The voyage south had been uneventful in the extreme once the chaos in the port subsided. It took two days to make port with the wind against them but Jack found ways to pass the time. Querin was a smart man, a chess player, and Jack spent many hours playing against him in the evenings. While they played, they spoke about William’s plans to supplant the Mamlak usurper. The ship would carry them to Vilpomolan where it would refit and take on supplies for a week. After that, it would sail to the eastern continent with arms and armor in the hold to equip rebels that were massing in exile across the sea. Jack would have his men join that force and he himself would return to Adeluna once the equipment was secured. There, Querin explained, he would be the true king’s eyes and ears, and would be able to draw on a letter of credit for any of his expenses. He was supposed to find a way to learn the dispositions of the forces in the city itself, any weakness that could be exploited, and any sorts of sentiment that would suggest the city would rise against the queen if the rebel forces landed. William did not want to move until he was sure that the city would receive him with open arms rather than push him back into the sea.

“So lass,” he said as they walked on the pier toward the inn that Querin had suggested, “you know this isn’t a grand sort of town, see? So don’t be traipsing about like a wide eyed doe and getting yourself in any trouble. The lads will be in the rooms around yours and I can share yours again if you’d like. If you do need to go out, let us know and one’ll go with ye. We’ll be in town a week wither Querin gets the ship resupplied and loaded down, and then it’ll be to Paporva we go, unless we hear about your elf bitch. But I figure there’s a better chance of hearing of her where the magicks are king than over this way, yeah?” He carried her bags to her room, leaving his gear with hers for the time being. “And if I’m in your room, do remember to knock. I hope you learned your lesson on the ship,” he chuckled. “I’ve got some business in town, getting rations for the lads. Is there anything I could get you?”

As he left the inn, he checked his pouch for what felt like the thousandth time to make sure the parchment from Querin was secure. It contained all the required armaments for the rebel forces. The pirate city had a way of finding you whatever you needed, if the price was right, and with the resources at William’s disposal, there was no question of price. He was risking everything on a single throw of the dice so he wanted to give himself every advantage. So he entrusted Querin, and now Jack, with procuring the vital weapons and armor that he needed, and Jack made his way through the maze of alleys beyond the docks to do just that.

It was, he thought, a bit anti-climactic. When he reached the door, he knocked three times and twice again as he had been instructed and a heavyset Mamlak opened a small grate in the door. “Whaddaya want?”

“I have William’s list –“

“Give it here.”

Jack passed the man the parchment and waited while the Mamlak read it with a grunt. “Five days. Bring the cash. Meet here.” With that, he slammed the grate closed and left Jack alone on the cobblestones. The Adelunan shrugged and headed back to the market before the vendors shut their stalls for the day, inking contracts for supplies for his men for the next three weeks and gathering any necessaries for Saria. Bag over his shoulder, he returned to the inn as the sun was sinking over the harbor. He found most of the men in the tap room, as he expected, and he left the provisions with them before checking for Saria in her quarters. He made a show of knocking heavily on her door. “Mind if I come in? Been out all day and need to get to my gear. You been up to anything exciting?”

