[IRP] The Dead One Calls

[Lavi]

Dinner was better than Cecily anticipated it to be: perhaps it tasted good because of the terrible taste of traveler's food, which Cecily only ate with the understanding that maintaining her strength was more important than comfort on the road.

Her improved mood brought Cecily to the card game that Satsume suggested they play, despite her own inexperience at anything with cards. It simply was not something that was done among the Lausian nobility; she could not recall it being a favorite pastime of other Lycian nobles either.

Satsume's latest pegging placed him far enough ahead of Cecily that there was no chance for her to actually win. But the lady was not one to give up easily.

Cecily had her own reservations about Shad scouting around. He seemed impulsive, from what she could discern from seeing him and talking with Paige, and Eli was an unknown to her. For Satsume to allow him to go too had to mean there was something that her retainer knew that Cecily did not, but she also did not press the thought. Nothing would change by voicing her reservations. Except for one.

"You let them go, but did not agree upon a time to wait for their return?" Cecily asked with an inquisitive expression.

Anything can happen over the night. Waiting too long can be their death, but waiting too soon can waste the time and effort that is being placed in this clearly impromptu plan. But Cecily could not criticize it too much, considering that one impromptu plan, with plenty of luck, saved her life in Bern.

She was about to lay down her hand for comparison with Satsume's when someone knocked at the door. Cecily looked expectantly at the clock, curious to why one would be at the door at this hour, but remembered there was no clock in the room. The clock is in the common room, not in the individual bedrooms.

"Yes?" she called out to the door expectantly.

"It's the innkeeper. I have a box to deliver," came the reply.

Cecily turned her eyes to Satsume, gesturing him to get the door. "Go on."

Little did the three know that on the other side, the innkeeper was accompanied by brigands. The keeper, having done his job, returned downstairs to wait for the inevitable.