The common room was dim and thick with the haze of cheap pipe smoke from a hearth fire that smoldered rather than burned. A few men sat at rough tables, hunched over bowls or clay mugs. Their clothes were worn but intact, the kind worn by laborers who had steady, if miserable, work inside the walls. They glanced up at his entrance, their eyes sliding over his mud-caked form with mild disinterest before returning to their food. He wasn't the worst-looking thing to walk in here, apparently.
A long wooden counter ran along one wall, stained dark by years of spilled ale and greasy hands. Behind it stood a man wiping a tankard with a rag that looked no cleaner than Momen's clothes. He had a broad, bored face and thinning hair, and his expression didn't change as Momen approached.
This was the moment. Slum lore said you asked for the weaver. It sounded stupid now, standing here in the smoky half-light with his heart thumping unevenly against his aching ribs.
Momen stopped in front of the counter. He kept his voice low, rough from disuse and dust. "I need to speak to the weaver."
The barkeep's wiping motion didn't pause. He gave Momen a long, slow look that started at his mud-caked hair and traveled all the way down to his filthy, bare feet. The look wasn't disgusted or angry. It was assessing, like a man judging the weight of a sack of grain.
After what felt like an eternity, the man gave a single, almost imperceptible nod toward the back of the room. There was a doorway there, covered by a heavy curtain of faded blue fabric that might have been nice once.
Without another word, Momen turned and walked toward it. He felt the eyes of the room on his back again, but this time the interest felt sharper, more knowing. These men understood what that request meant.
He pushed through the curtain.
The room beyond was small and cramped, lit by a single shuttered lantern on a wall sconce. The air smelled sharply of ink, old paper, and something acidic-maybe a cleaning solution. It was a different kind of stale than the cellar, this was the staleness of things being kept too long in one place.
Every surface was cluttered. Shelves bowed under the weight of ledgers, scroll cases, and stacks of loose paper tied with twine. A large desk dominated the center of the room, its surface invisible beneath more papers, ink pots, sealing wax, and odd trinkets-a broken compass, a set of brass weights, a small carved stone figure of some animal Momen didn't recognize.
Behind the desk sat a man.
Kaelen was older than Momen expected, maybe in his forties or fifties. His hair was grey at the temples and thinning on top, but his face was alert and unwrinkled by anything but concentration lines around his eyes. He wore simple but well-made clothes of dark wool, a little frayed at the cuffs but clean. He wasn't writing or reading when Momen entered, he was just sitting there with his hands folded on the desk as if he'd been waiting.
His eyes were what held Momen in place. They were pale grey and sharp, missing nothing. They took in Momen's mud-disguise, the way he favored his left side slightly, the wildness that probably still lurked behind his own eyes from the morning's horrors.
"Close the curtain," Kaelen said. His voice was calm and measured, with no particular accent Momen could place.
Momen let the heavy fabric fall shut behind him, sealing them into the lantern-lit space.
Kaelen didn't offer him a seat. He just watched him for another long moment. "You made it inside," he said finally. It wasn't a question.
Momen just nodded.
"You've had an eventful morning, I expect." Kaelen's gaze dropped briefly to Momen's hands, still black with dried mud but now clenched into fists at his sides. "Brann won't be collecting any more debts from anyone."
The words landed in the quiet room like stones dropped into still water.
So he knew, of course he knew. Information was his trade: news of a slum enforcer crushed to pulp in an alley would have traveled through certain channels faster than a running boy could crawl through a drainage tunnel.
Momen said nothing. What was there to say? *I didn't mean to? I don't remember?* That would just make him sound weak or insane or both.
"Sit," Kaelen said, gesturing to a low stool piled with more papers. "Move those."
Momen carefully lifted the stack of documents-they felt heavy and official-and set them on the floor before lowering himself onto the stool. The relief of being off his feet was immediate, though sitting made his ribs ache in a new way.
"The city guard will investigate," Kaelen continued conversationally, as if discussing the weather. "Brann had… arrangements with certain low-level officers for looking the other way on his collections. Those officers will want to look very diligent now, to avoid scrutiny themselves. They will turn over every rock in the slums."
"I know," Momen said, his voice coming out as a dry croak.
"You cannot go back."
"I know that too."
Kaelen leaned back in his chair slightly, steepling his fingers under his chin. "So you are here. You have no money. You have no name anyone inside these walls would recognize or accept. You have only what you brought with you." His eyes flicked to the bundle Momen had set on the floor beside the stool-the rag-wrapped piece of metal sheeting.
Momen followed his gaze. That pathetic bundle was everything he owned now.
"What do you want?" Kaelen asked simply.
The question was so direct it threw him for a second. What did he want? He wanted to not be hunted.
He swallowed hard around the sudden tightness in his throat. "I need papers," he said finally. "Something that says I can be here. And a place to stay."
Kaelen nodded slowly as if this was exactly what he'd expected to hear. "Papers can be arranged. A room in this house can be arranged as well." He paused deliberately before continuing. "In exchange."
Momen waited for it.
"There is a tannery warehouse," Kaelen said, his tone shifting to something more businesslike now that they were getting to terms. "Not one of the open-yard ones you smell on Tanner's Row. A private one, owned by Guild Master Halvor's syndicate. It is guarded at night by two men who take their job seriously enough not to fall asleep or wander off for a drink."
"Inside this warehouse," Kaelen went on, "on the second-floor office, there is a ledger book bound in green-dyed leather with brass corner plates. It sits on the left side of the main desk."
"You will retrieve that ledger for me," Kaelen finished simply.
A beat of silence hung in the ink-scented air between them broken only by faint sounds from the common room beyond the curtain muffled laughter maybe someone coughing hard probably from breathing pipe smoke all day long not good for lungs obviously but who cares about lungs when you are busy trying not get killed by guards or crushed by invisible forces or starve to death generally speaking lungs are least of your worries really moving on back to ledger book yes green leather brass corners second floor office got it understood sir thank you sir anything else sir?
"That's all?" Momen asked finally.
"That is all," Kaelen confirmed mildly.
Momen looked down at his mud-caked hands resting on his knees then back up at Kaelen.
"I'll do it," Momen said clearly.
***