Dungeon Master (Karma System)

Lucian received a high paying emergency contract in a room above an Ironcloud cobbler.

Every strike of the cobbler’s hammer traveled through the floorboards. Customers entered and left without knowing that a second business occupied the upper floor. Lucian had used three Hidden Ledger contact points since arriving in the dwarven stronghold. None resembled the rooms beneath Caldris, but each served the same purpose.

The Ledger intermediary placed a narrow iron case on the table.

”You will not open this until you accept the assignment.” The man said.

Lucian examined the case without touching it. ”Where does it go?”

”A rented room used by an assassin currently held by Ironcloud security. The authorities have identified the district but not the exact address. They should find it within two days.”

”What is inside?”

”Evidence connected to the assassin’s unauthorized contracts. You are not being asked to create, alter, or copy anything.”

”Does the evidence belong to him?”

”It concerns work he knowingly performed. The client wants it found in his hideout.”

Lucian considered the distinction. The objects might not have been stored there before, but they documented real actions. Whoever hired the Ledger wanted Ironcloud to discover a truth without learning who delivered it.

”What am I allowed to know about the client?”

”Nothing beyond the fact that the Ledger verified the evidence as genuine.”

That suited Lucian. Curiosity was not automatically professionalism. If the client’s identity affected his route, safety, or objective, he would ask. If it did not, the secret only created another fact someone might want removed from him. Generally speaking, the less he knew, the safe he was after the job was completed.

The intermediary passed him a sheet. Serrik had rented the upper portion of a narrow building under the name Kel Ordan. The lower floor held a metal polishing business whose owner sublet the rooms. Serrik paid three months in advance, received a rear-door key, and discouraged the owner from entering by claiming he worked night shifts.

”The authorities found the false name on a purchase receipt in Serrik’s clothing.” The intermediary said. ”They are tracing it through shops in the district. Once they speak with the polisher, the rooms will be searched.”

Lucian read the remaining terms. He had to place the evidence inside Serrik’s rooms. Nothing else could be removed, moved, or damaged. The locks must remain functional. No one could learn the Hidden Ledger had entered. Payment was nearly as large as the entire Blackwater Reach contract.

”Is anyone trying to destroy what remains there?”

”Possibly. Someone connected to his unauthorized work may attempt to clean the site.”

”If it has already been cleaned?”

”Place the evidence where it could reasonably have escaped a hurried search. Do not manufacture surrounding material.”

Lucian accepted.

The case contained payment records, coded assignments, contract tokens, and folded instructions. Lucian read only enough to identify which objects belonged together and how they might naturally be stored. Renn’s name appeared beside a description of the ring. Tharic appeared in older instructions. Helmar’s name did not appear in ordinary writing, but several records carried the private Ruskell authentication mark Lucian memorized before traveling to Blackwater Reach.

The connection explained the payment. It did not change the mission.

Lucian spent the afternoon examining Serrik’s district.

Ironcloud buildings rarely stood alone. Workshops occupied spaces carved directly into the mountain, while upper rooms extended over bridges, alleys, and freight channels. Serrik’s building shared walls with a tool seller and an empty storage room. The front entrance opened into the polishing shop. A side stair reached the rented rooms from an enclosed passage used by residents of three buildings.

Lucian identified two possible watchers before dismissing both. One was a debt collector waiting for the tool seller. The other was a young man watching a woman who worked across the passage. Neither reacted when the polisher closed his shop.

The greater concern arrived an hour later.

A broad human man entered the side stair carrying an empty sack. He used a key, remained inside Serrik’s rooms for twenty minutes, and left with the sack half full. He did not look around often enough to appear nervous. Instead, he moved with the confidence of someone who expected any observer to mistake him for a servant clearing a tenant’s belongings.

Lucian followed long enough to learn that the man intended to detect a tail. He entered a crowded lift, left it one level early, crossed through a tavern, and emerged from a kitchen exit after changing his coat. Lucian stopped before the pattern drew him away from the target.

The man had cleaned the room. Whether he carried everything useful remained unknown.

Lucian waited until the darkest hour of night.

The polisher lived elsewhere. The neighboring tool shop closed before sunset, while the rooms above it remained occupied. Lucian approached through the storage room sharing Serrik’s rear wall. Its door had not opened all evening. He crossed the enclosed passage with Stealth concealing him from the windows above, opened the storage lock, and stepped inside.

Dust covered stacked display stands and broken shelving. The shared wall was solid stone except for a ventilation opening near the ceiling. Lucian climbed a shelf, removed the grate without bending its screws, and examined the shaft.

It narrowed before reaching Serrik’s room. Lucian could not pass through it, but it allowed him to inspect the other side.

The cleaner stripped the obvious hiding places. Drawers stood slightly misaligned. A mattress had been lifted and replaced. The hearth ash showed fresh tool marks. Serrik’s room still contained clothing, cheap dishes, lamp oil, and papers supporting his false identity.

