An Alibi, a Name, and the Price of an Escort

An hour later, Barnaby was at the inn with a ginger ale, and nobody had heard from Thom or Bean.

He had tried the Lionshield Coster first. There was a light upstairs, but the shop below was locked, and the bow he wanted would have to wait until morning. Dax saw him go into the inn and followed him to the counter.

The room had quieted. People were still anxious about the dragon, but the shouting had worn off, and Barnaby had been there long enough to notice that Norbus was no longer at the bar. Dax asked about the other two. Barnaby had not seen them. The rest were scattered around town — Hamish in the burned building, Sage somewhere between it and the shrine, and Friend had been a weasel on Dax’s shoulder the last time he could account for him.

“Well, we’re never going to find him then,” Barnaby said.

Dax suggested they finish their drinks and go looking.

Rut saw them coming up the alley.

He was back in his own shape, watching the Exchange from the ruined building with Hamish and Sage, and the two figures approaching were Thom and Bean. They were coming from somewhere else entirely. He stepped out to meet them.

Thom wanted to know where Dax and Barnaby had gone, wanted everyone away from this spot, and needed his backpack. Bean went with him to find it. The bush was harder to pick out than he remembered, but Phantom got the scent and led them to it, and Thom put the pack on and immediately slowed under the emerald.

They reached the inn before Dax and Barnaby had got out of it. Thom found a table in a corner, away from the other patrons, and was about to sit down when he thought of something else. He went to the bar, beckoned the innkeeper close, and put three gold pieces in his hand.

If anyone asked, they had been here for the last hour. An hour and a half.

The innkeeper looked at him with some suspicion, then at the money.

You’ve been here for the last hour.

Thom gave him a wink and went back. Sage sent Phantom outside to watch for anything that might need interrupting them.

Dax put Holia Thornton’s fifty gold on the table.

He gave them the negotiation: the dragon news she already knew, the orc information she had paid for, and the information about Harbin he had got in return. She wanted maps. He had not had one to give her. She had also made clear what would happen if she found them creeping around the Exchange again.

“Long story short, Thom, you should probably stay as far away from her as you can.”

She had called him out specifically. The money, Dax said, was for all of them. The information had come from all of them.

Thom said that lined up with what they had found. Then he and Bean told the table where they had been.

The guard had left the door open, Thom began. They had to go in.

“Basically an invite when the door’s open,” Bean said.

They were invisible by then, and had stood in the room while Holia told her guards to kill anyone caught snooping. Everyone had gone down a hatch behind the desk. Dax had not seen it. Bean had opened it after them, and below it there was a mining passage running hundreds of feet under the town — Thom able to see, Bean unable to see anything, and neither able to see the other. They had tied themselves together with a rope.

Thom nearly stepped in a bear trap. After that he had made a point of looking for bear traps, pressure plates and tripwires, and stepped on a pressure plate. They both got shot. It was not too bad. They were all right. Bean had pulled him back from a tripwire farther on, so they had only set off one of the traps.

At the end was light under a door and voices behind it. Through a sliding panel they could make out a large hall, a dining table, people drinking, and the sound of pots and pans. They could not hear enough to learn anything. So they opened the door and went in.

“There was a big, big table and like twenty guards,” Bean said.

Considerably more than three. Perhaps thirty, in the later telling. Holia had gone into a room of her own. There were maps and papers on the table, and chests around the hall, which Bean mentioned separately.

“We didn’t touch them though. Unfortunately.”

“That took a lot of restraint, by the way,” Thom said.

People were talking about orcs. Bean worked her way close enough to look at the map, and Thom had to yank her back before somebody walked into her. What she could see looked like movements being tracked. She could not get a proper look with so many people there, and they withdrew to the wall.

They went to Holia’s door next. Thom listened through the wood and caught pieces of a conversation with a man inside — things were moving, she was pleased, something was happening in Phandalin — and then footsteps approaching. They got out of the way. The man came out. The door began to close.

