When Terri woke up she was back in her bedroom. It was very dark and the house was completely silent. The young cleric desperately wanted to roll over and go back to sleep but her full bladder and empty stomach forced her to reluctantly climb out of bed. She considered asking Avandar to light up her amulet but then thought better of it and lit the oil lamp that Aggy kept in the kitchen instead. When she made her way back inside after visiting the outhouse Terri found Aggy sitting at the kitchen table.

"It's about time you brought that lamp back inside lass, I thought I was going to have to make your bacon sandwiches in the dark."

Terri smiled gratefully and handed the lamp to Aggy before collapsing onto the couch. "You're a godsend Aggy, do you have any idea what time it is?"

"It's somewhere between midnight and sunrise," Aggy answered, "you've been asleep for almost a whole day."

"Ogden's beard!" Terri swore, using one of Aggy's many colourful oaths. "I had no idea the costs of healing someone could be so high." After a moment's thought she spoke again, "What are you doing up in the middle of the night Aggy?"

"Well," Aggy replied, "A certain female dwarf that we all know and love might have been a bit worried about her young human friend and might have been only dozing rather than sleeping properly. She might also have been waiting anxiously for any sounds of movement. You gave me quite a scare."

Terri was very touched by her friend's concern but didn't quite know how to respond, so she changed the subject to something less emotional. "Do you know how Thisss is? Were they able to heal him?"

"Well, he's not out of the woods just yet, but it doesn't look like he's going to die. Flem checked on him this morning and the clerics said it's going to take them a week to get the poison out of his system. They could have had one of the higher level clerics get rid of the poison immediately but Thisss couldn't afford the cost so he's stuck with getting better the slow way. Even so they're charging him a token for the service. It seems that the spider we fought together was a surprisingly dangerous beastie. The clerics said the big idiot certainly would have died if you hadn't been there. You're now officially a lifesaver lass."

"Well then that makes two of us Aggs," Terri replied. "The bacon sandwiches you're making are going to save my life for sure, I feel like I could eat a whole hog and still have room for a badger on toast."

Aggy laughed. "I know you're only joking lass, but you'd be surprised how tasty a badger can be if you cook it right. You see the secret is to......"

Aggy then went into a long dissertation about the correct way to make badger stew while she stoked up the fire in the cast iron cooker and started frying the bacon. The cooker was one of the main reasons Aggy had decided to rent this particular house as they were a common sight in dwarf homes but not in Providence. Most humans and elves still cooked using an open fire which was something Aggy considered hopelessly primitive. After feeding the young cleric Aggy sent Terri back off to bed and told her to sleep for as long as she could.

"After all, it's not like we're going to be getting up to much of anything until our ailing alligator is back on his feet. I don't fancy doing anything dangerous without him and I'd hate for the big lizard to miss out if we end up going wood stacking."

Terri took the dwarf’s advice and didn't come out of her bedroom until well after noon. When she did finally enter the sunlit lounge the young cleric found Flem and Aggy sitting together at the kitchen table quietly playing Krom's Triangle.

"Well, look who's made it back to the land of the living," said Flem with a smile as he placed his cards down on the table. "You're just in time to save me from another humiliating defeat. If I was a gambling man Aggy would already have taken the shirt off my back and most of my other clothes as well."

"And if I were a few years younger that'd be all the invitation I'd need," replied Aggy suggestively. Flem's face turned a slightly darker shade of brown in shock but Aggy only laughed in response. "I'm only teasing you Flem. Truth be told, I prefer my partners with a bit more femininity if you know what I mean."

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Flem now looked even more uncomfortable but Terri flopped down at the kitchen table appearing completely unconcerned. "Funnily enough Aggs, that doesn't surprise me at all. I figured it was probably the case. If I was inclined in that direction myself I’d already have asked you to marry me, you are pretty irresistible."

Now it was Aggy's turn to blush. "Ha, you're a sweet talker as well as a sweetheart Terri Tillerson. For that lovely compliment your reward shall be half a pot of leftover porridge from my breakfast this morning, and I'll even put a little honey on it for you."

