"Oh, look at that, not nice at all."

It's not a very long fight, but based on Lissa's expression and blissful surface thoughts, it's a very satisfying one. It attracts quite an audience in the thirty seconds it takes. Lissa makes sure to wait until the man is about to hit her.

Eventually she seems to get impatient, and when he tries to grab her and pin her against the bar - he's only a fraction taller but a lot heavier - she headbutts him, breaking his nose, and then somehow uses his own momentum to send him flying to the floor.

"I wouldn't get up just yet," she says sweetly. "If I were you." Oh but she loooooooves fighting.

"Lieutenant Ashkevron," the bartender says wearily, "I told you, no fighting in my -"

"Hey, it's captain now. 'Cept I'm off duty so actually it's just Liss. And he had it coming, you should kick him out." Lissa is still completely steady on her feet, but her voice is the teensiest bit slurred.

     The girl finally gets back from the privy, face freshly powdered, and stops dead, blinking.

"Your date was a slimy bastard," Lissa says, just as sweetly. She looks so pleased with herself. "Hey no, have a seat with us for a minute and I'll tell you what a girl's gotta do to look out for herself..."

This takes about three minutes. The young woman seems to find Lissa baffling and kind of scary, and also walking in to find her date bleeding on the floor and then shuffling out under the bartender's glare totally ruined her mood. She leaves.

Lissa turns and beams at Carissa. "That was so fun."

"You make a habit of that? Captain?"

Lissa rolls her eyes. "Not when I'm working. I'm on leave. All week, actually." 

She's thinking that okay fine she does sometimes go to the worst tavern in whatever-town, not in uniform obviously, and pick a fight, sparring just doesn't hit the same buttons for her. But it's really only in Haven that there's a semi-infinite supply of skeezy men she can catch doing something they deserve to be beaten up for, and it's such good stress relief.

Well, people who aren't wizards also get better at what they do by doing it with real stakes. "It was very impressive." Giggle. "I couldn't do that sober." She could Sleep them but that is, technically, a different thing.

Lissa chuckles as well. "I've had practice. Next round of drinks on me?" She's relaxed and in such a good mood and pretty glad now that she didn't drag Van along with her, he'd be squeamish and upset. Honestly giving someone with his personality extremely powerful magic is a waste, she thinks, he haaates fighting.

She brings them drinks and sits down and smiles brightly at Carissa, waiting to see what she'll say.

"How'd you get so good at that?"

"I had a really good teacher. Lord Corey. I persuaded my father to send me out to train with him when I was not quite eighteen, since I'm," vague gesture at her face and current clothing, "not very marriageable. Conveniently, who wants to get married to some crusty noble. "And then I joined the Guard. I guess it's really only been a couple of years. Feels longer."

So she's in Valdemar's aristocracy. And her brother is a Herald. 

"It was incredible," Carissa says, and kisses her.

Oooh. Lissa had been wondering but unsure if things were headed that way - women are harder to read, there are all the ways women can be friendly and sweet to each other that aren't that sort of thing - but she's pretty pleased with this outcome.

They get some wolf-whistles from the bar. Lissa pulls back after a minute. "If we're gonna carry on like this," she whispers in Carissa's ear, "we should take it somewhere else - I've got a room at the inn..." She is thinking that BEST VACATION EVER.

"Good idea," she whispers back.

Then they can take it upstairs!

Lissa gives the impression of being someone who isn't per se experienced in bed with other women but is nonetheless enthusiastic and certainly bold about it.

And if Carissa times her remaining Detect Thoughts right, to when they're snuggling and murmuring flirty exchanges to each other, she can learn a few things, though of unclear relevance. Lissa's brother - from context, the one who's a Herald - is gay. Their father disapproves and partly as a result her brother is very ashamed of it. (Lissa thinks this is STUPID and he should care less what their idiot father thinks.) Included in the subtext here is that Valdemar frowns on same-sex relationships generally, though it seems to be more the case for men; two women kissing in a bar won't attract derision, if only because the men around find it very hot.