“We made a very rash split-second decision,” Thom said.

“Because the door was closing,” Bean said.

They went in before it shut.

Holia was at her desk. The spell was running short, and the two of them were standing in her room with no way to leave that would not involve opening the door in front of her. Thom moved a little. She turned toward the sound.

After that they held still. They could not speak without being heard, could not see each other, and had a rope to tug on in place of a conversation. When Holia got up and went to her dresser, they crept toward the desk. Thom read what he could without moving the papers: shipping business, references to orcs, something he took to mean a new foothold along the Sword Coast. He thought they wanted to use Phandalin as a base. He had read the headings, not the pages beneath them.

With the invisibility nearly gone, they opened the door just enough to get through and slipped out. Thom did not think Holia noticed. Somebody outside did, and they got clear of that person and began working their way toward the door they had entered through.

Then the cook tripped over Bean.

He spilled the food across the table. The room went quiet. Everyone turned toward him, and toward the exit behind him, and he stood next to the two invisible intruders feeling about for whatever had caught his foot.

There was another ladder in the hall. They had not wanted to use it because they did not know where it went. Now they had no time to find a better way. They climbed it, lifted the hatch, and got out before the spell ended.

“They never saw our faces,” Thom said.

They had heard the hatch close. But they had never seen their faces.

Rut asked whether the people who already knew they had been sneaking around might suspect them anyway. Thom thought they would be all right.

“I’ve done so many odd jobs…” Dax sighed heavily. “…but I’ve never met people who are so eager to get themselves killed.”

They had a back way into the hideout now, Thom said. And they knew Holia wanted Harbin out, though whether that meant removing him from office or killing him was another question. He thought the tunnels might be for smuggling. Hamish asked whether the orcs were enemies or something she meant to use, and Thom could give him no more than an impression: they seemed interested in keeping track of them, perhaps to stay out of one another’s way. He had not stayed to rifle through the papers.

Dax took his share of the fifty gold and bought the party drinks.

Rut announced that he was tired, got down from his chair, and lay underneath it. Dax asked what had happened at Harbin’s house.

Rut got back up.

There had been the warning about the townspeople, the argument over keeping the dragon secret, and the request to return in the morning. Rut remained of the opinion that people ought to know when there was a dragon nearby. Dragons ate people unless they were well fed.

Dax had no particular interest in who ran Phandalin. He did have an interest in people who paid them, and in people who threatened them. Harbin had provided work. Holia had paid well and threatened their lives. They would see Harbin in the morning and keep away from her for now.

Thom was still too wound up to sleep.

When it came to rooms, Rut saw everyone handing over money and offered the innkeeper a gold piece without knowing quite what he was buying. Thom explained that they were renting beds, and that sleeping under a chair in the common room was generally discouraged.

He paid for modest lodgings for himself and Rut. Dax took a room of his own. Bean paid for Sage to share hers.

Rut noticed Thom’s injury and gave him a handful of Goodberries. Thom ate one.

They were on the stairs when Phantom came in and hurried toward Sage, moving to shield her. Three hooded figures were searching the common room.

Sage used Speak with Animals. Phantom had seen dark-clad figures moving through town, searching. He had avoided them and come back to warn her. He did not know whom they wanted.

Sage had a good idea. She passed the warning to the others.

Rut went farther up the stairs and crouched behind the party. Thom and Bean continued behaving like people who had spent a long, uneventful evening at the inn.

“My butt hurts from sitting in this inn for the last hour and fifteen minutes,” Thom said.

“I know,” Bean said. “We should have gone out and done something.”

One of the searchers was talking to the innkeeper.

No, no, I believe everyone who’s in here has been here quite a while.

Some people had left for bed or gone home. Nobody had rushed in. Nothing like that.

The party went upstairs. Phantom joined Sage and Bean. Rut chose the floor behind the bedroom door, where an opening door would conceal him. Dax worked through his stretches and light exercises in his own room before bed.

