“Drink this,” she said.

“It’s not ale, is it?” Larten asked, his face whitening at the thought.

The assistant smiled briefly — she looked quite pretty when she smiled — then shook her head. “A cure of my mistress’s. You will feel better after you drink it.”

Larten had tried a number of hangover cures in the past, none of which had done much for him. But to be polite he took the mug from the woman — not much more than a girl when seen by daylight — and downed half of it. He finished off the rest a few moments later and almost immediately his headache began to lift.

“This is amazing,” he gasped. “What is in it?”

“You’d feel sick again if I told you,” the girl laughed.

She had crooked teeth, Larten noted, but a man could easily ignore a flaw like that.

“I do not think you told me your name,” Larten said smoothly.

“You think wrong,” she answered. “In fact you made up a song about it. Lovely Arra Sails, nectar to all males, how I’d like to spear you like a whaler spears a whale! There was more, but that, sadly, was the best line.”

Larten winced. “I have a habit of making up insulting rhymes when drunk. My apologies.”

“No need. Your songs about my two sisters were worse. But they were nearly as drunk as you, so I doubt they’ll remember.”

“Three sisters working for the same mistress? That is unusual.”

“They’re not my real sisters,” Arra sighed, as if explaining something obvious to an idiot. “That’s just how Evanna refers to us.” She shrugged. “They’re pleasant enough, though I don’t think of them as friends.” Arra squinted at Larten and pursed her lips.

“You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”

“Aye,” Larten said proudly.

“Don’t vampires perish in direct sunlight?”

“Not immediately. I would start to burn if I stayed out, but it would not kill me for a couple of hours. A lot of the myths are false or distortions of the truth.”