Rovan didn't answer right away.
He picked up the robe, turned it over, and looked at the symbol on the metal plate beneath the fabric. His expression didn't change much — a slight tightening around the eyes, nothing more. He set it back down.
"Sit."
Alex sat.
Rovan pulled a stool from behind the counter and settled across from him. The hall had thinned out some — hunters near the board, two others at a table not really drinking. Nobody looking their way.
"How much do you know about cults?" Rovan asked.
"Almost nothing."
"Better than most." He rested his forearms on his knees. "People who think they know something about them are usually the ones who get hurt first."
Alex waited.
"They're not bandits," Rovan said. "Not gangs. They move with intention — what they take, who they take, where they show up. None of it is random. The small ones collapse under pressure, fall apart when someone pushes back hard enough. But the ones that have been running for years—" He paused, not for effect, just thinking. "They don't scramble. They don't improvise. They already know what they're doing before they arrive."
"The caravan wasn't a random target."
"No caravan is a random target for a group like that. Someone had something they wanted." He glanced at the symbol again. "Whether that someone knew it or not is a different question."
"The people they took."
Rovan's expression didn't shift but something in him went quieter.
"Depends on why," he said. "Could be labor. Could be leverage. Could be something else." He didn't elaborate. "The cargo's replaceable. The people — that's the part worth worrying about."
"And the symbol?"
Rovan looked at it for a moment.
"There are different groups. Different marks. Some overlap, some don't. I'm not going to name this one — not because I won't, but because I'm not certain enough and I'd rather give you nothing than give you the wrong thing." He stood, put the stool back. "What I'll tell you is that whoever uses that mark has been at it long enough that people should've noticed more than they did."
He moved back behind the counter.
Alex stood. His ribs pulled with the movement — dull, persistent. He turned toward the door.
"Jester."
The clerk. Alex stopped.
The man was already moving toward the back of the hall, toward a door that had stayed closed the whole time Alex had been here. He knocked twice, opened it slightly.
"Someone wants a word."
The room was small. Desk, two chairs, a window onto the alley. An older man sat behind the desk — lean, somewhere past fifty, a senior hunter's pin at his collar. He didn't offer his name.
He looked at Alex and said nothing for a moment.
Great. One of those.
"Jester," the man said.
"That's the name I registered under."
"First mission. Two peak initiates. Cult involvement." He had a single sheet in front of him — the report, already recopied. "You're Early Initiate."
"Yes."
He didn't react. Alex watched him and got nothing back.
"The woman you were with," the man said. "What did you make of her?"
Not describe her. What did you make of her.
"Experienced," Alex said. "She knew the symbol before I pointed it out. Wasn't surprised by anything at the scene. Left before I could ask her anything."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"No."
"Did she mention the cargo?"
"She said it was taken, not stolen. That they came for something specific."
The man wrote something down. One short line.
"If she contacts you," he said, without looking up, "you come here. Not the front desk. Not Rovan. Here."
"And if she doesn't?"
He set the pen down and looked at Alex.
Nothing readable there.
"Pick your next mission more carefully," he said. "You're done."
Outside, the air had gone grey and cool. Alex walked without hurrying, ribs reminding him with every other step.
Not Rovan. Here.
So Rovan and that man weren't working from the same information. Fine. He'd figured there were layers to how this place operated — he just hadn't expected to bump into one this fast.
He got back to his room. Sat on the edge of the bed.
The elixir was on the table where he'd left it. He looked at it for a second.
Not tonight.
His channels needed rest more than they needed pushing. He'd learned that much at least.
He lay back and looked at the ceiling.
The mission had been posted. Someone had read it. Somewhere between that and the caravan something didn't line up, and he couldn't figure out what.
He stared at the ceiling a while longer.
Sleep didn't come quickly.