Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 68 (Patreon)

Tibs ducked under the Gnoll’s swing and Khumdar sent it flying against the wall with a well-placed staff strike, where it melted away, leaving a silver piece behind.

“Anyone knows how we’re doing for time?” Mez asked.

“No,” Carina replied.

“We could keep going,” Jackal said, picking up silvers. “It’s not like another team in here will be a problem. This floor’s big.”

“Can the dungeon reset the floor until we leave?” Mez asked Tibs.

“It sort of depends,” Sto said, “on if Ganny wants to break a rule or not. We’re not supposed to do it, but it isn’t like there’s anyone here to stop us, is there?”

“There’s a reason for the rules,” Ganny replied unhappily.

“They haven’t worked it out,” Tibs told the archer. “But I’m tired. I think that’s something we need to keep in mind. How good are we going to be against the next group if we’re all exhausted?”

“Can’t you heal the tired away?” Jackal asked.

“I can do it for myself. But all I know how to do to you is heal your injuries. That makes you feel better, but it doesn’t last, does it?” Tibs grinned. “I guess I could practice on you until I get that right.”

“Okay, we’re heading out,” Jackal hurried to say.

“I didn’t think he could get scared of something Tibs did,” Carina said.

“You weren’t there when Kroseph took Jackal to Tibs after he got hurt in a pit match,” Mez replied. “Jackal was healed in the end, but it was a slow and indirect way to get there. It sounded very unpleasant.”

“Maybe he’ll learn to stop with those fights then,” Carina said, starting after the fighter.

“That’s not the lesson he learned,” Tibs said, watching his friend’s back.

* * * * *

“I thought you’d left,” Tibs told Cross as he stepped next to her among the bazaar. Another caravan had arrived this morning, and the town was busy again. Busier. Only a few months after, Sebastian and Tibs almost believe it had never happened. If he didn’t look at how the town had changed and how he was now busy with managing the safety of the town. There were fewer conflicts with Harry’s guard now that clearer lines divided the town.

The nobles wouldn’t have anything to do with Runner security, even after the guild had let Sebastian take over, and Tibs was happy to leave those to Harry. Other than the Gold Neighborhood, where merchants catering to the nobles were set up, all merchants were under Tibs’s care.

The bazaar was Harry’s, but Tibs still made sure Runners patrolled it and interfered with any theft a visitor might attempt on the merchants. Merchants were off-limits without exceptions. Pickpockets and conman Tibs was still figuring out. Runners had to practice, so he couldn’t outlaw it, and his fingers hadn’t gotten any less light, so he’d be a hypocrite to tell others not to do it when he couldn’t stop himself. He encouraged the rogues to stick to one copper, since the excuse he used was that this was training, not about getting rich, but he wouldn’t start demanding they show him what they took. That would make him a thief boss, and he wasn’t going there.

“Just because you’re too busy looking at papers and counting numbers,” she replied with a grin, “doesn’t mean the rest of us have left. Don’t I remember a certain rogue complaining about his sorceress friend forcing him to learn letters and numbers?”

“Just letters,” Tibs grumbled. “Numbers are something the merchants forced on me.” Managing the town had made it so he could count to the hundreds without needing to use purity to remove the headaches, and he could divide by fifteen mostly in his head. He had a deal with Darran for the man to convert the coppers all the way to electrum, but he required Tibs to keep the tally.

“Well, I’m still around. Are you looking to be rid of me?”

Tibs shook his head and handed him the cube. “This one’s interesting, but it’s about memorizing the pieces and how they fit.”

She smiled as she took it. “Not all puzzles are about patterns.”

Tibs looked around. “Sometimes they’re about how people think.”

She chuckled. “The greatest puzzle of them all. Society.”

Tibs rubbed his temple. “That one I don’t want to work on.”

She patted his shoulder. “Then you shouldn’t have agreed to running this town.”

* * * * *

Tibs entered the house through the second-story window. Khumdar’s message had been clear about not being seen coming in. He quietly walked through the unoccupied bedroom, wondering what the cleric was doing here, and why the secrecy.

No, that one was probably a darkness thing. Tibs had experienced it getting used to channeling darkness. This almost need to keep everything he knew to himself, even when it put others in danger. Fire, Light, and Corruption were the only elements he couldn’t channel without consequences yet, and Corruption was getting easier—he chuckled—to handle.

He was terrified of trying Fire.

He sensed two people on the ground floor. One with darkness as his element and the other had no elements. He made an ice knife and kept him behind his back as he descended the steps. The forms were seated, but Tibs couldn’t tell the situation, and until he confirmed it was Khumdar, he didn’t want to risk a Runner seeing him without blue eyes.

“It’s safe,” the cleric said, but Tibs didn’t drop his guard until he saw them. Khumdar was seated in a shadowed corner, nearly unseeable in his black robes. The other was a woman, seated in the light of the room’s lamps, tied to the chair. He didn’t recognize her, so he couldn’t work out why Khumdar had her tied. Staying in the shadows himself, he channeled darkness and sensed she had secrets. He tried to discern the kind she had, the way Khumdar could now, but neither of them knew how the cleric did it. He switched back to water and stepped into the light.

Her expression turned worried on seeing him.

“Maybe you should tell him,” Khumdar said. “You will feel better for it.”

There was a directness to the cleric’s words Tibs wasn’t used to. He sounded angry.

She glowered at him.

“This is what’s been keeping you busy?” Tibs asked, talking the third seat. The room felt lived in, with the crooked painting of an older man and woman on the wall, the dirty place on a side table, but it felt recent. There weren’t much of the small things people accumulated.

“One of them,” Khumdar replied, then smiled. “Kragle Rock has been growing ever larger, and so have the secrets contained within. I believe I will never get to our team’s secrets.”

