I said it would be long, and, well, I lied. It's about the same size, but there'll be another part coming in the next day or two, hopefully. The next scene's taking some planning. As always, I demand feedback...

“Barrenhollow Blues”
A serial novel in progress (Week 3 of ???)
By Cliff Hicks

I hadn’t been looking forward to this visit, but I knew it was necessary. I’d been to the bank earlier that day and taken some money out of my personal account to help smooth things over here, but I still wasn’t planning on them going well.

The sound of my knuckles on the door brought Concorde out to see me almost immediately. She opened it and stood there with that huge, girlish smile on her face. She leaped forward and gave me a big hug, tossing her arms around my neck as I swung her around (no small feat, being as she is nearly half a foot taller than I).

“We did it, Barrett! Tell me! Tell me how fabulously wealthy we are! Tell me how the world is our oyster and that we can retire and get fat and lazy!” she giggled at me as she ushered me into her small house.

“No job is that good, Cordy, especially not this one,” I sighed as I moved into the main room of her house. Concorde lived in stark contrast to me, and somehow thought that each job would be the one that would let her quit being a thief. She was, I had to keep reminding myself, new at this.

“What do you mean?” a voice boomed from the shadows. I watched as Ashe hobbled out of the corner of the room and into the light cast by the one window in the house. Ashe was a big fellow, nearly twice my height, and wide enough to scare the average Imperial guard. But he had a bad leg now and only one arm, a result of his time in the last war. Before the war, he’d been a blacksmith and one of the best in Barrenhollow, but when he came back broken from the Battle of Petravin, he couldn’t wield a hammer, as he had only his bad arm left. He’d been trying to learn how to work with his left arm, but collectors had taken his forge and now he was little more than a shadow of the man he once was, covered in scars both inside and out.

There was an awkward silence in the air as I pondered how to phrase it all. “So far, I can’t move the merchandise.” The words rolled out of my mouth like a death sentence.

“W-w-what… what do you mean, Barrett?” That was Concorde, unable to imagine how bad things happened to good people. “What will we do?”

My hand reached into my pocket and I fished out the pouch of money, tossing it to her. “That should cover you for a while, until I can start to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“You mean what you’re going to do,” Ashe threatened. There were many times I had to remind myself that he was her husband and not her father. “Concorde’s done her part of the job. She helped you get the damned things, and it’s your job to get them sold.”

“Ashe, now quiet down,” Concorde interjected. I watched Ashe grumble as he hobbled away from Concorde, who moved over towards me. “What the hell happened, Barrett?”

I sighed before I spoke again. “River ran.”

“Well of course River ran. All things run through River, you told me that yourself.”

“No, I don’t mean I ran it through River, I mean that River ran. Turned and fled with his tail between his legs. He won’t touch them.”

Concorde looked at me aghast, and I could tell I was breaking her heart. “Can… can he DO that?”

“What am I going to do, go and complain to the Fence’s Guild? Yes, of course he can do that. So I’ll just have to find another buyer,” I stated plainly. “Oh… have you seen anyone snooping around your house lately?”

She peered at me cautiously. “What do you mean?”

I tried to wave my hand at her, as if to dismiss her fears. “Nothing, nothing, I’m just being paranoid, that’s all.”

“Barrett, you can’t lie to me. I know you too well,” she whispered as she waggled a finger at me. Were I anyone else, I would’ve probably laughed at the sight. There was this gangly peasant girl dressed in barely one step above tatters waggling a finger at me, dressed in the garb of a nobleman with a sword at my waist. But I wasn’t anyone else, and I didn’t find it that funny.

“Yes,” I admitted, “yes you do, I just never thought you’d call me on it.” I paused and took a long breath, holding it in for a minute or two before I let it slide from my lips. “I was attacked this morning.”

“What?!” she said loudly before catching herself. We both looked over to see Ashe scowling at us, but Concorde lowered her voice and turned her attention back to me. “What do you mean ‘attacked?’”

My fingers curled up into fists as I looked at my boots. I slowly unwound my hands and let the fingers straighten as I brought my gaze back up to match hers. “Two men broke into my house this morning. They tried to kill me and both ended up dead in the process.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder and tried to be motherly for a moment. “Are you okay?” She was trying to simply be polite, but her damned touch would melt even the coldest man’s heart.

“I’m fine, Concorde. You should know by now I can always take care of myself,” I lied. “I was more concerned that someone had come after you or your family.”

Her hand was gone from my shoulder the moment she glanced over to see Ashe scowling at her before she returned her gaze to me, keeping her voice low. “No, I haven’t seen anyone, but you know I’m not as good at seeing those kinds of things as you are.”

“I know, Connie, don’t worry. I did a sweep before I knocked and didn’t see anyone, so it seems like they were just after me, or maybe just after the stones.”

She furrowed her brow, looking more like me than her for a moment. “What is it about these stones?”

I shook my head at her before I looked up again. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said, as she started to move and get her working clothes.

“Concorde, stay here. Take care of Ashe and Elie.”

“Oh no, you get into far too much trouble when I’m not along, and this is my money too. I don’t feel right taking your charity. I’m going to do my part of this partnership and help you find out what’s going on, so I can put food in my family’s mouth myself.” She stepped behind the screen and changed out of the peasant’s dress into a pair of pants and a loose tunic that I had given her when we first started – they were her “rogue’s clothes” as she called them. As she stepped out from behind the screen again and into my field of vision, I saw that she was strapping her short sword to her waist. It had been forged by Ashe before the war and held special value to her. “Let’s go.”