you're fighting him tomorrow in the unarmored division, right? Maybe we can strap a camera to your helmet." Laurie looked up toward the sky thoughtfully. "Actually, that's a great idea. I bet I could build a whole streaming audience empire off first-person-point-of-view fights."

"Not off my first person point of view!"

"You're no fun," Laurie told him.

Alis mumbled, "I disagree," and Laurie managed to look both horrified, shocked, and gleeful all at the same time. He opened his mouth to say something, and whatever it was, Jon didn't want to hear it, so he stuck his finger in Laurie's mouth.

His brother made a series of garbled sounds that ended in a hacking cough, knocking Jon's hand away, and an incredibly injured expression. "I wasn't going to sayanything!"

"And I made sure of it." Jon smiled as placidly as he could and Laurie hunched up in a sulk.

"Fine. I'm going back to the tavern, where theyappreciateme."

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