The Hunter’s Guild was built on the site of an old prison, and it looked only marginally more inviting now. Made of marble and gray brick, the Guild headquarters loomed over Downtown and sat at the western end of the city center. Char raced up the front steps and I lagged behind, my knees aching after the first twelve or so steps.

Once she reached the top, Char turned and waited for me.

I got to the top and said, “Gods above, I hate this place.”

Char chuckled and said, “As much as things change, you stay the same.”

I grumbled a complaint and walked through the huge double doors into the building, Char following right behind me.

The lobby of the Guild had a few people milling about and I looked for any Hunters I recognized but didn’t see anyone. Just a lot of bureaucrats.

Most people had an idea of the Hunters Guild as a bunch of trained killers, going out and slaying monsters and people constantly. The truth is that for every person like me in the Guild, there were at least five who didn’t see anything more dangerous than a paper cut in their entire lives. When I went to go kill a monster, say a basilisk or a bunyip, someone had to receive the report that the monster was in the area, someone had to write to local authorities to let them know I was there, and someone had to pay me and arrange for cleanup when it was all done. And I’m one of the lowest-ranked Hunters. I don’t make a huge paper trail compared to some of the bigger fish. Bureaucrats, love them, hate them, they make the world go round.

I went up with Char to her office and sat in a cushy lounge chair as she filed some paperwork and made some reports. I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, Char was shaking me awake.

“Jonas,” she said, “can you go uptown to that bank Gerry Teralt worked at?”

“Trieste-Vellan?” I asked, blinking sleep out of my eyes.

“Yes, I need you to ask around about him. What he did for them, et cetera.”

I sat up. My back was angry with me for falling asleep sitting down and it was punishing me with aches and pains. I rubbed it and stretched it out.

Char went back to her desk, and I asked, “Shouldn’t you go to the bank? You’re far more respectable than me.”

“I have to follow up on that military lead and comb through our personnel records. Unless…you want to do that paperwork?”

I rolled my eyes and stalked out the door. Uptown wasn’t far, just ten or fifteen minutes by streetcar. All of the banks were near each other, so all I had to do was find the one with the right name on it.

It took a little bit, but I did it. Trieste-Vellan was a medium-sized place, with a bunch of pillars and marble and ornate decorations. It didn’t look too fancy, but what did I know?

I walked in and immediately realized I didn’t know anything. I was far and away the poorest person in the bank and, boy, did I feel it. And this wasn’t like a normal bank class disparity. I’m used to that. This was another level.

Everyone in the bank was dressed in clothes that looked so expensive they hurt to look at. There was a mural of the sky painted on the ceiling, with naked gods splayed out, lounging around. I looked down and realized that there were gold inlays on the floor, forming the pattern of a sovereign. There probably had been gold details on the marblework outside and I just hadn’t noticed. And worst of all, the gold inlays were probably real. Gods above, this one building had more wealth than a small country.

I stood up a bit straighter and tried not to look like a rural bumpkin coming to the big city for the first time. I don’t think it worked.

I look around at the bank floor. There were a couple dozen customers—nobles and burghers—a few tellers, all behind fancy desks in protective cages, and a few guards trying to look casual.

I walked up to an open teller and said, “Hey there, I need to talk to whoever your boss is.” The teller just looked at me. So I flashed what soldiers in my troop called my ‘danger smile.’ For extra effect, I added, “It’s important.”

The teller smiled, nodded, and started to speak in High Valerian.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’ll need an appointment.”

Typical. I squared up the teller, he was a thin man in his early forties. His hair was neatly combed and short, and he wore thin wire glasses at the end of his nose. From the look of him, he was probably minor nobility. Places like this loved to give cushy jobs to minor nobility.

It would explain how he knew High Valerian and why he thought I wouldn’t. You see, it used to be that the nobility would have so little interaction with the lower classes that their language started to diverge. They termed their dialect ‘High Valerian,’ whereas the rest of us got to speak ‘Low Valerian.’ Now, they keep High Valerian around as a reminder from the old nobility that they still hold the real power in the country.

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Luckily, I knew enough High Valerian to get by. I may not have gone to one of their fancy academies, but Hunters get pretty decent training in linguistics. Plus, spite was a powerful motivator in my education.

“It’s Hunter’s Guild business,” I said, flashing my ID and pulling down my collar to show my Hunter’s Mark.

The teller blinked, clearly surprised that someone as grimy as me could speak his language. I leaned forward and bared my teeth into a wolfish grin.

