Chapter XLVIII – Be frisked here carefully and act innocent.

28-29th of Summer, 5859
Adventurer’s Guild of Casamonu, Casamonu (where else would it be?)

Up on the second floor of the adventurer’s guild building, Brown and co. had lodged themselves firmly in the cheapest straw bedding imaginable to man. The “Adventurer’s Guild” wasn’t an all-encompassing international institution like it is in other otherworlds, instead being independent organizations regulating (or throttling) business like any other guild. This meant that quality varied greatly between Adventurer Guild to Adventurer Guild, and one even had to pay for multiple membership fees at once if they thought about working in different cities like Shinasi had done for Azdavay and Casamonu. One could only wonder what Adam Smith would end up writing if he was isekai’d into Gemeinplatz.

Straw, as one might be able to guess, was not the most comfortable of all beddings. It makes you scratch, it makes you itch, and you have to be careful not to wake up with a piece of straw making its way deep into your precious nose. Every move you make makes the countless pieces crunch and rustle, making for unbearable noise when you have twenty people lined up in the same cramped room. Not to mention the smell of twenty unwashed adventurers… Even worse, this was accommodation for freemen. Most adventurers fortunate enough to own a slave of course didn’t want to pay for the slave’s bedding, and the straw in the guild’s stables was free to rest on for members. The stables added a lovely layer of “horse dung” on top of things which definitely didn’t help improve the experience for most.

Thankfully, for Ayomide, her being a slave was just for disguising purposes. Brown had been met with a few protesting voices when he had brought a darkskin to the “first-class” section of the guild, but they died down when Shinasi made some excuse about “Sir Smith” needing to attend an important meeting soon and not wanting his slave to smell alongside him. Still, Ayomide could swear a couple of the adventurers deliberately disposed of their unneeded trash items right next to her. Gritting her teeth, she exercised patience and sufficed by dreaming about beating a bunch of them to a bloody pulp while taking no prisoners; actually taking no shit and beating everyone who threw an insult your way was a luxury reserved those who were privileged enough to not be lynched for it.

The night marched on and then off, all visitors in the guest room having a fun time turning and tumbling around the straw. No matter how much he tried, Brown couldn’t find a position which wouldn’t result in his back aching as if the Devil had come to personally torture him. Him waking up was as torturous as well, before the sun had barely risen the guild’s guest room had surprise visitors who woke everyone up. A trio of people ran up to the stairs, causing quite a ruckus before entering the room itself. “This way, the adventurers rest here.” They were led by a nervous guild receptionist with a clipboard on his hand. He was flanked by two guards with the distinct bright yellow of the count’s customs officers.

Before any of the adventurers could wake up and react, the receptionist began reading names from his clipboard. “Dikla the Tall of Azdavay, Ermen of Gödel, Miray of Karash…” She pointed at the owners of these names as they were read. The guards approached anyone pointed towards, quickly shaking them down while clearly searching for something. “…Parvin the Shrewd of Subash, Shinasi of Azdavay son of Shinasi of Azdavay…” Shinasi’s pockets were quickly patted down as well, the guards finding nothing but spare change. After all the adventurers were counted for, ignoring the non-adventurer guests like Brown and Ayomide, the guards conducted a shakedown of the room by searching for whatever in the haystacks. Clearly dissatisfied by not finding anything, they left the room as eagerly as they had entered it. Some of the adventurer’s reluctantly stood up from their beds, while some tried to go back to sleep as if nothing had happened.

“…Alright, what was that?” asked Shinasi while quickly pocketing his spare change which had been dropped onto the floor. Most annoyingly, two small coins from his pocket seemed to have gone missing in the hay. Seeing that he received no answers from the audience, Shinasi targeted someone amongst the audience who seemed sort of familiar. “Dikla? You’re… my eldest cousin’s second husband’s younger brother, if I remember correctly.” The brain of an average villager was usually filled to the brim with very distant relatives they saw everyday but barely cared about except for when they needed a favor. “Could you mind enlightening me?”

