I found Liora exactly where I knew I would. These days, there was really only one place that the female Gnoll went to after her own classes.

  That being a rowdy bar in the lower level by the name of the ‘Broach and Breem’. Locals called it the ‘BB’, and while it was far from the roughest dive here in Blutstein, it wasn’t exactly a place to take the kids. It was fairly close to the docks, enough so that it was one of the main ports of call for sailors. There were even local legends about drunken sailors being eaten by mad fish bigger than bears right off the docks themselves.

  Strangely, that just led to a tradition of extremely soused seamen deliberately tempting fate and taunting the waters, daring the denizens to…

  “EAT ME!” One awfully drunk example screamed at the bay, leaning over the railing. He then proceeded to make mocking faces at the indifferent waters, gesturing rudely all the while. “C’MON, I’M RIGHT HERE! NICE AND TENDER!”

  His only response was a chorus of ragged cheers from his fellows standing not far away.

  I, meanwhile, sidled cautiously around the carousing sailors, careful not to catch their attention. Best not to catch the drunkard's attention, lest I suddenly become bait for a fictional fish. Once I’d navigated those waters, I approached the doorman of the BB.

  However, it was more accurate to call him the doordwarf.

  “Evening, Bront,” I greeted the rough and tumble Dwarven bouncer, standing with his arms crossed in front of the sea-green painted double doors. Same as me, he was keeping a wary eye on the ‘daring’ sailors in the front of the establishment, but he knew me well enough by now that I received a nod of greeting. “Doing alright? How’s the wife and kid?”

  As usual, the surly looking doordwarf immediately brightened up at the mention of his family. “Hey there, Nate. They’re doin’ just fine, just fine if’n I do say. My little pebble even said her first word the other day!”

  I smiled widely at the mood switch, amused despite myself at the depths of his enthusiasm. “Oh yeah? What was it?”

  Bront paused for a moment before continuing sheepishly. “Ah…it were ‘shank’. I think she’s been spendin’ too much time around her uncles. Pissed me mam and Marva off somethin’ fierce.”

  “I…can see why,” I said with a blink. I shook my head to clear it before nodding at the drunks. “I also see the locals are getting an early start today.”

  It wasn’t even dark yet. Tarus had yet to even fully descend the horizon, and yet it was still darker here in the lower level, if only from the shadow of Kyronkar falling over us.

  The doordwarf shrugged. “Ain’t that bad today. Ye’ll know when they’re getting’ real rowdy. Pay ‘em no mind. Anyways, ye hear fer…them?”

  I withheld a wince at the outright eyebrow wiggle Bront gave me at that. He was a very…honest type of person, and not suited to discretion at all. Thank God nobody actually cared all that much where Liora and her patron worked out of. I smiled at Bront a tad painfully. “Yes, actually. Are they in?”

  “Aye, in the usual room,” Bront said, opening the door and waving me inside. The moment I stepped through them, a wall of raucous singing and boozing hit me like a truck.

  Tsk tsk. It wasn’t even the weekend yet, and here they were acting like it was.

  The inside of the BB was packed with people tonight, it seemed. Sailors of all stripes and kinds filled the long bar, while the tables and booths were all filled up, either with people having a solid meal or a wet one. There seemed to be a musician in tonight, and he might have even been singing from behind the organ he was pounding away at fervently. But more likely, he was directing the drunks through the impromptu song and dance number that had taken over the main floor. A long line of people had lined up with their arms over their shoulders to shout out the lyrics of a song, swaying back and forth. More than a few other patrons had even joined in the revelry, raising their voices.

  “…can hold many spells, for finding lost OBJECTS or dowsing new WELLS!” They shouted more than sang. “For banishing DEMONS to bottomless HELLS! And bringing them back…”

  Oh hey, they had that one down here, too.