Nobody disturbed them that night.

Rut sat up straight on a stool at the bar and put down a gold piece for breakfast. The innkeeper looked concerned. One gold was far too much.

“Well, all I have is gold. What do I give you? I’ve got berries.”

The innkeeper made change and went to get his food. Sage joined Rut at the bar and ordered a raw steak for Phantom.

She asked him about his name. Friend was not really his name. They had called him that because they had nothing else to call him. Was there a name he wanted to share?

It had been a long time since anyone called him by it, he said. He had lived in the woods, with nobody to talk to but animals, and animals — squirrels especially — did not care.

He used to be called Rut.

Sage thanked him. She would like to use his name, if he would let her.

“You can keep calling me Friend too if you want. I’ve not been called anything in a while, and Friend is good. It’s good to have friends.”

She asked whether she could tell the others. He agreed. They were his friends too.

For the moment, she was the only one who knew.

Breakfast arrived. Rut regarded the panther with suspicion and advised Sage to keep him fed. Panthers would eat a person in their sleep. It was the same principle as the dragon in their group.

Sage had fed him that morning. She considered getting another steak.

Phantom rolled his eyes.

Thom went to Barthen’s Provisions for ink, paper and a component pouch. He wanted to make spell scrolls. For now, he needed the supplies.

The total was fifty gold, which was all he had. He suggested thirty-five.

Barthen considered his new customer and agreed, on one condition: Thom was to tell his friends where to shop.

“Dude, Barthen’s is the best.”

Thom showed him the condition of his clothes — torn, stained, full of holes — and asked whether he looked like a man made of gold. A store for the common man. A store of the people. The shopkeeper took thirty-five gold. Thom left with his supplies and fifteen still in his purse.

Barnaby bought a healer’s kit, then went to the now-open Lionshield Coster for a shortbow and arrows. He sold his old longsword for seven gold and kept the better one from the temple.

Dax asked about a shield. Ten gold. He offered eight, and the woman behind the counter accepted. She could put a design or emblem on it for an extra fee whenever he wanted.

He would think about it.

Hamish bought a whip.

Harbin Wester was at the job board, putting up the work he had promised them.

There was an orc attack at Butterskull Ranch to investigate, a cart of provisions to take to the Loggers’ Camp, and a man who needed escorting to Mountain’s Toe Gold Mine. A hundred and fifty gold for each.

He noticed Thom looking tired. Thom explained about the giant gemstone in his backpack, and asked whether Harbin bought gemstones that made people tired. They had found it at the dwarves’ excavation. He was not to mention that to the surviving dwarf.

Harbin suggested Holia Thornton. He was suspicious of her, certainly, but she was still the guildmaster and still did legitimate business for Phandalin.

Dax leaned toward Thom and asked whether they ought to tell him. They discussed it in front of Harbin: he had done well by them, gave them steady work, and they did not want him dead. Thom put an arm around his shoulders, discovered he was too short to do it comfortably, and went up on his toes. He had already committed.

“We like you, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. But if something did happen to you, I would know who did it, is what I’m trying to say.”

Harbin looked at him without understanding.

“I think you should just watch your back in this town, Harbin,” Dax said.

Thom mentioned the locks on his door. Harbin looked toward the Exchange and back at them, and gave a knowing wink. Thom pressed on: did he know she was Zhentarim? He had suspected it. Good to have that confirmed. Did he know she was after his job? Harbin nodded. The dragon news had not helped him there. She knew more about keeping secrets than he did.

“Yeah, they got tunnels all under this town, buddy.”

That was news. Harbin had thought the old mining tunnels were out of use. Thom told him they were not, and that he thought the Zhentarim meant to make Phandalin a base, and that Harbin was not to tell anyone he knew.

Harbin went home and came back with two hundred gold. They had saved him quite a bit of investigation. Thom asked what he would pay to learn where an entrance to the hideout was.

Another hundred.

