The Leaky Shingle leaned over the canal at the foot of Tanner Row like a drunk deciding whether to jump.
They reached it well before noon, muddy to the knees from the long morning walk back along the river road. Ray stopped at the bottom of the lane with both hands on his hips, squinting up at the sagging roofline.
"You told me this place was an inn, Doc, but from here it looks like a building halfway through falling into the canal on purpose."
"The guild bunks have fleas, but this place only has one grumpy old man."
"What about your guildmaster, who apparently wanted my whole account of the drakes by noon?"
"Tenon can have you tomorrow morning," Yuzu said, shoving the door open with her shoulder, "after you sleep under a roof that isn’t a cave."
Inside, the common room smelled of onions and pipe smoke, with buckets set under three separate drips across the floor. A board above the bar carried one rule burned into the wood, each letter as tall as a man’s hand.
Ray read it aloud, tilting his head, "No blood under this roof... that’s a very aggressive way to say welcome to the neighborhood."
Behind the bar, an old man in a stained apron looked up from the tankard he was slowly wiping.
"That’s a house rule, not a welcome, so scrape the mud off before it touches my floor, boy," the old man rasped, pointing the tankard at his feet.
"Wiping, sir, I am wiping as fast as a man can wipe, so please don’t throw that tankard at me!"
He scrubbed his soles on the mat like a wet dog, while Yuzu stepped around him toward the bar.
"Dredge, this is Ray, who needs a room for the week and promises not to set anything on fire," she said, jerking a thumb at him.
"Attic’s all that’s left at two silver a night, with the whole week paid up front."
He counted fourteen silver onto the bar, the old man sweeping the coins into one palm without looking down.
’He never even counted them, meaning he either trusts me already or knows exactly what fourteen silver weighs by feel.’
"Just out of professional curiosity, what happens when somebody does draw steel in here?"
The old man set the tankard down with a click, "I settle it quick enough that nobody asks twice."
’He stands like a man who stopped worrying about threats a few centuries ago, which is a strange look for a bartender.’
Dredge leaned across the bar, his nostrils flaring once like an old hound catching wind of a fox.
"Whatever’s rotting in your coat pocket stays wrapped up tight under my roof."
’Nobody should smell those cores through a coat, given that even I can barely feel them warming my ribs.’
"Those are drake cores, which you can think of as souvenirs from a really bad fishing trip," he said, patting the pocket.
"Every fool has a fishing story, though nobody believed mine when the canal ran backward."
"Hold on, when exactly did that canal run backward, and why does nobody else in this town ever mention it?"
The old man only went back to wiping the same tankard, as if the question belonged to somebody else entirely.
A mercenary at the corner table shoved his chair back, beer slopping over his knuckles as he lurched upright. A D-Rank tag swung on a chain around his neck, matching the sneer of a man six drinks deep.
"You’re the F-Rank they say killed two drakes with a magic stick," he sneered, crossing the room to grab Ray by the collar.
The candle on the bar stood perfectly still beside Ray, its flame no longer guttering in the draft.
"You have until I finish this sentence to take your hand off my coat, friend," he said quietly.
At the corner table the dice stopped clicking, one of his drinking partners setting his mug down slowly. Yuzu went still at the bar, her fingers tightening on the counter as the warmth left the room.
The hand stayed put, so he peeled the thumb back to the exact edge of what a human joint allowed.
The mercenary dropped to one knee with a squeal, his mug rolling across the floor toward the nearest bucket.
"Aghhh, my thumb, let go of my thumb before it comes off in your hand!"
"The next quarter inch belongs to you, so think hard about how much you enjoy holding a—"
Something slammed down on the bar between them, hard enough to make every tankard on the shelf jump an inch. It was a mop with an ironwood handle as thick as a wrist, held out level in one gnarled hand.
"Both of you let go, or this mop settles it for you," the old man rasped.
’Ironwood sinks in water and breaks axe heads, which puts that mop somewhere around the weight of a grown man.’
Ray let go at once, grinning again as he raised both palms like a man returning a borrowed horse.
Dredge lifted the mop off the bar, twirling it once like a breadstick before leaning it against the shelf.
