Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 38 (Patreon)

The inn had inherited more Runners, Tibs saw as he made his way to his table. The inn smelled amazing, spices and meats and sweet and oils. His stomach growled and Carina chuckled.

“Don’t overdo it; It’s your first meal. You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’ll take sick over being hungry again,” Tibs replied. Jackal was off talking with Kroseph. Probably giving him instructions to keep his servings small. The healing potion had made his hunger bearable long enough for him to sleep until light, but now he was ready to devour whatever was put before him, no matter how bland the food.

While waiting, he looked around, taking in the rougher crowd. They were loud, unlike the previous batch, who had to endure deaths after deaths. Tibs wished these people had been brought when Sto was set on killing everyone who entered. He didn’t like them. They acted like the town was theirs to do as they pleased and, with a few exceptions, the guards seem content to let them get away with it.

One guard who had no patience for them was sitting in a corner, her dogs at her feet. She was up to seven now. The latest was still scrawny, like the ones roaming the darker alleys between buildings.

She was dark.

Everyone had some degree of darkness to them unless Tibs purposely stopped… he didn’t know how to call it. He wasn’t using the darkness essence, it was just there, but if he distanced his thoughts from it, people brightened back to how he’d seen them before. This, he suspected, represented how many secrets people held. And Serba had a lot of them, more than anyone in the room. To his surprise, the latest conscripts didn’t have many secrets.

Even Kroseph and his family had some, and Tibs ideally wondered what the innkeepers might be keeping to themselves. Unlike Khumdar, he didn’t feel a need to find out. People had secrets; it was how the world was.

Kroseph placed a tankard and bowl before him and Tibs stared at it.

“What is this?” he searched in it for meats or even vegetables.

“Meat broth, to ease you back after so long without eating.”

Tibs looked at the server. “But I’m hungry.”

“Trust him,” Jackal said, placing places full of meats and vegetables before Carina and himself before sitting down. “Innkeepers might not be clerics, but they see enough injured people to have a sense of how to deal with those who’ve been without food for a while.”

Tibs nodded. “Okay.” He smiled at the server.

“Watch your plates,” Kroseph said. “He had that ‘I’m planning something look’.”

“This is what happens when you don’t feed me,” Tibs grumbled. “I can’t hide my intentions anymore.” He looked at his friends. “What are you going to do when I give away which pocket I’m planning on picking? You need me to do the runs.”

“You start by enjoying your broth,” Carina said, “then we’ll see about letting you steal from our plates.”

Jackal moved his away from Tibs. “Her plate. I’m not sharing mine.”

Tibs eyed the fighter’s food. He seemed to have more on his plate, and it looked juicier than Carina’s. The distance was a problem. He’d have to stand, and Jackal wasn’t the fool he liked to pretend he was, he’d realized why Tibs was getting out of—

“Eat, Tibs,” Carina coaxed him.

“It needs something to chew, for it to be eating,” Tibs pointed out.

She smiled. “Then drink.”

He pointedly took a long swallow of his tankard. Even the ale tasted better now. Although it had to be his imagination if the face Jackal made as he drank his was anything to go by.

Shouting rose about the din of conversation, a table overturned and before Tibs stood, Serba’s dogs were there, growling and forcing the Runners back. Tibs was surprised not one of them attacked the dogs. They were large dogs, but those Runners had been long-time criminals before being sent here. They couldn’t be scared of dogs.

He looked to Jackal as Serba stood, an annoyed expression on her face, and went to deal with the Runners.

“Half a dozen of them have been sent to the clerics by her dogs,” the fighter said. “She made sure word spread and now they are wisely wary of them.” Jackal shuddered. “I told you they were monsters.”

“I think they’re nice,” Tibs said just before he felt something nuzzle his leg. Thump sat next to him, looking up balefully. “Sorry, you’re going to have to go hungry, too. They took my jerky away.”

“Don’t tell me one of them’s at our table,” Jackal said, an edge to his voice.

“Thump,” Tibs replied, petting it on the head.

“Don’t touch it,” the fighter warned.

