“I grabbed a few arrows for Figo, like you asked,” Vish announced, carefully cradling more than fifty of the missiles in the crook of his arm, “I also found a badass new robe. Check, it’s got padding stitched into it. Style and protection,” he admired the garment lustfully, “bloody genius.”

They were in what was revealed to be just one of Screamer’s armouries. They had been given free reign to browse the racks, stacks and cupboards, while Nail-puller propped herself in the doorway stretching like an alley cat. Armoury was actually a bit misleading, It was of an abyss for various weapons, knick-knacks, and tools. Nail-puller explained that it was mostly plundered gear that didn’t have immediate obvious worth. Some of it had been confiscated to pay off debts, but that was a matter of principle more than anything. The really valuable stuff never made it here, that was taken to Screamer’s crew of accountants, who valued and partitioned accordingly. There were a few hidden gems here, to be sure, but for the most part the ‘armoury’ was more like a forgotten battlefield, the combatants long since departed or consigned to the aether, their weapons and meager belongings the only remaining worldly indication of their life’s struggle.

“Mmm,” Gabriel replied to the mind-mapper, barely hearing a word.

“Plus it’s red. Red’s not normally my colour, but I feel like this one pops. What do you reckon?” Vish was unfurling the robe and holding it against him.

“Lovely.”

“You don’t think the padding is going to make me look fat, do you?”

“Seems so.”

Vish sighed to himself and folded the robe back over his right arm as best he could without dropping the bundle of arrows.

“You should probably keep an eye on Bling, by the way –”

“Natasha,” Gabriel corrected.

“- last I saw she was filling her pockets with a bunch of horseshoes.”

“That’s nice.”

Vish raised an eyebrow at his pasty compadre, “You okay there, buddy?”

“Mm? What? Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel moved his hand from his chin to his hip, “it’s just, uh, I’ve been trying to get hold of some new armour for Lydia.”

“Good shout, it’s weirdly unnerving to see her without it. She looks like a turtle without its shell.”

“Right. The thing is, there are only two vaguely viable breastplates in this whole place and, well,” Gabriel flicked an open palm towards where two pieces of iron plate had been propped up against a wall.

“Well that should make life easier. Let’s have a looksee and… Ah.”

“’Ah’ indeed.”

One breastplate was a beautifully crafted, exquisitely made, intricately engraved masterpiece. It looked like it had once belonged to a warrior-princess or something. Looking around, it was clear that this piece had made it here by mistake; it was probably worth a whole rack of the other tat on offer. The only trouble was, whoever this hypothetical warrior-princess had been, she was a lot more petite than their Lydia - a lot more.

The other breastplate? That one once belonged to an ogre. Literally.

“Well,” Vish said after some time, “they both have their merits.”

“They do, don’t they?”

“Also, arguably both very handsome pieces, you know, in their own right.”

“That’s what I thought! I mean, the styles are a bit different, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“This one is more traditionally fancy, but that one has a nice kind of rustic charm to it.”

“Exactly! Rusting charm, I mean, rustic charming is exactly what I was thinking.”

Gabriel ignored the slip, “Plus it’s definitely thicker, which is a huge bonus, seeing as Lydia can’t use a shield.”

“And, and, she’ll be virtually invisible if we have a fight in a swamp.”

“Really, if we’re talking protective worth, it’s pretty much invaluable.”

“Plus it’s a style that’s coming in. I’m sure of it.”

Gabriel and Vish looked back at the purloined plate.

“She’s going to kill me, isn’t she?” Gabriel sulked.

“We could literally upturn that and use it as a boat.”

Gabriel sighed, “If it had fewer holes, perhaps, but, I mean, she could wear the other one as a gauntlet!”

“Maybe if she wore a few extra layers under that one?” Vish said.

There was a clatter from the far side of the room that sounded like an avalanche of steel. Vish and Gabriel recoiled at the sound, and rubbed at their ears to disperse the ringing.

In the silence that followed, they heard Bling say, “Yuss!”

“Right, that’s it, you’ve had your fun,” Nail-puller growled, her hands firmly on the side of her head, “Out, all of you!”

