Gorm had bought information from thieves in taverns countless times, but he couldn’t make any sense of how this was supposed to work. He watched in bewilderment as another clerk stopped at the customer inquiry desk, put the contents of the outbox into a leather satchel, and shuffled back into the depths of the office. “Do I pay ye or—”
“Responses!” she reiterated, pointing at another nondescript desk.
“Come on.” Heraldin nudged Gorm as he stood. The Dwarf gathered up his coins with a shrug, and the three heroes went over to the desk indicated by the attendant. It had another small plaque. This one said, “CUSTOMER RESPONSES.”
They waited in uncomfortable silence. The quiet was oppressive and heavy, only interrupted by the occasional pounding of a stamp or the turning of a page. The minutes stretched into an awkward eternity, and Gorm could not tell how much time had passed before a wrinkled Tinderkin in a rumpled gray suit hobbled up to the desk.
The old clerk held two sheets of parchment; one was the form the inquiries attendant had written, and the other was covered in promising-looking script. “Payment,” he said evenly.
Gorm placed the coins on the desk. The Gnome counted the money, made a note on the form, and adjusted his spectacles to read the script on the second page. When he spoke again it was in a ridiculous accent, like a bad mummer trying to affect a hoodlum from Chrate. “Word on the street is you lads want to know about movin’ Imperial flame olives into the Freedlands. Well, I got sources that says they seen ’em comin up from Kesh through Mistkeep and Waerth by unmarked cart. An’ the talk about Fengarden is there’s an unusual number of said unmarked carts runnin’ through their city and round the Drakehead. Common practice to avoid customs at the Riverdowns. But nobody’s seen ’em enterin’ the city nor passing through the village at Eastgate, and the crews rebuildin’ Aberreth aint talked ’bout ’em neither. Might be bound north for Scoria or Goldwynn if they’re stayin’ off the King’s Road, but no word. That’s as far as the guild ears will get ya.”
His performance done, the clerk cleared his throat, scooped up Gorm’s coin, and added in cold monotone, “No refunds.”
“So, what, the olives just make their way around Drakehead Lake and disappear?” asked Gorm.
The clerk gave a shrug and a nod as he gathered up paperwork and stood.
Gorm thought about where the shipments could have gone. “Any word of the shipments in Hollinsher or East Upshore? Or could the carts be unpacked somewhere?”
“Inquiries,” the clerk said with a perfunctory smile before he turned to hobble away.
“Should have known,” Gorm grumbled.
“I doubt they know more anyway, friend,” said Heraldin. “And I am eager to be out of here.”
Gaist nodded, still glancing around the room.
“Aye, can’t disagree there,” said the Dwarf, already making for the door. “And it seems a good lead. The trick is followin’ it.”
With the three customers gone, the Thieves’ Guild office returned to its quiet work. Clerks processed, indexed, cross-referenced, and filed tips from field observers. Managers assembled briefings from collected paperwork. Senior staff monitored these reports to see if adjustments were necessary in risk profiles or quarterly projections. Every guild member went about their duties wordlessly, completely focused on scrupulously following process. Few things survived from the pre-acquisition era of the guild, but creative and memorable punishments for breaking guild policy had endured.
And so the response clerk quickly went to the back office with Gorm’s payment and paperwork. A guild accountant counted out the payment, checked it against the total on the inquiry form, and returned the paperwork to the clerk with a receipt of payment. The clerk deposited the inquiry, the scripted reply, and the receipt into a new folder, signed a pre-printed attestation of veracity, stamped everything with his seal, and put the entire packet into the inbox of a desk marked “POST-OPERATIONAL OPERATIONS.”
The senior clerk of post-operational operations opened the file, reviewed its contents, and paused as she was placing it in an outbox marked “TO FILE.” Something echoed faintly at the back of her mind, like the call of a miner lost in a deep cave. She reviewed the description of the customers and nature of their request, then consulted a ledger of guild procedures. A few loose memorandums on process updates were in the back. One of them, dated from the prior Bloomtide, had a list of topics and the descriptions of a dozen people. She compared the memo to the inquiry form, made a note on the file, stamped it, and placed it in a different outbox labeled “ESCALATIONS.”
