Chapter One hundred ninety-two (Patreon)

Once Raff saw his charges settled into their rooms, he let Lianhua know that he would go find some horses. There were a few stables in town, and though there weren’t a lot of extra horses around, he could probably find someone who knew someone with an old nag or a retired carthorse. But first, he had a stop to make. 

The Jeweled Chalice was exactly the kind of place Raff preferred to avoid. Large and ostentatious, the gilt-lettered sign hanging above the door had actual jewels - or possibly cut glass - stones inset into the picture of an elaborate cup. No doubt someone would have pried those out to see if they were glass or gem long ago if it weren’t for the very large guards who constantly flanked the door.

Raff stepped up to them without hesitation, however, and the two of them took in his battered and mismatched armor, along with the symbol of the Adamant Reach on his shoulder. Adamant wasn’t the bottom of the barrel when it came to mercenaries, not by any means, but it wasn’t where young nobles went to play at being warriors until they were needed by their houses.

“The Old Crow is on the other side of town,” the taller of the two said with surprising kindness. “You’ll find better rates there, friend.” He leaned in slightly. “Better food, too.”

Raff grinned. He had been planning to bluster his way through, make a fuss if necessary, but he liked this guy, even if the other guard looked like he’d rather swallow those glass gems than make nice with someone who looked as common as dirt.

“I’m here to see someone, actually,” Raff told the friendly man, who was nearly as tall as he was, though he was carrying a bit of extra weight. Any extra Raff had even thought about carrying had melted away over the last month, leaving him lean and wild.

The other man looked disbelieving, as if no one who stayed at their fine establishment could possibly have any business with anyone who looked as rough and ready as Raff, but he didn’t say anything. The first man looked surprised, but lifted a hand and pulled the rope hanging from a bell nearby.

A deep, rich note rang out, causing everyone nearby to look around. Raff cursed internally, but just lifted a hand and flashed a grin at them, which caused more than one person wearing fine clothing to roll their eyes and turn away.

The door swung open on soundless hinges, and a tall man, as thin as the guard was heavy, stepped out. Rather than holding the door open for Raff to enter, he stepped out and closed it behind him, his face set in a mask of polite dismissal.

“Yes, sir?” he asked, the ‘sir’ clearly only there for formality’s sake.

Raff scratched his beard, dislodging something which tapped against his armor with a soft clicking sound. “I’m here t’see, um-” He hadn’t thought this through. Which of his brothers was here? Or was it one of the lesser nobles who constantly hung around them, like fleas on a dog? “Lord Hillcroft?”

A slightly disbelieving look crossed the man’s long, narrow face, but he nodded. “And who may I tell him is calling, sir?”

Raff sighed. In for a copper, in for a groat. “Grafton.”

Eyebrows went up. No doubt ‘Lord Hillcroft’ had let everyone know why he was in town, so this officious man should now have a pretty good idea of who Raff was. Immediately, the thin man’s attitude shifted, and an obsequious smile flickered, then faded again. That was fair. Most people didn’t know how to handle Raff when they figured out who he was.

Stepping aside, the man pulled open the door, motioning for Raff to enter. “Of course, si- Ah, my lord?” That questioning tone indicated that the pretentious  arse still wasn’t convinced Raff was who he claimed to be, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. Smarter than he looked, then.

Both guards looked shocked as the door closed in their faces. The servant ushered Raff toward a chair covered in rich red velvet, then hesitated and instead touched the back of a tall wooden chair, with no fabric to be ruined by Raff’s rusty and filthy armor. “Have a seat, m’lord,” he said. “I’ll let Lord Hillcroft know you’re here. He has been looking for you quite urgently, so I’m sure it won’t take long. In the meantime, if you need anything, please let any member of staff know how they can help.”

He bowed slightly, turned, and vanished up a set of wide stairs to their right. Raff didn’t sit, instead choosing to stand as he looked around, pretending to ignore the few other people in the large, open room. Two of them wore fine clothing with a provincial cut, expensive but practical, indicating that they were probably local nobility, or possible wealthy traders.

