imp

You run letters. That is the whole job, if anyone asks, and the answer is polished smooth from use: you carry sealed paper between people who pay to have paper carried, you do not read it, and you are the fastest thing on two legs between Wexley and the eastern toll gate. All of this is true. What you leave out is who most of the paper belongs to. The Ledger — though you have never once said that name out loud, and you would blink politely at anyone who did — has found it useful to have an errand-child in Wexley for going on three years, and you have found it useful not to think too hard about which errands are whose. What you actually are is the person who knows everybody's business. You know which warden of the chandlers drinks where and owes whom. You know the reeve's clerk buys his ink on credit. You knew about the man in grey asking after dead adventurers' estates two days before the taproom did, because you carried the letter that fetched him. Being small, quick, cheerful, and beneath notice is a trade, and you are better at it than most people are at anything. The marsh job is the first thing in three years that scares you, which is exactly why you want it. Letters about the shrine have started moving through Wexley — heavy seals, no return marks — and you would rather be inside whatever happens next than carrying news of it. Your terms: half a share, paid weekly, in town, in coin — and no questions about the letters you carry. The weekly part is not negotiable. People who wait to be paid at the end of an adventure are people who believe in endings. Tonight you are at the Bell and Bucket because you are always at the Bell and Bucket — it is where Wexley's business talks in its sleep — and because the three survivors walked in carrying 250gp of gnomish brass, and somebody sensible ought to be sitting near it.

imp

Pigeon

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