The guards at the back gate taxed her the badger carcass, but left her the mattress bundle. They didn’t know what it was. The courtyard was busy with afternoon traffic. Hunters were returning to the square after a day in the Green. They were visiting the shops to sell items not taxed from them and buy replacements for the equipment damaged or lost in the hunt. Irene crossed the square planning on renting a room for the night in the inn. The common room was mostly empty. It wouldn’t get busy until the guards were finished collecting taxes at the green gate. Irene stood just inside the door and thought about how she was going to get her skid up to a rented room. She didn’t think she could do it without drawing too much attention to herself. Although she wanted to check on Mary’s children, she also wanted to pass unnoticed by her mother as long as possible.

She slipped back out into the square. She took the stairs up to the first floor of apartments and circled the floor looking for an empty one. The shortest an apartment could be rented for was thirty six days, which was why she hadn't rented one before. She never stayed that long in one place inside the structure. Since she didn’t plan to go back to the Speedwell again she needed a new place for her base of operations. Londontown seemed like a good choice.

There were no available apartments on the first floor. There were a few on the second, but they were far from the stair closest to the back door. Irene expected more empties. It wasn’t that long since the split with Paris. She walked the path back to the back door. She was trying to decide if the apartment far away on the second floor would work better or worse than a closer one on the third. She couldn’t decide. She really wished there were apartments directly on the square.

She leaned against the courtyard wall outside the stairwell closest to the back door. She set her mattress bundle down at her feet. One of the rope ties was loosening up, letting the mattress start to expand. As she pulled the lines tight again, a group emerged from the training grounds and crossed the courtyard carrying a large boar. They went directly to a meat shop.

Almost all the shop fronts were filled. Irene found only one empty. It was located in a corner. The amount of frontage on the courtyard was small. There were workshops behind all the shops. Not being a crafter, Irene hadn't entered any of those workshops, so she didn’t know how big they were. The front was large enough to display two beds and maybe a chair. Irene put her hand onto the sealed door.

A pile of ten silver shadow coins appeared above her hand. They looked like they were laying on the glass. Below her hand was a pile of eighteen shadow coins made out of oxidized bronze and a little scale model of a shop. She didn’t think the model was this shop, but rather a generic version, since the frontage on it seemed much wider. Irene didn’t know what the lower amount was. She checked the price on shops before out of curiosity and only saw the upper ten silver price. She lifted her hand off the door and the shadow coins vanished.

She considered the little shop model. Eighteen greens was a lot of coins. The price was about six years worth of rent on a shop. Could this be the purchase price for the shop, instead of just rent? Irene might have enough. Traveling, trading and not staying long in settlements was profitable. Once she was outside the structure the coins held no value. That fact made her careless with keeping track of how many coins she held.

She wouldn’t be going out to the Speedwell again. A shop would serve as a home base as well as an apartment. If she bought the shop, she wouldn’t have to worry about losing it or its contents to the rent being a day late because she was delayed on the road. She still planned to travel. She wanted to become the trader she always pretended to be. Which was a goal that was in conflict with a shop.

A shop needed someone to run it. Irene wasn’t certain Control would allow a shop that never opened. She saw rented shops closed for a day or two. So they could be closed sometimes. A newly rented shop sometimes didn’t open for a week or more as the new shopkeepers got themselves organized and hired workers. Now there was an idea, Irene thought. Master craftsmen often hired a clerk to run the front shop, while they retreated to the workshop behind.

Irene wasn’t a crafter so she didn’t need to disappear into a workshop. As a trader and scavenger she needed to travel into the structure to gather her goods. Yes, she thought, that sounded right to her. She put her hand back on the door and paid the eighteen greens. The door opened under the pressure of her hand.

The showroom was deeper than it was wide. A door in the back wall led to the workroom. A small counter projected out from the right side wall in front of the door. This would be the pay surface. The back wall was lined with built-in shelving to display goods on.

Irene sat her bundled mattress, pack and staff down, before opening the door to the workroom. The workroom was much larger than the showroom. It was the same depth as the showroom but wider than it was deep. Irene thought this space was perfect for a large crafting team that produced small amounts of high end quality product. It was pretty much exactly opposite of what she would need. She probably should have rented the space for thirty six days before buying. She shrugged off that thought. This was the only space available in Londontown.

