Continue

“We should continue,” I said. “I don’t know what other inconveniences I set for myself, the sooner we get to the jaka flowers.”

“I agree,” Master said. “For now, we continue, but everyone be on guard.”

We all nodded and climbed back into our wagons and continued the journey. Fortunately we made it to the town without further incident. I would need better alchemical items to properly process jaka flowers and we would need to proceed with selling things before that. In addition the flowers were best processed within a few hours of their collection. So, all in all it left their collection to be for tomorrow at best.

After parked our wagons at the inn, Master addressed the Lady of the Night. He then went off alone with Mistress. My heart soared a bit at the sight of them together like this. I hope they had a nice trip together.

The Lady clapped her hand twice, which caught me off guard, only Mistress had done that before. “The guild shouldn’t be closed yet. So, Brenda, you can use their mail system for your family. Also protect Rosemary and Julia, you accompany as an extra pair of eyes. Okay?”

“Yes, my Lady,” we all said in unison.

We had to hurry to have enough time to get the stuff done. The guild hall was a lot less busy at this time. It technically never closed because it also served as an inn but official business would be ending soon enough. Julia looked at the bounty board to pass the time as me and Brenda went to the counter.

“How may I help you?” the man at the desk asked. I flashed him my ID card. The one thing Master let me have back for today.

“Oh, Lady Rosemary, we have been waiting for you,” he said as he flagged down another member.

Fuck. I didn’t like the sound of that. “How come?”

“We have a client that has been eagerly awaiting your return, he has been staying at the inn.”

“Oh, well, the thing is, I don’t plan to take any more quests currently,” I said.

“He already has an active quest with you though,” the man said.

“Oh, him,” I said pretending to remember. “Could you ask him to prepare tea and I’ll meet him shortly.”

The man relaxed and added the instruction to the lady that he called over and she rushed off. Great. Okay well, let’s see. Oh. Yeah, that would work.

“Could I get a copy of the request, I want to review it for our meeting,” I asked.

He nodded and reached under the desk. “We have had it ready, we anticipated this request.”

That put me on guard more. There were plenty of reasons the guild might be like this, depending on if the client was pushy and they wanted to get rid of him, to me having asked them to keep in on hand before I was charmed. I would need to be cautious. I sat down to look at the paper.

Quest: Missing Person.
Name: Iris Hutson
Last known location: Ilex Forest Southern Area
Reward: 400 gold pieces
Notes: Suspected to be the victim of a ****. Suspected the captors have some sort of leverage over her, the target may resist. Use of **** to bring her home is permitted by the permission of Count Gerlach
Requester: Henry Hutson

Oh well… fuck.

I called Brenda over to take a glance too. I wanted her opinion on the matter.

“Cheap bastard, only offered me 200 gold pieces. Should we both talk to him?” she asked.

“I’ll explain to him!” Julia said.

I shook my head. “Julia, you literally can’t. Plus if he saw you, it would only complicate things,” I said.

“You want me to wait?” she asked.

“I see the dilemma,” Brenda said. “I can’t watch both of you unless you stick together which, she can’t. Well, what should we do?”