"What the hell do they feed innkeepers around here, small horses?"
"The stew costs extra, boy, along with any more noise on my floor."
"Extra for stew, you scary old bastard, now that’s a businessman after my own heart," he muttered, edging toward the stairs.
The mercenary scrambled out the door clutching his thumb, leaving a trail of beer and wounded pride behind him.
"Does the house rule cover thumbs, or does it only count the parts that bleed?"
"Thumbs count once they bleed," the old man said without looking up, "and that one only bent."
Yuzu caught his sleeve halfway up the stairs, pulling him close enough to whisper over the creak of the steps.
"He likes you... and that frightens me more than both drakes did."
"He threatened me with an actual mop, so I’d hate to meet the people he doesn’t like!" he whispered back, glancing down at the bar.
"My grandmother swore he was already old when she was a girl, though she also swore he never sleeps."
"Then he’s either a very well-preserved grandpa or a fixture that came with the building, like those buckets."
The attic ran under a sloped roof the length of the inn, with one window looking north toward the bluffs. A long workbench sat abandoned under the window, its top scarred by knife cuts, burns and years of spilled drinks.
"Oh, hello there, gorgeous, where have you been hiding all my life?" he breathed, running a palm along the grain.
"You are flirting with a plank that has four legs."
"I’m negotiating with her, and once I bolt a vise to this end she’s going to help me build things nobody in Kelford has ever seen."
He paced the attic twice while the HUD sketched outlines where a vise and a forge plate could someday go.
"A good vise runs about forty silver with a forge plate at twice that, leaving my eighty-one silver looking pretty thin," he said, tapping the end of the bench.
Yuzu leaned in the doorway with her arms folded, watching him pace like a kid on a festival morning.
A fat drop fell from the rafters straight onto the pillow, spreading into a dark ring across the linen.
"Oh, come on, the one damn leak in this whole attic lands right where my face is supposed to go?"
"Move the bed a foot to the left, then change the sunleaf dressing on that arm before you sleep."
"Yes, ma’am, bed left and arm clean, with no complaints from the patient whatsoever."
She pushed off the doorframe, "I need to check on Pim and Etta before dark."
"Their fever was climbing when I left them, while the water gets worse faster than I can treat it, like bailing a boat with a sieve," she said quietly.
He stopped pacing, the joke dropping off his face as he turned from the bench to look at her properly.
"Tell those kids the weird guy in the attic is going to fix their water, though in exchange they owe him one drawing in charcoal or crayon."
"They will ask what you look like," she said, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"Tell them tall, handsome and extremely good with water... they’ll draw me with a mustache anyway."
’Two sick kids on a clock means the bluff doesn’t wait for anyone’s permission, including the guild’s.’
"We go up to those waterworks as soon as the guild gives us a reason, or sooner if it drags its feet."
She nodded once, her mouth tight, before leaving him alone with the drips and the creaking rafters.
That evening a knock sounded on the attic door, though nobody stood on the landing when he opened it. A bowl of stew steamed on the top step beside a second slab of bread that nobody paid for.
He leaned over the rail, shouting down the stairwell, "Heh, I never ordered the extra bread, you know!"
"Hmph, eat it before it goes stale and stop shouting on my stairs."
’An innkeeper who gives away bread and twirls ironwood like a toothpick is either a saint or something much older, though I’m tipping him either way.’
Downstairs someone laughed at a joke, then went quiet when the mop knocked once against the floor.
[ LODGING ]
[Room: Leaky Shingle Attic]
[Paid: 7 Nights]
[Purse: 81 Silver]
He ate standing at the window, both pistols stripped across the bench beside the bowl for a proper cleaning. The warmth in his chest sat full again at fifty mana, steady as a pilot light under his ribs.
"Payday, Last Call, we’re down to fifty-four rounds between the pair of you, meaning not one of them gets wasted on drunks with grabby hands."
Fresh rain drummed on the roof after dark, setting three buckets downstairs filling again.
’Somewhere under that bluff a pump is drinking a whole river, and tomorrow I start finding out who pays its bills.’
He set the two drake cores on the windowsill, where they rolled until both faced north toward the dark bluffs.