The other three had on some variety of uniform, including one middle-aged lady in a dress that complemented the guard’s uniforms, the man-servant’s suit, and even the red and gold velvet and brocades that the room was decorated in. He thought he recognized her from when Gaoda made them all stay here. That was only a single night, but sometimes that was all it took. Of course, Raff’s armor was still intact and gleaming then. Would she recognize him?

He gave her a broad grin, and she nodded back, but her brow wrinkled slightly. Was that a spark of memory, or disgust at the smell wafting from him? She came over and gave him a slight curtsy.

“Can I help you with anything, sir?” She asked, clearly unsure what the correct term of address should be. A merc didn’t even rate a ‘sir’, at least not usually, but here he was in the lobby of her fine establishment without any sign of a lord or lady to protect.

He shrugged. “I stayed here a while back, guarding a trio of Imperials.”

Her expression brightened. “Oh! The lovely young lady with the white hair, and her… companions?”

His grin went a little lopsided. “Those’re the ones. The lady was expecting a letter from a friend in the capital, an’ I wondered if anything arrived for her? Name’s Lianhua.”

As far as he knew, only one person in Cliffcross knew or cared that they’d headed for Mount Scarabus, and it was very unlikely that if she wrote a letter, that letter would find them. Asking gave him a reason for speaking to this woman, though, and established his legitimacy as a former guest.

“I’ll check,” the woman said, her smile relaxing. She crossed to a series of alcoves built into the far wall, each one with a room number engraved on a golden plaque beneath it. Ignoring these, she pulled out a wooden box from beneath the desk and dug through its contents. A moment later, she looked back up, shaking her head.

“Nothing, I’m afraid,” she told Raff as she returned to his side. He gave a beleaguered sigh, and she smiled back before glancing over her shoulder. “If there’s nothing else then…?”

Raff started to shake his head, then snapped his fingers as if he’d just remembered something. “Oh! I have a friend who was hired by Lord Hillcroft. Could I leave a message for him?”

She nodded. “Of course. Tell me his name, and I’ll let him know.”

He started to scratch his chin, remembered that it might cause a shower of debris, and instead tapped his knuckles twice on the hard leather of his belt. “Ah, it’s a bit personal. Maybe I could write it down?”

Her friendly expression closed down a bit, so Raff leaned closer and whispered, “It’s about some money I owe him.”

He had no idea what scenario she came up with to explain why that was a secret, but her face cleared instantly, and she went to the desk, returning with a pen, a sheet of paper, and a string to tie it up with. Raff jotted down some gibberish, rolled up the ‘letter’, and handed it to her, along with a silver he’d slipped out of his pouch while her back was turned.

The silver vanished into her palm, and the letter went into the cubby with ‘3B’ embossed on the plaque beneath it. Raff cast a nervous glance at the stairs. This was taking far too long.

“Could you get me a beer, by any chance? It’s awfully dry out today,” he asked, passing a copper to the woman, then another when she hesitated. She smiled and nodded, hurrying off through an open archway with red velvet swags hanging across the top.

Raff immediately turned and headed up the stairs after the male servant. He had spent sixteen years as the youngest of six brothers, and one thing he’d learned was that it was never good when one of them got the upper hand. Even the ones that weren’t so bad were just that - not so bad. If this was one of the bad ones, Raff wasn’t going to wait to meet him on the older man’s terms.

One, two, three flights of stairs vanished beneath his long strides, two and three steps at a time. Gaoda had insisted on the finest rooms while they were there, and apparently so had ‘Lord Hillcroft’, because the three rooms that took up the entire third floor were the same ones Raff and the others had stayed in.

Raff kept an eye out for servants, but in that strange way of upper-class attendants, there were none in sight, even though the man Raff had spoken to before had yet to come back down. There was undoubtedly a back stairway, so the fine folks who stayed here never had to encounter a servant unexpectedly.