“His name,” Serba said, warning in her tone, “is Thumper.” The dog looked at her at the mention of his name, tongue lolling out between its teeth.

“He likes Thump better,” Tibs said, regaining the dog’s attention.

“How are you that bad of an influence on him? On any of them?”

“It’s a gift,” Carina said and motioned to one of the empty chairs. “Do you want to sit?”

“Don’t invite her,” Jackal protested. “She’s going to bring the rest of her animals here.”

“Thanks for the offer. I’d do it, just to watch Jackie squirm, but I don’t want them closer to Tibs anymore than I can avoid. If they spend too much time with him, the next thing I’ll know is that they are going to start nuzzling my brother.”

Jackal made a terrified croak and looked around his chair.

Kroseph appeared behind the fighter, rubbing his back. “It’s okay, I’ll protect you.” He nodded to the now seated, and better behaved Runners, their table surrounded by dogs. “Thanks for keeping them from fighting. We don’t need blood on the floor again.”

“It’s my job.” She looked around, her expression turning displeased. “Seems like I’m the only one still doing it.”

“Why are the others not doing it?” Tibs asked.

Serba looked at Jackal before answering. “I don’t know.”

Tibs figured she was lying, but nothing happened. She didn’t shine or get darker. However Harry used light to tell when someone lied, Tibs couldn’t do it. It might be a more advanced skill, instead of something automatic with how he saw the density of secrets people held.

“Dear old Dad’s getting them to slack off, isn’t that right, Serba?”

“How would I know?”

Jackal rolled his eyes. “The way you did everything he told you to? Come on, it’s not like you have to pretend anymore. I’m out of the way since the guild owns me. Who else but you is he going to pick.”

She shook her head. “You’ve been gone for years, Jackie. Things changed in that time. Unlike what you believe, I didn’t come here to carry out Dad’s instruction.”

Jackal snorted and opened his mouth.

“Don’t fight, okay?” Tibs said. “You’re family.”

“No Tibs,” Jackal said. “We’re family. She’s just someone I’m related to, like my father.”

She shook her head before turning. “Come on Thumper. We have rounds to make.”

The dog looked at Tibs and gave a soft whine before heading to join her and the other dogs as she left.

“She does seem like she isn’t working for him,” Carina said. “Wouldn’t she have let the fight go on is she was? That is what your father wants, right, to disrupt the town.”

“She liked this place,” Jackals said, looking up and smiling at Kroseph, still behind him. “Everyone does. But she’s a Wells. We’re all thugs obeying someone else.”

“You don’t obey anyone,” Tibs said, and was stared at.

“Tibs, I do everything you tell me.” He looked up at the server and his smile became goody.

Tibs looked away, wishing it had been enough to kill his appetite.

“Drink your broth, Tibs,” Carina said. “Before it gets cold.”

With a sigh, he dipped it, then drank all of it. It might just be a drink instead of a meal, but it was tasty. He had two more before Kroseph brought him one with ripped meat and a few vegetables.

“Where did you get the vegetables?” Tibs asked. “I thought all you’d managed to have sent was rotten when it arrived.”

“Runners,” Kroseph said. “They started bringing in fresh vegetables from the dungeon yesterday.”

Jackal and Carina looked at Tibs.

“Don’t look at me. You were there for the last run. I wasn’t in a state to hold that kind of conversation with him.”

“With whom?” Mez asked, taking a seat. Kroseph headed for the kitchen.

“Sto,” Tibs said. “He started providing vegetables.”

The archer nodded. “Yeah. As part of the loot drops. There was grumbling about it meaning even fewer coins, but just like the meat, the guild isn’t interested in it, and the inn paid well for them.”

Jackal looked at Tibs. “If you didn’t tell the dungeon, who did? Is there someone else who can talk with it?”

Tibs wondered about the sorceress, Nora, but dismissed her. If she could talk with Sto because of how many essences she could use, others would be able to, and Carina would have read about it.

Mez chuckled. “We don’t have to be able to talk with the dungeon for it to listen to what we say. With it giving meat as part of the loot, someone must have mentioned vegetables and it made those.”

