Arc 5: Chapter 14: Broker of Secrets
I stepped from the innocuous hallway into a very different scene.
The first thing that struck me was the silence. As the door clicked closed at my back, the roaring din of music, conversation, and more salacious entertainment vanished completely. The quiet that replaced it had a near deafening quality, like the moment after a thunderbolt. My ears even rang in the same way.
The room itself was darkly lit, spacious, and comfortably furnished. Stands decorated with honest, old fashion candles stood at every corner, on the arms of a chandelier hung from the ceiling, and on the low table at the very center of the room.
Sitting at that table were three figures. One was a man on a narrow couch. He looked to be around fifty, almost skeletally gaunt, with a thin neck hidden in a collar and neckcloth. His long gray hair receded from a spotted scalp, and he had a pale-eyed glare that seemed almost ghoulish in the dim lighting, not helped by a thin, almost lipless mouth perpetually caught in sour disdain. He wore a brown vest over a gray shirt, of fine quality if modest design.
He had a beautiful woman in his lap, seated so a single long leg emerging from a green dress hung over the little couch’s arm. Her head was propped on the opposite arm, her black hair falling nearly down to the carpeted floor. Her eyes were closed in drowsy contentment while the man ran his fingers through her raven locks with slow, unfocused motions.
The third figure was a man in his thirties, handsome, and looked like a wealthy merchant. He wore layered clothes in an elaborate fashion, mostly black and white striped with splashes of brighter red. A chaperon hung over his face to shadow one eye. The other was so dark as to be nearly black, watching me with detached interest.
The Keeper of the Backroad Inn scowled at me, his raspy voice cutting through the silence. “You’re late.”
He spoke without stopping the rhythmic motion of his fingers through the woman’s hair. She murmured something and stirred without opening her eyes. I realized she was asleep.
Or high. Smoke emerged from an intricately fashioned bronze pot on the table. As I stepped closer and got a whiff, it exuded a heady scent.
I ignored his complaint, glancing at the second man. “You didn’t tell me there’d be someone else present for this.”
I guessed the drowsing woman to be one of his employees, here to show status as much as the lavish, darkly furnished room did. The man, on the other hand, looked like one of his guests.