The creaking of floorboards overhead unsettled Zefir as he waited silently in the far corner of the dingy cellar. The party above him had gone from rowdy to a downright brawl as the villagers celebrated the summer solstice. Zefir had other matters on his mind however, and kept his eyes fixed on the cellar door, awaiting the arrival of his contact from the Jackdaws.
He wondered if he’d be waiting long for this Mal character. Zefir found folk in this part of the realm uncultured and rude. The kind of unpunctual brigands who would stumble into a tavern before attending to business, and perhaps not bother to show up at all. Another heavy thud from above made his heart jump—another drunken patron hitting the deck. Zefir was losing his patience but tried hard to calm his mind. The quest ahead was far too important to let his anger loose and draw attention to himself. He closed his eyes, cleared his thoughts, calmed his emotions, and waited patiently for a knock at the door.
*
The knock came a few minutes after the stroke of midnight, judging by the growing rabble upstairs. Two short raps, a pause, then three more. A shadow blocking the moonlight seeping through the crack at the threshold. Zefir pointed to the candles on the cellar table and they ignited with a flickering flame, then to the latch on the cellar door which opened with a rusty groan.
The door opened slowly and a hooded figure peered inside. Zefir couldn’t see their face, but they seemed the right sort of scoundrel to be meeting a stranger in a dark cellar at midnight. The figure spoke in a rough man’s voice.
“I have a delivery. Historical documents it says on the tag, for a Professor Warren.”
Zefir didn’t respond at first. He knew he had heard that voice before, but couldn’t place it.
“Hello?” asked the figure, losing patience.
“Please, come in,” said Zefir, emerging from his dark corner and standing at the edge of the aura of candle light.
The figure swung the cellar door wide impatiently and descended the short flight of stairs. He wore a long and dirty traveler's cloak and had a large leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He held its strap firmly with both hands as he approached the table.
Zefir continued, “Mal, is it?”
“I might be,” the man responded, setting the satchel down on the table. “Then again, I might be the fellow Mal hired to make the delivery.”
“I would hope not, for Mal’s sake,” said Zefir, opening the satchel and removing a stack of folded maps. “For you see I had planned on giving Mal a bonus, and asking if he might be interested in more work. Depending on the condition of my historical documents, of course.”
“Say I were Mal, how is their condition?” asked the man.
“Certainly worth another gold piece from what I can see,” said Zefir.
“And the next job?” asked the man.
“Worth a whole lot more,” Zefir replied, a glint in his eye.
“Is that so? What do you have in mind, professor?”
“Tell Mal that Professor Warren needs a team of capable and discrete dungeoneers,” Zefir said, removing a map from the stack and pushing it across the table. “Have you ever been to the Vastglen?” he asked with a sinister grin.