“I don’t understand,” Aris said.

Kelsey looked at her. “I thought we went over this. We’re going to see a man who knows the criminals of this city. What we want to do is going to be some kind of crime, and he should be able to point us towards the right kind of criminals for what we need done.”

“I get that,” Aris replied. “What I don’t get is how this ‘illegal gambling den’ exists! If it’s illegal, why don’t the guards come and arrest anyone? It’s not even hidden!”

“It’s not like there's a sign saying ‘illegal gambling den’,” Kelsey pointed out, looking intently at their destination. There was a sign on the door, but it was decrepit and damaged. The only letters that could be made out were “Hass… ar”.

“But if even the kids know about it…” Aris protested.

“Well, it’s bribery that does it,” Kelsey explained. “Either lots of lower level guards are being paid not to report it, or a higher official is being paid to officially not know. Or both.”

She stepped away from the corner they’d been hiding behind while Kelsey checked out the building.

“Or,” she said, “They’re good enough at hiding the illegal stuff, that when the guards come there's nothing to be found. “Let’s go see.”

She strode up to the guarded doorway confidently, Aris and Anton trailing behind. The courls had stayed behind on the off chance that there were military officials at the den. The kids had been set free once they had answered all the questions that Kelsey could think of.

The man standing guard was the very definition of surly. His dusky brown skin spoke of his mixed heritage, and his scowling expression hinted at his lack of educational resources.

“Hi there!” Kelsey said brightly. “I’m here to speak with Nazari.”

The guard’s scowl didn’t change. “Who sent you?”

“No one. If you’re asking who gave me the name, just a street rat. I find that coin makes a more effective introduction, don’t you?”

A silver coin suddenly gleamed in her outstretched hand, Kelsey once again using her inventory to make it look like she was using sleight of hand. Anton winced a little at the gleam. Karim had recommended they bribe the guard with copper, but Kelsey never seemed to mind overpaying.

The guard took the money, but he still glared at Kelsey suspiciously.

“Come on, I think you would have heard if the Bey had hired a northerner,” Kelsey said.

The guard grunted. “Shows what you know. He hired a whole squad.” He looked her up and down. “None of them were a girl as creepy as you though.”

“Olaf got hired?” Kelsey exclaimed. “What’s the world coming to?”

“Who in the Hells is Olaf?” The guard asked.

“Oh, you know us northerners, we all know each other,” Kelsey said. “Now are you going to let us in or not?”

“Fine,” the guard growled. He opened the door. Kelsey walked inside, the other two following. The guard glared at them as they went by, but didn’t make an issue of it. He then followed them inside, closing the door behind him and gesturing to another guard inside.

Ignoring the byplay, Kelsey stepped forward and was intercepted by two more guards. These two looked a little more professional. One was human, one was a courl.

“Weapons check,” said the courl. Kelsey smiled and held her arms out to the sides. They gave her what seemed like a cursory glance and then moved on to Anton.

Against his instincts, Anton was only carrying a dagger. He hadn’t wanted to, but they’d been told that larger weapons were forbidden. Looking around, he couldn’t help but feel he’d made the wrong decision.

Kelsey’s got my sword, he told himself. I can be armed in a second if there's a need.

The dagger must have passed inspection because the guards moved on to Aris without a word. Their silence didn’t last long.

“What are those?”

“They’re a Class feature,” Kelsey said blandly. “Your trait must be leading you astray if you think they’re weapons.”

“Let me see,” the courl demanded. Aris shrugged and handed a gun over.

“I suppose you could use it as a club if you were desperate enough,” Kelsey said. “Maybe that’s why it triggers your sense?”

The human looked at her suspiciously, while the courl continued to try and figure out what the gun did. He managed to pull back the hammer.

“Careful,” Kelsey said. “You could give yourself a nasty pinch if the hammer catches you.”

The courl glanced at her with irritation, just as there was a loud Clack! Looking down, he saw that he’d found the trigger and caused the hammer to close. The gun, of course, was not loaded.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Useless thing,” he snarled and gave it back to Aris.

“If you say so,” Kelsey said. “Now, can we get service at the tables, or do we have to go to the bar?”

The courl growled at the question. “Find yourself a table, someone will take your order,” he said.

Kelsey slid into the booth, still grinning like a particularly pleased cat.

“You could have just stored her guns like my sword,” Anton said. “Why go through all that rigamarole?”

“Pretty soon, the whole world is going to know about guns,” Kelsey said. “There's going to be a very small window where you can get away with tricks like that, so let me have my fun while I can.”

She passed two fast loaders surreptitiously to Aris. Aris looked apologetically at Anton, but dutifully reloaded her guns under the table.

“Now what?” Anton asked.

“Now, we take in the atmosphere and wait for this Nazari fellow to show up,” Kelsey replied. She looked out over the room.

“Atmosphere?”

“Yeah. You’ve got a real wretched hive of scum and villainy here, you should be more familiar with them as an adventurer.”

“The adventurers’ tavern back home isn’t so bad,” Aris said. “It’s quite clean and doesn’t smell… smokey like this one.”

Aris was referring to the fact that the tavern back home was lit, not with torches or lanterns, but with lightstones. Being a favoured haunt of adventurers, it often picked up alchemical equipment as payment for drinking debts, and it could use lightstones.

There was another reason for the smokey atmosphere here, however. Roughly half of the occupied tables had some sort of smoking device. Tubes led from them that were occasionally sucked on by the people sitting at the tables. There was also a sectioned-off, raised area that was much smokier than the rest of the club.