Thom wanted a hundred and fifty. Harbin began to draw the bag back toward himself, and Thom accepted the hundred. Three hundred altogether.

Dax asked about the gems again. Their business with Holia had turned sour; was there anyone else who could buy them? Harbin suggested Barthen. He might end up selling them on to Holia himself, but he had good standing in town and could handle the transaction.

“He’s a man of the people, that Barthen,” Thom said.

They would start with the mine. After that they could return for the cart of supplies, take it to Harbin’s half-brother at the logging camp, and go on to the ranch.

Harbin gave them all three notices. The mine business was part of an arrangement he had with Neverwinter. He wished he did not have to send them on it, but the work needed doing and they would be paid.

They were to collect Don-Jon Raskin from the inn.

He was waiting in a leather jacket and an upturned-brim hat, watching the door. When they came in, he appeared to consider them overdue.

Harbin had told him there were adventurers in town. He had expected them to be sent along. His pack was ready, and he wanted to go.

Before leaving Phandalin, Thom sold the gems to Barthen. The smaller stones brought a hundred and fifty gold. The great emerald brought three hundred and fifty, and ceased to be Thom’s burden.

With Harbin’s payment added, there were eight hundred gold to divide.

Thom counted out a hundred and fourteen for each of them.

On the road, Barnaby explained to Rut that he would not eat them. He was a fake dragon.

Rut took this to Dax.

Real dragons flew, Dax suggested. Barnaby did not. There was still the panther to watch, though. Could Rut turn into a panther himself?

Rut did not try it. Sage heard enough to reassure him that Phantom would not eat him.

Thom passed around the Goodberries he had left. He had eaten one the night before and another for breakfast. He gave one back to Rut.

Don-Jon talked the whole way. Neverwinter, Neverwinter Wood, Baldur’s Gate far to the south — wherever the story went, he had been there and done something worth telling them about. He was getting to an entire horde of mimics when a low ridge rose beside the trail and they found six dead orcs strewn across the rocky ground.

Ain’t that something.

Thom examined the bodies first. There were scratches. They were cold. He could not make enough of it to say what had killed them.

Bean, Hamish and Rut looked together. The damage reminded them of the reports from Umbrage Hill. Something had killed these orcs with cold. It looked like the work of the white dragon.

They searched the ground and the sky. Nothing showed them which way the attacker had come or gone. There was no creature nearby that they could see.

They were in the open and the mine was close, so they went on faster. Don-Jon had fallen quiet. When he spoke again, it was to say he hoped they were nearly there.

Half the day was gone when they found the tunnel, tucked among bushes at the foot of a snow-capped mountain. The sky was overcast. A wooden board above the opening had Mountain’s Toe carved into it.

Don-Jon had never been inside. He had no map. He was ready for them all to go in and see what they found.

“I’m pretty sure we were paid to just bring you to the mine,” Thom said.

Don-Jon wanted to be brought safely inside. He said he had paid for the place back in Neverwinter and had not yet inspected it. Once they made sure it was safe, he would give them a note for Harbin confirming the escort.

Thom said Harbin trusted them. They could tell him themselves. Going inside was extra.

I think some trouble might be heading Harbin’s way if you don’t help me out with this.

His employers would want to hear how the venture had gone.

“Are you threatening my man, Harbin?”

Thom accused him of being one of the Zhentarim. Don-Jon did not confirm it. He maintained that this was part of the job. The party had the written notice and did not agree.

Dax offered a separate arrangement. Harbin was paying for the escort. Don-Jon could hire them to get him safely inside as well.

Whatever loose gold that you find here inside is yours.

“All right,” Thom said. “If it’s not bolted to the ground, we’re taking it.”

Bean switched to Halfling and called Don-Jon stupid. He frowned at her as though he had not understood a word.

Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, I hope.

Dax asked whether he could fend for himself if a fight started, or whether they would need to protect him. There had been that story about the mimics.

Don-Jon went first into the mine.

They followed.