“Closed?” I repeat, staring at the sign. “What does that mean?”

Zyneth frowns at the door. “It means it does not appear to be open.”

I wish I had eyes so I could give him a flat look. “What does that mean for you?”

“That depends on if Vardi really isn’t here.” He steps around to look through a window, but the curtains are drawn. Zyneth glances both ways down the street; it’s empty.

He holds me up to his shoulder, where I hop off and dig my glass into his cloak for purchase. Zyneth withdraws a thin metal rod from his pocket and inserts it into the door’s lock.

“Is that a lockpick?” I ask. Exciting. I’ve never done a B&E before!

I mean, I guess beside the Athenaeum.

“Of a sort,” he murmurs. A faint yellow light glows between Zyneth’s fingers, and a set of runes light up along the grip of the tool. Zyneth twists the rod, and a pulse of red flickers through the lock. A moment later, more runes appear on the door itself. Zyneth frowns in concentration, turning the pick this way and that. One by one, the runes on the door fade from red to blue, then flicker out.

The lock clicks. Taking one last look around our surroundings, he quietly pushes the door inward, removes the pick from the lock, and slips inside.

It’s dark inside the tavern. Completely silent. I tensley clutch to Zyneth’s shoulder, waiting for him to move, and I can feel the predator watching attentively as well—perhaps on alert due to my own nerves.

Only the way I sway on his shoulder tells me he’s moving. I can’t hear his footsteps at all. Disoriented from the lack of light, I resist my instincts to activate a Glow spell or ask Zyneth what we’re doing. This is his job: his specialty. I’m just along for a ride.

After several minutes of darkness and silence—it’s hard to keep track—Zyneth lets out a quiet sigh. A small flame crackles to life in his palm.

“I’ve disabled all the alarm and trap spells I could find,” Zyneth says, his voice still low. “It should be safe to explore. I suspect it really is closed.”

Alarm spells? I hadn’t even noticed. “What do we do now?” I ask.

“I’m not sure,” Zyneth admits. “Look for some sign of where Vardi has gone, I suppose. See if there’s any indication of when she’s coming back. But be careful,” he adds. “I haven’t checked upstairs yet; there could be more spells up there.”

He offers a hand down to a table, and I take it. “Can I make a light?”

“Yes, but keep it dim enough no one would notice from the outside,” he says. “It’s actually a good thing it’s day, still; I’ll crack a few curtains.”

I remove the small pieces of glass that were hidden in Zyneth’s clothes, and nudge the predator to leave, too. I don’t particularly need its help looking around the tavern, but it will keep the creature busy, and more importantly, it will get it away from Zyneth’s back so I can stop feeling so anxious. The predator is happy for the opportunity to exercise some of its autonomy, and peels away from Zyneth’s cloak to puddle onto the floor. Using a small cluster of signing glass, I activate a Glow spell.

Benches are upturned and resting on the tops of their tables; the floor is clean—as clean as a tavern floor can get—and all the glasses are slotted away behind the bar. It looks like someone swept up, closed shop, and never came back.

The predator slinks across the floor in curious exploration. It’s about as big as a medium-sized dog. Sometimes the suggestion of limbs or carnivorous jaws almost manifest, only to be subsumed by the living mass of shadows once more. Without my glass to give it a stable shape, its form is indistinct and dynamic. It’s extremely unsettling.

Zyneth begins systematically checking all the building’s rooms. Without removing my body from my Inventory and getting the predator to act as my inorganic tendons, I remain where Zyneth left me on the table. I can keep track of things through the predator, but I also have another spell I haven’t used in a while: Inspect.

It has no mana cost if I’m touching the thing I’m Inspecting, but since I’m searching for more of those trap and alarm spells Zyneth mentioned, touching those probably isn’t the best idea in the first place.

How much mana to scope out the dormant spells in this whole building? I ask Echo.

[Inspect with a thirty-foot radius would consume three mana per second,] Echo says.

