The man had timed his interruption well, the courier realized. Had he confronted her any earlier, she perhaps could have schemed up some sort of plan to evade him, and had it been any later, they would have been too close to the letter's destination for their encounter to not draw suspicion and put the delivery at risk.

She muttered a curse to the Five-Headed Hare under her breath as she approached the door of the tavern and knocked for admission.

"Fat lot of good all those heads do for you, can't even be bothered to warn me about someone sneaking up – Hello!" The door had opened, and she drew back her hood and flashed her courier's crest in explanation of her sudden appearance at this late hour. "I'm here to deliver a letter to one of your patrons."

"There aren't many left," the woman replied flatly, opening the door wider so that the courier could pass over the threshold.

"The atmosphere tends to be less...cheery, when the candles have burnt to the bottom of their wicks," the tavern-keeper continued to explain, when the courier stopped to take in the handful of hunched figures that still lingered with their latest drink. "Anyone with any self-compassion would have turned to their bed at a much more respectable time of the night."

"As long as the recipient is here to give me the other half of my payment, the atmosphere doesn't concern me," the courier said, tipping the other woman a coin. "Any idea who that person may be?"

"Over in the far corner," the tavern-keeper pointed with her chin. "He's been coming pretty consistently the past few nights, and always sits in the same place. Never talks to anyone but the servers. Perhaps he's been expecting a message for a while now."

Nodding her thanks, the courier left to approach the man. Much like the tavern-keeper had mentioned, the candle set out to light the man's table was sputtering low, casting flickering shadows against the wall behind him that from across the tavern made it difficult to make out the details of his clothing—details that would help her identify him to the city guard who had stopped her on the road earlier. The man's face was also mostly hidden, though more due to a half-curtain of long dark hair than the shadows.

The courier glanced down as she came to a stop before his table. Sure enough, the man was wearing a ring in the shape of the three-winged Green Serpent, as her client from the theater had mentioned. Now she only needed to check the code word.

She cleared her throat, painfully aware of the man's gaze on her as she continued to stand there. "Sir, are you expecting a letter?"

The candle on the table sputtered as the man turned slightly, his face still mostly hidden in the dim light. "I am."

"All right. The phrase I have for this message is masked dancer."

"The performance starts even before the curtain rises." The response was immediate, and the man continued with a challenge of his own. "Twelve marksmen or one archer?"

"Even one arrow can fell an enemy," the courier responded, repeating the phrase that the man at the theater had told her she would need to answer.

The man held out a hand for the letter, palm-up, and she hesitantly placed the bamboo tube in his hand. His fingers closed around the wood, but he didn't withdraw his hand, and the courier tensed uneasily. He was watching her, waiting for her to retreat.

"Is there something else?" he asked, slowly and steadily. It was only then that she realized her hand was still holding the other end of the bamboo, and she let go with a sharp intake of breath.

"No, my apologies," she said. "It's just...been a long day." She gestured vaguely across the tavern. "I'll just, uh, go over there and wait for your decision on whether to send a response."

She had no other option now but to retreat, lest she draw any more suspicion. She did so slowly, walking past other tables until finding an empty table sufficiently not too far away. She sat down, careful to keep her quarry in the corner of her vision.

As far as reporting back to the city guard who had intercepted her on the road, the courier could find little about this recipient that was noteworthy. His long black hair concealed the parts of his face that weren't already in shadow, and his brown robes were in good condition but ordinary in cut and quality. If she had to guess by the few glimpses of his face she had seen in the flickering candlelight, he was younger than her, perhaps early in his third decade. Nothing special.

The courier let out a sigh, scratching at a groove in the tabletop and bowing her head so that some of her hair fell forward and covered her face from the man's view. Now rather than using her peripherals, she could glance through the fringe and watch for the man's response to the letter.

Instead, a figure shifted in front of her view.

"Care for anything to drink while you wait?" a voice asked, and the courier looked up. It was one of the tavern servers, holding a ceramic bottle and empty glass expectantly.

Fighting down her alarm, the courier shook her head. "No, I won't be long," she said, resisting the urge to crane her neck to look around the woman. "Thank you."

The server didn't seem to sense her urgency, instead shrugging her shoulders defeatedly. "Suit yourself," she said, at last shuffling away to refill a glass at another table.

