Lucas nodded, leaving the other half of the question unanswered. “Then we can kill Kegan.”

“Sounds good to me, boss. I’ll be looking forward to killing my first noble.” She stepped away so that she was no longer leaning over his shoulder as he worked, pulled out a dagger, and began spinning it around on the palm of her hand. She looked incredibly cool when she did it at first, like she was a real professional, but then she messed up. The knife flew out of her hand and clattered against the floor.

Nick laughed, and Lucas had to stop himself from joining in as he watched her quickly bend over to pick it up, covering her cleavage with one hand so that she didn’t spill out of her top. She straightened up and gave them a “nothing to see here” look.

“Well, we have what we need. Put these back where you found them, and let’s get out of here before anyone notices we were ever here at all.” Lucas passed the real accounting book and seal back to Nick so that he could stash them where he found them. He knew that he should have put the journal back too if he wanted to make sure that Kegan didn’t notice their presence, but some nagging feeling in the back of his mind encouraged him to keep it.

What are you doing keeping the journal? Lucas shook his head, took one last long glance at the painting of Kegan and his wife, and then opened up the trap door and began his descent back down into the cavern below.

“So, not to be optimistic and claim the bounty early,” Bonnie began, giving Lucas a big wide-eyed and expectant look, “but I think the first quest was successful, wouldn’t you say?”

Lucas didn’t want to jinx it since he had actually messed up horribly by taking Kegan’s journal, but he couldn’t outright ignore her question either. “Yeah, it should be.”

“Then . . .” Bonnie’s grin grew bigger. “You think it’s okay to pay us those five gold coins yet? I mean, you got to go make that whole accounting book and whatnot, and that’s gonna take time right? So, paying me now would be okay, right?”

“Five gold coins, is it?” Lucas looked over at Nick. He hadn’t expected the greedy kid who had swallowed his own pride for money to not cheat the one person he had managed to hire. The fact that Nick didn’t act as the middleman and skim even a single coin was shocking.

“Yeah, boss,” Bonnie asserted. “That’s what Nick told me: five gold coins. And don’t even try to cheat me a copper.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Lucas pulled out six gold coins, tossed Bonnie five of them, and then threw one to a confused Nick, who likely didn’t expect to get anything more for this particular quest since Lucas had already paid him. “Now, if you two wanna go level, have at it. Just make sure not to kill any Imperium. I’m going to need a bit of time to finish creating the replica accounting book, so go have fun.”