Chapter 4 #3
“On it.” She returns to Koen, dragging him away from his circle of admirers.
After pinning him to the wall and kissing him hard enough to make the other women stop giggling, she continues to lean close to him, speaking in a low voice.
He looks my way a moment later, then beckons for me to follow after he obtains a key from a hook behind the bar.
His uncle is the one who owns this establishment.
Said uncle is also a frequent contributor to my expeditions, always making sure I have the supplies I need to get the job done.
Koen is usually the one who coordinates things between us, and he can be helpful, too, when it comes to obtaining information.
He is, as Briar said, a colossal idiot, but he’s got a face that people trust, and a laugh that makes just about everyone drop their guard and spill whatever secrets they’re carrying. He’s got a decent enough heart too, I suppose; I wouldn’t let him anywhere near my best friend if he didn’t.
The key he took lets us into a small storage room. There’s a table in one corner, which we settle down at. Both he and Briar bring their drinks. I decline when they offer me one of my own; my stomach is too full of nervous energy to add alcohol to the mix.
“Another job offer,” I tell Briar, holding up the letter.
“Already?” She doesn’t look thrilled, but she reaches for it all the same.
“Too much work and too little play,” Koen tuts at me. “I’ve warned you about that in the past.”
I smile sweetly. “Well, we can’t all make our living as drunken entertainers, now can we?”
“I do have more talent at this career than most, that’s true. I could teach you my ways, though.”
“I’ll pass.”
Briar ignores us as she scans the message, squinting through whatever haze her drink of choice—honey and whiskey, I’m guessing—has put over her vision. Her frown is deeply etched into her face when she finally looks up at me.
“You want to go to Meridian?” She massages her temples. “As in the abandoned city that’s a known hotbed of both dragon and raider activity? The city that I’ve heard is literally crumbling away, thanks to sinkholes that are swallowing up half its buildings? That Meridian?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Arowyn…”
“It’s a simple enough job. Retrieve some records from the old magistrate's hall, deliver them to Grenmire…and did you notice the payment?”
“I did.” She still doesn’t look convinced.
Koen takes the letter and reads it for himself several times before placing it on the table, smoothing it out, and clearing his throat.
“What that deplorable, fatass of a baron isn’t telling you in his letter is that two Ashwalkers have already been sent to fetch things from that magistrate’s hall over the last month. They didn’t come back.”
The nervous energy in my gut twists into something more solid. Something heavier. “…How do you know that?”
“’Cause I have ears, darling.” He shrugs. “And the rumors have been louder than usual the past couple of days. Something very strange is afoot in the northeast corner of this kingdom, no doubt.”
Was that something also the reason for the heightened Mouren presence?
The camp they set up wasn’t far from Meridian…
I shift in my seat, finding my balance despite that heavy weight sinking deeper in my stomach. “I still think it’s worth the risk.”
Koen chuckles and takes another swig of his drink. “And I think you’re fucking insane.”
“Good thing I care so little about your opinion, then.”
He pauses mid-sip to smile at me, his amber eyes shining. “So hateful toward me, my beautiful, darling Owyn. Is it because I broke your heart all those years ago? Because we can give it another shot, if you’d like—honestly, I don’t even remember why we split up.”
“We never dated, you moron.”
“Didn’t we?” He lifts his eyes to the ceiling. His gaze gets stuck there for a moment, presumably while he rubs the few sober brain cells he has together in an attempt to spark an intelligent response. “Well, it’s probably just as well,” he finally drawls. “Doubt you’re very good in bed.”
“Not with you, at least,” I say. “Considering I wouldn’t know what to do with such a small dick.”
Briar chokes on her drink.
I offer her an apologetic grin—she is trying to bed this idiot, after all—but she just laughs.
“The small ones try harder, in my experience,” she says with a wink.
“Both of you can go straight to hell,” says Koen.
“And we’ll see you when you get there, Tiny Dick,” Briar replies, lifting her cup to him.
He rolls his eyes, but then lifts his own drink and clinks it against hers.
We sit together for an hour more, occasionally re-reading the letter the Grenmire baron sent and rehashing the things we know about Meridian, both rumored and factual.
The tone eventually shifts entirely away from bawdy jokes at one another’s expense to a more serious, somber discussion of potential plans and routes.
Koen doesn’t last long once the laughter stops; he slumps onto the table, face buried into his arms, and promptly falls asleep.
Briar, on the other hand, is sobering up slightly. Enough that her expression turns thoughtful, and she’s quiet for an uncharacteristically long time before she lifts her bright eyes to me. “You’re really considering this, aren’t you?”
I fold and unfold the letter in my hand again; I’ve done it so many times over the last hour that the paper is already starting to tear in a few places. “This town needs the money,” I tell her. “And Meridian will likely have supplies we can scavenge while we’re there, too.”
“We’ve been running multiple jobs a week as it is.”
“And it’s still not enough. We have to take these large jobs whenever we can get them, so long as there are so few of us to do the work.”
“More are going to join us eventually, aren’t they? Grier has some up-and-coming recruits that seem promising.”
“But in the meantime?” I shake my head. “You saw how sparse the market was earlier. Fewer and fewer merchants are making their way into the Burn, and the ones that do are charging us more and more—we’ll need to be able to keep affording their prices, somehow.
At least until we figure out a better solution. ”
Neither of us makes any attempt to guess at what that better solution might be.
Nor do we mention how Grier has had ‘promising recruits’ before that haven’t panned out.
To be an Ashwalker is to bet your life on every run, and it’s only gotten more dangerous as of late.
Few end up truly committing to the job, and I can’t really blame them.
It wasn’t Briar’s vocation to end up here, either; she started mostly for my sake, I think, and because there were so few able-bodied others to help. She wanted to be a teacher—to establish the first proper school within the Burn.
But this world has a way of taking away choices, ripping them from one’s hands as violently as a dragon ripping apart its kill.
The silence stretches between us, interrupted only by Koen’s occasional snores.
Finally, Briar sighs and says, “I don’t like it. But you know I’m with you, whatever you decide to do.”
“Is that the alcohol talking?”
“A little bit, yes.” She gives me a sleepy grin. “But I agree with the alcohol, in this case. Although…” She trails off, her lips curving downward. “No attempted dragon slaying this time.”
Images of bloody water and broken wings flash through my thoughts, but somehow I manage to push the dragon hatchling’s face from my mind. “I’ve had my fill of close encounters with those demons.”
“Swear it?”
“I’ll swear it on our last remaining tin of tea leaves.”
She puts a hand to her heart in pretend shock. “Few things are more sacred to you than that.”
“Which is how you know I’m serious.”
She returns the wry smile I give her. “I guess we’ll leave first thing tomorrow, then.
” She looks at Koen and sighs, as if to say, so much for that.
I think of telling her to enjoy the rest of the night with him if she wants, but she raises her cup and gets to her feet.
“A toast to the baron’s gold before we leave. ”
“Hear hear,” I agree.
But when I crawl back into bed later that night, it isn’t his gold that I dream of.
Instead, it’s the gold of that dying dragon’s eyes watching me through layers of smoke, following my every movement, as if waiting to see what I’ll do next.