As the Five-Headed Hare would have it, in the time it had taken for the server to move, the tavern-keeper had now stopped in front of the man's table, also to refill his glass, it seemed.

The courier just barely bit back a groan of frustration and tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the tavern-keeper to move. If she didn't have anything other than the man's ordinary appearance to report, there was no doubt she'd have trouble with that supposed city guard on her way back into town.

Finally, by some grace of the heavenly realm, the tavern-keeper moved. The courier only realized she had forgotten to be subtle in her observations when the man then looked up and locked eyes with her.

She froze. Just act calm, maybe he thinks you're looking to see if he wants to call you back over yet—yes!

The man had, in fact, raised his hand, beckoning palm-inwards for her to return to his table. The courier forced herself to stand up slowly rather than in a rush of the energy that she was feeling, and returned to hear his summons.

"You wish to send a response?" she asked, seeing the pen and half-written letter on the table before him.

The man hummed an agreement. "Just a simple letter will do, though," he replied, much to her curiosity. "No need for all this folding nonsense." His chuckle was quiet but friendly, almost apologetic. "My, er, friend tends to be a bit self-conscious of our situation."

"Self-conscious?" she tried not to sound too eager. The man was talking, and freely so—completely different from the first stony, serious impression he had given. Perhaps the extra glass the tavern-keeper had poured for him had loosened his tongue. She couldn't waste this opportunity to learn more.

"Well, I suppose there is good reason for it," the man admitted, sounding a bit embarrassed—not like a member of a nefarious secret society, the courier thought. "He has a bit more to lose than I do. He has more of a reputation to uphold, you see."

The courier stayed silent as the man finished writing, mentally filing away the information to share with the city guard later. She didn't dare risk asking any more questions.

"Here," the man folded the letter in thirds and held a stick of ordinary sealing wax over the sputtering candle on the table until it melted enough to drip over the letter. He waited a moment, slowly waving a hand as if to help it dry faster before handing it off to the courier, unstamped. How curious, she thought, of the discrepancy between the two senders' value of secrecy regarding their letters. Or perhaps the alcohol had made him careless. Supposedly the nuns in the nearby monastery brewed potent stuff.

"The passphrases will be the same. Let me get your fee, of course—and the man at the theater will pay you the other half of the payment for carrying this message, as well. Just a moment..." The man fished inside his pockets for his coin purse while the courier stood by, the letter in her hands burning as though it came straight from the demon realm.

She had never been so tempted to open a letter before. She had sealing wax in her bag – she could open the letter, read the contents, and seal it back up and the recipient back at the theater would be none the wiser. And if she did discover some Loyalist plot, well, then, that was just her duty to the kingdom, wasn't it?

"In your line of business, it must be difficult to always be faithful to your clients, isn't it?"

The question startled her, and she looked up from the letter. "Pardon?"

"Well, we trust you to deliver our letters and not send them to the wrong people, right?" The man picked out a few coins and held them out to her. "Even though there are times when you must wonder what people are saying to each other, if you were just reading all the contents, no one would hire you. You'd be out of business."

The back of the courier's neck tickled in warning. Was it just the alcohol talking, or was the man threatening her? But he couldn't possibly know about the confrontation she'd had earlier that evening.  Perhaps he had just picked up at her attention on the letter and seen it as an innocent curiosity.

She cleared her throat and accepted the coins, storing both them and the letter in her bag. "Yes, we pride ourselves on our loyalty to our customers," she replied, satisfied at how calm her voice sounded.

The man scoffed. "Eh, you only wind up dead with loyalty." He waved a hand and took another swig from his drink. "No matter how much I try, I can't understand people like you. If you ask me, it's much better to sell to the highest bidder. But then, I suppose that's why you are you, and I am me." He chuckled again, though his tone was much darker this time.

She stared at him, unsure of how to reply. It was almost the same thing the city guard had told her, too.

The man seemed to realize her shock, and gave a small, somewhat rueful half-smile, waving his hand as if to dismiss what he had just said. "Well, at any rate, have a good night."

She gave a short bow and turned swiftly, heading towards the door.

If she'd looked back, she might have seen the man's carefree demeanor fade, and the way his eyes darkened over his glass as he looked after her retreating figure.