“Well, isn’t this nice,” Rixxan’s cold, icy voice cooed.
She kicked back in a plush armchair, her feet resting lazily upon an ottoman as she sipped a glass of red wine that was quite a bit more expensive than anything she would ever be willing to pay for. Her most recent mark had been easier than expected, and she’d taken over his house in his ‘absence’… Well, his body was still there, just missing the top piece that sat above the neck. Rixxan had sent it off to her contractor and received her payment, so now she was simply biding her time. A mini-vacation, so to speak. She was just lucky enough that the paranoid bastard hadn’t trusted people enough to have hired any help, so she would likely be able to ride this one out for a week or so before anyone caught on to his disappearance. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure what he’d done to deserve his fate, but she had stopped asking those questions a long time ago. Rixxan closed her eyes and relaxed a little, as she clasped a crystal glass and enjoyed the quiet of the morning.
By noon, the streets had become busy. Vilpomolan was only quiet in the morning when all the thieves and other undesirables were still resting up from the night’s work. A rap upon the front door sent Rixxan reeling from an unexpected nap and she threw the door open without thinking, and started, “What! What do you want!?”
Clearly, she’d been found out, as a small troop of guard stood at the door.
“Oh, well then, I see. I didn’t even realize this place had guards. Huh, must be the ritzier side of Vilp,” Rixxan scoffed, sizing up her foes. Three men, one a bit on the heavier side in his thirties, the other two a little closer to fifty and scruffy. Nothing terribly remarkable. Nothing to worry about. “So, what’ll you have me for? A cup of tea, perhaps some scones, gentlemen?” Rixxan teased, motioning with her arm for them to enter.
“Where is Oliver? His presence was expected yesterday with our Lor-”
“Please don’t act like you don’t know where he is,” Rixxan spat, cutting the younger one off. “You’ve come here for me, have you not? Well? Take your best shot, then!” The younger one hesitated, but one of the older men started forward.
“You’ll pay for the things you’ve done!” He drew his sword and slashed at her, quite haphazardly. Rixxan stepped to the side, bored. His sword hit the wood of the entryway. The others moved forward as well, but seemed to not really understand the fact that they would not all fit through the door. She took one more step out of the way, as they came crashing into the house and nearly fell upon the floor. The young one turned and unsheathed his sword, aiming to come down upon her shoulders but proving too slow. Rixxan was already through the doorway and partly in the street, so that the men were now the ones inside.
“My turn?,” she cooed to them, as her eyes glowed a cosmic pink. She lit a tiny flame on the end of her fingertips, and the men staggered, “I hate to leave a game unfinished, but ya see, I’m a bit of a sore loser!” She blew them a kiss, and with it, sent one of her signature fireballs hurtling toward them. The man panicked as their clothes caught fire, and Rixxan pranced away to find her next task. Her first order of business was food, so she would head to the more hospitable section of town, the market, in her coyote form. In Vilpomolan, she simply looked like one of the many stray dogs, so she found it a convenient way to avoid drawing much attention. She slipped behind a dark building to change form, then trotted the rest of the way to the market. Using her best sad-puppy-dog eyes she could muster, she was able to acquire a nice sized slab of meat from a butcher stall.
Laying in the warm sun, licking her chops, Rixxan listened to the goings on of the market,
“Have ya heard? They said he’s moving the whole operation to the other continent, not enough of a market here for that stuff–” Ugh, economics, Rixxan thought, boring… next.
“The mistress will really love this,” “Ya, that’s a good one for the wife,” “I said mistress, din’t I?” She chuckled to herself, humans are just such trash, aren’t they. Next.
She bathed in the sun for a few hours more, listening to the comings and goings of the people.
“The last shipment was late, we need to be gettin’ on ‘em about this next time, it’s not acceptable!”
“We’ll need enough for at least three weeks, maybe a month,” a gruff voice bargained for supplies, and one of Rixxan’s ears turned as he made his way through the market to follow his conversations. This man was clearly readying for a sizable expedition, and that meant he had some sort of serious cashflow. As the stalls began to close and this particular man left the market, Rixxan rose up, slowly, and did the stereotypical dog stretches of her paws and legs, overemphasized a yawn, and trotted off down an alley to turn back to her true form. From there, she could simply shadowmeld and follow this man to his wealthy patron. No doubt a nobleman of some sort, perhaps a Lord, searching for some sort of vengeance or treasure.
The man entered an inn, unknowingly bringing Rixxan along, her hiding within his very own shadow. She broke from the shadow as he went off to join his men, and stood alone against the bar, her face concealed in her usual hood. She ordered a flagon and overpaid, and the barkeep took her coin without question, knowing she had meant for him to keep quiet about her identity. She kept her gaze neutral and forward as she listened, the man she followed left his supplies with his company and went upstairs to check on their patron. He briefly talked to them about the ship and etcetera, other random specifics that she didn’t care about. She heard a door open, but not close, upstairs, signifying that he would probably be heading back down to the tap room shortly. Rixxan sipped her ale slowly, waiting for the eventual creak and soft shut of the door.
Ten minutes later, Rixxan found herself rolling her eyes. What the Hell? What was taking so long. She couldn’t even hear a patron, just the man talking with a girl. From the sound of the conversation, at least what her elven ears could hear from downstairs and across a tap room full of drunken men, was the girl had basically sat in her room reading a book all day, not choosing to venture out of the inn into the depths of Vilpomolan. Was the patron not in the inn? She groaned to herself, and pulled more coin from her pocket. “Here, gimme a room at the end of the hall. And do be private about it, eh?” Her eyes flashed the sickly sweet pink for a moment as she handed over the money, as a way of making both a promise and a warning. The man begrudgingly handed her over a key, which she pocketed as she slugged back the rest of her ale, “Thanks, I’ll be seeing ya.”
She would simply go about some business elsewhere, maybe lift some jewelry off some overburdened victims, and return when the company would no doubt all be asleep. Having a room of her own, she would be able to listen in to their prospective plans and either steal their bounty before them, if it were valuable enough, or rob their patron blind and put their expedition into bankruptcy. Rixxan smiled and walked out of the inn, without having ever faced any of the company. As far as they knew, she was simply a bum who’d stumbled in for a drink and stumbled out.

