Chapter 23

The armoured treads of the elf’s sabatons were a steady, dull metallic crunch as she wound her way through the underground grotto. Meliana of the Autumn Veil, bounty hunter, monster killer and exiled bastard heir of Tel Minnor, was very well acquainted with the crowded, gloomy space - once a smuggler’s hold, then a hidden tavern during the prohibition years, and now a meeting place for those looking to trade gold for skills better kept out of the merchant sun.

She took a right, avoiding the eastern caverns where Darjvok the Humourless ran his illicit spice den, and headed directly for the back caverns. One man ruled over the Grotto, and she wasn’t one to try and rub elbows with other killers. One never knew when a grin was simply hiding a blade for when your back was turned in a place like this.

Meliana reached the iron-clad door and pounded on it with her fist until a small viewport slid aside.

“‘Oos it then?” came the craggly voice of the watchkeeper.

“Open the door, Djerek,” Meliana growled quietly. “Before I open it myself.”

“Ah, yes, Mistress,” Djerek grovelled from the other side of the door. “Right away, Mistress.”

The viewport clanged shut, and several loud locks were turned with heavy chunks before the door opened. The elven beauty swept by the decrepit homunculus, its twisted form no longer even an odd curiosity to her. It was the same obsequious, snivelling thing every time.

She strode confidently down the single, dark corridor, unneeding of torchlight with her elven eyes illuminating the darkness. The walls were riddled with doors, some spaced out enough that an entire ballroom could be held behind them, others so close that they couldn’t be more than the width of the doors themselves. She’d only ever seen behind a few of them and wasn’t curious enough to stop and check if any were locked.

“Ah, Lady Meliana,” Stellan Icepick said as she entered his audience chamber at the end of the corridor. “I assume this means that you’ve ... completed the previously requested task?”

Stellan was a man feared by many, both for his appetites and the dangerous information that he gathered and sifted through like a successful prospector seeking gold in a muddy river. He was tall, and pale, his sharply aristocratic features almost elven in their unearthly beauty. His perfectly arranged black hair was long and hung down over his shoulders. He wore a ring on every finger, and his jacket was of red velvet accented with thread of gold while his boots and belt were made of basilisk skin.

The wine glass he held aloft, as usual, was half-filled with blood. Because Stellan was a Vampire.