Having spent quite some time in the villages in Kirton, it was late afternoon by the time they arrived in Wathamalin. The first thing they needed was to secure a place to stay for the night. It would not be good to be on the streets at night in any town. Braydon was not about to start taking chances when he had two very pretty companions with him. Thankfully Wathamalin was somewhat of a waypoint in east Fiveria, with travellers coming through all the time. There was anything but a dearth of inns.

Having chosen an inn relatively central to the town, they still had a few hours left in the day. Braydon decided to ask the owner of the tavern if he knew of any prospectors living in town. It was amazing the amount of news a tavern could collect. Gerald, on the other hand was right at home in a tavern, acting buddy buddy with the perennial drinkers. Braydon wondered if he was even taking his duties seriously.

“Oh, no. I have not heard of such a thing from the louts in here. You may have more luck asking among the craftsmen. They’d love a new source of iron, I doubt they would not know of such a valuable guest in town.”

“Do you know where the craftsmen’s quarter is in Wathamalin? Or which are the particularly famous workshops?” Braydon asked, hopeful that the bigger names would have more information on possible sources for their crafts.

“Well, they tend not to like being disturbed unless it is for a commission. You might have more luck with the forgers guild, the guilds tend to aggregate the rumours circling in the craft. They have one of their main branches in the centre of town.” This was good news for Braydon, he had heard that the guilds held a lot of power here. But enough to warrant setting up a branch outside of the capital?

“Do you know if they are still open?”

“Probably not at this hour, most craftsmen go to the guild branches in the morning and early afternoon.” It didn’t matter much, they had planned to stay the night anyway.

“Thank you for your time.”

“No worries, Sir, it was not any grand secret anyway.”

Braydon returned to Nela and Mireille, who were seated at a table in the corner. Their looks had attracted a lot of attention from around the bar. Somehow, though, Gerald had managed to keep unwanted company away from the pair, despite looking like he was paying no attention and making merry with other people. In truth, most of them were people who had tried to start a conversation with Nela or Mireille but had been intercepted by Gerald.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting?” Upon sitting across the table from the two, they started talking.

“Not at all, in fact Gerald’s antics have been keeping us quite amused.” Amusing was one way to describe Gerald. Not one Braydon was fond of using, he didn’t want to give Gerald the satisfaction.

“It looks like the most hopeful way to find our mysterious prospector is visiting the forger’s guild in the morning.” At Braydon’s news, Nela nodded. It was too late to start looking all over town for their prospector now.

“What time should we leave, tomorrow? We can’t just keep looking until we find the man, so a time limit is necessary.” She asked, clearly more interested in talking to the peasantry than spending another evening amongst the drunkards.

“Let's say we leave midafternoon, it should give us enough time to take a ‘stroll’ around Baron Walker’s lands.” 

“Agreed. Any later would be pushing it, and I don’t want Mireille to spend too many nights in a tavern. It would not be good for her to learn this particular skill set from Gerald.” To this Braydon laughed. Partly because of the swipe she took at Gerald, and partly because Gerald had heard her and almost stumbled over his feet.

The next morning they headed to the forgers guild, accompanied by the moaning of both Gerald and Braydon. One for the hangover, and the other that he was woken up in the morning at all. Of course their female companions were in much better shape than them. And at least one of them took much delight in the men’s plight, especially Gerald’s self inflicted pain.

 By the time they had arrived, Braydon was more awake and ready to start the day. Gerald had learnt that his complaints only brought more giggles from behind and had taken the opportunity to stay quiet. The guild itself was quite a large building, built from stone. It could easily be mistaken for a theatre from the outside, but the inside looked more like a large tavern. Of course there were a number of side rooms and offices for other purposes, but it looked like forgers had a penchant for drinking in eastern Fiveria. 

“Nothing like the forgers guild in the capital, that's for sure.” Nela made a comment about the place.”