She visited shops that changed their layout over time. Shifting where the pay station was or the shelving. Maybe she could move the wall separating front from back.

There was another door in the sidewall of the workshop. Irene opened it to find a tiny restroom. It was equipped with a single organic toilet and a sink basin on one wall. Irene decided that it explained how crafters could spend all day in their workshop.

She decided to go retrieve the rest of her components before trying to figure out how to use the pay station from a seller's point of view.

She left most of her belongings in the shop, only taking with her the tools she needed to make safe entry into a room. She cleared the room she left her skid in, but there was no way to tell if it was repopulated in her absence. She would need to clear it again.

Irene found the skid where she left it. The five badger carcasses were still on it. She thought about it and threw three of them off. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. A lone scavenger coming in with five badgers would do that. She cast muffle again and dragged the skid the rest of the way to Londontown.

“Back again?” the guard asked. Irene dismissed the muffle spell, so the guard could hear her response. She noticed to her chagrin that she forgot to cast don’t notice me. The guard didn’t seem to recognize who she was, just that she was there earlier.

“Yes,” Irene responded. “Where’s your partner?” she asked. The guard was alone, when she came through before there were two of them. Irene didn’t recognize the guard, so there was no reason for him to know her.

“Prior engagement,” the guard responded.

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“What do I owe?” Irene asked.

“You paid a badger earlier,” the guard responded. “That more than covers entry taxes for the day.” That was a surprise.

“So if I head back out and scavenge more, you’ll let me back in without another tax?” Irene asked.

“Until midnight, which is when my shift ends,” the man responded.

“I’ll have to think about that,” Irene responded. “I’ve decided to set up a shop. I’ll need a lot of salvage to fill it.” Irene made a note of what the man looked like. Even if what he was quoting was the official policy, not many guards followed it.

She recast muffle on herself and the skid. She pulled it through the gate and into the back hall and across the courtyard to her shop. Once the skid was in the shop, she skinned the two badgers. She sold the meat to the butcher shop and the skins to the leatherworker. As she watched the clerk in each shop use the pay surface to buy the items, Irene wondered if she could talk one of them into teaching her how to use it.

Back in her shop she emptied out her gathering bags and backpack. The little connectors spilled across the floor, while the fiber scrap fluffed up into an impressive pile. Irene found several crafting tools she tucked into the pockets of her pack. She was carrying a large supply of travel food that was actually survival bars from the Speedwell. She set it all aside along with anything else she didn’t need on a salvage run so she would have more volume to carry items. She tied the gathering bags to the side of her pack within easy reach. She took the time to refill her water flask from the water source in the shop restroom.

She picked up her staff and went back out the back door. She started clearing rooms as soon as she was out of sight of the guard. She put anything she suspected of being a small connector into one of her gathering bags. The second bag she reserved for fiber scrap. Any useful items she had seen anyone use in a settlement, like bowls and crafting tools she put in her pack. The large pieces of metal and wood that she thought might be similar to the structure of the bed frames, she set in the hallway.

In her fifth room she found an almost intact chair frame. She removed the damaged pieces and set the remaining chair into the hall. By looking at the intact side, she could see what the missing pieces should look like. She found them fairly quickly in the salvaged piles built up behind her in the hallway. A few minutes later she held an intact chair frame.

When Irene first came to Londontown she saw them in use with the missing seat and back replaced with straps of braided cord or leather straps. She could buy the cord or leather from a crafter and weave them on herself. The pieces used to make the frame seemed common. Irene was certain she could piece together another one just from what was in the hallway. Pleased with her find, she bundled up a bunch of the components like firewood and swung it across her back. She picked up the chair one handed and carried-dragged it back to the square. In her other hand she held her staff.

“Nice chair,” the guard commented as Irene approached. “I haven’t seen one in a while. Are you interested in selling?”

“It’s for my shop,” Irene said. “I’m planning on selling furniture.” The guard tilted his head in thought.

