“Roast carrot! Roast carrot onna stick! Hello there, how’d you like one of our bratwursts?”

Ambergryph looked around. The centaur in front of him, as far as vending went, was alone. He said so. Fuzzy Bob, the centaur, laughed. Why he was called Fuzzy Bob was unclear - he had a crippling and ironic addiction to horse chestnuts, which contain a chemical that has detrimental effects on centaurs. This, combined with age and, possibly, mange, meant that he had, on the whole, less fur than the average centaur. He also had all the business ethics of a slug.

“’Course I’m not alone! You’re here, aren’t you?”

Ambergryph thought about this. “Bob, I’m not selling anything. You’re selling questionable food.”

“No, it’s not questionable. It can’t answer you! Have a bratwurst.” Ambergryph glared at Bob. Fuzzy Bob wasn’t known for being the most intelligent centaur around, but sometimes it sounded like he used his stupidity to dodge questions, or unpleasant comments. One of the key points Ambergryph noticed about Fuzzy Bob was that, although he wasn’t the sharpest spoon in the drawer, he was a shrewd and persuasive businessman. Every day, for example, Amanda, the secretary at the dispatch, would tell herself she wasn’t going to touch Fuzzy Bob’s carrots, and every day he talked her into buying one, and every day she spent an hour under the impression that the world was, in fact, a naked piece of shepherd’s pie, and she would spend this hour trying to figure out what shepherd’s pie wore so she could clothe it. There was also, underneath the cheery, if-you’d-buy-it-you’d-love-it demeanor, a sort of profiteering malevolence. Ambergryph had noticed upon the tray’s labels, which advertised that a certain percentage (although what this certain percentage was, never did get disclosed, which was because, Ambergryph suspected, because the percentage was 100) of customers complained of unpleasant side effects to the food, and that therefore each food item counteracted certain others, depending on if, and sometimes what, you’d already bought and eaten, and he had found after some mental calculation that after a certain process of purchasing foods to counteract the problems caused by other foods (the most famous of these problems was the after-effect of the aforementioned carrots), the whole thing would cycle and you could, theoretically, go on forever buying antidotes from Bob if you weren’t willing to wait it out.

Ambergryph put what would have, on another man, been considered a congenial arm around Bob’s shoulders. From Ambergryph it actually managed to be sarcastic. “Okay, Bob, lemme present to you some economical advice. You sell sausages. Your sausages are not very good. I can, if I wish, go to the delicatessen and, for the price of one of yours, get four sausages that taste much better.”

“Aw, this is about the time you found a toenail in one of ‘em. It was a fluke!”

“I found an entire rat skull one time. I never smelled rat in one of your sausages before,” said Ravenna .

“And I once found one of your souvenir daggers!” added a bystander.

“In a sausage?”

“No! In one of his soy patties!” Bob’s soy patties were famous for being the worst of his comestibles. No one could definitively put color or flavor to the patty, or to the buns between which they sat. It was agreed, however, that color and flavor were both just right to put off even Ambergryph, who was famous for being willing to eat anything, although once Ambergryph discovered Fuzzy Bob that reputation had to be amended to “almost anything.”

“I’ll be back for you later,” Ambergryph said to the beef wads, clearly intending to do something cruel and unusual to them as punishment for the heinous crime of existing. He ambled off. Ravenna went after him and turned him around. Headed once again in the correct direction, they set off for the dispatch. Fuzzy Bob wandered off with his tray of foul food and his saddlebags of shoddy souvenirs in search of someone insensible enough or foreign enough to buy something.

Ambergryph walked into the dispatch. This is normally not an event of any note, except of course for the fact that this dispatch, being located in a part of the city known as the “Alchemist’s Quarter,” is more or less set aside for the oddballs of the mercenarial crew. The desk secretary in particular was noteworthy. A vampire named Amanda, she had a seductive attitude-so long as it was male, it was fair game; Ambergryph had once seen her proposition a troll. While in Arden showing romantic, or at least sexual, interest outside the species was considered healthy and forward-thinking, it was generally considered that Amanda was a little too enthusiastic about being forward thinking. She did have standards, though-they weren’t very high standards, but they were high enough to exclude her boss. This was not, in fact, very hard to imagine. Jason was a man of ill-repute of the worst kind. He was well known as a womanizer, an unethical businessman, and he had all the inherent honesty of quicksand (which, much like Jason, looks completely harmless until you make the mistake of stepping in it). It was suspected that he had close business ties to Fuzzy Bob, a dark stain covering most of his reputation on it’s own. It was also rumored that, while he was less seductively minded than Amanda, he had a more extensive sexual history. What, exactly, he had encountered in this sexual history was a subject not widely explored, except in euphemistic terms such as, “We’ll do to yer what Jason Orlavs does to ever’thin’ else!” (which is a surprisingly common statement around some of the city’s seedier bars)

“Hello there, handsome,” Amanda said. Her reputation had gotten around, and she hadn’t made any progress with anyone who minded that she made the term “loose woman” sound virtuous, but she did possess a tenacity that made the drive to survive look like a mere spring fancy.