Bronze level access apparently wasn’t sufficient enough to allow you to travel from A to B without being hooded. Whilst they had been allowed to wander around the hideout with a degree of freedom, they apparently still weren’t supposed to know where it was. Before they left, Nail-puller and her thugs made sure the three mercenaries were suitably blind-folded. Gabriel couldn’t help but feel this was a slightly redundant exercise this time, as if they wanted to find the hideout again, they could just follow the trail of arrows Vish was accidentally shedding with every other step.

It was early morning by the time they were returned to Figo and Lydia. They were pretty much where they had been left. The former was dozing on a stool in front of ‘The Un-gnome Quantity’, whilst the latter was drinking with a bunch of grizzled locals. Some obvious scrapes and bruises indicated that there had been a brawl, or maybe an amateur boxing bout, but everyone seemed in decent enough spirits. They assumed this was how Lydia managed to rustle up the cash for the beer she was holding.

Gabriel filled the other two in on their peculiar interaction with Screamer, while Nail-puller slunk off to fulfill her orders.

“I have killed people for much less,” Lydia said from behind 6 foot’s worth of decrepit iron plate.

“I think it suits you!” Gabriel said.

“How can it suit me, when I can’t even wear it?”

“We can have it resized.”

“Yeah, you can probably get, what, three, maybe four breast plates out of that one?” Vish added, “You could mix it up, wear a new piece each day.”

Lydia let the armour clatter to the floor, “Probably be safer to wear paper.”

“Look, I’ll level with you,” Gabriel held out his hands placatingly, “It was either this, or some tiny, fancy noblewoman’s breastplate that, frankly, would have made you look like a marsupial.”

Lydia’s ears went red. Her eyes looked molten.

“Glare at me all you want, but I did my best,” Gabriel said, folding his arms.

“Couldn’t,” Figo started to say with a perplexed frown on his face, “Couldn’t you have taken the fancy one and sold it to buy something more appropriate for Lydia?”

Gabriel looked at Figo. He looked at Figo for a long while.

“Wha-huh, sheesh, I mean, do you really think we didn’t think of that?”

“Sorry, Gabriel.”

“Obviously we thought of that.”

“Obviously,” Vish added.

“Honestly, the audacity.”

Lydia’s expression had darkened like clouds in a storm.

“Run?” Vish suggested.

“Run,” Gabriel agreed.

Nail-puller approached in time to see Gabriel and Vish disappear over a bump in the road,

“Where are those two idiots off to?” she asked nobody in particular.

“Off to find an aether god to protect them from their impending doom, if they’re smart enough,” Lydia said, cracking her neck as she spoke.

Nail-puller snorted, “Money’s the only god you’ll find in Jandrir these days,” she turned to Bling who was messily devouring a piece of fruit that nobody could remember her buying, “I sorted out your accommodation for the night, it’s,” she paused when Bling looked up at her, eyes feral, juice and pulp dripping from her chin, “it’s,” nail-puller took a step back, “it’s all expenses paid for two nights. As for the job, Screamer’s cousin was working the beat as one of Tinto’s men, before he got nabbed. We don’t know exactly where he is, but we can’t be doing your whole job for you now, can we? Tinto has pretty much free reign over in the Winelands, hence the name. He owns a bunch of estates on the Eastern bank, just outside of town, but he’s more often than not splashing his cash in the South-Eastern trade district, Wheelbarrow Warrens. His top-dogs all wear purple tunics, the bunch pf pansies. Anyway, you wander around there for a bit and you’ll probably spot a dozen of them. The rest is up to you.”

Bling was staring wide-eyed. She looked around quickly for Gabriel and then returned her dumbfounded stare to Nail-puller, “Yes,” she said, when it was clear the other woman wasn’t going away.

“Knew we could count on you. Here’s a picture of Screamer’s cousin, on the off chance you do find him alive. I drew it myself. Quality’s not all that, but, I’m pretty proud of it,” Nail-puller said with a shy smile, handing over a rolled-up parchment.

Bling took the paper gingerly and, when Nail-puller looked at her expectantly, started to wipe her face with it.

“What? No!” Nail-puller shouted, snatching back the precious artwork.

Bling looked around at the others, utterly confused.

“Um, perhaps I should keep hold of that,” Figo offered.