The ventilation seemed designed to draw air to that section, rather than let the smoke escape, but there was a smell that underlaid the whole place. Anton and Aris weren’t familiar with it, but Kelsey had a knowing grin.

They got served drinks. Almost none of the menu was familiar, but Kelsey was eager to try as many new things as possible. She ordered about half the menu, buying teas, liquor and cordial. Anton and Aris looked over the offerings and ordered based on what looked good. Kelsey went over the entire lot and ended up ordering a pot of bitter brown sludge.

“This is coffee,” she told them, using a different word from what the server had used. “Not as I’d like to drink it. Needs milk, and filtering. Bleagh.”

“If you filter out the beans, you take out the flavour.” The words were delivered with a silken voice from the courl that just stepped up to the table. His fur was jet black, and he wore a dark velvet vest covered in intricate designs. His green eyes flashed as he looked down at them.

“That’s your opinion,” Kelsey said. “Just wait until I get an espresso machine working. Are you Nazari?”

“I was told you wanted to speak with me,” the courl said. He didn’t take a seat. “You are unusual, and you do have money, so that makes you worth a little of my attention.”

Kelsey grinned. “I knew that the street rat wouldn’t be the only one with a sense wealth trait,” she said. “We need some work done, and we heard that you were the person to see about it.”

The courl looked at Kelsey, evaluating her. Then he slid into the booth across the table from her. When he did so, a number of the patrons at the smoking tables started passionate discussions. A musician started labouring away on some kind of stringed instrument. It was a subtle change, but the quiet, lazy environment changed to something a little more lively.

“What kind of work,” Nazari said quietly.

“I need to look at some documents in the Administrative Compound,” Kelsey said.

The Administrative Compound was one of the three main government buildings in the city. The other two were the Wali’s palace and the Military headquarters. The Administrative Compound was technically the palace of the Bey of civilian administration. He did actually live there, but his living quarters were attached to an ever-growing hive of bureaucracy.

“What kind of documents?” Nazari asked.

“Slave auction records for the last three weeks or so,” Kelsey replied.

Nazari flicked a glance at Kelsey’s companions, taking in their dark skin. “That would only be the start of it then,” he said. “Once you know where your merchandise is, you’ll want to retrieve it.”

Kelsey shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to bother you with details until I know what I need.”

The courl looked at her for a long moment. “I know a person who can give you the records,” he said. “I can set up a meeting, tomorrow night.”

“Sounds good,” Kelsey said. “I take it he won’t be bringing the documents to the meeting.”

“No, you’ll have to pay him before he takes any risks,” Nazari said. “You can work out the details with him.”

“And where do you take your cut?” Kelsey asked.

“From him,” Nazari told her. “That’s the tradition here. Expect him to charge accordingly.”

“That seems fine,” Kelsey said. “I’ll be back then.”

“Before midnight,” Nazari cautioned her. “Some of us have to work in the morning.”

“Sure thing,” Kelsey said. “I’d take off now, but I haven’t finished my coffee.”

Nazari nodded and took his leave.

“Well that seemed easy,” Aris said.

“Seemed is the right word,” Kelsey said. To their surprise, she switched to the Tiatian trade tongue. “There’s a few more complications, but let’s not make a scene in Nazari’s place. He’ll probably want to track us down to where we’re staying.”

Mystified at what Kelsey meant, Anton and Aris just nodded. Kelsey finished her coffee, and they headed out. To the market.

Despite Kelsey’s earlier words, she mainly seemed interested in shopping now. Coffee beans were a priority, but there were a lot of items that caught her eye. A general rule, Anton found, was that if he didn’t know what a thing was, Kelsey did, and wanted it.

“A place like this, you expect to see someone demonstrating half a frog hooked up to a magic jar,” she said at one point.

“Oh, you must have heard of Amel,” the merchant whose stall they were at said. “No, they ran him out of town three weeks ago. He wasn’t selling anything, just bilking the gullible out of their silver.”

Kelsey laughed delightedly and went back to shopping. Finally, though, she seemed about done.

“All right, I think I’ve got this guy's patterns down,” she said. “Let’s grab him.”

“No spiders this time,” Anton said.

“Yeah, yeah, you guys can do all the work this time,” she said. She led them back to an area of the Market that they’d already gone over. “This alley looks good. Aris, if you stay around that corner, we’ll lead him on. When a shifty-looking guy with brown hair comes around the corner, grab him.”

“Are we allowed to just grab people off the street?” Aris asked.

“As long as no one sees,” Kelsey said. “And if they do, and call the guards, we’ll just bribe them. The guy is a thief, they’re not going to care what happens to him.”

“Don’t they have a bounty on people they can feed to the dungeon?” Anton asked.

“Ooh, shoot, that might drive the price up,” Kelsey agreed. “Let’s just keep it quiet then.”

They went around the corner and it all went pretty well. The shifty-looking guy came around and Aris grabbed him.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing!” he yelled, trying to get free. He had the edge on her, Aris thought, but not by enough. He was still struggling when Anton arrived, leaping to the attack. One punch from her husband was enough to put the thief down on the ground, gasping.

“What… are you… doing?” he gasped. “This… is assault!”

“Stay down,” Anton told him. To the quickly approaching Kelsey, he said, “I hope you know what you’re doing here.”

“Of course!” Kelsey said. “This guy was listening to our conversation. All we have to do now is make him tell us who he was planning on selling us out to.”