Asher Converse's Arc

Chapter 20 of 30

The two door men still watched the mirror when Chalam came in from the alley. The wizard moved fast, his blue robe open at the chest, his staff tapping the floor. Asher knew him as the man he'd repaid in the grove, now his ally. Chalam had spent months chasing why a god went silent three hundred years back. He read Asher's face and read the room in one look. "Two men at the door," Asher said low. "They know a trapdoor's here. They mean to find it before the new moon." Chalam set his staff against the bar. "Then they can't remember tonight." He opened his satchel and took a pinch of pale chalk. "I can pull the last hour from their heads. The cellar, the mirror, why they came. Gone. But I need them still and I need them close." "Tucker," Asher said. Tucker was already leaning on the bar, chains catching the lamp. He grinned. "Two mugs, on the house. Watch." He carried the round to the door men himself and dropped into the empty chair beside them like an old friend. He bought their attention with a story and a joke Asher couldn't hear. The men laughed. They forgot to watch the mirror. Chalam crossed behind them, quiet, and pressed chalk-dusted fingers to the back of each man's neck. He spoke three words under his breath. The men's faces went slack for a breath, then loose and easy again. They blinked. One looked at his mug like he didn't know how it got full. "It's done," Chalam said, back at the bar. "They don't know why they sat here. They'll finish the drink and go." He wiped his hand clean. "But the man who sent them isn't wiped. He'll send more." Asher watched the two men drink, dull and content now. His hidden room had held. His cellar was still a secret. That was the win, and it was real. But it wouldn't last past one night's work of chalk. "I need the ledger," Asher said. "The one with the shop deed and the coin count. If they come back, I want to know who owns every wall around us." He turned to Tucker. "It's in my room, above the shop. On the shelf." Tucker went up the stairs. Asher heard him stop in the doorway above. When he came down he held the ledger, but his mind was somewhere else. "You keep it clean up there," Tucker said. He set the book on the bar. "Smells like cedar. That good shirt on the hook." He grinned, slow. "A man could get ideas, sent up there alone." "Oh, yeah?," Asher chuckled. He opened the ledger. The door men rose, paid, and left with no idea they'd come hunting. Chalam picked up his staff. "You bought a night," he said. "He'll want the trapdoor found harder now, since two of his men came home empty."