Xerius Xinium's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Xerius Xinium had paid for three quiet nights at the lodging house, and the widow ruined the first one before the lamps were lit. She dragged a stool from somewhere across the lane and set it under his window. On the stool she balanced a small shrine of river stones and a folded coat. She sat down beside it and waited where every passerby could see her. Xerius watched from behind the shutter and counted the people who slowed to look. He had come to this town for a name. A merchant here had hired blades to clear a tenant family off good land, and the family had died in the clearing. Xerius hunted that kind of work. He ran a thin order of people who tracked killers through court records, tavern debts, and land disputes. The order stayed small and scattered because powerful men noticed crowds. A woman keeping vigil at his door was a crowd of one, and one was enough. She knocked at dusk. He let her in because the alternative was worse. She was thin and steady-eyed and she set a wrapped bundle on his table without asking. Inside the cloth lay a crystal dagger, the blade streaked with two colors of dried blood. "His and the man who killed him," she said. "He cut the bastard before he fell. I pulled it out of my husband myself." She told Xerius a name. She told him she had asked everywhere for the person who hunted such men, and a tavern keeper three towns over had given her his description. "Take the work," she said, "or I walk to the station house at the end of the lane and I scream until the constable comes out." Xerius knew the constable by reputation. A man named Rook ran the post here, took coin from the same merchants Xerius hunted, and would happily trade a strange robed traveler for a quiet week. If the widow stood in the lane and named Xerius aloud, Rook would have him in irons by morning and the order would lose a year of careful work. Xerius looked at the dagger. He looked at her face. He thought about his brother, who had come to him the same way once, carrying grief like a weapon and asking for a name in return. He had given his brother a name. He had never been sure it was mercy. "I'll take it," he said. "Go home. Burn the stool. Tell no one you found me." She nodded once and left the dagger on his table. He wrapped it again and slid it into his pack. The vigil outside was gone within the hour, but the bargain stayed. He had a new name to chase, a witness who could ruin him, and a constable down the lane who would notice, sooner or later, that a stranger in robes had taken an interest in a local merchant. He blew out the lamp and began to pack.