When they were all once again seated around the kitchen table and Terri was busily testing her jaw muscles on the remains of Aggy's porridge, Flem began to speak. "So I'm not exactly sure how to bring this up, but I have a sort of business proposal for you both."

Aggy stopped shuffling her deck of cards and Terri looked up expectantly from her pot of porridge. After a moment Flem continued, "Ah, I'm not sure how much detail I'm allowed to give you about this exactly - the rogues' guild are extremely vigorous in the protection of their secrets. But...ah, I think what I'll do is tell you the absolute minimum you need to know, the stuff that I know it's definitely ok to talk about, and then you can both make your minds up from there."

Aggy and Terri waited patiently while the dark haired elf composed his thoughts. "The first thing you need to know is that the task boards aren't the only way to earn tokens for Gravenhall. It's possible to earn them directly from your guild by performing certain services for them. Well, I know that's true for the rogues' guild at least."

"And what exactly do these services entail?" Aggy asked suspiciously.

"Lots of different things," Flem replied, "but the service I know I'm allowed to tell you about is simple surveillance. From time to time the rogues' guild has a need for certain people to be followed around and watched. Getting access to these relative cushy jobs is by invitation only and is not usually available to level one parties. However I made a contact during the year who has offered us a couple of nights' work if we're interested."

The missing details from Flem's story were that during the year he'd made quite a name for himself amongst the rogues as a talented tailor and had performed a lot of clothing alteration jobs for his guildmates. Rogues in general were very, very keen on having hidden pockets and weapon holsters sewn into their clothing, and the one Flem told his housemates about was no exception. Rather than paying in coin for having his long burgundy cloak filled with lots of secret little pockets, the red haired rogue had offered Flem the chance to earn a few extra tokens instead. The trading or selling of tokens was expressly forbidden by the rules of Gravenhall, and violations resulted in the perpetrator being either expelled or 'mysteriously disappearing'. However, trading the opportunity to earn more tokens was not against the rules and Flem had been happy to accept the offer.

At the kitchen table, Aggy was mulling it over. "So all we have to do is follow someone around for a night and we earn ourselves a token each. It sounds pretty tempting, what's the catch?"

"There isn't one as far as I can tell," Flem replied. "If we're lucky they'll stay home all night and we won't even have to go anywhere. Then in the morning I head off to the rogues' guild and report what we saw, and they give me the tokens. What do you think Terri?"

Terri was unsure. "Avandar teaches us that things which seem too good to be true usually are too good to be true. They wouldn't be handing out tokens if there wasn't some risk involved. On the other hand, every Gravenhall task is risky in one way or another, it's just the size of the risk that varies. It could be as small as getting a handful of splinters from stacking wood for a week, or as large as finding a giant poisonous spider when all you were looking for was some lost sheep. I don't know whether it's a good idea or not, but I do know that the last task I suggested ended up with us fighting a giant spider and Thisss in the hospital. So, all things considered, I'm happy to rely on your judgement."

"Well," Aggy replied, "that took quite a few long sentences to decide that you didn't want to decide anything. You did make a fair bit of sense in the middle bit though; every task we do is going to be risky. The question is whether we think the risk is balanced by the reward. In this case I think it's worth a try. At the very least we'll learn whether it's a safe option for earning a few extra tokens or not. It will also give us a chance to show that big lizard that we're more than capable of earning Gravenhall tokens without his help."

Now that the decision had been made Flem said that he needed to head off immediately to set things up, although he may have been leaving quickly to avoid another game of Krom's Triangle. When he returned in a few hours' time he found Aggy sitting on the couch, staring out the window at the sunset.

"Hello Aggy," he said. "Where's Terri, back in bed again?"

"She is indeed," Aggy replied, "how did you fare at the rogues' guild, are we good to go?"

"We're all set for the night after tomorrow," Flem answered. "They've given me the mark's name, his address, and his usual habits. They've also given me a time when he'll be leaving his house tomorrow so that we can be there to see what he looks like."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Aggy said. "Now, what do you think we should cook up for dinner?"