Chapter 2: Acceptance

It didn’t take Fen very long at all to decide to visit Regis. The diminutive man’s house was on the opposite side of the city from The Vulgar Lake, so he had enough time to be certain of his decision on the way over.

The address listed on the card led Fen to a strange dark alley, covered in shadows despite the sun high overhead. It gave Fen a strange chill to look down it, but he chalked that up to the dozen or so traps that were barely concealed by the shadow. So, he worked his way carefully through the dim alley, calculating each step before he took it.

Fen made it to the door without any incident, and he knocked politely. He was more wary now about what he might be putting himself in the middle of.

Regis opened the door, holding a crossbow that was quite nearly the size of himself, peering suspiciously out. “Ah, Fen.” His disposition immediately changed back into the cheery confident man he had projected back at the tavern. “Come on in.”

Regis’s house was full to the brim with books, shelves piled high with texts of all description were crammed in wall to wall, floor to ceiling. There was one hole in the shelves that housed a cozy looking chair that had a book piled table in front of it, and another open slot that held a sofa. Curiously, one of the shelves was entirely empty, but Fen didn’t pay it too much heed as Regis bade him sit down on the sofa.

“So, you decided to help me after all, eh?” Regis asked, perching himself on the over stuffed chair.

“I haven’t decided yet.” Fen said, deciding that honesty was the best practice with this man. “I have a couple conditions I’ll need you to meet before I can say yes.”

“Name them.” Regis said.

“First, I need assurances that the information won’t be able to be traced back to me once it’s leaked.”

“Of course. I’ve been an informant in this city for two decades, I know how to do business.”

“Second, I have a reputation for swift service to uphold, so I need your copying to be done within a day.”

Regis smiled. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got that well and truly covered.”

“Third, I assume that I’ll be followed by government agents through this whole process. Officials in Unger aren’t exactly known for their ability to trust, so I might need a safe house within the city that I can ditch after the job is done.”

Regis happily nodded, turning his beard into a little tornado. “You can come to my house at any time you might need.”

“Then I’ll just be tied back to you,” Fen said, “Which would violate my first condition.”

“How long have you worked in the city?” Regis asked.

“Ten years, but I’m starting to think you already knew that.”

Regis’s smile turned a little bashful, but he kept going. “In all your time in the city, how many times have you happened across my alley?”

Fen, thinking about it in earnest now realized what had been so off putting about the alley. “I’ve never even noticed it before.”

“I’ve gotten this place so heavily enchanted that you can’t even find it unless I’ve invited you. All you need to do is slip your tail briefly, and then come here and you can stay safely. The city doesn’t even know about my home.” Regis beamed as he bragged about his house, but Fen felt uneasy about what that said about the business Regis was involved in.

“Good to know.” Fen said. “Well, my final condition is that you tell me what you suspect you’ll learn when I let you copy those government records.”

Regis pondered for a moment, stroking his long beard as he gazed into the distance. “It’ll put you in danger.”

“No more danger than I’ll be in for simply acquiring the item.” Fen said.

“Fair point. Are you absolutely sure you want to know?” Fen nodded, so Regis sighed and kept going. “Well, to be fully honest, I don’t yet know.”

Fen balked for a moment before he could paste his stoic facade back on. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Unfortunately not.” Regis said. “I have a couple clues and guesses, but whatever secrets they’ve put in that ledger are clamped up tighter than a diarrheal priest’s cheeks during service.”

“Then you can’t meet my fourth condition?” Fen asked, and he stood as though to leave.

“I can tell you my guess.” Fen sat back down, feeling like he was being eaten by the couch. “I think that it has something to do with the brewing conflict with Kheltirm. The two cities have been prodding one another for years, always threatening war, but never going through with it. I have an inkling that Unger might have gone too far with one of their shows of force and they had to seal it up lest the Duke learn of it and finally have cause to wage war.”

“So you seek to start a war then?” Fen asked.

“No. I seek to prevent a war that seems inevitable.” Regis stroked his beard again and looked at Fen. “If we can depose those who are responsible and proffer them to the injured party, then it can keep the city as a whole out of the conflict that will surely come soon.”

Fen thought about it for a long, silent moment before answering. “I’ll do it.”

Regis tossed him a sack of silver, and Fen tucked it away as he crept through the alley back into the city.

By the time he had made it back to The Vulgar Lake a letter had been delivered for him. It was stamped with the King’s own seal, so Fen retired to his own home to read through the information his other employers had seen fit to provide him.

It was sparse, leaving out any indication of what the ledger might contain, but Fen wasn’t all that surprised by that. There were at least four robbers who had worn black robes, killed nobody, and taken nothing but the book. A sigil bearing a hammer and anvil had been recovered from the torn robes of one of the burglars.

None of it was overly useful information, not even the sigil, as a hammer and anvil was employed by at least three guilds in Unger.

Still, Fen felt better about accepting this mission. At the very least he had already been paid as though he had succeeded, so failure wouldn’t cost him anything.