Asher Converse's Arc

Chapter 14 of 30

Elixir ran full most nights now. Asher liked the crowd, but the crowd was a problem. His fighters needed to meet without a hundred ears listening. The hidden room under the warehouse worked, but the door to it ran through the taproom. Every man who slipped down there passed the front of the bar first. Asher wanted a way in that no patron would see. He found it behind the bar. A shop stood there, empty, its door facing the back alley. He measured the shared wall one morning while Tucker counted mugs. "Buy that shop," Asher said. "We knock a door through this wall. Men come in from the alley and reach the cellar stairs without crossing the floor." Tucker set down a mug. His gold chains swung as he leaned on the bar. "Storage too," he said. "We could hide half a wagon in there." He looked at Asher a moment longer than the words needed. His eyes dropped to Asher's chest, to the gold chain resting there, then came back up. He grinned like a man who had been caught and did not mind. Asher let it pass. He had learned to let it pass. "Find the owner," he said. They found him drinking at Asher's own bar. The shop had sat empty two years, and the man wanted rent he no longer earned. Asher named a price below what the man asked. The man frowned and named a higher one. Asher slid three coins across the wood and offered a month of free drink on top. "You keep coming here anyway," Asher said. "Now it costs you nothing." The man took the coins and shook on it. By afternoon the shop was Asher's. He and Tucker swung hammers at the shared wall until stone and timber gave way. Dust hung thick in the lantern light. When the hole was wide enough, Asher stepped through into the empty shop. He looked back at the taproom, then forward at the alley door. "A man comes in the back," Tucker said, wiping sweat from his mustache. "Nobody at the bar ever sees him. He's at the cellar stairs before you've poured a pint." Asher hung a curtain over the new gap and stacked crates in front of it. To any patron, the wall was still a wall. He set a bolt on the alley door and kept the key himself. Elixir had a secret way in now. His fighters could gather unseen, arrive unseen, leave unseen. The bar above stayed loud and open, a house for wandering men, exactly as he wanted it. Asher checked the alley bolt twice.