About that Offer || Nolan & Rye
Rye couldn't help but think everyone who wanted to undermine the Unseelie King had a bit of a flare for the dramatic. And a thing for bartenders. First Thayne, and his poetry of owls spoken to a bartender to retrieve letters that needed to be delivered, and now the halfling who’s name Rye still didn’t know.
But he went to the Broken Arrow, aptly named, in Rye’s opinion, and sat at a table by the window for a little while. He noticed the bartender. She was short, pale, average looking, really. No one that would stand out in a crowd. With long brunette hair tied back with an emerald green ribbon, just as the halfling had said. Rye stayed at the table for about an hour, ordering a drink and nursing it for entirety of the time, carefully noting each person that came in, though he never made eye contact, and made sure the hood of his cloak kept his face partially hidden from anyone that glanced over towards him. He wasn’t sure if the bartender had similarly been told of Rye’s appearance, and wouldn’t give the correct directions to anyone else, so he didn’t want to use a glamour, for fear of scaring off either her or the halfling boy.
Finally Rye drained the remainder of the bottle and set it back on the table, adjusting his hood as he made his way up to the bar. He’d bene hoping to wait for the tavern to clear out some, and there really weren’t many patrons there, but they all seemed to be at the bar, right near the brunette hob.
“Another drink for ya, sir?” She asked politely as he approached.
Rye put on a wide smile, stumbling a bit and slurring his words purposefully, to excuse the odd exchange that needed to happen. “No, no— no more drinks fer me,” Rye mumbled, shaking his head adamantly, before pausing as though the motion had given him a headache. “No, wonderin’ in you might help me. See, I heard a banshee wailin’. Wonder if you heard it, my dear? Did you hear the banshee wail?”
Her eyebrows quirked up and she looked him over, before rolling her eyes and looking to the man that sat on the barstool beside Rye, and mouthed the words, ‘another one.’ She looked back at Rye and winked before putting on an exaggerated look of concern. “I did, you know, what? I heard the banshee wailin’. Quite an awful sound it was too. Out behind the old woodworker’s shop ‘round the corner. Why dontcha get outta my bar and go find yer banshee, huh? Got work to do here.”
Quite an awful sound it was. The response he was told to listen for. Rye smiled a little, but passed it off as drunken victory for having his story confirmed. He tipped his head in exaggerated fashion as he grinned at her. “Thank ya much, madam. Think I’l do that.” He turned and grinned at the man on the barstool. “Gonna go stop that damn banshee wailin’, I will. Been keeping me up all hours.”
“Good luck to ya, out with ya now,” the bartender called out as Rye left the bar, stumbling a little until he got outside. He straightened the hood on his cloak, his footsteps less clumsy and more purposeful as he made his way to the woodworker’s shop. It was a front, he was fairly certain, for a dealer that supplied mara root to the locals. There was hardly any other reasoning that made sense— the shop was almost always closed, and Rye never saw any customers in there when it was open.
He rounded the corner and made his way down the alleyway between the woodworker’s shop and another tavern, and peered around the corner to the back of the shop. “You’d better be here,” he whispered more to himself than anyone else as he squinted into the darkness.