The tavern was quieter than usual.
Reerie sat in her corner—her back against the wall, facing the door, with a cup of water untouched on the table. Usually, she wouldn't stay after finishing a job, but her body was sore from the long walk back, and her cloak was still damp enough to chill her bones.
A chair scraped across the floor.
She looked up.
The man—no, not quite a man—sitting across from her was an elf. Not the pale, willowy type from old tales, but something older and tougher. His skin was darker than most of his kind, bronze like weathered oak. He was broad-shouldered and solid, built like someone who had spent a lifetime in armor. Steel plate covered his chest and shoulders, dulled from use, catching the dim firelight in muted gleams. His eyes were gray—cold and sharp like winter frost—and he moved with the steady confidence of someone who had never needed to ask for permission.
"Miss Ghost." His voice was low and smooth, heavy as an anvil. "I watched your work tonight. Quiet. Efficient. No wasted movement."
She remained silent. Her fingers rested loosely on the table, her face expressionless as glass.
The elf leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wood. "My name is Dray. I have a job for you. It's dangerous work. But it pays well."
Still, she didn't respond. Only her eyes flicked to his—pale and sharp like winter.
"A girl has been taken," he said. His voice remained steady, but something beneath it felt tense. "Someone important. From my homeland. King Adam's forces have already captured her. She's alive—for now. They're holding her in an abandoned village north of here, beyond the woods."
The air around them grew dense. Dray waited, but Reerie's face remained unchanged.
"If you assist me in bringing her back alive," he stated, "you'll receive one gold coin."
The room seemed to tilt.
One gold coin.
Not silver. Not copper. Gold.
The thought of it weighed on her mind like a stone sinking into deep water. One gold coin could buy months of food. Weeks of shelter, perhaps. It was a sum that made her briefly ponder what kind of life allowed someone to spend that much on a single task.
The thought faded. It didn't matter why he would pay. Just that he would.
Dray's gaze remained fixed on hers, unwavering and cold. "Do you agree?"
Reerie nodded slowly and deliberately.
"Good." He pushed a piece of parchment across the table—a rough map, quickly sketched. "Meet me at the northern gate. We will execute the rescue during midnight. You will still have some time to prepare."
His eyes fell to the knife at her side—a hunting knife, worn from use, suitable for slitting throats in the dark but too short for real fighting.
Then he stood and exited, his boots thudding on the wooden floor.
Reerie lingered in the silence for a long moment, gazing at the map.
Then she tucked it away and left.
XXX
The city had gone quiet by the time Reerie reached the smithy.
The smithy was the only light on the street.
It glowed from within. The particular amber warmth of a forge that had not been banked for the night, visible through the gaps in the heavy door and the small window beside it. The sound of a hammer reached her half a block away, steady and unhurried, the rhythm of someone who worked at night because the night was when the work got done without interruption. The smell of coal smoke and hot metal came with it, drifting into the cool air and sitting there the way forge smoke always sat — heavy, purposeful, the smell of something being changed into something else.
Reerie pushed through the heavy door.
The weaponsmith glanced up from his grindstone. He appeared to be in his early thirties, broad-shouldered from his labor rather than any intention to be muscular — his forearms were dark with coal dust, and a small burn scar marked the base of his left thumb, a scar that had faded into the background of his life. His face bore the marks of someone who had experienced enough of the world to no longer be surprised by it, arriving at a kind of calm acceptance.
He assessed her — the dagger at her hip, her movements, the way she paused — and set the grindstone aside.
"How may I help you?"
Reerie remained silent, holding his gaze.
He didn't rush to fill the silence like some people did. He allowed it to linger for a moment, examining her as he would a piece of metal — searching for what was truly there instead of what he anticipated. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile but something close to it.
"So the assassin seeks a stronger blade." He turned to the racks without any fuss. "Give me a moment."
Metal met the counter with a sound that was almost gentle, deliberate placement of something that had been made with a specific purpose and knew it. He stepped back and let her look.
It was a poignard. Long and narrow, the blade tapering to a fine point with the patience of something that had been ground down over time until only the essential remained. The spine ran straight and true, subtly thickened for rigidity. The grip was wrapped in dark cord, wound tight, shaped for a hand that needed certainty rather than comfort.
"A dagger made specific for your line of work. A poignard," he said. He looked at her across the counter, not pushing, just present. "Two silver. What do you think?"
Reerie picked it up.
The weight distributed differently from her current dagger — more toward the point, the balance asking something slightly different of the wrist, the reach noticeably longer when she extended her arm. She turned it once, slowly, the way she turned any tool she was considering — not admiring it, assessing it. Measuring what it would ask of her and what she would get in return.
She had been doing this for over a decade now. Taking contracts, closing distances, putting blades into people who did not see her coming. It had become the shape of her days — not comfortable exactly, but familiar. The mechanics of it no longer required thought.
And yet.
There was still something at the edge of it that had not fully resolved into ordinary. Not guilt — something stranger than it. The particular strangeness of a person who had become very good at a thing they had never chosen to be good at, who had simply woken up one day already made into it and found no clear line back to before.
The poignard sat in her hand and waited.
She placed two silver coins on the counter. They rang out, clear and definitive.
He glanced at the coins, then at her — just for a moment, with the keen awareness of someone who had noticed something unspoken. Then he slid the blade forward.
"Pleasure doing business." A pause. "Be careful out there."
This wasn't advice given to every customer. It hung in the air between them for a moment before she picked up the dagger.
Without saying a word, Reerie grasped it. Its cold spine pressed against her palm like a promise.
She turned and moved back into the crowd, the weight of it perfectly balanced at her side.
Sunset was still hours away.
She had time to get ready.