“Aye, we don’t like the stuck up pricks in the capital either. Too much pomp and pageantry.” A middle aged man said as he entered the guild behind them, he continued walking past their group into the ‘tavern’. It seems their group had caught the attention of most of the forgers and their apprentices in the area, looking too out of place among the burly men and young boys, all dressed in more practical attire. Though Braydon was sure half of them only noticed their group was because of how loud the man had been.

“So what now?” Gerald asked.

“Well, we are not going to ask every single person here if they happen to know any prospectors.” Braydon felt good being the one to get a quip back at Gerald for once.

“Ask some of the people who work directly for the guild, see who is knowledgeable. And more importantly who is willing to talk to us.” Nela gave a proper response. For all her mischief, she apparently had a rather large distaste for taverns. Hence her desire to be as efficient as possible.

“Gerald, you go try and find somebody who appears more willing to talk amongst the people drinking, see what you can find. But, for the love of all things holy, do not start drinking in the morning.” Braydon’s comment got a snort from Gerald, still miffed that he was not the one giving the quips. He blamed it on the hangover.

“I was at least going to wait until lunch…”

“On the other hand, the three of us will be going to find somebody more official to ask if they have heard anything.” Braydon ignored Gerald’s half hearted response as he stated his intentions. The other two found it interesting that Gerald was on the losing end of an exchange for once. And upon seeing that he still garnered no sympathy, Gerald gave up and decided the forgers would be better company for his hangover.

“Now, let us try and see if we can find somebody who can help us.” And with that they set about their tasks. Gerald perked up as his conversations went on, a mix of more sympathy and a slight bit of drinking when he was sure the others weren’t looking. On Braydon’s side they had been directed by a waiter towards an office to the side of the room. It was apparently the office of the person in charge of managing requests from both forgers and customers alike. They were lucky that nobody had come in before them wanting a request, the waiter had told them that many could take a long time.

“And what can I do for you?” The man sat at the desk could at best be described as bland, the kind of face you would forget the moment you stopped thinking about him. After the three of them got seated Braydon asked.

“We would like to ask if anyone in the guild knows if the rumours of a retired prospector living in town are true? And if so would we be able to meet this person to request their assistance.” The clerk was taken aback, not the usual request one would give to the forging guild. Though he quickly was able to reply, there had definitely been weirder requests to date.

“I can confirm for you now that the rumour is true, he has been here for a couple years now. The problem is that he hasn’t taken on any work as far as I can tell. He has a bit of an odd attitude, so it's hard to tell what he is thinking. I can get you a meeting with him, but heaven knows if he’ll agree to anything.” Well that was good news. He had presumed they would need to put in more effort to find the man, but apparently the bigger challenge would be getting him to agree to help.

“In fact he comes into the guild everyday about this time, to drink, and stays until we close.” When the clerk said this, Braydon could almost feel Nela cringe behind him. He wondered if her aversion to drinking came from her ‘fiancée’s’ famous escapades and love for being drunk whilst he did them.

As the clerk led them out, he tried to find Gerald amongst the crowd. Who he reliably found drinking. Though he happened to be drinking with the middle aged man who had entered the guild shortly after them.

The clerk led them through the tables towards Gerald, surprising the three of them. It dawned on Braydon that Gerald might already have made drinking buddies with the very man they were trying to find. And not only that he was the man they had walked into the building with.

“This is Master Aran Weston, the person you are looking for. If you need me for anything else you know where to find me.” With that the clerk returned to his office, leaving a rather stunned Gerald in his wake. 

“Greetings Master Weston, I have something I would like to request of you.”

Darkwood

Hi Hi. I'm sure you are getting sick of my comments but hey, I'm the author. A little progress report on my editing, chapters 1-7 are now done.

I am thinking of pulling my releases forwards by an hour so that they would come out at 11am/pm gmt rather than the current 12am/pm gmt. Not that many of you read my story instantly, I read the statistics. =P

Also, come join me on Discord and hang out, here!