“Ah! We do know each other, don’t we! I sort of thought you were familiar, what a coincidence!” Dikla added a couple words which were cliché in a meeting between people who were barely related to each other. He searched the floorboards of the room, taking out a loose plank and lifting it up. Lo and behold, he had a very familiar sort of small paper. “I think you know what it is, I’m sure you couldn’t afford your famous winesoppery without some help.” He cooled himself down by flapping the paper like a fan. “Of course, I do something more productive by running a side hustle instead.”

“Yes, I think every adventurer worth their salts knows what’s up with that. I was wishing to be enlightened on the sudden visit by the yellow-vests.” I guess he just wanted to brag about his side hustle… Shinasi remembered why he didn’t like talking with far off relatives. He was essentially a stranger to his eldest cousin’s second husband’s younger brother, yet there was also a certain level of intimacy expected from talking with a blood relative which made conversation feel forced and awkward.

“Oh, the yellow-vests?” Dikla furrowed his brows at the thought of those pesky guards trying to stop his grind. “Someone must have croaked to them. Like, bloody hell, it’s supposed to be an open secret between adventurers, not a secret open to everyone!” The man looked even more annoyed at the thought. “Can’t a guy just do some small-time trading on his way to adventure, running fabric between cities without a bunch of ‘stand-up’ gits trying to ruin his job?!” He would have loved to kvetch further if not for a sleepy adventurer in the room shouting at him to shut up. Dikla had to lower his voice much to his own annoyance. “Just be careful out there. You never know when the yellow-vests come knocking.”

“We’ll be careful.” Shinasi jumped back into the hay, he still had some sleep to do. He turned to the old man while on the “bed”. “Old man, make sure to hide the paper somewhere safe.”

“Don’t worry young man, an old man of action like me has his tricks.” Brown inserted his hand to his magnificent beard, soon taking out the small slip which had been rolled up to fit. “I don’t think anyone is going to inspect an old man’s beard.” He put the slip back in, and laid his head on the hay once more. Even John Brown wasn’t going to wake up this early, God forbid.

29th of Summer, 5859
A tobacco plantation (name as-of-yet unknown), Outskirts of Casamonu

The morning sun was slowly rising over Casamonu, slowly bringing light to its flatlands. The rolling green hills with Mount Curry looking over them in the distance, the green grass swaying under the wind and the cool breeze… It was quite the comfortable environment, the perfect one for a picnic, or a scouting mission.

Kyauta was sat on a hill overlooking a nearby plantation. The novice abolitionist was scanning the area through her hands which she had bent to a shape resembling binoculars. She could see fields of green tobacco plants along with newly harvested leaves being dried under the sun. “Miss Tubman.” she said, noticing what they had been looking for. “The overseers are coming out to play. You reckon we’ll…”

“Have time to skedaddle?” Tubman rose up from her seated position. Her old legs had been tired during her round of overlooking. “They should have come out a few hours ago if they didn’t want to give us time to skedaddle. We’ll have time to reach Gilead and cook a nice dinner while they’re still having sweet dreams.” She took a look towards the plantation herself. “What’d you think’s the best food for the new arrivals? I think that Mister Hakim would love to bake some cake with the new batch of pearl ash he cooked up.” Tubman picked up her axe she had left lodged in the ground, an axe brought along just in case of abolitionist emergencies. “Let’s go. We’ll go in tonight.”

“To-Tonight?!” Kyauta stopped looking at the plantation to look at Tubman. “Don’t we need to… I don’t know, prepare?” She didn’t know what exactly they needed to prepare, but Kyauta had reservations about risking her life once more.

Tubman was already making her way towards a spot she intended to camp on. “Every day that we prepare means more suffering for our brothers and sisters.” She swung her axe around as if it was a whip. “You see? With the Lord above watching and guiding us, we should be more than ready.”