“Sorry if I’m pushing things,” said Mizuki. “It’s a bad habit.”
“No,” said Alfric. “They’re good questions. I just don’t have good answers.” Not at this stage, at least. Maybe later, once they all knew each other, once the party was together, after their second or third dungeon.
“Fair,” said Mizuki. She put the last of the dishes on a drying rack and wiped her hands on a towel that hung on the handle of the oven door. She briefly looked down at her robe and cinched it tighter with a sheepish look. “Well, I should probably change into something more acceptable before we leave. It shouldn’t take long. Make yourself at home, but don’t snoop.”
Alfric waited patiently in the kitchen, looking around, but trying to do it in a way that didn’t constitute snooping. There was a large dining room through one door, but it looked as disused as the rest of the house. The obvious question was why Mizuki was living in such a large house alone, but Alfric hadn’t asked because it seemed like the kind of question that might have a difficult and painful story attached to it. The house was far too big for one person, and Mizuki obviously hadn’t kept up with either repairs or cleaning. The kitchen was the only place that Alfric had seen that had obvious love and attention applied to it.
Mizuki came back into the kitchen not long after she’d left, wearing a similar outfit to the day before, a wrap on top that left her arms bare and wide-legged pants that ended at her calves, this time a dark blue. In addition, she had a small belt that provided an anchor for a dagger in a sheath, which she hadn’t had the day before. She had also spent some time fixing her hair, and she’d applied lipstick, making her look much more put together than she’d seemed while making breakfast or the night before. Her bag was her final addition.
“I thought it would help me look serious,” she said, gesturing to the dagger. “Like an adventurer.”
“Your job won’t be to stab things,” said Alfric, frowning.
“Durr,” said Mizuki, sticking out her tongue. “But it looks cool, right?”
“I guess,” said Alfric.
“Verity will think it looks cool, I bet,” said Mizuki.
“Well, let’s hope so,” said Alfric.
The Fig and Gristle didn’t open until noon, but the proprietor, a sturdy woman with a streak of gray hair, answered the door when they knocked and brought them up to Verity’s room when they explained that they had arranged to meet with her.
“You’re not planning to take her away from me, are you?” asked the woman, Cynthia.
“We were hoping to go into a dungeon with her,” said Alfric, who had always considered honesty to be the best policy.
“Well, you protect her,” said Cynthia with a nod. “I always thought she wouldn’t be here long. I’m paying her a pittance, compared with what she can do.” She came to the door and knocked on it twice, hard. “Verity! Visitors!” She turned to Alfric and Mizuki. “You might have to knock again,” she said. “Verity doesn’t like the mornings, but I’m not going to sit here all day waiting for her to get up.” She turned and went down the stairs, leaving Alfric and Mizuki standing there.
After a full minute had passed and Alfric was contemplating knocking again, there were sounds from the other side of the door, including a fair amount of banging. This continued on for some time, until finally Verity opened her door and poked her head out. Alfric was surprised by how similar she looked to Mizuki, with her hair messy, a frown on her face, and a squint. Unlike Mizuki, she had gotten into a dress instead of a robe, one that had a pattern of white flowers on top of lavender fabric. It was slightly wrinkled.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Just past second bell,” said Alfric.
“Oh,” she said, looking between the two of them. Her bleary eyes finally rested on Mizuki. “I don’t usually get up until at least fourth bell.” She stared at Mizuki. “There are two of you now?”
“Three makes a party,” said Mizuki, quite cheerfully. She held out her hand. “Mizuki.”
“Verity,” said Verity, slipping a limp hand through the door for just long enough to do a perfunctory shake. “Hang on.” She closed the door for a moment, and there were more sounds from inside her room. Alfric had only gotten a narrow glimpse into her room, but it was a complete mess, with clothes everywhere, books in haphazard piles, and remnants of old meals. It was, frankly, a frightening amount of detritus to be packed into a relatively small room.
“Okay,” said Verity when she returned, slipping out of the door without letting them see any more of the inside. “Let’s go downstairs and talk.”
The tavern was empty, save for the proprietor, who was cleaning out glasses and tidying up the place. The chairs were all upside down on top of their tables, and Verity quickly flipped a few of them, giving them a place to sit.
“So,” she said, steepling her fingers and trying to look more awake than she was. “You want to go into a dungeon.”
“All you would have to do is sing and play,” said Alfric. “If you felt like you were in any danger whatsoever, you could run back to the entrance and leave without me. I’ll be the point man, the one facing down anything dangerous, and I’ll try to keep myself between you and whatever we find in the dungeon. In exchange for maybe two hours of work, only an hour of which will actually be in the dungeon, you’ll get a fifth share of whatever we find.”
“Do we have a healer?” asked Verity. “I’d feel better with one.”
“We’ll be picking her up later today,” said Alfric. “It might be better to have everything else squared away and agreed on before we approach her though.”
“And what kind of songs would you like, if you’ve given it thought?” asked Verity.
“Strength and speed,” said Alfric. “I’ll be up front, sword in hand, and with your proficiency, you should be able to give me a boost of some thirty to forty percent. Enhanced vision and hearing would be great, if you can add that in, and endurance would be a bonus as well, but with a healer on board that’s less of a concern.”
“Just one dungeon?” asked Verity, after a long pause. Alfric was getting the feeling that this was perhaps too much information at once for her.
“He wants more,” said Mizuki. “He’s got plans for the one in this hex, and the six surrounding, and no doubt more beyond that.”
“Just one to start,” said Alfric, casting a glance at Mizuki. “I wouldn’t want to commit until we know we can work together as a team, and I know that a single day is much more manageable in terms of scheduling than seven days or more. We need to allow for the possibility that someone won’t be a good fit or that something unexpected crops up, so yes, just one.”
“With the option for more?” asked Verity, tapping her fingers on the table. There was something rhythmic in how she did it, like she was playing out a tune.
“Possibly,” said Alfric. “And for a bard, it’s good training, good exposure to party dynamics and custom songs. I know that you can make decent money with taverns and outdoor performances, but party- or guild-level performance is where the real money is for a bard, even if it’s outside the traditional adventuring structures.”
Verity glanced at Mizuki.
“I think he’s just like this,” said Mizuki. She looked at Alfric. “How long have you been in Pucklechurch?”
“I arrived early last morning,” Alfric replied.
“So, based on what I know about this guy,” said Mizuki, seeming quite pleased with herself, “he comes in yesterday, early in the morning, makes a beeline for the censusmaster and gets a list of people, then spends the rest of the day asking around to see what he can find out about us, our reputations, our skills, things like that, and then, having not been in town for more than twelve hours, he visits first you, then me, trying to pull together a party in record time.”