The market square was packed tight as the citizens of Dragons' Landing went about their daily routine, going from stand to stand, occasionally purchasing something from the vendors. The sun hung high in the sky, shining brightly against the edges of the clouds that dotted the sky, and the heat of midday was thick in the air. Summer was fully under way, baking the dusty roads and drying the streams that brought vital water to the coastal city, and it was the sort of day that would usually have Peri holed up somewhere with a scroll to read or a weapon to clean or practice with. Despite the blistering heat and choking dust that wafted up in everyone's wakes, the city was busier than it had ever been. The inns were packed full and some people were even opening up their homes for the countless travelers to make an extra coin or two, and there was an encampment set up just outside the city walls for those who counldn't find lodging.
Peri was hardly surprised; the Riders would be coming the following day and accompanying them would be a shipment of dragon eggs, all Unquickened, and that was always when the city was at its fullest. Despite being only a few years old, Dragons' Landing was one of the largest cities in Algaësia, second only to the capital, and it was mainly because of their location. Being the closest settlement to Vroengard had its perks, and one of them was the trade. Peri swatted angrily at a fly that was buzzing around her head and huffed out a breath. Desin was late. Not just a couple minutes late. He was one whole hour late, and Peri had better things to do than stand around in this dragons-fire heat, waiting for some doddery old fool to come collect his diary. She shifted the leatherbound journal that was hidden under her dark cloak, checking to make sure it was still there and also trying to get it to stop digging into her ribs.
"Five minutes," she muttered to herself, leaning forward an inch or so so she could see the clocktower that reared up from the center of the square.
She wished she could rip off the sweltering, black cloak, but it was necessary to hide the journal and to keep her features a secret from both clients and passersby. If anyone could replicate her face to the authorities, she would have a fullscale manhunt on her hands. Or womanhunt, she thought dryly to herself, reduced to cheap humor in her boredom.
Suddenly, she stilled, feeling a chill come over her bones like she was tredding on the unmarked grave of a long forgotten body. She felt the hood of her cloak ripple as if there was a slight breeze, while the rest of her cloak remained still, weighing heavily around her like a marionette on its strings. Peri whirled around and bit back a gasp of alarm as she stared into the blank darkness created by a hood's shadow. A dark figure stood in the alley behind her completely motionless except for the sway of his cloak, and even thought she couldn't see his eyes, Peri knew he was looking at her. She also knew he was dangerous, and she took an instinctive step backwards to give herself space to run. She felt the weight of her dagger more heavily now, but she didn't stir or give away the position of her weapon. She remained silent, studying the figure from under her cloak. The figure was tall, far too tall to be a woman, with Peri only coming up to his shoulder, and he was slender and willowy, but she didn't doubt his strength. Even under the heavy cloak, she could make out heavily muscled arms, folded across the man's thick chest. And yet he was graceful and slealthy as well, for he had been able to sneak up on her without her even guessing at his presence. Peri suspected the only reason she'd noticed him was because he wanted her to, which meant he wanted her alive. Probably.
The silence stretched on as neither one of them spoke, and Peri was starting to grow impatient. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, but otherwise remained still. Finally, the man moved and his arm extended towards her, his fist clenched. Peri flinched away from the man's arm, drawing a dark chuckle out of him. It wasn't really a chuckle, more of a vibration in the air. The fist opened and in its broad palm lay a scrap of paper, slightly crumpled, and folded into a small square. Peri glanced at the man's face, or where she assumed it was, then cautiously reached for the note. Swifter than her eyes could follow, the man siezed her wrist and whirled her around, slamming her facefirst into the grimy wall, crushing the air from her lungs. He yanked her hood back and Peri's long, jet black hair fell in waves down her back, exposing her as a girl. Peri didn't wait for the man to drag her off to someplace she'd never return; she jerked backwards with her free elbow, catching the man in the gut and driving the breath out of him. Peri smiled darkly as she pushed off the wall and sent the man stumbling away; the moment he'd seen her hair, he'd expected her to be some soft little princess, which worked to her advantage. She whirled to face her opponent, expecting him to be on the ground, but instead finding him standing straight, with no signs of injury or breathlessness. She tensed for a second assault, but nothing happened. They both stood frozen, hardly breathing, for a short second, and then the man extended the note towards her again. Not willing to be caught off guard a second time, Peri snatched the note quickly out of the man's hand and slipped sideways down the alley, bursting out into the bright, sunlit square where anyone would see if she was grabbed again. As she set off across the square, weaving and ducking through the mob of people, earning a few irritated glares, she swore she could feel the man's deep laughter vibrating in her chest, and it followed her all the way home.
