:That should suit you, considering the mood you’re in.: Kantor was not being ironic nor sarcastic this time.

:As a matter of fact,: Alberich replied, :it does.:

By day, the tavern that was his goal, the Boar, was a quiet enough tavern, serving manual laborers at the nearby warehouses. At night, however, it took on a rougher clientele. Some of the laborers returned to drink away their earnings, and they were joined by others, for whom the warehouses were of less-than-legitimate interest. Aarak fit right in there; he might hire himself out as a day laborer, if he was inclined to do manual labor, or forced into it, but he would far rather serve as the lookout for thugs who planned a little late-night looting.

Alberich let himself out into the alley. It was dark back there, shadowed on both sides by tall buildings, but he knew his way around Haven even in pitchy black. He kept to the alleys for the most part, only crossing streets when he had to, and at length, found himself in the warehouse area where the Boar stood.

There was a lot of coming and going around a warehouse, and no one asked what was being stored there very often. And, of course, warehouses were full of things that were already packed for transportation; what could be more attractive and easier for a bold gang of thieves?

Alberich had been recruited by such gangs, once or twice, though never out of the Blue Boar, and never as Aarak. He had hopes, though, and he nursed his thin, sour beer at a table here several times a moon, waiting to see if his patient fishing would catch him another gang of thieves.

He opened the door quietly. It wasn’t a good idea to make any kind of an entrance into the Boar. There were always people there who would take that sort of hubris amiss.

Flash of blue—a tangle of thrashing bodies on the floor—

He paused, just inside the door, and caught himself.

Damn. Come on. Don’t show anything, or you’re dead. He shoved on inside the door on strength of will, until his vision cleared and he could pretend that he hadn’t just had a flash of ForeSight.

The regular servers knew him by now, or at least, they knew Aarak’s distinctive hat. He caught the eye of one, nodded at a vacant table off to one side of the room, and took his seat there. Within a reasonable length of time, the server appeared with a jack of beer.

Despite Kantor’s needling, he’d had a few hopes that someone might try to recruit him tonight—a full moon now meant moon-dark in a fortnight, and moon-dark meant the possibility of work.