It was the third time I had found the library’s only copy of the Undead Sea Scrolls on the Classics shelf.  It almost had a mind of its own, it seemed to me, the number of times I had to return it to its own individual chest in the locked Antiquities Section.  And it wasn’t like anyone from Oceanloft ever asked for the scroll.  It was of a dark and notorious aspect, little known outside the necromantic types, who are easy to spot and are as unwelcome as garlic and clam pizzas at a vampire lock-in.  
I pulled open the scroll so that I could see the first few columns of glyphs.  They had been written on vellum with blood, and I hoped it was neither human nor fae, but nurtured no faint hope that the writer of this detestable scroll would not stoop so low.   I had enough of the Deep Speech to be able to recognize the words on the page, and even those first introductory words seared my eyes so that when I shut the scroll and my eyes, the hateful words still glowed behind my lips.  Alg horst elee ngfibs.  Even as un-pronounceable as the words were, the atavistic syllables passed over my tongue and I felt the shuddering of the veil that separates the mortal world and that other world from which evil shuffles and shambles and gibbers trying to get to us.
I pushed the scroll into my shoulder bag and hurried in the direction of the Antiquities Section.  When I turned right at the end of the aisle I slammed into a large figure.  If hard hands had not grabbed my arms I would have been knocked back on my posterior.  I looked up into the face of the man that held me ready to offer rebuke, but the smile caught me off guard.  “Celador!  I… wha… Oh gods!  What are you doing here?”
Celador shrugged and held me at arm’s length studying me.  “Well, you’re certainly uglier than when I saw you last.  How old is that scar?”
My hand went up and felt the ragged scar on my pate.  Since I got it I have shaved the whole of my head, except for a top-knot.  “It’s older than my horse but not as old as my mustache.”
“Ach aye, that’s something new too.  I’d not have known you except for your indigo eyes.”
I shook off his grasp.  “And what are you doing here?  It’s been the age of a pangolin since I left you in Horn.  You were hanging about collecting bounties on golems with a partner, if I remember aright.”
Celador laughed, “You can try to hide in Oceanloft as long as you like, but your Hillman accent betrays you.”
I frowned at that.  I had been trying to lose that bumpkin accent, but it was always waiting for a chance to slip out.  I crossed my arms on my chest.  “And you’re still the southernmost part of a northbound mule.  Answer me, or hang yourself. “
Celador’s laughing was as jarring as any ruckus in the silent library where tomes were as quiet as tombs.  When his laugh declined into the chuckle of stream water over smooth stone, he raised his left eyebrow.  “Well enough, then.  I didn’t come to plague you, cousin.”
“You smell bad enough to be carrying a plague or two.  And is that blood on your jerkin?”
He looked at the stain on his leather coat and rubbed at it.  “Gorramit!  That’s goblin blood.  That’ll never come out.”  He grumbled a bit and I desperately tried to hide my grin.  He held up his palms in surrender.  “It’s true.  Shkini and I heard about the wizard games you’ve got going here, and it sounded a far sight better than the money-grubbing reeves at Horn were doing us for all the golems we destroyed.”
The wizard games were the best tourist attraction on the continent, as I could guess.  Apparently, there was something about it that the wizard’s found entertaining, and the agreement with the outworld folk, the goblins and shrieks and dragonlings, kept our trade caravans safe on the road.  The outworlders would fight against the various soldiers of fortune that came along, and there was always plenty of each willing to contest.  “But I didn’t think you idiot enough to risk your life on a toy like that?”
Celador smiled and turned, walking toward the library’s lobby having me skip and stumble to keep up with his longer stride.  “I’ll be telling you that, right enough.  Shkini and I met up with a likely crew on the ship over, and we did quite well in the dungeon questing.”
“Oh, don’t tell me.  Dungeons and what?  Dragons?”
“Actually, yes, there was a dragon, now that you mention it.  Smallish as it were, and we were more than a match for it.  This blood here,” he said indicating the stain I had noted, “is none of mine, but of a goblin picador that was my bad luck to fall on me after I had shot it through the throat.”
I nodded.  Celador was perhaps the more violent of the two of us, and a few arrows short of a full quiver.  Except that a few of the feathers on his arrows in his quiver actually looked matted with blood.  He had always been the kind of person who picked up after himself, even if it meant pulling out the odd arrow or two out of corpses.
At the lobby, Celador turned and sat on the edge of a broad table and waited for me to come bustling up.  “So, cousin, to what do I owe this great and pleasant surprise visit?  I have work to do, even if you do not.”
“Well, you know, that’s as it is, of course, a truth.  I happened to meet a lassie.”
“And this lassie is gotten with child?  Mayhaps she has left you with a plaguey rash?  Or is it my blessing for your nuptials you wish?”
