16. Chapter 16 The Announcement #2
“Some people around town already knew, I’m sure. Anyway, I talked to the dock workers afterward. I may have threatened them.”
Liv laughed. “Yeah, you did.”
Sif chuckled. “I’m so happy right now. I wish I could have seen it.”
Bjorna hadn’t moved. She sat with her hands around her mug and her eyes on me. I could see her processing it, turning it over, running angles on it.
“Fenrik,” Bjorna said.
“The watch captain.”
“You went to the watch station first. You gave your name and Vaughn Strom’s name. Then you walked to the docks and did this in front of witnesses.”
“Five or six dock workers and a barge master. Yeah, what’s your point?”
“So Fenrik has a record of you asking about Vaughn Strom. And now Vaughn Strom has a story about a healer who walked up and broke him through a handshake. If Vaughn talks to the watch, or if any of those dock workers talk, it connects.” Bjorna laid it out flat, no judgment in it, just assessment. “You left a trail, Daniel.”
“I did, but I healed him and there’s no evidence. Plus, I scared them all shitless. They aren’t going to talk.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am. Don’t worry about it.”
Bjorna looked at me for a long count. Her dark eyes were steady and warm and serious all at once.
“I’m not telling you it was wrong,” she said. “That man beat a woman in broad daylight and walked away like she was nothing. You did something about it. I’m telling you to be aware of what might come back on you. There are consequences to every action.”
Sif broke her silence. “Yeah, the main consequence was Liv getting horny and Daniel getting laid.”
Bjorna groaned. “Please let the adults talk.”
“Fair enough.” Sif made a lock motion on her mouth.
Bjorna shifted her attention back to me. “If the watch comes asking, you were at the clinic all evening. We’ll handle it.” She said it the same as she said everything that mattered, flat and final. “Liv, is there anyone who saw them at the docks besides the workers?”
“I don’t think so. It was dark and the quay was mostly empty. The workers were the only ones around.”
Bjorna nodded. “Then we wait and see if anyone talks. Most dock workers don’t run to the watch with stories about a healer who put a colleague on the ground. It’s bad for business.”
Nott had been listening without speaking. Her hands were flat on the table, fingers spread, still as the rest of her.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said.
Everyone looked at her. Nott didn’t usually volunteer, and when she did, people paid attention.
“Do what?” I said.
“Control it that precisely. Start it, sustain it, choose when to stop, then reverse everything with that precision.” Her dark eyes held mine. “That’s not just a combat skill. That’s something else.”
Sif’s gaze jumped from Nott to me and back to Nott, and a grin crept across her face. “Nott’s impressed.”
“I’m observing.”
“She’s impressed,” Sif said to Liv.
“She’s very impressed,” Liv confirmed. Her ears were forward and her grin matched Sif’s.
Nott’s gaze dropped to the table. The pink in her cheeks had deepened. “I said what I said. I’m not adding to it.”
“You don’t have to add to it,” Sif said. “Your face is adding to it for you. Daniel has ruffled your pretty black feathers.”
Bjorna cut in before Nott could respond. “Enough.” She said it without sharpness, but the thread died. She looked around the table and settled on each of us in turn. “Now that we’ve covered Daniel’s evening at the docks, I have something else.”
She paused. The lamplight threw her shadow across the wall behind her, massive and still. Larg’s forge had gone quiet below us. The apartment was just the coal-pot’s low heat and the sound of the night outside the window.
“I’ve sorted out our entry to The Splits,” Bjorna said.
The whetstone stopped. Liv’s ears locked forward. Nobody said anything for a second.
“Nott and I went to the portal outside of town, then to The Splits,” Bjorna continued. “We registered the party. We’re cleared for entry.”
“Today?” I asked. “You didn’t mention it would be so soon.”
“Tomorrow. I wanted to make sure the registrar cleared us and that the portal path to the dungeon was active. It is. The staging area is different from Cold Hollow’s.
It’s busier. More parties. More serious parties.
I saw groups coming out of the dungeon with gear I haven’t seen in Halver’s Reach before. ”
“How does this work logistically?” I said. “We talked about the portal scrolls and camping, but I want to make sure I have the whole picture.”
“We set up camp nearby. We go into the dungeon and push as deep as we can on the first day, then portal-scroll out to camp, rest overnight, and portal back in the next morning. The dungeon resets its creatures around our anchor point, so we’ll fight through our current depth again, but we don’t re-clear everything above us. ”
“How many scrolls do we need?”
“Minimum three for a two-day push. Four or five if we go three days. I want to buy six from Mildred in case we need emergency exits. Each scroll is a one-time use.”
Sif cracked her knuckles. “So we’re actually doing this. We’re going into The Splits.”