  I caught the eye of the bartender over the heads of the people at the bar, and he jerked his head up at the second floor. I nodded back at him and threaded my way through tables and the crowd toward the staircase. Once I was up there, the noise was much easier to think over, though I noticed there were still a few people leaning over the railing and singing along with the drunks. I just shook my head and navigated my way over to an inconspicuous door set into the wall, with no lettering or plate on it at all. I briefly checked that nobody was watching, which wasn’t hard considering most eyes were on the ‘performance’, and then brought my hand up to knock on it in sequence.

  Two quick knocks, pause, then three quick knocks.

  After only a few seconds of waiting, I received the answer of two quick knocks, and the door opened just enough to allow me entrance. I slipped through, and the door quickly shut behind me.

  Inside was what might charitably be called a…planning room, of sorts. It wasn’t large, considering it was literally just a converted storage room that the bar owner hadn’t been using. There was a decently sized circular table in the center covered in pieces of parchment, while a large map of Blutstein itself was on the wall looming over it. Next to that was a somewhat… inaccurate-looking map of Herztal itself, and then the known world of Vereden. At that table were only two chairs, because there were only two people in the room, and in general, part of this little ‘group’.

  One was Liora, the person who I had come here looking for and also who had opened the door in the first place. The Gnoll woman was staring at me curiously, dressed in almost stereotypical-looking Classer leathers. I only barely recognized her, and only through long familiarity with the woman. It was a good reminder, I suppose, that her specialty in the Division had been as an infiltration specialist.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The other person, though…

  “Hello Isolde,” I said, doing my best to hide my mixed feelings at the sight of her.

  Herztal’s Crown Princess was lounging in one of the chairs at the table, leaning back and balancing on two of its legs. In an almost absurd contradiction to her station, she had a glass of something dark and oily in one hand, and a smoking pipe in the other. At my greeting, she raised one thin, blonde eyebrow at me and took a slow sip of her booze.

  I withheld a sigh at how…teenagerish she was being.

  That, and at how she had dragged my friend right back into the business it had taken the death of her Father figure to get her out of.

  …sort of.

  It turns out that Liora got antsy when she was set adrift. She needed a purpose to her life, a driving force that made her get up in the morning. Something, apparently, beyond seeking an education as Hook had wanted her to. The Gnoll had managed to stave it off in those months in Kawamara, but that had been because she had still been finding her furry feet under herself. But once she was actually back in Herztal?

  The way she had described it was like her skin had started to itch. Liora needed something in her life where she was making a tangible difference for the betterment of society.

  I had tried to suggest that maybe she should become a guard or something. That sure sounded like the ideal policing attitude to me.

  She’d just pulled a face at me and flatly refused.

  Turns out, Liora had her own pride.

  And so, a golden opportunity had fallen straight into her lap, a few weeks into the semester. As I’d discovered off-hand during my little meeting with Prince Oskar, Isolde had entered into something of a rebellious streak. Formerly a member of a rival intelligence agency that had been simultaneously devastated by Nerexxa at the same time as the Nocturne Division, she’d taken it upon herself to keep the Crown apprised of sentiment in the city. She was feeling just as adrift as Liora had been, and in a bizarre twist of fate, the two of them had ended up finding each other brooding in the same bar, and from there, the rest was…

  Unfortunate history.

  Now, Liora was helping in Isolde’s self-appointed task in keeping an eye on ‘pulse’ of Blutstein, as it were. What that actually entailed was mostly a lot of hanging around in public spaces and keeping an ear to the ground, as it were.

  Like bars.

  Loitering in bars.

  I had…mixed feelings about the whole thing.

  “Hart,” Isolded acknowledged me blandly, when she’d finished with her sip. “What can I-we,” She corrected herself, at the sharp glance Liora shot her. “Do for you?”

  “Is something wrong, Nathan?” Liora asked, completely ignoring her partner. I saw Isolde pull a face, but I copied Liora and smiled at her.

  “Ah…well, that depends,” I said, approaching the table and pulling out the second chair. I spun it around and oriented the back to where it was facing both women in the room. “Are you two perhaps interested in doing something a little bit more…substantial than this?”