Lissa's brother also...lost a lover in tragic circumstances? Maybe. There's an upsetting memory here that Lissa makes a habit of not-thinking about, it seems to be the same thing she wanted distraction from earlier.

They have an aunt who's also a Herald and a mage. (Lissa is at one point thinking that she's supposed to have lunch over there tomorrow and she wonders if she can manage to talk to Savil about her delightful liaison with the foreign merchant cryptically enough that Savil's teenage student won't catch on.)

Huh. She picked well, if this was luck. (Why would a society discourage same-sex relationships? Though probably the nobility in Cheliax have lots of arbitrary taboos that are something like fashions.)

She is not totally sure she wants her liaisons accounted to the Herald-mages but, well, she is going to want to speak to them at some point. 

She sleeps well.

Lissa is apparently a morning person; when Carissa wakes up she's already up and has made tea. "I'm going to the market this morning," she announces once she notices Carissa is awake. "Gotta get presents for the cousins, and my baby brother's engaged! Er, the other one, back home, he's the heir now. Can't hardly believe it. Last I remember he was thirteen and a fathead and getting maids pregnant - gods, Mother was upset about that one."

"Oh? Where I'm from that's practically expected." Though also stupid because no one assassinates each other like noble half-siblings.

"Oh, it's not surprising or anything. Just rather insensitive." Shrug. "Probably he won't be so much of a fathead when he's grown up. And at least he wants to inherit, Van never did. Anyway, I'm guessing you've got things to do, but I'll be down at the Oakenshield tonight." (This is the name of the tavern.)

"Well, hopefully I can get my things done by then." Wink.

Lissa returns the wink, and kisses her, and then downs the rest of her tea. "You'd better."

She heads out.

She prepares her spells. She will have Tongues for a total of three hours of the day and should save two of them for the evening; she will have Detect Thoughts four times for a handful of minutes each; she can do Comprehend Languages much of the rest of the time, but that won't let her speak it. 

She goes looking for temples, not to participate but to hang around and eavesdrop.

She can find several! There's apparently a private Heralds' temple to Kernos inside the walls that encircle the Palace and grounds, but at a glance the Gate-guard there is paying substantially more attention to questioning everyone who goes inside, and there's a much bigger temple just outside. There's also a temple to a goddess called Astera - the one that Lissa's family worships, apparently - a bit further out, and one to Vkandis Sunlord on the edge of town, in the Karsite-immigrants district. There are a few smaller temples and specialized monastic orders with locations in the city: Anathei of the Purifying Flame is mostly followed further south but has a small number of followers here; there's anuns' cloister dedicated to Astera, separate from the main temple, and also an order of monks of Kernos with a location here; there's even a very small temple to the Star-Eyed Goddess, though She's mostly worshipped by Her peoples, the Tayledras in the Pelagirs and the Shin'a'in down on the Dhorisha Plains.

Huh. What does eavesdropping at all the ones that aren't on the palace grounds teach her? Do they have sermons? Prayer services? Libraries?

Astera's order is a scholarly one and has a library, though the public section of it isn't that impressive. The temple to Kernos is the most widely attended and has locals dropping by to pray and leave offerings at the altar (mostly bits of paper with notes on them) throughout the day, and prayer bells every hour. The temple to Vkandis has a sermon delivered at high noon. The tiny temple to Anathei mostly has a single priest supervising an oil lamp burning, available to answer the few questions he gets from passersby.

Maybe tomorrow she'll come back when her Tongues aren't spoken for in the evening and ask lots of questions. Today she's content to just wander the city eavesdropping and thinking.

She sees a few Heralds from a distance. One middle-aged man appears to be a mage, and is helping out with repairs to the stone wall around the back of what seems to be the city courthouse, precisely knocking out the sections that need replacing and then floating new stone blocks into place - and fiercely concentrating at them, which apparently heats and fires the cement-grouting between them.