Celador slapped me on the back with a resounding whump and barked a laugh.  “Nah, Lach, nothing of the sort.  As it were, she was likely enough, a Halfling as it comes to be.  Now, I’ve got not a thing against the little folk. . .”
“And you’re as likely to shag a sheep if it’ll stand still long enough, so how did the lassie manage to avoid your divine attentions?”
“Now don’t be mean.  Just because you’re more of a eunuch than a man, it’s no reason to be spreading stories about my habits.”
My hand went to my knife, and I consciously had to restrain myself from starting a fight inside the library, a most unalterably unforgivable mischance.  Instead I grinned coldly.  “Out with it, Celador.  You’ve already won as much of my good will as you’re likely to.”
Celador shrugged sheepishly.  “Your mother, my father, you know.  Brother and sister.”
“A mistake of chance that we share some blood relation.   I’ll have you remember that my father was elven kind, and my mother was shunned of the clan for the match.”
“I never held anything against you or yours.  I am free of all that apartheid nonsense from the old country.  But I’ve got something to ask you, a favor.”
I barked a laugh that disturbingly sounded much like his.  “And I’ll do this favor to get rid of you, right?”
“Well, as it happens, this likely Halfling lass had a brilliant idea, and I’ve got a bad feeling about my adventuring days.  I’ll be honest with you, cuz, I think my eyes are failing me.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore, and I could see the pain there at the corner of his lips.  It cost him something to admit it.  And an archer, a bounty hunter, was not much good if his eyes betrayed him.
“I thought this adventure would be a lark.  But even as Shkini barreled into every chamber and took on all comers like a regular fire storm, I couldn’t hit the wall of a barn if I were inside.  I hit nothing the whole time.  And here is my best friend taking wound after wound in battle while I stand at a distance shooting my arrows and hitting nothing.”
“I can’t say that I don’t know what you mean.  A librarian who loses his sight is next to useless, and then it’s set to sweeping he is, for all his knowledge.”   If I sounded bitter it was because Evertcinch was digging out the library jakes as we spoke for just such an infirmity took him.  Reading the crampt and spidery scripts of ancient and faded tomes by the light of smoky lanterns and malodorous tallow candles was not gentle work of the eyes.
“As it were, indeed.”  Celador coughed behind a meaty fist.  “And this Halfling lass and I talked a bit about a pub.   Now, I know enough about brewing, and I’ve got a good hand at making the forever stew that bubbles in a cauldron sitting at a fire.”
Celador paused, and I saw what he had in mind.  “And, well, if I had enough, I might be a good pub keeper.”
“And what have you got with you?”
“Not enough, you know.  I haven’t been able to catch a break with the bounty hunting, and Skini and I were never any good at saving money.”
“But you came out of the games with some money, right?”
“A little, some three-hundred gold, all told, after the bookies paid.”
I sighed, knowing how the Oceanloft underworld handled people who won too often.  They would not be very kindly disposed to assisting Celador in his new business venture.  In fact, if he were not very careful, he might attract the attention of the extortionists.  Under my name, a pub would have a better chance for success, as I had a certain reputation amongst the unsavory sort.  A reputation for knowing useful things.
“I have an idea, then, cousin.  Leave your money with me, go and say goodbye with your adventuring friends and then stay out of trouble.  I’ll see you tomorrow at the corner of Temple Street and the Caravan Square.”
“And what will you be doing until then?”
I smiled and showed my unnaturally sharp teeth.  “Oh, I’ll tell you after you grow up.”

In the dark alley I could smell the sour scent of night soil in the gutter and the heady aroma of orc’s ear incense.   Surely there was an incense den near, where the hopeless could drown their consciousness in the dizzying stupefaction of the smoke from the yellow leaves of the hallucinogenic plant.  I heard the rustle and saw the shadow shift.  The shadow shifted again and stepped closer to me.   When I spoke, I startled the man in a dark cloak.
“Where are you?”
I stepped from the elvish shadow realm into the normal dark of the alley.  “I was concealed in the dark, nothing more.”
I couldn’t see much of the man with his face neatly concealed by his lowered hood.  “Nah’s meny thet ken sneak-up a’ me.  Y’eve some’at of thee eld aboot ye.”  His street argot was thick, but it was mostly put on, for when I surprised him he spoke well enough.  But the shady types love their costumes, as ridiculous as they may be.
“I’ve got something to trade, and I hear that there are those who wish to buy it.”
The man in the dark cloak nodded.  Of course, I only assumed it was a man.  The voice could have been anything.  I pulled out the scroll case from my shoulder bag.  It was brass studded with cheap glass to look like amethysts, but in the dark, the gems glittered gaily.  As I reached the case out a length of my cloak fell from my forearm and revealed my tattoo.  The sharp inrush of breath from the rogue was gratifying.  I had meant for him to see it, and it achieved the exact effect I desired.
