Mouse plopped a sack of coins onto the nightstand beside Taiga. The coins jangled and Mouse put his hands on his hips in triumph. “We won’t have to worry about supplies for a while. We can even get Sweet Bun those special grubs from west town!”

  “Did you… steal them?” Taiga eyed the sack warily. He closed the book he read in the small candlelight.

  “Of course not! What do you take me for?” Mouse checked the stones beneath the blankets, pulling them out when their coolness met his dissatisfaction.

  “I take you for my partner with a hobby of theft.”

  He liked that word, ‘partner’. Fondness emanated from the word as Taiga spoke it. He took the stones and left to warm them and the teapot of water. Once he returned, he made Taiga a hot cup of tea to warm him and placed the heat stones back beneath the blankets.

  Taiga sipped the tea, shuffling beneath the covers a little more. “So, where’d you get the money?”

  “I earned it.” Mouse grabbed a blanket of furs and wool and wrapped it over Taiga’s shoulders. When he drew close, he noticed Taiga’s fingers trembling. “How’s your head?”

  “Fine at the moment.” He adjusted the furs around him and buried his face into their warmth. “There’s no way your trip to the rip funded that sack, even if you came across a demon or two.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “So, explain.” Taiga patted the space beside him for Mouse to sit. He obliged, and began telling him the story.

  “You remember how I ran into those three guys in the alleyway?”

  Taiga nodded. “You told me they tried mugging you.”

  “Yeah, it’s related to them.”

  When Mouse passed through the walls of Winolin after visiting the rip, a cart collapsed to the side of the road. With the snow having finished for the day, Mouse took the time to help pick up the fallen goods off the ground, where they began soaking through.

  “You expect me to believe you helped people? Of your own free will?”

  “I was feeling oddly generous!”

  Taiga eyed him, and so Mouse rectified his words. “Okay, I got a helper’s fee.”

  “Mh-hm, that sounds more accurate.”

  After picking up the last item and setting it carefully onto the cart, the man thanked him. He told him he’d follow through on payment for the help, and reached into his pocket. But what the man pulled out was not a reward, but a knife.

  The man held it to Mouse’s stomach. “You’ll come with me, nice and quietly.”

  Mouse blinked at the small metal blade. He stifled giddiness from his voice. He loved being threatened. “What’s going on?”

  “A little payback for what you did to my buddies a while ago.” The man shoved Mouse forward and stuck the knife against his back. “Keep walking, and don’t draw any attention, got it?”

  At the corner, the man jerked Mouse to the right, and they followed the road until they made another right turn. He hadn’t been to this area of town before, and the lack of people was likely the man’s intention. With a forced left turn, Mouse faced a deadend. He turned back to the man, only for three more to join behind him.

  “Head down.” One of the men reached out, grabbing Mouse’s hair in one fist and forcing his head bowed. Then, black cloth rammed over his head and burdened his sight. The stench of the dirty streets filled the bag, unfortunately.

  Someone pushed him from behind, and Mouse stumbled forward. “Walk.” It was the voice of the man who led him there.

  “And you… let them do this?”

  Mouse nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Well,” Mouse smiled, “I was bored, I guess.”

  They forced him to walk for another ten or so minutes. Down some steps and through two different doors. He tried remembering the way back but well, he gave up the idea when he realized he could just wander his way around to get out.

  When he was forced to his knees, the bag ripped off his head. He blinked a few times before looking around himself. Six people, including the underlings he’d beat up before and the non-underling. Them, plus the four that led him to the room, left the smallish space crowded beyond Mouse’s liking.

  The older man in the center of the room sat behind a desk of black wood. It reminded him of the table he’d spotted in Captain Farren’s manor, though nothing else in the room resembled anything else of such caliber. The old man tapped a finger to his temple, looking down on Mouse.

  His scar over his eye must’ve hindered his sight, but the glazed look of it stared down at him nonetheless. “Do you know why I called you here?”

  Called? This didn’t really fit the definition of ‘call’ that Mouse knew, but he supposed humans did enjoy the flexibility of their languages.

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  “Uh, no. No one told me anything.” He slit a smile towards Non-Underling.

  “Mouse. We’ve talked about giving these weird nicknames to people.”

  “What, should I have asked his name at some point?” Mouse tossed his hands up in the air. “Like when I stabbed his foot?”

  Taiga waved it off, rubbing a finger between his brow. “Fine, continue.”

  “You!!” Non-Underling reddened, boiling over until the older man raised a hand to silence him.

  “I see your bravery. You must be quite something, holding such a facade in front of so many.” A few of the men laughed, though Mouse didn’t know why. Was he not giving him a compliment?

  Surely, there was some insult there, but Mouse could also give insult back by accepting it, right? Taiga always told him to give his appreciation. He grinned as wide as he could. “Thanks!”

  “Not like that!”

  The old man grimaced at Mouse. “We’ll see how long that ‘bravery’ lasts. Know, fool. This is what you earn by messing with my people. By messing with The Ravenguild.”

  Damn. Who knew messing with ‘his people’ led to so much fun? He’d surely have to do it again someday. And what a cool name. ‘Ravenguild’. Though he saw no ravens around. Perhaps they specialized in raven linlao? The older man, Raven Man, signalled two of them behind Mouse, and they shoved down on his shoulders, forcing his head to bow deep.

