"Why is he like that."
"What, a bard?" Hech Genima wrinkles her nose. "This humble one assumes a neglected childhood, and the internalised maladaption that if misbehaviour gets attention, misbehaviour is good."
The adventurers around the table fall silent.
"Not quite what I meant, I think," the helling seated opposite says gloomily, teacup cradled in her palms, "but horribly likely. Has anyone tried explaining that there are, ah, ways for people to take 'mess with the bard, you get it hard'?"
"Has anyone," Hech says mockingly, "tried explaining to a bard about innuendo—"
The helling sets her cup down and pushes her chair back. "My apologies, Lady Genima," she says curtly. "I'll take my peasant foolishness where it doesn't befoul your air—"
"Happy now, Hech?" the tall sellsword says wearily, in the wake of the helling's retreating back. "The second we reach a city, that girl's going to jump ship for some other outfit where thay're not mean to her. At this rate, we'll be lucky if she pauses on her way to tell us she's going; and then we're down a healer. Again."
Hech lifts her chin, shoulders tense. "No," she says, with a cool and glasslike lack of expression. "I am not happy now."
Across the tavern, the helling skips from bar to table, plunks one of two steins down in front of the bard, slings an arm around his shoulders, and in fair imitation of the overloud earnestness of drunks, begins: "You know, if you're always going on about your hardness because, you know, you're the only man adventuring along with all these powerful women, nobody thinks any the less of you! Have people made fun of you? If you just ask, we'd all be happy to back you up against any mockery of your virility! Obviously I'd rather brick myself up than verify with my own senses, but that's nothing personal at all—"
The sellsword barks with laughter as the bard, wide-eyed and disconcerted, says something low and hurried back.
"No no but it's cruel and demeaning to define a man by his erectile function!" the helling declaims near the top of her voice. "We'll tell them! Who was it? Come on, you're always talking about it, it must have hurt your feelings deep! I'll tell them myself that the dockside alleyway skirt-hoisters in Vermus Tep were happy to take your coin for a five-minute fumble!—"
"We ought probably put a stop to that," the sellsword says, smiling; she crosses her outthrust legs under the table, and takes a leisurely sip of tea.