Lucian returned the grate and left the storage room.

Entering through Serrik’s door risked leaving evidence in the lock. The window faced a busy vertical passage where lamps burned through the night. The roof provided the better route.

Lucian climbed through the neighboring building, using public stairs until the final occupied floor. A maintenance ladder reached the roof. Ironcloud’s upper winds moved between the towers hard enough to pull at his coat.

Serrik’s chimney emerged six feet from the roof edge. It was too narrow for a person, but the stonework around it had been repaired with removable panels. Lucian loosened one panel and found the service gap used to access the chimney supports. He lowered himself between the outer wall and flue, reached the room’s ceiling, and removed a maintenance plate.

The opening placed him inside a narrow cupboard.

He descended without touching the shelves, replaced the plate, and studied the cleaned room from within.

The authentic evidence could not simply appear beneath the mattress after someone had visibly searched it. Investigators would wonder why a competent cleaner missed an iron case in an empty space. Lucian needed a location the cleaner overlooked for a believable reason, but it couldn’t be to well concealed or the investigator may miss it as well.

Serrik had altered one floorboard beneath a wardrobe. Scratches showed where the cleaner lifted it. The space beneath was empty.

Lucian examined the wardrobe instead.

Its rear panels were thin wood fixed against the stone wall. One had warped near the bottom, creating a gap too shallow for the case but deep enough for loose papers and contract tokens. Dust inside the gap remained undisturbed.

He removed the evidence from its case.

The payment records and coded orders went into a cloth packet supplied by the client. Lucian pressed the packet behind the warped panel, leaving one folded edge caught where an investigator moving the wardrobe could see it. He placed two metal contract tokens deeper inside so they appeared to have slipped from the packet over time.

The iron case did not belong in the room. Lucian folded it along hinges concealed beneath its rim, reducing it to four flat pieces that returned beneath his coat.

He checked the placement from three angles. It did not look arranged for discovery. It looked poorly hidden by someone who believed the wardrobe would remain against the wall.

Lucian examined the rest of the room only for threats to his exit. He ignored a coded address scratched beneath the table and a locked box the cleaner had missed inside the chimney. Neither affected where the evidence rested or whether he could leave. Opening them would turn a precise contract into an uncontrolled search.

Footsteps entered the passage outside.

Lucian moved into the cupboard and waited. A resident stopped beside Serrik’s door, tried the handle, and muttered when it remained locked. A second voice asked whether Kel had finally been arrested. The first man said the polisher believed so. Their footsteps receded toward the stairs.

Lucian remained still for several minutes after the voices disappeared. He then climbed through the maintenance opening, replaced the plate, and returned to the roof. No alarm sounded. No observer reacted. He crossed the upper passages and reached the Ledger contact without using the same route twice.

”The evidence is in place.” Lucian told the intermediary.

”Did you encounter any problems?”

”Someone searched the room shortly before I entered. He removed a half-filled sack and checked the most obvious hiding places, but I found one he overlooked.”

”Any chance someone saw you?”

”No. As far as everyone in that estate knows, I was never there.”

The intermediary accepted the folded case and recorded the mission as complete. Lucian received his payment immediately.

The following afternoon, Ironcloud investigators traced Kel Ordan’s receipt to the polishing shop. The owner identified Serrik from a security image and provided access to the rented rooms.

Their search found little at first. Clothing fit Serrik. The false work history matched his cover identity. Residue in one bottle corresponded to the poison used against the lodging attendant, but none of it identified his employer.

An investigator moved the wardrobe to inspect the wall behind it.

The cloth edge appeared near the floor.

Payment records, coded instructions, and Ruskell contract tokens spread across the room’s only table. Investigators compared the private marks with the letter Midnight had recovered at Tharic’s ancestral stronghold. They couldn’t use it as evidence earlier because the original was lost and it was only a recreation, but now things were different. The same authentication appeared on both.

Serrik’s expression changed when they placed the documents before him.

He expected Malrec to destroy every record. Seeing the assignments meant either Malrec had abandoned him or someone had taken Malrec’s protection away.

”Helmar Ruskell paid for the attack.” The lead investigator said. ”These records also place you on the road where Tharic Ruskell was attacked.”

Serrik looked at the contract token and recognized the mark impressed into its edge.

He remained silent, but the silence no longer protected anyone who intended to protect him.

Across Ironcloud, Lucian ate dinner in a crowded public house and considered which kind of assignment he wanted next. He did not know when authorities searched Serrik’s room. He did not know why the evidence had been surrendered, or which organization employed the assassin.

None of that affected whether he completed the work.

No one knew he had entered the room at all.

The success increased Lucian’s standing inside the Hidden Ledger, but no public reputation followed it. Ironcloud would remember the investigators who found the evidence and the guards who captured Serrik. The absence of Lucian’s name was part of what the client purchased.

It was strange to think that a few months ago he had been a new scout who was just looking for some work. Now he was considered a promising skilled infiltrator.