I didn't have to wait long, softly and quietly the door opened, and
the light of a bullseye lantern penetrated the room, I on the other
hand needed no light thanks to the second item I had grabbed, a set
of tinted goggles, they looked ridiculous but they kept the glare out
of my eyes, and more importantly allowed me to see in the dark, only
in black and white, but it was sufficient. The intruder was taking it
slow, the lantern in first to scan the room.
Not being interested in conversing with someone who obviously
intended me harm, I stepped back and swung Eustace at the hand
holding the lantern, now I am no trained fighter, but Eustace makes
wielding it very easy, and all I needed to do was swing down. Blood
spray looks weird in black and white, the lantern fell to the floor
with a thud, Eustace suffered from very little resistance cutting
through the intruders limb midway up the forearm, so little
resistance that I was unable to react in time and embedded the tip of
the blade in the floor.
“Hey!”
Eustace's telepathic voice sounded aggrieved. “I'm not an
ax! You've nicked me!”
Ignoring the sword's complaints for the time being, I jerked it from
the floor and moved to inspect my hapless assailant, years of
catering to adventurers allowed me to quickly identify the particular
flavor of intruder today, leather armor, rope, bullseye lantern, and
unreasonable number of daggers, seriously these thief types generally
have like one weapon they use above all else, and rarely if ever do
you see any of the half dozen odd spares get use, it's like a
compulsion or something, a couple of years back one of my customers
took a liking to one of my kitchen knives of all things and took it
when he went to the Underlair, I like that knife, never saw it again.
This particular example of the profession was making a frightful mess
from his stump, to his credit he wasn't making much noise outside of
some low whimpering, I set the lantern upright, fortunately it hadn't
broken in the fall, and dragged the thief into my room, soon a belt
was tied around his arm to slow the bleeding and we were having a
conversation while I packed.
“Why are you trying to rob me?” I was concerned about this, I had
thought I was being clever checking into a cheap, some would say
seedy, inn and not flaunting my wealth, but apparently I had
neglected something.
“You came into town and immediately began talking to merchants
about large sales, it wasn't long before one of them came to us with
a tip, the city rumor mill did the rest.”
“I knew that bastard couldn't be truste- wait, who is us?” I
suddenly felt very insecure, as if I had been forgetting something
extremely important, something about cities...
“The Ravens of course! We run the shadows in Port Jasper!”
I cursed, of course, the local thieves guild, I should have known,
I've heard enough stories from my customers about them, there is
always at least one in any good sized town, they are always called
something like the Ravens, or Shadows, or Shadow Ravens, and whenever
an adventuring party stays nearby them for any length of time, the
party thief nearly always gets caught up in guild politics and ends
up running the whole organization, at least for a week or so before
they get bored and move on.
I had a suspicion. “Did one of your members carry a dagger that
dripped an acidic venom?”
My prisoners' eyes widened “Oh yes! That's the Blade of the Dark
Leader! The symbol of our guild leader, lost when the adventurer
called ShadowFox stole it from the previous leader! We've been
seeking her ever since, she must either take the Raven's Nest, return
the Blade, or die. As must all with her.”
He was very animated, I began to suspect there may be a religious
angle here as well, also I apparently had a holy relic of the local
thieves guild among my possessions.
Great
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