Thus Gorm’s paperwork was diverted from the river of paper flowing into the depths of the guild’s archives. Instead, it cascaded from desk to desk, collecting notes and stamps and additional papers, until it arrived at the Office of External Communications. A communications clerk bound the folio with a red ribbon, put it into a briefcase, and carried it to a courier waiting by a nondescript carriage.
The carriage took the clerk up to a beige, windowless building wedged between two law firms on the Seventh Tier. Suite forty-two of the building was empty aside from a single desk, and behind the lone desk sat the shadow of a figure reading from another set of documents. The courier placed the bound folio on the desk with trepidation before fleeing the room. Before the sound of the courier’s hurried, retreating footsteps had completely faded, the man behind the lone desk cut the red ribbon and opened the folder.
He picked up the inquiry form and read. Then he read it again.
He set the paper down. He took a deep, meditative breath, and trembled as though fighting to suppress a scream. The struggle contorted his fine features for a moment, and then he lost. An expletive forced itself from his lips in a spray of spittle.
“Spug!” swore Benny Hookhand.
Chapter 9
“Pardon my language. I am not used to this—bones!” Poldo swore again as his seat shifted and nearly dropped him. His stomach lurched as the cobblestones swayed below him.
“You all right?” Thane asked over his shoulder.
“Yes, fine, thank you.” Poldo righted himself. “I am not used to this height. Perhaps, though, a few adjustments to the straps? For stability.”
A Wood Gnome chittered an order, and the Domovoy on Thane’s shoulder sprang into action.
“And you’re sure you don’t mind? It’s just hard to move quickly on these, aha, relatively short legs.” Notes of apology rang in Poldo’s voice as he stared up at Thane. “And I never learned to ride, living in the city as I did…”
“I don’t mind,” said the Troll, though he was preoccupied with the leather harness around his arms. Wood Gnomes swarmed through his shaggy fur, making adjustments to the straps. Those strips of padded leather connected to Poldo’s seat, an apparatus halfway between a plush seat and a haversack on the Troll’s back.
“And, as you well know, coaches tend to attract unwanted attention,” Poldo continued.
“And I’m good at avoiding it, yes.” The Troll gave his limbs an appraising stretch. “It fits well.”
“I should hope so, given what that leatherworker charged,” said the Scribkin. “Are you ready to travel for Mistkeep then?”
Thane straightened and took a breath of the salty air. West of them, dark clouds rolled over darker waves that crashed against the rocky coast. North of them, the city of Chrate perched amid the rocks. Black smoke spewed from the maze of crooked chimneys that crowned the port city.
“Yes,” the Troll said. He took another breath, and his subsequent grin was equal parts pure joy and daggerlike teeth. “It will be good to be back in the deep forest.”
“Will it? Uh, excellent.” Poldo, for his part, had enjoyed his brief hours in a city, even one as dingy and soot-filled as Chrate. He’d found a teahouse that brewed a decent cup, and for a few blessed moments he’d been able to relax and pretend he was back on the Pinnacle of Andarun with a cup of Spelljammer’s green blend in hand and the jewel of the Freedlands spread out before him.
Yet Poldo knew they couldn’t linger too long. The fiasco with collateralized threat obligations had left a lot of people very angry at Poldo, many of whom had ample wealth and meager morals. At least a few had quietly placed bounties on his head. He wouldn’t be safe in Andarun without a king’s guard, and Chrate was far less safe than Andarun. The port city was a nest of skullduggery and grift, an orgy of thieves, spies, and assassins plying their trades against each other.
Whenever he walked into Chrate, the Gnome was like a plump chicken strolling into a den of wolves, albeit a chicken that walked around with a Dire Bear watching over it. Poldo preferred not to put his bodyguard out by provoking constant attempts on his life. They’d spent a night in the decaying port on their way to Adchul those many months ago, and poor Thane had barely slept for all of the would-be assassins creeping through the window and shimmying down the chimney. On this trip, they’d only been in town long enough to purchase Thane’s harness from a dusty antiques shop, drop it with the leatherworker, and have a cup of tea while waiting for the modifications to be complete.
The Troll gave the straps of the harness a couple more experimental tugs. Poldo’s seat didn’t shift. “Let’s be off,” he said.