Three per second? Given my pool of 300, that’s nothing! It’s wild to think that would have eaten up my entire mana pool in less than four seconds when I first got dumped on this world. But now I’ve got mana for days! Or, well, a few minutes, anyway. I activate an Inspect.

It’s not a form of sight, exactly, but I can feel the magic balloon through the building, passing through wood just as easily as air. A thread of magic appears between me and the predator, connecting us together. Items light up on Zyneth’s person, too, including his blade and lockpick. As curious as I am to learn about all his artificed trinkets, that’s not the current priority. In the tavern, almost everywhere, there’s magic.

It’s a lot like Yedzaquib’s library. There were dozens of spells embedded in the walls, some for structural support, some for the water system, others for the floors’ force fields. In here, it’s very similar. There’s mundane things like dormant spell circles in the kitchen basin that my low-level spell tells me has to do with water. There’s some type of cleanliness runes carved onto much of the floors. I notice the spells Zyneth deactivated as well, though all my Inspect can get out of it is that one was a sound spell and another was a fastening spell. Since I’m not sure exactly what to look for, I use these as examples and search for anything else in the tavern that Echo would describe in a similar manner.

“There is another alarm spell upstairs,” I say aloud when I notice it. “Top step.”

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Zyneth pauses. “You can tell that from here?”

“I think so,” I say. “I am just looking for the same things you disarmed. Let me know if I am wrong.”

Zyneth disappears around a corner; I don’t hear him move up the steps, but I do see the magical items on him ascend. He pauses.

“You’re right,” he voice drifts back. “Good catch. Let me know if you find anything else.”

As it turns out, I do: another fastening spell on a door—actually that might just be a lock spell rather than a trap—and another alarm in a back office. Zyneth also catches two more traps I didn’t, so my system isn’t perfect, but hey, I’m learning. And if I get this spell leveled up a bit more, it might be very useful.

In the end, there’s nothing more to find. The tavern is empty. Zyneth gains no clues about where his contact, Vardi, has gone. He estimates it’s been at least a week since anyone has been there.

“What do we do about your debt, then?” I ask.

Zyneth sits down at the bar next to me. The predator has taken to exploring the tavern as the two of us talk, bored by concepts of commerce it doesn’t understand. Since Zyneth and I both scoped out the place pretty thoroughly for traps (or anything living) I feel relatively safe letting it roam. At least it’s in an enclosed area with no one else around. And frankly, I’m perfectly happy to not have it clinging to my body for a few minutes.

Zyneth rolls up a sleeve to show his tattoo: the ink is still gold, rather than the inert black color, but it’s no longer glowing. “Ironically, this is probably the best case scenario,” he says. “Since I’ve arrived at the agreed upon location, as ordered, the burning has stopped. It’s up to the creditor to deliver the details of the job contract now. If they don’t hold up their side of the agreement, a portion of my debt is removed.”

“That is great!” I say. “So can we just leave?”

“Not quite,” Zyneth says. “If it were that easy, you could appear at the meeting location when you’re sure the creditor will be away, consider the obligation fulfilled, and scrub off a portion of the debt. To account for this, there is a time limit. For Vardi and this particular debt, it’s one month. If she doesn’t return within that window, then I’m off the hook. While that window is counting down, however, I need to stay in the area, in case she returns.” He turns his hands up. “So I suppose now… I wait.”

Certainly not the outcome I was expecting. But I agree with Zyneth—this is a lot better than being sent on some dangerous mission or another. “You are telling me we have free time?” I ask. “We are not fighting for our lives, or racing against a clock, or trying to steal something or sneak somewhere?”

“Much of that tends to be your doing,” Zyneth remarks, quirking a smile. “But I suppose, yes. For the next thirty days, at least, we can just… be.”

I’m not even sure what to do with myself. Such freedom! I’d been so certain we were about to go on some new dangerous job to help settle Zyneth’s debt that I hadn’t even bothered to figure out what I would prioritize after that.