The man in the cloak snatched at the case, but I yanked it back out of his grasp.  “And you’ve got the sheepskin I want?”
A rolled parchment appeared before my face.  We traded our treasures and I turned and vanished from the man’s vision within three paces.  It’s a trick of the elves, that is.

“And here she is, love, The Northbound Mule, the finest pub in Oceanloft, as it were.”  Celador gestured broadly.
The charming Halfling next to him poked a sharp finger into his chest.  “I’ll be having none of that love nonsense out of you.  It’s a business arrangement, and nothing more.”
I smiled broadly at that.  I liked this little woman a lot.
Peony, the Halfling lass, stepped forward with her hands on her hips.   “It’ll do.  When I’m ready to retire, this is just the right place to settle in.”  Turning to Celador, she put her hand to her dagger.  “And if you take more off the top than half, I’ll make sure to carve off more than half of what’s most precious to you.”
As Celador gulped Peony laughed.  I really liked this woman a lot.

I began to climb the marble steps up to the library when the three evil men approached me.  It’s not funny, but it is.  Bad men never have a sense of humor and they are always too confident of their badness.  It’s a weakness of type that shows that the gods love the good and wish us well.  The first man to cross in front of me was the biggest, the ugliest and the stupidest of the three, although there was a very tight race for the bottom of that triathlon.
“Oi!  Book man!  I’ve a word to have with you.”
“Have as many as you like, but don’t strain yourself.  Use pictures if you like; I’m sure I’ve got chalk about me somewhere.”
The man grabbed me and his two companions moved forward.  “The Wraith King is not happy with his purchase, and he wants it made good.”  Why do the more intelligent bad men, who actually have a brain, have such a melodramatic sense of fashion?  The Wraith King?  The gods send us rain, for it’s too dry.  He wasn’t any better than a fifth rate hedge wizard who dabbled with necromancy.   And he hired the best he could afford in henchmen, I supposed.  But it wouldn’t do to let the bad men think that they had any hand at all, let alone an upper one.
I leaned forward and put my lips to the henchman’s ear.  I whispered a single word.  The ruffian’s eyes went wide and he stiffened.  His friends took a step in retreat but not before I drew out a crooked wand.  It wasn’t a power wand, just a stick I had found that seemed to fit the shape of my hand, but its effect was suitably thaumaturgically ambiguous.  The first ruffian fell to his knees and began to weep.
Now, grown men crying is always an unnerving sight, and his friends apparently were shocked to see this big bad man lachrymose.  But I stepped around the big bad man and approached the two not so bad and certainly more cautious men.  I allowed my sleeve to fall to reveal my tattoo.  It’s just a rat.  Seems to be scary to some, though.  The two men were about to turn and run.
“You write like James Fennimore Cooper!”  Although they are nonsense words, meaning nothing of sense in this world, the hellish rebuke had its effect.  They stumbled on the library steps and fell.  Their faces contorted in grimaces of pain, I handed them a folded piece of papyrus.  “Let your employer know that he got what he paid for.  I copied the scroll exactly, just as we agreed.  If there’s a problem with reading it, that’s not my fault.”  Actually it was.  I had cast an occlusion upon it to shadow the writing.  So it was indeed, as the, gods grant us mercy from the pretentious, Wraith King wanted, an exact copy of the horrendous Vermis Mysteriis.  It was just unreadable.  Until he found the secret formula of the veil that kept anyone but me from seeing the writing beneath a magic shadow, he owned a copy of the demonic grimoire, he just couldn’t use it.
And once he read my little letter, he wouldn’t bother me or mine anymore.  For it warned him that Oceanloft’s Wizard’s Convocation would find his disturbing collection of proscribed books quite fascinating.    I had kept a careful index of his acquisitions over the years, keeping my ears to the underworld traffic in magic books.  The wizards might even be a little put out.  The Wraith King may have put the romance in necromancy, but that did not mean that the wizarding community would be lenient toward some upstart dabbling in dark arts.
As the two henchmen carried between them their still crying friend, I continued up the marble steps of the library.  So, Celador could retire to his pub.  Peony (Gorammit, I like that woman!), when she was done with her adventuring would be able to retire to the pub.  And I?   Well, there was my position at the library.  But the Wraith King, who might be cautious for a while, would certainly be back with his mischief before too long.  Pulling at the long tight tail of my mustache, I considered.  
Well, there was that group of soldiers of fortune that Celador had stumbled into.  Peony would be good company, and there could be any number of interesting people to meet.   The contests sounded entertaining enough to keep me from getting bored.  And the Lecter at the library was always telling me that I needed to get some exercise, although I don’t think he had trudging through dank dungeons in mind when he made the recommendation.