“This can be easy or hard. I really prefer easy. I think you will too.”

He smiled nervously and nodded.

Ten minutes later, I had a meeting with the bank’s manager. As I strode through the back offices, I felt the disapproving gaze of the bank staff boring into the back of my head.

The branch manager’s office was nice. New world woods and lush carpets. Paintings of people and landscapes I didn’t recognize. The manager herself was a woman about my age, with salt and pepper hair and dark, stern eyes. Her skin was extremely pale; as if she hadn’t seen the sun since she was a child. She didn’t look at me when I came in, so I sat down opposite her and sighed.

“You proficient in Low Valerian?” I asked in High Valerian. She smiled and nodded.

“Of course, Mr. Dreadstone,” she said politely, in Low Valerian.

“Great, I’d do High, but I’ve found I just can’t manage to roll my r’s the right way. Been trying since the Last War but I just haven’t quite cinched it,” I said, before pausing and asking, “How did you know my name?”

The manager leaned back in her chair and said, “Educated guess. I like to keep tabs on all the Hunters that are in the Capital at any time. You’re the oldest man, so it wasn’t too hard to pick you out.”

“Well, you have me at a disadvantage,” I said, “I don’t know your name.”

“My name is Dominica Wellstone. You can call me Dominica.”

The name seemed familiar, I rubbed my chin and thought.

“Wellstone…Wellstone. Where have I heard that before?”

I leaned forward and got a better look at Dominica’s face.

Then, I said, “We haven’t met, I have a good memory for faces.”

The edges of Dominica’s mouth twitched into a smile for just a second before returning to a poker face.

“No,” she said, “we haven’t. But you did a job for my family, around fifteen years ago.”

I snapped my fingers and said, “Yes! The Wellstones. I saw your house—nice place. Lots of flowers. Met your husband—nice guy.”

“Yes,” she said, “my mother didn’t want you meeting anyone important. Hunters seem to have a way to attract danger.”

I nodded and chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. I rescued your daughter, right? She was just a kid. How is she?”

Dominica shifted a bit uncomfortably, but said, “Well. She’s in university here, which is part of the reason I transferred here.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Glad she’s well, it isn’t often I get to know about what happens after I leave.”

“Yes,” she said impatiently. “Now, not to be rude, Mr. Dreadstone, but what did you need? I’m a busy woman.”

“Of course, of course. I just need some information about an employee of yours.”

Dominica frowned slightly and said, “Well, there are some privacy concerns, I’ll be quite limited in the information I can give you.”

“I understand, whatever you can give me. His name was Gerry Teralt.”

A flash of recognition went through Dominica’s eyes, disappearing even quicker than it came.

“I would have to check the employee manifest to see if he worked here, I don’t know all of the employees by name,” she said apologetically.

I nodded and smiled disingenuously.

“Of course,” I said, “take your time.”

Dominica started to root through papers and folders and after a minute, she said, “Yes, Mr. Teralt was employed for us, but not at this location.”

“No?” I said, sitting up a bit in my chair.

“No, he was employed in the Portsmouth branch.”

“I’m guessing he wasn’t a teller,” I said.

“No,” Dominica said, not even looking at the sheet. “He was a bank representative, he worked directly with clients. Unlike other banks, when we work with individuals and organizations, we like to give them a bit more of a personal touch.”

“And I’m guessing you can’t tell me which clients or what sectors they were in, can you?”

“No,” Dominica said, tilting her head in a sign of fake sympathy.

I clicked my tongue and thought for a second.

“Are you employing any retired Hunters on your staff? In any location.”

Dominica flipped through her papers again and after a minute, said, “Yes, a few.”

“Any men?”

She looked at me a bit curiously.

“There aren’t a lot of male Hunters,” she said carefully, “much less retired ones.”

“I know,” I said, “indulge me.”

She read a few more papers and said, “We employ five ex-Hunters across all locations. All women. Three of them work at this branch, if you need to talk to them.”

“No,” I said, getting up from my chair, “that’s alright. I should get going, I’ve used up quite a bit of your time.”

Dominica stood up and showed me out.

As she walked me to the door, I asked, “Say, I’ve been trying to help my kid think about universities. Your kid, does she go to the Imperial College?”

“No,” Dominica said, absentmindedly, “she goes to the Royal Capital University.”

“And does she like it?”

“I suppose so.”

I thanked her and stepped out of the bank, heading for the streetcar line. Time to check out the Royal Capital University. Dominica Wellstone knew something she wasn’t letting on. Maybe her daughter would know.