Snippet #2815766

Anaïs held the back of her wrist against her nose as she stepped into the room on the second floor of the Jackalope tavern. She winced at the musty smell of old wood and sharp, sour stench of dried alcohol which pervaded this place, not helped in the slightest by the brackish smell of the canals meeting the sea outside wafting through the cracked window. It had been easy enough to get the key - for all their reputation for discretion, the owner was remarkably amenable to petty bribes.

Anaïs shut the door quietly behind her as her eye took in the scenes imprinted on the room. She brushed one finger lightly over the back of an unmarked chair near the center of the floor, watching wispy echoes of Hilgur tying and then untying his drow captive with lengths of rough, strong rope, saw him step across the room to place the rope down as the prepared to set out that morning. Her lip curled in disgust, and the rope vanished into her bag a moment later.

She looked to the desk next; hefty bags of coin were piled along one side of it in neat stacks. Two foreign hooked swords were bound together behind them. Anaïs doubted they belonged to Hilgur. He seemed the type to favor something a bit more… conventional. The drow's blades, then? No doubt tied together and kept here so she couldn't turn them against the one holding her chain. She picked them up gingerly by the end of their bindings, then grabbed the handles to keep the blades from penduluming toward her. Anaïs doubted she'd be able to hide these easily, so after some quick thinking she slipped them out the window and onto the roof above the second floor. She wasn't sure she'd be able to retrieve them, but at least the clerics wouldn't find them.

She pulled herself back inside and turned back toward the desk. Across the face were strewn a number of unopened letters from various establishments. Most were likely rejections - the furrowed brow of frustration on the ghost of Hilgur's face as he tossed one of them onto the desk without opening it made that clear. A large sheet of parchment was held open next to them - a map of Zoltia, spiderwebbed by a series of seemingly random routes heading north, several of which were crossed out. Was this Hilgur's proclaimed map to Gala-Dor? Anaïs almost scoffed at it, but something about it…

She narrowed her eye, brushing her fingers lightly over the top of the map. There was a conviction to it that she couldn't quite shake, and...

She felt something, a slight bump like the map was laying on another document. She lifted it up gingerly, rolling it tightly and slipping it into her bag before turning her attention to what was underneath it. Another letter, it looked like, but this one bore the seal of the Sacred Flame. It was made from vellum, rather than letter parchment, and flipping it open she saw the name of the High Paladin scrawled across the bottom.

Not a letter, but a deed of sale. "Dreador LaRue." Surname notwithstanding, was that her name? Anaïs's lips pressed into a thin line as the document disappeared somewhere into her robe. This was unfortunate. She hadn't lied on the bridge - she did recall the assassin from the Ducard incident had been recorded as lawfully executed. Which meant if Hilgur had also been telling the truth, their arrest was putting them both in far more danger than Anaïs had intended.

The sound of footsteps approaching from down the hall. The guards wouldn't respond this quickly, would they? No, not for something like this, but with the right incentive, and given what she'd just uncovered… Anaïs's arm shot quickly across the table, making a mess of the letters before she stepped back as the knob on the door began to turn. Whoever they were, it should at least buy a bit of time before they found what they were looking for… or the lack there-of.