Page 51 of Reaper's Quest

Chace squeezed my arm, and I jumped. The warmth of our contact startled me, then it grounded me, pulling me back to the now, the pub, and Chace.

“I don’t have a good feeling about that Winter guy,” he said. “Is he going to be a problem?”

14

Winter didn’tneedto return to his post. Not yet anyway. Although he probablyshould, he could spare another hour or two before doing so.

A tingle had taken root in the center of his chest, and the only satisfying scratch would come from attaining more information on the intriguing newcomers.

Newcomers. A term he had neither thought nor spoken in well over a lifetime.

He leaned against the pub’s exterior brick wall. The muffled sounds of conversation from within drifted through the window’s thick glass, the surrounding edges, and cracked sill. Few discernible words reached his sensitive ears. Still, at the border of the dark, quiet, sleeping citadel, Aoes’s establishment showed more life than it had in far too long.

The newcomers had somehow made their way into Winter’s citadel and toAoes’s—or Earl’s—pub.

Who are they? Where did they come from? And how did they get past the citadel barrier?

He could think of one way that might provide him with one or more answers and help satiate the persistent itch radiating from his breastbone.

Circling around to the back of the building, Winter made his way to the pub’s secret cellar hidden entrance. An empty pallet leaning against the brick wall concealed a camouflaged door and passage descending to the room beneath the building.

No one, other than Aoes and Winter, knew about the space. As far as Winter understood, even Earl no longer held awareness of the secret. Not since he became afflicted. If Aoes hadn’t gotten sloshed with too many spiced spirits one night many years ago, Winter likely wouldn’t know about the room’s existence either.

But Aoes did, and now Winter knew. And considering the new development, he intended to put that knowledge to good use.

Winter let himself into the secret space.

With the crank of an ignitor switch, light flickered to life, illuminating everything in sight. The narrow stairs, the lower landing, the drunk tank set into the back wall spanning from side to side, the door beyond to the tunnels and pub, and the open doorway on his right to the adjoining room.

As far back as he could recall, no one had ever used the drunk tank. Why have it if not to use it? Well…

Employing the lockup would mean divulging the room’s existence, and Winter suspected that Aoes had no intentionof ever doing that. Mainly because of the adjoining room Winter stepped into, shutting the door at his back.

The room offered several comforts: a lounge, a table with two chairs, a folding bunk anchored halfway up the wall that Winter had once used, a collection of shelved liquor-filled bottles, and a small library for which to pass time—if one didn’t busy themselves utilizing the many vision scopes and sound tubes to spy on the patrons in the pub above.

Unsure of everyone’s position in the pub’s open space, Winter began opening each tube, allowing the sounds from above to wash over him.

“As if I would ever.” Raven’s voice came through strong. A tad too strong. A clear indication that she’d raised her voice, and from the inflection in her tone, raised it in anger or frustration. “I should have expected this coming from you. A buffoon with no faith in others.”

A beat of silence, and Winter darted to the wall housing the various vision scopes. Aoes had one situated in each corner of the pub, one overlooking the back room, and two others covering the back hall and stairwell.

Winter gazed through one of the four offering an overview of the pub. A series of mirrors mounted at particular angles allowed the contraption to work. The resulting image came through wide and less than ideally defined, but he easily found Raven and Chace in a silent standoff beside the bar.

Even with the network of mirrors and tubes between him and the newcomers, Winter could feel the tension.

Aoes slammed two filled steins on the bar, the liquid sloshing up and over the sides. “Have another, on me. Might help wane the strain.”

He pushed the steins toward Raven and Chace. The one toward Raven slid a smidgen too close and too sharp. Froth slipped over the side, splashing across the front of her outfit.

She jumped back and glowered at her ale-soaked attire. “Fabulous.”

The word seethed from her lips.

Aoes grimaced and produced a less-than-clean towel with which he began to mop up the mess. “Sorry.”

Unable to see the scene with pristine clarity, Winter couldn’t discern the situation with certainty, but based on the crinkle of Aoes’s face, Winter suspected the spillage intentional.

Raven huffed and spun toward the back washroom. “I’ll be back.”