“Do we have any left?” Tibs asked, watching her. The casual conversation wasn’t making her relax.

“It is a sad fact of this world we live in that we always keep secrets.” Khumdar was silent for a few seconds, and she grew more worried. “Often, even from ourselves.”

“And what are her secrets?” Tibs asked, and her eyes went wide with fear.

“I have only worked out two of them,” the cleric replied, “but they are enough that I thought you should meet her. The first one is that she works for Sebastian.”

“I don’t know who that is,” she stated.

Tibs sighed. It made sense. She probably wasn’t the only one. Even if he knew how to identify them, would it be possible to keep anyone who worked for Sebastian from coming here? And that was without considering the loyalty coins bought.

“Everyone knows who Sebastian is,” Tibs said. “You can’t be in this town without hearing his name and how he tried to take it from us.”

“Well, yes, of course, I know that,” she replied, still looking worried. “But I don’t know him the way he’s saying it. I work at the Tipped Tankard, I’m a server and I do some of the cooking. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

The Tankard was a tavern only a couple of streets from the inn. Tibs had visited it when it had opened. The ale hadn’t been memorable.

“She does work there,” Khumdar said.

Tibs wished he could switch to light and know if she was lying, but he hadn’t trained with that element, and seeing his eyes go from blue to bright would give her too much information. Maybe he could stand behind her? Be mysterious and threatening? Would light let him do that? Did he even want to?

No. Tibs liked puzzles, but not playing games. “What’s the second secret you figured out?”

“She is here to watch you, specifically,” The cleric answered.

“That’s ridiculous,” she replied as Tibs sighed louder. “Why would I watch him? Whoever he is.”

Tibs should have expected it. Sebastian had told him it wasn’t over. Jackal said he’d want to hurt him specifically whenever he managed to come back. He rubbed his face.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“Not long,” she replied.

“She came within days of the attendants reestablishing transport,” Khumdar said. She glared at him. She wasn’t a good liar.

“Alright, what did she find out?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m too busy working.”

“She spends a few hours every day at the inn,” Khumdar said. “She doesn’t approach you, but she has watched you work on your ledgers.”

Then she didn’t know the details of how many Runners he had doing security, but someone else could be working on that from a different angle. Sebastian had put one person in his town, he wouldn’t have stopped there.

“Can you sense anything specific of the secrets she has?” he asked. “I don’t know how to go about questioning someone.”

Khumdar shook his head. “Unfortunately, that is not how darkness works. Or at least not at this time. Maybe one day I will get stronger and I will be able to tease about one’s secret.” He smiled at Tibs. “But I believe that will take away the enjoyment of having to work for it.”

Tibs nodded. “What did you tell Sebastian?”

“I don’t know him,” she repeated.

“I know three of the convicts who would have no compulsions with forcing her to give you the answers you seek,” the cleric said, and she was scared again.

Tibs shook his head. “I’m not going to have someone tortured. I know she spied on me, which means there are others. That’s enough for now. What can we do about her thought?”

“I suspect the dungeon would not find it amiss to have someone step in during the night. I am certain that between the two of us, we could accomplish it.”

“You can’t do that!” she yelled. “It’s murder. I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“We’re not feeding her to the dungeon,” Tibs stated. Maybe he’d have considered it back when he thought Sto only existed to eat them. But he wasn’t going to turn his friend into a murderer just because he didn’t see it the same as Tibs would.

“Then I am uncertain what we can do.”

Tibs only saw one option, and he didn’t like it. “We send her back and make sure she can’t come back. We’ll do that with everyone you uncover. Maybe you can arrange for someone at the platform to be on the lookout for how the secrets of the people who work for Sebastian feel so they can be sent right back before they find out anything.”

The cleric nodded. “I can have people in place within the hour.”

Tibs didn’t care if she believed them or not. She wouldn’t know the extent of what essence did, so what couldn’t be done. All he needed from her was that she’d tell Sebastian so he’d have something to make him hesitate in sending someone to replace her.

“I’ll escort you back to where you came in,” Khumdar said, standing. Tibs followed him up the stairs and indicated the room he’d entered. There, the cleric closed the door and lowered his voice. “Can you afford to pay the attendant’s rates simply to send her away?”

“Jackal can put me in contact with one of them. I’m hoping we’ll be able to work something out.” He didn’t want to owe anyone linked to the guild favors, but he didn’t have a choice. “It’s not like we’re set up to hold prisoners, and Harry isn’t going to do it for us. He’d probably use this as an excuse to force his guards back into the town.”

“I do not believe Sebastian will believe anything about us being able to stop him from sending in spies. From what I have learned of speaking with those who fought his forced, he is knowledgeable about essence.”

Tibs shrugged. “He can’t know everything. Can you find the other spies he has in the city with how you can feel secrets now?”

Khumdar considered it, then shook his head. “I was capable of sensing her because of how focused she was, how much she wanted to remain unseen by you, and because of the proximity within the inn, ensured I noticed her. If he sends someone to replace her, I expect he will ensure they are more careful. That is why you should not send her back.”

“I can’t keep her either, and I’m not going to murder her just for working for Sebastian. I’m pretty sure that’s something he’d do.” He studied the cleric. The man was older, more aware of the world. Maybe…. “Do you want to handle sending her back? That way…”

The cleric shook his head. “I will not kill her behind your back, Tibs. You would sense my secret anytime you channeled Darkness. You would grow to mistrust me anytime I said I would do something to keep you and this town safe. I will advise you on how I believe you should proceed, but I will follow your instructions.”

Tibs nodded. “Then keep working on finding more spies. I’ll have something worked out for sending them back soon, hopefully.”