Nail-puller grudgingly handed over the picture, never taking her eyes off of Bling. Before she left, she strutted up to the redhead, baring her stained teeth in a snarl, “You think you’re better than me, just because you’re the so-called leader of a bunch of gutter crawlers? Well, guess what, you don’t intimidate me, lass. If Screamer didn’t have a use for you then I’d have put a knife in your ribs and left you in the Malin the moment I met you.”

A glob of seeds slid from between Bling’s fingers and landed in a mucous-like dollop on Nail-puller’s open-toed shoes. Both women looked down at the saccharine mess. Nail-puller flushed so brightly it looked like she was burning from the inside out. Her fingers were twitching at her sides, itching to find a blade. With a last guttural growl, she yanked herself away from the showdown and stomped back to whichever cubby hole she had come from

“You really must be more careful, Natasha,” Figo cautioned.

Bling looked at the young hunter for a good while, and then slowly started chewing the mouthful of fruit flesh she’d been holding in her cheeks since before Nail-puller’s rant.

Lydia shook her head, “Let’s see the mark then.”

Figo sighed and unrolled the parchment carefully.

The archer and warrior stared at the page’s contents long and hard.

“I don’t wish to be rude, but…” Figo trailed off.

“What is this bollocks?”

“I think perhaps Nail-puller was not playing to her strengths.”

“I can see now why she was intimidated by Natasha, they clearly rival each other in intelligence,” Lydia looked over the page at the other woman, “No offence.”

Bling was too busy spitting out an inedible part of the fruit’s outer skin to catch what had been said.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to rely on information gathering,” Figo said with a forced smile, “Shall we go and find the others?”

Lydia yawned with her whole body, “Suppose we better had.”

Fortunately, Gabriel and Vish were equally and hopelessly unfit, and had not made it too far. Once Lydia had agreed to postpone their execution, they were convinced to take the group to their accommodation for what remained of the evening/ morning.

‘The Blighted Pond’ did a pretty good job of destroying the impression of Jandrir they had been steadily building. Whilst every other shop, restaurant and pub they had passed had some kind of unique selling point to draw in custom, ‘The Blighted Pond’ looked like it existed only to stick a middle-finger up at health, safety and hygiene guidelines. Upon entering, the group spotted as many rats as they did customers, and that was pretty impressive, seeing as the candlelight didn’t really touch the corners. The whole building looked like it had been transplanted form a different age entirely, back before any reasonable headway had been made in the fields of carpentry, architecture and taste. The stools, all three of them, didn’t match, the bar was warped and chipped, and the floor was uneven, though not in the deliberate way that The Un-gnome Quantity’s had been. Even the staff looked a bit bent and broken, as if in decrepit sympathy with their sepulchral workplace.

To be fair, it would be a bit unkind to say The Blighted Pond had nothing going for it– it was fucking cheap. Their beds were bundles of old straw with stained sheets draped over the top of them. The straw was scratchy and stiff, and poked through the material in places, prodding and poking like a dwarven acupuncturist. It wasn’t a comfortable night’s sleep, by any stretch of the imagination, but exhaustion had finally caught up with them, and they slept soundly until midday.

They awoke and got ready in near silence. They’d have slept in much longer without any hesitation, despite the fact that they could spot the lice now that the sun had risen, had they not already used a quarter of their time allotted to find Screamer’s cousin.

They spent the morning on basic prep. First, they went to an armorer and put in the obscenely huge breastplate for resizing. Next, they went to the mercenary guild so Gabriel could make good on his promise.

“Goodness me,” Archimedes said as he set down his tea, “Working for mobsters now, are we?”

The pair of captains were sitting at a round table in front of the guild reception desk. The rest of Gabriel’s group were sat at a larger table behind them. They were invited to join the conversation, but opted instead to put their heads down for an extra few minutes of precious sleep.

“To be fair, we sort of already were. Vagalad’s not exactly squeaky clean,” Gabriel pointed out.

“I’m not sure if this is a ‘two wrongs make a right’ sort of moment,” Archimedes reproached.

“And yet you were always so quick to mock me for not taking on more high-profile work.”

