Asher Converse's Arc

Chapter 12 of 30

The cellar was a gift, but the ladder was a problem. A gaping trapdoor in the warehouse floor told every patron there was more below. Asher wanted the cellar hidden. A drunk who found the stairs would find the casks, and worse, the space where fighters could gather unseen. He climbed back up and stood over the black hole. "We wall it off," he said. "Build a room around it. One floor for the crowd. The stairs stay a secret." Tucker came up the ladder behind him, brushing dust from his vest. He ran the bar for his share of the drink money, and he liked things that made him coin, not things that cost it. "A whole room," he said. "That's lumber. That's Ajax's gate and his prices." He tucked a thumb in his belt, gold bracelet catching the lantern. "Buried things stay buried cheaper." "We use the timber from the wall we knocked down," Asher said. He'd already counted the boards. "Corner room. Small door. The stairs sit behind it." They worked through the day. Asher held the frame while Tucker drove the nails. They raised four walls in the far corner, snug around the trapdoor. Asher cut the ladder short and built proper stairs down into the dark, then fit a plain door over the top of them. From the tavern floor it looked like a storeroom. Nothing more. Asher hauled the last board across his shoulder and set it in place. Sweat ran down his chest, past the open buttons of his shirt. His gold chain stuck to his skin. He drove the final nail and stepped back to test the door. It swung clean and quiet. He turned and caught Tucker looking. Not at the door. At his arms, where the sleeves pulled tight over the muscle. Tucker held the look a beat too long, then found the lantern very interesting. "Something on my shoulder?" Asher asked. "Sawdust." Tucker brushed at nothing on his own vest. His grin came slow and easy. "You build a good wall, Converse. I'll give you that." Asher let it go. He knew what he'd seen. He filed it away, the way he filed every useful thing. They stood in the new room together. Two doors now: the plain one to the tavern, and the hidden one to the stairs. Only they knew what the corner held. "Now it's a real base," Asher said. "A room to drink in, and a room nobody sees." He set his hand on the hidden door. "Wandering men come for the ale. The wizard's fighters come for the cellar. Same roof." Tucker looked at the corner and shook his head. "You wanted a tavern. You’re built a fort with a bar in front of it." "Both," Asher said. He blew out the lantern. In the dark, the corner room was just a wall like any other. That was the point.