When Raff reached the door marked with a wide golden plaque bearing the room number ‘3B’, he didn’t hesitate. Gripping the doorknob, he gave it a tiny jiggle. It’d look ridiculous if he attempted to throw it open and it turned out to be locked, but as he’d expected, the occupants were so used to their privacy being respected that they hadn’t even bothered to secure the door.

Taking a deep breath, he turned the knob, pushing open the door, then had to immediately jump back to avoid the sweep of a sword through the space he would have occupied if he’d kept walking. His brows lifted. They had posted a guard? That could only mean he was dealing with-

“Timon!” Raff called, and a familiar voice responded.

“Stand down!” The voice said, still holding the sharp note of authority, in spite of having retired from military service five years earlier. “Grafton? Is that you?”

Raff warily stepped back to the doorway, cursing internally as he saw the one-eyed warrior standing just inside the room. Timon had brought Agrian? The old man hardly ever left the estate anymore. Why was he here now? Just because Jinn had run off?

“Oi, Timon,” Raff said, staying as relaxed and casual as possible. Not because it irked Timon, who was born with a stick up his behind, but because it would help keep some of the power on Raff’s side.

Agrian peered out into the hallway, his single blue eye scanning the brightly lit, red and gold passage with great suspicion. He was just as deeply tanned as Raff remembered, but his skin was even more wrinkled, if that was possible. The hand in which he held his sword was as steady as ever, though.

“Come in, m’lord,” the old man said, stepping aside. He was one of the few who had never treated Raff like an afterthought, an extra and entirely unnecessary addition to the family. If he hadn’t trained Raff as thoroughly as he had any of his older brothers, Raff never would have been able to join such a well-respected mercenary group as the Adamant Reach.

Raff didn’t try to take Agrian’s hand or clap him on the back, though he would have liked to. The man was working, and that meant he was all business, and he wouldn’t appreciate a distraction.

Timon, too, looked older than Raff remembered. He’d always seemed older than his years, thanks to his rigid adherence to anything that could be construed as a rule, but now his auburn hair was thinning, and crow’s feet dug deep into the skin at the corners of his eyes. He maintained his stiff posture, but there was something about him that spoke of exhaustion. Something besides the deep shadows beneath his brown eyes.

“Where’ve you been, Grafton?” he snapped as the door clicked shut behind Raff’s back. “We’ve been trying to find you for two weeks. Even the Adamant Reach didn’t know where you were, other than, ‘near Mount Scarabus.’”

Raff thought back to the grueling trip up and then down through the mountain, culminating in reopening the lost kobold city, at least for a few moments. No, no one would have guessed where he was, even though his superiors knew he’d accepted a job to take a trio of foreigners to the mountain.

“Busy,” he said, deliberately scratching at his itching beard until more unidentifiable things pinged off his breastplate. No officer in the Holiander cavalry would have been caught dead in Raff’s current condition, and he saw his brother’s lip curl.

“Fine,” Timon huffed, running his hand through what was left of his hair. It was a shockingly uncharacteristic gesture, leaving the thin strands in disarray, and Raff blinked. “Have you heard from Jeanne?”

It was Raff’s turn to grimace. Jinn hated her real name. Their grandmother had died while their mother was pregnant with her, and Jinn had spent her entire life hearing about ‘Duchess Jeanne’, usually when Jinn had failed to live up to that lady’s name.

“Nope,” Raff said, offering a grin and a shrug. “Just got back myself. What’s the kid done this time?”

Jinn was six years younger than Raff, who was six years younger than their next oldest brother, Oliver. That gap between the two youngest and the four oldest had seemed insurmountable when they were younger. Jinn had at least had the benefit of having a task in life - make a good match with another aristocratic family - while Raff was just… extra.

Timon’s face turned a little gray beneath his tan, and he darted a look around, as if someone might be hiding in plain sight, waiting to overhear whatever he said next. To be fair, this was a hotel for people of high rank, which meant that spying on what happened here could be a lucrative proposition for a certain type of person.

Lowering his voice, Timon said, “She’s run off with the princess.”