“I need to figure out how to start tracking down the lost souls,” I think aloud. “And Rezira suggested I should find a glass mage to learn more glass magic from. Noli and I also would like to make a trip to Trenevalt’s cabin. Oh, Expletive, and Attiru is nearby! We should stop and say hi to them. This also gives me time to get the predator accommodated to being in a city. But what to do first?”

Zyneth taps my translator. “First, I think, I will get your primary translator recharged. There’s no need to start with the biggest things. We can take them one manageable step at a time.”

“You are right,” I say, brightening. Now that the surprise is wearing off, I feel weirdly… happy? Okay, it shouldn’t be weird to feel happy. But it’s like a weight has been lifted. Those of us with lungs can take a deep breath. This dark cloud that’s been chasing me has finally blown past. It feels good to have options. A… future on this world.

“We should celebrate,” I say. “After two months on a submarine, I bet you could use a drink.”

Zyneth laughs. “That sounds wonderful, actually. Will you be paying?”

I falter. “Maybe finding a job is the next thing I should do.”

His eyes dance with amusement. “Oh? And what sort of job would you take?”

Er. Good question. “I will figure something out.”

He chuckles, standing up as he offers me a hand. “I believe you will.”

----------------------------------------

Noli and Rezira are equally surprised and pleased to hear the news. Noli has many of the same first thoughts I did, what with visiting Attiru and returning to Trenevalt’s cabin.

“If you two travel to Peakshadow, I won’t be able to come,” Zyneth says. “I’ll need to stay in Harrowood until the time limit is up.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly fine,” Noli signs. “It would only be four, five days at most. And I think we’d rather just go alone anyway, if that’s alright.” She looks to me for confirmation.

We’re back at a bar near our inn, one Noli insisted we had to try because it has some sort of drink called ‘Rainbow Surprise.’ (And they’re certainly prismatic, glowing all different colors with an illusion spell. After a sip, Rezira winced and reported the surprise was that it was grog.)

I’m in my body and clothes once more, sitting at a table with the rest instead of attempting Murrok’s disguise. Zyneth is reclining in the seat next to me, sipping at a stout, which I actually did manage to pay for with the last few coins I had leftover from selling my spellbooks in Miasmere. When was the last time I’ve seen him this relaxed?

I nod at Noli’s suggestion. “It just seems like something we should do in private.”

Rezira sighs, pushing away her kaleidoscopic drink as she looks to Noli. “I don’t like you being out there on your own, but I know you can take care of yourself.”

I guess I don’t count as company.

“If it’s something you both must do, I will not stop you,” Zyneth agrees. “However, I would request you wait a week, first. If Vardi was notified of my arrival via our contract, then she will likely show up within the next couple of days. If she doesn’t by then, I suspect she won’t show up at all. I’d rather her arrival not coincide with your trip, if avoiding that is at all possible.”

“I can wait a few days,” I say.

Noli nods her agreement. “That’s fine! We can explore the city in the meantime. I wasn’t here very long last time. And it seems so different now that I’m not three inches tall!”

“A break would be nice.” Rezira stands up. “In that case, I’m going to go get something stronger that’s not marketed at my wife’s vulnerabilities.”

“No, wait, I’ll still drink them!” Noli objects. “It might not taste good but it looks so happy! It’s nourishing for the soul.”

I translate for Zyneth as Rezira stalks off to the bar. He chuckles, taking another drink of his beer, beforing nodding at me.

“Will you also be exploring the city?” he asks.

“I had more than my fair share of that last time, thank you very much,” I say. “But maybe finding a day job would not hurt. I should be able to find something I can do with my glass magic. Fix windows, perhaps.”

“Would you like for me to come with?” he offers.

“Can you?” I gesture vaguely in the direction of Vardi’s closed tavern. “Or do you need to stay close?”

“I’ll need to periodically check on it throughout the day,” Zyneth admits.

“Then do not worry about me,” I say. “I will not fall apart without you.”

He raises an amused eyebrow. “Are you certain about that? It’s happened before.”

“Ha ha,” I say sarcastically. But in truth, I’m brimming with warmth.