“I wonder how,” Carina mused. “Meat I get. Animals wander in. The rats and bunnies at least.”

“People,” Jackal said.

“Please don’t say that,” she said. “I’m making sure to think the meat we’re getting is only animal meat. But where would it get vegetables to absorb?”

“He can sense outside the mountain,” Tibs said. “To about where Harry was addressing the last batch. Maybe someone brought food there?”

She shook her head. “That would have been prepared vegetables. Mez said there’s fresh. There might be some growing wild near the mountain.”

Kroseph placed new tankards on the table along with Mez’s plate. Before anyone could react, or Tibs think better of it, he had a chunk of meat in his mouth and was panting, trying to cool it.

“I think that’s punishment enough,” the server said with a chuckle.

“Kro, what kind of vegetables have Runners brought in?” Jackal asked.

“Something resembling potatoes and carrots, smaller, and the carrots are more red than orange, but it’s all good.”

“When we get our next run, see if you can find nice vegetables your brothers would like to cook with.”

“What are you planing?” Carina said as Tibs could finally chew on the meat.

“Unlike everyone here, we know how the dungeon does it.”

“It’s not a secret that dungeons absorb what’s in them and recreate them.”

“Okay, it might not be a secret to sorceress and people who actually like to read, but in this bunch, I figure we’re the only ones who know because of Tibs. So why not take advantage of it and bring things we want the dungeon to make, instead of waiting for it to figure it out on its own?”

“Like the cylinder he wanted.” Tibs eyes Mez’s plate and the archer moved it away protectively.

“Yeah, but with things everyone will want.” Jackal smiled. “We could supply the town with everything my father’s been ruining.”

Tibs shook his head. “Not everything. Sto wouldn’t have the reserves for stuff like metals and more than the occasional armor piece.”

“And the guild will take those,” Mez said.

“Right.” Jackal deflated. “And it isn’t going to fix the rest of the problems he’s causing.”

“Like what?” Tibs asked. If Jackal knew what his father was doing, that meant they could stop it.

“The unrest among the merchants, for one thing, that’s him.”

“But that’s theft,” Carina pointed out. “It always happens.”

“It didn’t happen to this level before he came here,” Jackal said.

“The Runners?” Tibs asked, looking around.

“I don’t think so.” Jackal looked thoughtful. “There aren’t many left of the original groups, and I think that while they might not have your level of respect for the town’s merchants, they understand that if they’re in disarray, we don’t get the things we need.”

“There have been a lot of people coming in since the dungeon graduated,” Mez said. “Not all of them have been nobles or new Runners.”

“But the guards…” Tibs trailed off. “They used to work for your father. So maybe they’re letting it happen.”

“They could also be encouraging the problems,” Jackal said. “Guards are in a good position to spread lies about who might have paid a thief to steal from someone else. And that’s if some of those new people aren’t simply putting on guard uniforms and giving the impression they aren’t doing their jobs. That’s the problem with a uniform, anyone can wear it.”

“But they can’t lie if Harry asks about it,” Carina said. “Wouldn’t that risk make trying it too dangerous? Harry isn’t gentle with anyone who breaks his rules.”

“You should know better than anyone it’s possible not to lie, and still not tell the truth,” Jackal said.

Mez looked at Tibs. “Please tell me this isn’t going to turn into us trying to stop your father by ourselves. We’re not the guard. And I am not wearing that black and green you are so fond of.”

“Trust me, I’m not saying we have to do it, just that I’m confident it’s what’s happening. It was how things happened back home anytime someone got in my father’s way. Things started to go wrong, shipments were misplaced, not well protected, arrived damaged. Then small accidents happened. Theft and fights with other people that person had problems with would escalate out of control. Even without controlling much of the guards there, he could usually get them to do his work just by making sure things appeared the way that forced them to get involved. Eventually, they either left, got dead, or caved in and agreed to what my father wants.”

“What happens if the merchants work for you father?” Tibs asked, remembering the way Darran had greeted him; as if someone with an offer he didn’t want to listen to again was back.

“Nothing good,” Jackal answered. “Nothing good at all.”