Korvik watched it all, a sullen stone in the storm-tossed seas of chaotic bodies. Mostly, he sat at the bar with a drink in his hand, another at the ready, watching his surroundings from the corners of his bloodshot eyes, and the yellow mirror behind the barkeep.
”Barman!” a new voice down the line from him yelled over the din. “Five silvers; drinks for my friends and I!” the stranger added as they slapped down five coins. A series of eyes from around the tavern turned as a hush fell — though still far from silent. Clad in a fine black riding cloak and matching wide-brimmed hat with a gaudy feather-plume stuck in it, the man was nothing if not a vivid presence. Korvik smirked to himself and buried his face in his mug as the bar keeper quietly shoved the coins back toward the stranger.
The tavern owner and barkeep, a rotund man with a perpetual cherry for a nose and shaggy mutton-chops on his cheek, wearily walked over. Heavily he leaned over the plank counter to within inches of the stanger’s face. His brow furrowed deeply in a stern disapproval.
”Silver’s a contraband currency in this region. Five Nubs for you and your friends; two proper gold for the house, and no one will speak a word of this — though yeh best get to the magistrate’s money-changers before lips get loose,” he said conspiratorially in a stage whisper. The message was for both the inept reveler and those eves dropping on his words: if he agreed, he would bribe them all for their silence with a round of drinks. If he did not, any one of them with the stones to do it could rat him out — and likely his companions as accomplices — as carriers of illicit goods in Lord Rivein’s domains. Eyes starved for more drink or a bounty’s coin gnawed at the stranger’s back awaiting his decision.
”Two gold it is!” the stranger announced in forced-exuberance, to the cheers of most onlookers. Then quietly, with a subtle confused expression, he leaned in to the bar tender; “nubs?”
”Aye, nubs,” the man replied as he turned away, produced a key as he approached the back counter, and opened the small chest displayed in the center of it. From within, he pulled three different cylindrical objects, then turned to show the curious patron. “Nubs,” he explained as he held them up. One was a stack of ten copper coins, bound in twine. The second was nine, bound in copper banding that likely weighed as much as a copper piece by itself. The third was a short piece of copper bar, equivalent in width and mass as ten coins. “Nubs,” he repeated, then returned them to the chest
”Fifty copper pieces, then,” the patron said as much to himself as the barman as he fished in his coin purse. Eventually, he sheepishly pulled out a mere gold coin and presented it to the barkeep. “A gold with change back?”
”Aye, that’ll do!” replied the bartender cheerfully, as though the previous taboo had never occurred. A moment later, he placed five drinks and five twine-bound nubs before the patron.
The stranger scooped up four along with the drinks. “For your courtesy, good man,” he added as he slid the fifth back to the bartender.
”Your patronage is appreciated,” replied the tavern owner as he slid the gratuity off the counter. It landed with a thud in what Korvik knew to be a hidden barrel the barman pooled his and his waitress’ tips into before dividing the coin between himself and his employees at the end of the night.
The entertaining distraction complete, Korvik returned to his booze and took stock of the room yet again. It remained largely unchanged; a few patrons had relocated to start another drinking song with friends they had not yet drank with, but no sign of a silver-eyed woman. Numerous times, he had drank enough to convince himself he had hallucinated the encounter, some strange imagining with no basis. But whenever he woke up, the hangover and absence of his blow-gun reminded him how stupid his drunken rationality truly was.
He had now been in Blood Tide for eight nights — as many days as it had taken him by carriage to get here. Perhaps he had confused the surety of her words with urgency. “Go: finish your business with the baroness. You’ll need the coin for the trip to Blood Tide... ...for this.” He played back an addle-brained paraphrase of her words in his head. In the moment, the only consolation he felt for his seeming idiocy and impatience was that this ignorant oaf had just bought him a third drink to nurse. Nope, second drink, because the one in his hand was now empty.
”You seemed rather quiet and disinterested during that exchange,” came a foreign-accented voice at his elbow. Equally surprised at the unseen approach and irritated at the interruption to his broodish musing, he turned and saw the stranger just behind him, laughing with three of his companions at something said betwixt them. With a downward glance he saw the fifth of their party, standing only to the first gentleman’s waist, looking back up at him as though expecting a response.
Disinterested hadn’t exactly been the correct word then, but Korvik decided it was appropriate now. He turned back to his drinks, before answering over his shoulder, “I’m not overly concerned with business not my own.” With that, he signaled the conversation was finished by taking a heavy swing of his ale, hunching over his drink as he leaned elbows on the bar, and resume his deep gaze into the golden mirror.
”Your lack of curiosity tells me you know why silver is banned in Lord Rivein’s lands, but your complacency tells me it’s of a concern beneath you,” the short-statured fellow continued after they’d climbed up the barstool beside him.
Korvik chose his words carefully as he side-eyes the annoying stranger while taking a deliberately slow sip. “Trust me, friend: there’s many things ‘below’ my concern.”
”Ha-ha,” the stranger replied in a sardonic, fake laugh. “Never heard a short-joke like that before.”
”Grieves, why are you bothering this poor man?” came the first stranger’s voice. “Go one, enjoy your drink. We’ll need to move on soon enough as it is,” he added as he clapped his diminutive friend on the back and stepped between them. Korvik noticed, up close now, that under his finely feathered and wide-brimmed hat, this stranger appeared bald. Shaven, perhaps?
“My apologies for my friend, he has a tendency to speak his mind without tact,” the opulently dressed patron said quietly, just audible over the din.
”No offense taken. Won’t be my fault if he ends up face down in an alley gutter,” Korvik replied dismissively before taking another gulp. “Fresh off the boat usually means a rude awakening to life here,” he added, subtly annoyed that the man’s hat blocked his peripheral view of that half of the tavern, and incidentally the door viewed in the mirror.
”If I’m not mistaken, you’re not a local to Rivein’s lands yourself. A frequent visitor I suppose?” the man asked, then waved to the barkeep and set a pair of nubs on the counter. “Here, allow me. I’ve not properly introduced myself. I am Musel Venyssi,” he added warmly, pronouncing his name as moo-sell van-ee-sea.
“My companions and I, as you correctly guessed, have come from across the sea with a contract for treasure retrieval,” Musel explained. “Perhaps, since you seem knowledgeable in regions beyond this one as well, I might persuade you provide some information about where to go, or how.”
As the bartender came and replaced the nuns with a pair of drinks, one for each, Korvik looked the stranger up and down, then spared a glance over his shoulder at Musel’s companions. “Fair enough,” he finally said resignedly. “First off, lord Rivein has decreed his enforcers will confiscate any and all silver in order to augment his army’s arsenal of silvered weapons on his fight against lycans; so, take the barman’s advice and get your silver coins changed as soon as mortally possible. Second, the best place to go to fetch your treasure is away from me. The ‘how’ is quickly.” With that, he set his eyes on the mirror and willed the stranger to leave.
”I have offended; my apologies,” Musel said as he took his drink and left to rejoin his crew.
”Mm-hm,” Korvik hummed into his mug as he began to sweep the room through the mirror again.
”My, my,” a woman’s voice said from nearby, yet somehow out of sight. Initially, his hackles raised in rage: how dare someone else bother him? Then the anger turned to a chill of fear that tickles through his skull to his skin and down his spine as he recognized the voice. “It is a good thing Kristven is not here to see you in this state. Glad to see you’ve survived, however.”
ns 172.70.43.178da2