Archimedes tilted his head low so that he was looking up through his albino brows, “This was not exactly what I had in mind. Anyway, be careful. Vagalad’s got his fingers in a few unsavoury pies, to be sure, but Screamer? Well, by all accounts the man is nothing short of a monster.”

“He was actually remarkably polite! Well-spoken too, as it goes. I must say, my experience has been rather good with crime lords. Let’s hope that track record holds up for Tinto.”

“If I didn’t know better, I would worry that your blasé sarcasm was an indication that you weren’t taking matters seriously enough, Gabriel.”

The receptionist, a middle-aged man with a comb-over, looked up at the sound of that name, “Gabriel? Did you say Gabriel?”

Both mercenaries looked around.

“Yes,” Archimedes said, as Gabriel was saying, “No.”

“Gabriel of Gladstone, per chance?”

Gabriel slumped, “Yeah, that’s me. What is it now?”

“A letter came for you, sir,” the receptionist said, fishing in a pigeon-hole behind him. He found a scroll with a wax seal on it. The seal was unmarked, without a sigil, “If you could just sign here to acknowledge receipt, sir.”

Gabriel signed for the letter and returned to his seat, where he broke the seal and started to read.

The others were peeking over at him from their arm pillows.

“No crest and no name,” Archimedes noted, “Who’s it from?”

“Vagalad, speak of the Stygian overlord,” Gabriel snorted.

“How can you tell?”

Gabriel’s lips flapped minutely as he counted, “Because he uses the term ‘cock-suckers’ twelve times in the first paragraph.

“How eloquent,” Archimedes said.

“Oh, there are a few other variations, but I wasn’t counting those.”

Gabriel blew out his cheeks and put the page face-down on the table.

“What does it say?” Figo asked from behind.

“We getting a pay rise?” Vish grunted.

Gabriel drummed his fingers, “He wants a status report. We got a bit of stick for not keeping him in the loop.”

“That’s not so bad,” Archimedes said cheerfully.

“Yeah,” Gabriel turned in his chair so he could speak to all of them at once, “That, and Hubert’s missing.”

“Whaat? How many times do we have to catch that little sod?” Vish mumbled, his face buried in his sleeve.

Everyone else took a moment and allowed this revelation to sink in.

“How long has he been missing?” Figo asked.

“Seems he snuck out two days after we left Gladstone.”

This time there were a few muttered profanities.

“You don’t think that..?” Archimedes dared not finish the thought; he didn’t have to, Gabriel was already shaking his head.

“I don’t know, but it would make a kind of sense. It’s hard to believe though.”

“Very,” Figo agreed.

Lydia was looking at each of them in turn, “What’d I miss?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Gabriel said.

Archimedes took a last sip of his tea, “Well, I’m afraid that’s my que to leave. We’ve taken a job towards Miscus way, so I’m afraid I shall be unavailable for at least a few days.”

“Don’t worry, you weren’t that helpful to begin with,” Gabriel smiled with his mouth only.

“Charming,” Archimedes rose from the table, “Look, Gabriel, if things do go sour, then, well, perhaps you should consider returning to us. I do have some sway, as much as you hate to admit it, and I think, with our resources, we could keep you safe long enough for this to blow over.”

“We’re not scraping the barrel just yet.”

Archimedes sighed, “All it would take is an apology, Gabriel; I really think I deserve that. It’s not a big ask. Anyway, in the meantime, good luck, and stay safe,” he looked at the others, “all of you.”

“Even me?” Vish yelled over his shoulder.

Archimedes carried on walking.

As the mercenary legend reached the door, half the occupants of the guild got up and accompanied him out. Without The White Fangs there, the guild looked very empty indeed.

“I can’t decide if that guy is hot, or a pompous prick,” Lydia said, watching the door long after it had closed.

“Is it possible to be both?” Figo suggested.

She shrugged, “Sometimes. What’s his problem anyway? Why’d he want an apology from you?” she asked Gabriel.

“Because he’s a pompous prick,” he confirmed.

“If you say so,” Lydia shrugged.

Leering at the now empty seat in front of him, Gabriel leant over and picked up Archimedes’ half-finished tea, draining the contents into his parched mouth. He was starting to feel the effects of their night of drinking again.

Gabriel hiccoughed bodily, “The trouble is, he might also be right.”