As Jack left the room to head out and get supplies, Saria was relieved and finally exhaled out a loud sigh of exhaustion that she had been holding back for days. Ships were definitely not her favorite form of travel, that was for sure. She didn’t really sleep well once, not just because she was sharing a room with a stranger but because the room itself was so terribly cramped to begin with. And that was without the additional person taking up half of the floor space!
This room would do fine for a few days, though it was definitely barely above basic. On the bright side, Saria figured she would be able to get enough rest since this wasn’t a town she would be spending a lot of time traveling around. Jack had made it terribly clear to her that she ought not be going around on her own, and she didn’t particularly feel comfortable going out and about anywhere that she might be warned of in such a way.

After settling her things in and making a few adjustments, she finally started to wind down. She made sure to check outside the door that no one might be coming her way, then closed it very slowly and quietly, and made her way back to her bags which she had carefully stacked in the back right corner of the room by the bedside. Carefully, she unlatched the satchel that held her book as a small bit of excitement grew in her heart. Since the last time she was within a place very similar to this, Saria had not been able to study any of the book for fear that someone might see it and question it, and she worried that she would somehow find herself in trouble because of it. But now, with Jack gone for at least the better part of the day, and the room totally to herself, she would have plenty of time to start reading and studying again.
The room was basic but luckily it did have a lectern, placed directly adjacent to the door. Fortunate, because at least this way, Saria would hear anyone coming who might enter her room, be they malicious or not. She sat down and opened the book, and started to read. Exhaustion truly had its grip on poor Saria; she was so jaded she didn’t even notice how heavy her eyes were growing, and when they finally closed shut it was as if their weight brought her whole head down with them, face-first into the book. All of those restless, poorly slept nights on the ship had caught up with her at last.

Saria was too far into her sleep to awaken when Jack knocked on the door, so her lack of response had probably caused him to push open the door and stomp in. It wasn’t until he loudly said her name that she jumped–nearly knocking over the chair–and stood up in a fright. She had no idea how disheveled her hair was, with one side laying firmly and flat against her head from where she was pressed into the book, and one side having become a bit of a flyaway disaster. Her skin was temporarily painted with lines from the pages of the book, as well, and that all combined with her light-headedness to paint a picture that might possibly distract Jack from the fact that the text of her book was faintly glowing, like it had the last time she was in danger. She had yet to notice that, herself.

“Ah!! Jack, you’re back already! What a surprise! How long has it been, it can’t be even midday by now can it? Oh I’ve just been busy with some,” Saria looked back and forth around for an idea on something she might have actually done, but any idea escaped her as she caught sight of the book. She snatched it up into her arms and pressed it against her chest, with the illuminated text of the cover hidden against her bodice. Trying to once again glaze over what might be an awkward situation, she patted its cover in a humorous yet loving way, “…er, I’ve uh, I’ve been just reading my book! You know, I really am a bit of a book worm. Not sure where I get it from, it might have been someone back a bit on my mom’s side, maybe. Ya know what, though,” She set the book down on the lectern, face down, trying to ramble and make him lose interest, “Now that I think about it, honestly, not many of the people in my village could even read the signs on the shops–not to say that they were unintelligent or anything, no, we simply didn’t have the luxury of formal education out there–but anyway, when I do really think about it I’m not sure if anyone in my family ever could really read more than a few signs and such, and ya know, those, I think, those they didn’t even really read, they were just recognizing it after a while. Does that make sense?”