Peri made her way towards the shadier part of town, pulling her hood back up and stuffing her hair back into it to hide her identity. Once she was hidden once more, she continued farther down the grungy street, which was lined with squat little houses, most of them missing a shutter or even a door, all of them filthy. A pair of drunks stumbled down the steet towards her, arguing vehemently about who kissed who's wife, but when they spotted her and her signature black cloak, they fell silent and stepped aside to let her pass, scrutinizing through squinty eyes blurred with too much drink. Peri ignored them and continued down the uneven dirt road, manuvering the deep, dusty ruts carved into the dried mud with her soft leather moccasins, making no sound as she walked. She passed few people on her route and she got the same reaction. Under her hood she smiled, laughing inwardly at their wariness.
After a couple more turns down similar streets, she came to a narrow alley with an empty barrel blocking the entrance, the opening barely wide enough to allow Peri to slip in, and even then her shoulders brushed the dank walls on both sides. She was up and over the barrel in a heartbeat, setting off down the long passageway. Here, in between the two buildings, the sun rarely shone on the cold, barren earth, and the tempature had dropped instantly to a comfortable chill. About halfway down the slender alley, she stopped and knelt to the ground in one swift movement, throwing a glance over her shoulder as a precaution before facing the ground before her. She brushed her hand once along the ground, sweeping away a thin layer of dirt that the wind had deposited during the day to expose a wooden board, which she pryed from the ground. Peri cast the board aside and placed her hands on opposite sides of the gaping hole she had just uncovered, slowly lowering herself into it, letting herself drop the last couple feet. As always, the ground appeared beneath her feet with frightening suddenness, but she recovered quickly and straightened. Standing straight up, her head came about halfway out of the hole, enough for her to spot the board and drag it over the opening again. Blind and slightly stooped, she set off into the blackness, hands out to the side so she wouldn't run into anything. Already, Peri's neck was starting ache, but thankfully she didn't have far to go. Within a couple minutes, the tunnel began to lighten just enough for her to make out the solid wall of dirt rearing up before her. She didn't pause at the base of the wall and slipped her hands into the holes gouged into it, scaling it in a matter of seconds and emerging in a small, empty room, devoid of any furniture or decoration that would give her presence away to anyone who might happen to find the tunnel.
"Home, sweet home," Peri murmured to herself, pushing the hood of her cloak back and taking a deep breath, drawing the scent of wood, mud, dust, and a hint of flora into her nose.
She allowed herself a moment to rest and listen, then she was on the move again, striding briskly out of the room and turning down the hall, away from the front room and further into the house. Her house. Sort of. She'd found it, and no one else used or even knew how to get in since the windows were boarded up, so it made sense to have someplace dry to sleep and hide. She imagined it must have belonged to some espionage group or smuggler, who used the passage to get people or goods in and out without drawing the attention of others.
At the end of the hall, a set of rickety stairs ascended to the second floor, half-rotted and sagging under their own weight. A stranger to the house would have reconsidered the uncertain steps, but Peri flitted silently up the stairs, barely touching the soft wood beneath her and coming to a stop at the end of a long, shadowed hallway. Like the first room, nothing decorated the walls and there wasn't any furniture. Most of the doors were closed, save for the last one on the end, which send a fan of weak light across the floor. Peri headed for that one, slipping through the doorway and stopping again to take in the room.