  “A message for you, if you will. And a warning to what happens when you mess with my people.” When Raven Man lowered his hand, the person holding Mouse’s head slammed it down into the floor.

  Well, he would have, if Mouse let him. Which he didn’t. Instead Mouse froze his body in place, and the human’s measly strength did nothing other than flatten his curls for a few moments. He kept still, even as the human tried to force his head into the ground two, three, four times.

  “What are you doing?” Raven Man’s tone peaked in annoyance.

  “No, it’s not…” Someone else from behind slammed his hands on Mouse, though it made no difference. “It’s not me!”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” Mouse stood despite the two humans’ efforts. Oh, the look on Non-Underling’s face would be something he’d remember with such fondness. The paleness of their faces, the agape mouth of Raven Man, the instant panic in ‘his people’s’ eyes.

  How he’d enjoy this.

  And then take a bath immediately when he got back to the guildhall to get those filthy humans’ touch off him.

  But until then, this moment was his.

  He swung around, gripping the wrist of the fool that messed up his curls and snapped it sideways. The fool cried out, and—

  “Stop. I don’t need the details.” Taiga groaned. “I keep telling you not to act reckless. There’s no human that can match your strength.”

  “I took care of it!” Mouse raised his head proudly.

  “... how?”

  “Do you want me to skip the fighting part?”

  “Ideally.”

  Mouse squatted down in front of Raven Man’s face and pushed a bloodied lock of hair from his face. “So, uh, not sure what your message was but,” he smiled as Raven Man’s eyes flitted to him in pain and anger.

  His face was smashed quite lovely against the hard floor, and Mouse briefly wondered if Raven Man would be able to use that shoulder of his ever again. Mouse had shattered it when the man tried striking him, after all.

  “I have a message for you, too. A fun little letter exchange, hmm?” Mouse laughed a bit as a bubble of excitement came up his throat. He could kill them. That would be fun. But Taiga wouldn’t approve.

  “Oh, so you do know that, hmm?”

  “I’m telling you not to make too much of a scene about all this, okay? Not that you can, being a criminal yourself and all. But in case you need the incentive… let’s see… I’ll let you live. I won’t even turn you into the mercenary guild for now.” This was actually because Mouse didn’t know how to get so many people back to the guildhall for a potential reward, so he’d planned to leave a few behind anyway.

  After a begrudged surrender, Mouse rounded the ones in easy reach, and definitely Non-Underling and the two Underlings themselves, and wrapped their hands in rope to prevent escape.

  He put Non-Underling at the front of the line to give him directions on the way out of the building and back towards the streets he was familiar with.

  “And this is where you got the money from? Rewards?

  “Yep!”

  The commissioner’s mouth dropped as Mouse brough the line of them in front of his desk. “What is this?”

  “They jumped me and dragged me to their hideout. Said they’re part of the Ravenguild. I wanted to know if there’s a reward for them or something.” Mouse looked over the eight or so men he brought back with him. A few avoided eye contact, having acted out on the way there and been forced to Mouse’s submission.

  “The Ravenguild?” A woman’s voice came out from behind the commissioner’s desk. The guildmaster blinked at him and then towards the line of men from where she rounded the desk and pillar. “All of these?”

  “Are you kidding?” Non-Underling hissed at Mouse. “You’re part of the mercenary guild?”

  “Yeah.” Both Non-UNderling and the guildmaster seemed to accept his answer to their questions, which was fine by him.

  “No wonder we couldn’t beat you. What, are you some hot-shot from Pall or something?” Non-Underling mumbled while the guildmaster walked the line of them.

  “They’re wanted. So we’ll give you the appropriate award.” She nodded to the commissioner, who immediately took out some small blue book.

  Taiga handed Mouse his empty teacup. “The Ravenguild, huh?”

  Mouse nodded, accepting the cup and setting it down on the table beside the now cooled teapot. “She said the governor’s been hunting them down for a year or two. They set up an underground market pretty quick, and he suspects they’re linked with a cartel in Pall. But I guess he sucks at it or something, because he asked the mercenary guild for any and all help.”

  “Hence the reward.”

  Mouse nodded. “The guildmaster said all the deals are still in negotiation and not even made official yet. They expected it to be quite the challenge to track down. So I guess my catch helped them a bunch.”

  “Hmm,” Taiga thumped a finger on his book. “I guess humans have their own issues going on. I never paid attention, since we’ve only focused on the Guardians.”

  Well, considering they were working on saving the continent and magical beings, little turf wars between the humans were kind of insignificant. “It paid a lot and I got to beat up humans. So it was fun.”

  “Fun,” Taiga shook his head, “is probably not how you want to describe it to outsiders.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it might look suspicious.”

  Mouse shrugged. “She didn’t seem bothered.”

  Taiga paused, looking up at him. “So, you already told the guildmaster ‘it was fun’?”

  He nodded, and Taiga groaned. “She was fine with it! I promise! She even asked if I’d want to join in to exterminate the rats!”

  “Rats?”

  “Yeah, I think she meant the Ravenguild.”

  Taiga sighed, “and I take it you said yes?”

  Should he not have? But it was the most fun he’d had in a while. Mouse hesitated, but Taiga flashed him an amused smile, and Mouse’s unease settled. “I did.”