A well-dressed dwarven butler opened the thick oak door of a large candle-lit office.

“Lord Wimbli, the lady wishes to see you.”

Another dwarf sat at a desk facing the door, his face almost obscured by the colossal piles of paper. He looked up from his document, put down his pen and hastily cleared his desk.

“Of course, Bomrek. Let her in.”

She entered.

“Good evening. My name is Wimbli and I believe you already know why I summoned you to this great city. Please, have a seat.”

She did. Her long cloak obscured her body and face, making all attempts to read her body language useless. Wimbli sighed.

“I’m offering your firm a private, confidential and a quite dangerous contract. If you choose to listen further, I expect you will understand the consequences of any information going further than this room. As such, this contract will not be given in writing and this conversation will be your only source of intelligence. In order to forge trust, I will pay three-quarters of the fee in advance and the rest after completion. Are you willing to hear out the details?”

“You speak with almost no accent. That is rare among dwarves – you must have trained this ability for at least several years.”

The woman stated this fact calmly, smoothly. He raised his eyebrows.

“However, Lord Wimbli, despite my respect I am afraid I must refuse. Considering the contract is not on paper, I could potentially be cheated out of a quarter of the pay with no recourse.”

He shuffled in his chair.

“Dwarves are honourable folk, my lady. This would be a necessary precaution to take if you were to deal with your own people or - especially so – elves; for our kin, however, honesty and integrity run deepest.”

“I plan on leaving this room with the full cheque or nothing. An army needs feeding, paying and arming. You also know just as well as I do that the only possible reason for this contract to be left incomplete is if every single one of my soldiers dies in the process of trying.”

Wimbli leaned back in his chair. He looked to the ceiling in thought; the face of Urist Bomrekkivish, engraved masterfully in marble, stared back. After a few seconds of deliberation, he leaned forward, rested his elbows on the desk and attempted to find the woman's eyes in the darkness of her hood.

“Agreed. I will write you a check for the full fee, redeemable immediately. Does this mean you are satisfied with the conditions?”

“Correct.”

“Excellent! Let us begin. The completion of this contract will entail you to accomplish the following tasks. First, King Henselt’s punitive forces - or labour camps, if you will - must abandon the ruins of Nazgoth. Second, it must be verified beyond a reasonable doubt that the ruins in question are still in complete disrepair and are not open to entry from the lower depths. Anything needing elaboration?”

“Why is Henselt sending prisoners to work in a decimated city?”

“I assume he plans to make as best of a use of the lands we sold him. He’s already building roads to the mountain – it’s easy to deduce his goal is either to reclaim the city or simply turn it into a mine.”

“These operations of his, do they need to be halted permanently?”

“Of course.”

“Do your spies have any intel which would assist in this task?”

“They can forge papers to arrange an infiltration of any one of Henselt’s punitive expeditions, including the one in question. Exfiltration is a different matter entirely – you will have to arrange this yourself. As for intelligence, I was not able to acquire any for the simple reason that exclusively humans are sent to the Nazgoth camps.”

“What of the fortress destruction? What would you qualify as ‘complete disrepair’?”

Wimbli leaned back on his chair.

“A crater, or something similar. If no creature on this earth can pass through the ruins, your job is complete.”

The woman sat forward. The candles gave her eyes an eerie glint inside the shadows of the cloak.

“I need your espionage team to prepare documents for one female prisoner on a punitive expedition to King Henselt’s lands in proximity to the dwarven fortress of Nazgoth. This needs to be done with due haste. Please keep the cheque and instead deliver an equivalent value of gemstones to our headquarters – you can subtract delivery costs from the final payment.”

She stood up and held out her hand.

“In no more than two months, I will provide all you have paid for. Let us hope this is not the last time the dwarves call upon the assistance of our firm.”

Reluctantly, he stood up from his chair, reached with his own hand and shook.

“If you don’t get this done, you will rot alongside me deep beneath this earth in our dungeons. Do not fail,” he whispered.