2nd Fall, 514
It was his first day off in a while. Too long. He'd tried to count on his fingers, and had run out; probably since Black Sun had invited the city's reimancers to help in the hunt for this damned fish that everyone was so obsessed about. A surprising number of his fellow dock workers had turned out to be capable of reimancy; either that, or perhaps willing to pay the black market price for an initiation to shirk their day jobs and get in good with Black Sun. Amoros had considered it but, monetary considerations aside, there was something about the whole initiation process that left him feeling deeply uncomfortable at the prospect; the idea of having another man's djed inside him was way past his comfort zone.
With so many people in his section of the docks finding more important uses of his time, there was too much work and not enough people to go around, even with ships only arriving every three days of late. The docks seemed to be a precarious balance: as few employees as possible, overworked as much as possible, paid as little as possible. Even a few disruptions to that balance, and everything collapsed.
There was a solution to this problem, Amoros was sure of it. He didn't know where the answer was, but he was relatively confident that it lay at the bottom of a bottle. He wasn't sure which bottle of course, but planned on performing his due diligence and searching as many of Ravok's bottles as a single day would allow.
He shoved the tavern door open with his shoulder and, after a few blinking seconds for his eyes to adjust from the comparative brightness outside to the dimness within, a grunt of recognition left him as his gaze settled on the man behind the bar.
"Verin," he greeted gruffly, trudging between the scattered tables and heaving his work-addled muscles onto one of the stools at the bar. Delving into his pocket, he retrieved his coin purse and dumped in front of him with a metallic clink. "I'm going to need something cheap, alcoholic, and in some sort of bottle."