The small room didn't have very much in it; just a wooden bed in the far corner with a thin matress stuffed with straw and a wooden desk directly next to it. Papers where overflowing the desk and some had drifted to the floor in her absence, sprawled across the floor in disarray. She kept saying she was going to clean them out, because over half of the papers she didn't need, but she never got around to it.
Peri strode across the room, discarding her cloak as she went, leaving it in a heap by the door, and froze. She turned quickly to stare at the black cloak where it had settled silently onto the floor in a jumbled heap. She sped-walked back over and stooped quickly, shoving her hand into the coarse black fabric. After a couple seconds of pawing through the cloak, she found the hidden pocket where she kept all of her merchandise before she passed it off. It was empty, except for the scrap of paper the hooded man had given her. Where was the journal?!
Peri groaned and froze for a heartbeat, tracing the events of the day and searching for the point where the journal might have dropped out of her pocket. The trip to the market had been uneventful, the wait had been excruciatingly uneventful, and the walk home had been the same as the walk there. The only time it could have fallen out was when her attacker had appeared. Her client would kill her if she lost the journal. Literally. And she could hardly leave it there overnight and get it in the morning. Who knows what people might have picked it up by then?
Mentally cursing the strange man, she snatched up her cloak and threw it on, striding out of the room and down the hallway in a matter of seconds. She fingered her dagger, which was still on her belt, wishing she'd stuck the man with it when she'd had the chance. She lowered herself back into the tunnel through a hole in the floorboards and completely skipped the ladder, dropping about seven yards and hitting the ground hard. She set off through the tunnel, doing an awkward hunched over jog-shuffle to reach the exit, which was still covered by the board. She pushed up one edge from underneath and scanned the alley to make sure no one saw her emerging from the tunnel, then shoved the board to the side and leaped out, using her hands to pull her body all the way out of the tunnel. She replaced the board and straightened, brushing off her cloak and making sure her face was sufficiently hidden. With that, she proceeded down the alley and stepped out onto the street, walking towards the market at a brisk, hurried pace.
The streets still were packed, even though it was getting darker with every passing minute, and they were lined with vendors, selling colorful trinkets, delicious treats, and the occasional toy, all designed with dragons in mind. Dragon's Egg Pie, necklaces with jeweled dragon pendants, and chunks of dragon egg that the vendors swore were good luck were just a few of the items that filled the vendors' carts. Peri ignored it all and stuck to the edges of the street where the traffic was thinner.
Once she reached the market, she cut straight across, elbowing through the crowd to reach the alley where she'd seen the hooded man, ducking out of the throng of people and into the shadows. She made her way through the darkness, one hand on her knife, the other reaching out before her so she didn't run smack into a wall. She reached the place where she and Desin had decided to meet and the place where she had stood for an hour while he'd failed to show. Digging a match out of her cloak, she struck it and knelt to the ground, searching the filthy cobblestone for any sign of the dark, leatherbound journal. Nothing. Well, except for a certain cold feeling and a slight breeze.
With a sigh, Peri straightened and turned around, knowing he didn't want to harm her, or he would have. She stared up at the place where his face should be.
"Fancy seeing you here," she snipped, not bothering to hide her irritation with this man.
The man said nothing.
"Say, have you seen a journal, brown, leather…"
Silence.
"Yes, no, maybe so?"
More silence.
"Are you, like, mute or something?"
The man pointed her cloak or, more specifically, her hidden pocket.
"Note." The man's voice was deep and a tiny bit sinister.
"He speaks, ladies and gentlemen!"
"Note."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Read."
"Do you only speak one syllable words?"
"Read." The man's voice took on a threatening tone, and Peri scrambled to pull the note out and unfold it. She squinted at the slanted, loopy writing, trying to make words out of the chaotic scribbling. After a couple long moments, she was pretty sure she had it all right.
I have a job for you. High pay.
Meet tonight at Carvahall Dock.
Midnight. Warehouse C.
"What kind of job is it?" Peri asked and looked up, but the man was gone.