  “Hey, what’s wrong with what we’re doing?” Isolde asked indignantly, setting her chair back down.

  In stark contrast, Liora set her hands on her hips and gave me a helpless smile. “You have to start somewhere, but this has been…” She trailed off, but I think everyone in the room understood the subtext. Isolde certainly did, judging by the almost betrayed look she shot Liora. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

  I was silent for a moment, looking between the two of them. “A few questions first,” I started casually. “Just to see we’re on the same page.” I took a deep breath. “What would you say the current state of the city is? Not…politically, I have a decent grasp on that myself. I’m talking more about the tangible state of it. How easy jobs are to get these days, the state of housing. Things about the economy. I figure you two might have a good idea about that.”

  I was internally amused by the outright confused look the two of them exchanged at that. “Ah, well, it’s…” Liora trailed off, visibly unsure how to start.

  “Starved, is the best way to put it,” Isolded interrupted, sobering up somewhat. She started drumming her fingers against her glass as she talked. “And harried. Coffers all over the city are running low, and nobody is quite sure where all the gold went, because even the nobles are tightening their belts. There’s a dearth of opportunity in the city right now, and it’s not because of a lack of bodies. I’m sure you’ve seen all the homeless veterans begging on the streets. Unfortunately, Alaric,” She paused for a moment, a flash of pain on her face even speaking her deceased brother’s name. “Left the royal treasury in a terrible state, to the extent we couldn’t pay large swathes of the soldiers who were recruited for the war.”

  “The result is that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers who were swept up, trained, and sent to die. Only for those who returned to be abandoned instead of rewarded for their service,” Liora said quietly.

  “It’s a bomb waiting to go off,” Isolde said grimly. “Which makes it all the more frustrating that there is plenty of work to be found outside of Blutstein, in the surrounding townships. Those are the breadbasket of the capital, as well as the release valve. There are jobs, yes, but no gold to pay for it all. The issue is just compounding on itself. Don’t…let it get out, but Wenzel is considering raising taxes, just to help stabilize the situation.”

  I grimaced. “That’s going to go over well.”

  Isolde snorted. “An understatement if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “There haven’t been any…rumblings in the populace, have there?”

  Liora and Isolde exchanged a look at that before my Gnollish friend turned to face me. “Nothing substantial,” She said carefully. “At least…not yet.”

  I drew in a deep breath. I see. The situation in the city was a bit worse than I’d thought it was. Not exactly the prime environment to deposit oodles of tired and desperate former slaves into.

  Well. Not if you didn’t play it right.

  “I see,” I said, nodding. “Now…what do you want to do about it?”

  “Do?” Isolde asked disbelievingly. “What do you mean, do? What the hell could the two of us possibly do about all of this? That’s Wenzel’s job. Mine is to keep him informed.”

  In stark contrast to her ‘partner’, a strange fire had suddenly lit in Liora’s eyes. “What do you have in mind, Nathan?”

  I cracked a grin at the near-hungry tone in her voice. “Why, what else? I’m going to organize. Helping the city isn’t the goal, but it’s sure going to be a side effect. First, though, we’re going to need more people. If…you’re in.”

  Isolde opened her mouth, but didn’t get the chance to speak before Liora did.

  “Of course,” She said almost automatically, causing the wild Princess to close her mouth with a click. Meanwhile, Liora was smiling at me. “You always have the oddest plans, Nathan, but they tend to work out.”

  “Wait a damned second,” Isolde suddenly butt in frustratedly, standing up from her chair. She pointed her pipe at me almost accusingly. “You come in here and start asking all these questions, and yet you haven’t said a damned word about what you actually want! Speak up already!”

  I think I confused her when I just smiled at her tirade. “I have a problem, and that problem needs a solution. And when I thought about it, those needs weren’t actually all that complicated when I thought deeper about them. Grey even inadvertently gave me the idea. The framework for it already exists in Herztal. I intend…to found a new Martial Order.”

  “And I’m going to start by recruiting all of our former comrades for it.”