Arc 5: Chapter 13: Den of Wolves
Inns are special places. They are where strangers meet and leave as friends, where quests start, where warmth and safety can be found regardless of your origin or destination. Lords and peasants can rub elbows by a quiet roadside hearth as anonymous travelers, without concern for station. There are old traditions around such places, strong as any devil’s contract or elf’s bargain.
But there is one place like a shadow to these, latched to the border between the waking world and stranger realms like a leech on a vein. A meeting place for the lost and the desperate, for the apostate and the blackguard, for the dead and the damned.
A den where hungry wolves can find their like.
It can be found in any country, the Backroad Inn, if you know the signs to look for and if it wants to be found. Easier if you have a token from its master. I kept the bronze coin in a hand half hidden beneath my cloak, rolling it through my fingers.
Some parts of Garihelm have no proper streets, and need to be navigated by boat. I found myself in one of these, the sleek gondola beneath me plying dark, burbling waters along a narrow stretch. Homes, shops, and brothels rose to either side of the drowned street, their windows and balconies set right over the water.
Hendry, who rowed for us, watched the surrounding rows with a nervous eye. Many of them were populated by flint eyed men in the garb of dockworkers or fishermen.
There wasn’t much noise here. We were in a bad part of town.
“You’ve been to this place before?” The brawny lad asked me. He’d switched out of his Storm Knight uniform, dressing instead in a simple coat and shirt like I’d often worn after my tenure in Inquisition custody, his shaggy brown hair tied back from his face.
“This place?” I asked, glancing around at the neighborhood. “I haven’t.”
Hendry frowned. “Then…”
Emma, reclining at the front of the boat with her boots crossed at the ankle, rolled her eyes. “Don’t indulge him, he’s being all blunt and mysterious. It’s practically his favorite pastime. It’s simple, really. The place we’re going can’t be found, it has to find you. He’s just getting us lost in the ass end of the city to speed things along.”