POV: Bex
Bex had a system.
She had built it over three years of surviving Irongate alone and it was a good system, a tight system, a system with exactly zero flaws that she could identify. Step one: find the new supply delivery. Step two: wait until the owner went inside. Step three: be fast, be quiet, take only what wouldn't be immediately missed. Step four: be gone before anyone counted anything.
Three days in a row she had run this system on the new tavern's back delivery crate and three days in a row it had worked perfectly.
She came around the back corner at five in the morning on day four, moving low and quiet along the alley wall the way she had learned to move when she was twelve and the alternative to quiet was getting caught, and stopped dead.
The tavern owner was sitting on the back steps.
Not pacing. Not holding a weapon. Not even looking particularly alert. Just sitting on the steps in the cold morning dark with a lamp beside her and two plates of food actual food, hot food, food that smelled like it had been cooked by someone who knew what they were doing and looking at Bex with an expression that was not angry and not surprised and not the specific face of someone who was about to call the city guard.
Bex did not move.
Her brain ran through her exits in under a second. Left alley, right alley, back over the wall the way she came. All three were clear. She could be gone before this woman stood up.
She didn't move.
"You're fast," the woman said. "I've been watching the crate for two days trying to catch you and I couldn't. That's actually impressive."
Bex said nothing. She was very good at saying nothing. It gave you more information than talking did.
"I'm Mira." The woman slid one of the plates across the step toward her. "I need someone fast."
Bex looked at the plate. Eggs. Real eggs, cooked soft, with something green in them that smelled like herbs. Bread on the side, actual bread, not the hard end-pieces that got thrown out. A small pot of something that turned out, when the smell reached her, to be tea.
She knew a trap when she saw one.
She sat down on the bottom step and ate the eggs because she had been awake since three and they were very good and the cold was getting into her bones and some traps were worth walking into if the bait was hot food.
Mira let her eat half the plate before she said anything else. Bex noted this as a point in her favor. People who let you eat before they started talking were more trustworthy than people who didn't.
"I need one person," Mira said. "Nights, mostly. Help with tables, keep track of orders, watch the room." She paused. "The customers are they're a lot. Some of them are very large. Some of them have done things that would make a normal person nervous."
"I'm not a normal person," Bex said.
"I can see that."
Bex ate another bite. "How much?"
Mira told her. Small wage, room in the back, three meals a day.
Bex put her fork down. "Why me? You could hire someone from the guild boards. Someone bigger. Someone with I don't know, actual qualifications."
"I don't need big," Mira said. "Big is everywhere in this city. I need quick. I need someone who looks at a room full of people and knows which table is about to start a problem before it starts. I need someone who can carry four bowls and remember six orders and be on the other side of the room before the customer finishes asking." She looked at Bex with steady brown eyes. "You've been stealing from me for three days and I couldn't catch you until I cheated and sat outside. That's the skillset I need."
Bex was quiet for a moment.
She looked at the plate. She looked at Mira. She looked at the back door of the tavern, which was propped open slightly and through which she could see the edge of a clean kitchen and smell the banked-down fire and something that might have been fresh bread rising.
A room in the back meant a door that locked. It meant a bed. It meant waking up somewhere that was hers, at least a little, in a city where nothing had been hers for three years.
"Four meals," Bex said.
Mira blinked. "What?"
"You said three meals a day. I want four."
"That's just that's called snacking, that's not a meal "
"Four meals," Bex said. "Or I want the wage increased by five coins a week."
Mira looked at her for a moment. Something moved in her expression that was not quite a smile but was in the same neighborhood. "Three meals and a snack," she said. "Final offer."
Bex picked up her fork. "Deal."
The room in the back was small.
It had a cot and a hook on the wall and a window that faced the alley, and the ceiling was low enough that someone tall would have had a problem with it, but Bex was not tall and she had been sleeping in worse places than this for long enough that the cot felt almost indulgent. She put her bag under it not much in the bag, there was never much in the bag and she sat on the edge and looked at the four walls that were hers for as long as she did the job.
She had not had four walls since she was eleven.
She did not think about why that was. She was very good at not thinking about certain things. It was one of her best skills, right up there with moving fast and reading rooms and knowing exactly when a situation was about to turn bad.
Mira knocked on the open door. "First shift starts at fifth bell," she said. "I'll show you the layout before customers come in."
"I'll be ready," Bex said.
Mira started to leave. Stopped. Turned back. "Is there anything I should know? About you. About anyone who might be looking for you."
The question was careful. Not accusatory. Just the question of someone who was building something and wanted to know what they were building on.
Bex thought about what to say.
"I grew up in the dungeon scavenger camps," she said finally. "Floor entry points, lower levels. My family ran with a crew. We're they're not around anymore. I've been on my own for three years." She met Mira's eyes. "Nobody's looking for me."
She believed that when she said it.
Fifth bell. The bar opened. Customers came in ones and twos and then in a rush, the way water comes through a crack slow and then all at once.
Bex moved through it like she was born to it, which in a way she was. Reading tables was just reading people and she had been reading people for survival since before she could properly reach a countertop. She had four orders memorized before she reached the kitchen and she was back out before the second wave hit the door.
She liked it. She hadn't expected to like it.
First customer: an old scout who wanted the soup and no bread. Second customer: two young raiders who argued about splitting the bill and tipped generously out of guilt. Third customer
Bex turned from the counter with a full tray and looked straight into a face she knew.
The tray stayed level because her hands were steady even when the rest of her wasn't. She had learned that young. Keep your hands steady. Keep your face still. Give nothing away.
But her heart was doing something loud and complicated in her chest because that face that specific face, older now, harder now, but unmistakably the same belonged to someone who was supposed to be two hundred miles away and who had last seen her on the worst night of her life.
He was looking at her.
He recognized her.
His mouth started to open.
Bex set the tray down on the nearest table, smiled at the customer like nothing was wrong, and thought very fast about how many exits the Dungeon Door had and whether Mira would notice if her brand new staff member ran out of one of them before the end of the first shift.