“That’s a good idea, but it's going to be a lot of work to get enough stock. Intact furniture is really rare,” he said.

“I know,” Irene responded. “I’ve got a plan.” She carried her chair back to her shop and unloaded. She set her new components in a new pile separate from the skid.

“Again?” the guard asked as Irene exited.

“Well even my plan involves work,” Irene responded.

It wasn’t until her fourteenth room that she actually found an intact piece of furniture. It was a large set of shelves in a storage room in an office suite. The shelving supported a mixture of items that residents of the square would find useful. Irene was picking through the debris when she realized the arm reaching out from the back was one of the components she was gathering. This wasn’t the first set of selves she found in a supply closet. She never thought of them as furniture, because they were too large to move out through the door. If she took it apart, the pieces would fit through easily.

She cleared all the broken and decayed items off the shelves and disassembled the entire thing. She bound the pieces together into a single bundle and carried it back. Irene could see that the guard thought she was a little crazy bringing back piles of junk. She went straight to her shop and reassembled the shelves against the back wall of the workshop. The only problem she had was figuring out which of the small pieces in the gathering bag were the ones from the shelving. She threw the shelving connectors into the bag without thought. When she dumped the bag out she was surprised at how many connectors were in there. They were not all the same. The ones to attach sheets of iron to the top of the shelves were distinctly different to the ones used to attach the wooden slats to the top of the bed frames.

Looking over at the still loaded skid, Irene realized she was going to have trouble putting the bed frame back together. She already didn’t remember it that clearly. She thought about doing it now, but decided against it. She left a lot of good components in the hall, she wanted to retrieve them at a minimum before giving it up for the night. Once out in the hall, she couldn’t resist checking just a few more rooms.

She found a complete small table, a nearly complete desk and the frame of a bookcase. She was getting a feel for how the pieces went together. She just needed to find the right size sheets of metal or planks of wood and she could fix the bookcase. She might even already have them. She’d continued to haul back bundles of loose components each time she made a trip.

“My shift ends soon,” the guard commented, as Irene passed him on the way back out.

“Thanks for the warning,” Irene responded.

“Some of the night watch think that desperation to get back into the square will make people pay more,” the warrior commented.

“I’ll just make one more quick run then and play with what I’ve gathered,” Irene responded. “Do you work the same shift everyday?”

“Most,” he responded. “I get one day off in six. My next day off is in three days.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow night then,” Irene responded.

“I’ll look forward to it,” the guard smiled. “I am Anthony, by the way,” he said introducing himself.

“Irene,” she responded without thought.

“Phillip’s sister?” Anthony asked with a frown.

“Yes,” Irene responded. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Don’t tell anyone. I haven’t admitted I’m back in the square yet.”

“I can’t promise you that,” Anthony responded.

“Don’t worry,” Irene replied. “They will figure it out sooner or later. I just prefer later.” Irene smiled and headed out for her last load. She gathered up as much as she could from the hall. She managed to keep herself from entering any other rooms.

Back in the shop, Irene couldn’t stop thinking about the items she left in the hallway. She decided to try and squeeze one more trip in before the guard changed. As she rounded the corner to the back door she heard two male voices. It appeared she already missed her window. She cast muffle and camouflage on herself and walked carefully the rest of the distance.

There were two new men, they were engaged in an animated discussion of who would win in a fight between Phillip and Chris. Irene might have thought they were talking about an uprising, only she was pretty sure that Chris was actually Christopher, Irene and Phillip’s second oldest brother. The last time Irene was in Londontown, Christopher’s official title was head of the guard.

Irene walked calmly by them and started bundling up the rest of her collection. She ended up with three big bundles. She could carry one on her back, and one in her arms, if she set her staff across the top, defending herself from an unexpected attack was going to be difficult. She ferried the three bundles up to the last corner, one at a time, so that the time she was burdened with two would be limited. She peeked around the last corner, under full cloaking and discovered both guards were asleep. Faintly annoyed at this development, Irene made three trips, under full cloaking spells, but not using much care. She decided this was a lesson for her. After midnight, when the halls were dark and people didn’t want to go out, guards assumed that no one was coming in either.