“What’ve you got?” Ambergryph asked, ignoring her. Amanda looked disappointed at the snubbing, but handed him a few files.

“Some old friends, a few new faces, couple of general job requests. See anything you like?” she replied. Ambergryph and Ravenna flipped through the files and extracted a few. They handed the remaining ones to Amanda, and held their choices for her to register the file numbers as taken. As she registered the files, her crystal cube went ping. She began typing furiously. Her cube pinged again and she made a triumphant cry. “Got him!” Because there had been trouble in the past with mercenaries squabbling over just who was after a bounty and who was going to get him, dispatches were now required to register the files on an interdispatch network. If any two dispatches tried to register the same file within five minutes of each other, they had to go through large quantities of digital paperwork and beaurocracy as quickly as possible. The first to complete it all got the register. Amanda had been doing this job for years and was very good at getting the job-most of the other secretaries were elves, and their reaction times were slower.

“We’ll try to get him today. We’ll see what we can do about these others over the next week or two,” Ravenna said, waving a file. Ambergryph took it and took a look.

“Oh. Him. I remember him. Ugh, you think he’ll smell any better?”

“What month is it?”

“Heh? Month of the Barking Snake.”

“He bathes every…so…yes, I think he’ll smell better.”

“Awesome.” Ambergryph ambled out. Ravenna chased after him to make sure he went the right way.

Amanda looked at the piles of paper on her desk. “Oh!” she cried. She looked around the office. “Derek!” she said, accosting the nearest bystander, “I forgot to give this to Ambergryph. Run it down to his apartment, would you?” she asked finally, handing him an ornate envelope.

“Wouldn’t it be quicker to just catch him up?” Derek asked. “Fine, whatever. Just get it to him. Honestly, having his mail forwarded here, I don’t know what he was thinking…”

“Ambergryph!” called Derek. He had to be careful running. The Igor he roomed with hadn’t been able to find very good thread lately, and last time he’d run too hard his arm had fallen off. It was times like that he wished he wore a shirt. As it stood, he’d had to beg some skirt off of a sympathetic passerby to stop the bleeding until Igor could sew it back on. Having such sexy abs had it’s drawbacks, he always said. He never could understand why everyone started laughing whenever he said it.

“What?” Ambergryph asked, turning. He was always slightly overwhelmed by Derek’s presence-being constructed from bits of different people, he retained the scent of everyone who had contributed - dead or live donor, it didn’t matter.

“This came for you.”

“What is it?” Ambergryph asked, confused. He took the envelope and opened it. “Oh. Beautiful. Another one of those damn parties. Why am I always invited to these things?”

“Maybe it’s because you’re a duke. Or a duchess’ son, anyway,” Ravenna said.

“But do they really have to invite me? They all hate me,” Ambergryph said. He chuckled at that. He made absolutely sure that every time he was invited to one of these parties, it was a complete and utter cock-up, in the hopes that they would never invite him again. It never worked, but it was always fun.

“Go. Have fun. Screw things up. I gotta go,” Derek said.

“Later,” Ambergryph said.

“Do good!” called Ravenna , although since Derek had not expressed any particular need to do any work this was unclear as to why. “’You must bring a female escort, preferably of the same species’,” Ambergryph read, “That’s not very friendly. What, do they expect me to take Amethyst? Angel’s the only one that leaves.” Angel was, aside from Lady Amethyst, the only half-dragon Ambergryph knew. She was the adopted daughter of Steve and Annelise Kyasana, the superintendent of the apartment complex and his wife. She was half kobold like Ambergryph, but while Ambergryph was a wolf, with grey fur and platinum scales, Angel was a jackal, with dull black fur and glossy black hair and green scales.

Ravenna poked her head out the door and, in a very Ambergryph-like gesture, shouted across the hall to Angel’s apartment door. “HEY ANGEL!” she shouted. A bedraggled, canine-like head poked out the door.

“What do you want? I’m sleeping…” Angel muttered. She was the only tenant of the apartment who kept the same hours as Ambergryph - viz., variable but generally considered late by the rest of the tenants. She was, she claimed, training psychologically to get a license to join Ambergryph and Ravenna in their mercenary work. Her parents didn’t believe it, because licensing requirements generally didn’t get much more extensive than “Is applicant present? Yes/No. Is applicant actually seeking mercenarial license? Yes/No.”

“Ambergryph got invited to this big shindig and they say he’s gotta bring a date,” Ravenna replied.

Angel’s expression changed from groggy impatience to groggy irritation. “So? He’s got you. You get up at dawn.” “It’s not until eight o’clock , Angel.” “And I’m not understanding what this has to do with me. It’s too early for this. It’s…What time is it?” Angel asked.

“It’s like…one. And it says he has to bring a date of the same species,” Ravenna said. “Now what was so hard about coming out and just saying that?” Angel demanded.

“Are you kidding? Do you know how much fun you are when you’ve just woken up?”

“We’re about to find out how much fun you are when you’re on fire.” “Not much fun at all. I’ve tried. Anyway, it’s not for another week,” Ambergryph said.

“You woke me up for something a week away?” Angel growled, annoyed. Ambergryph felt it would be prudent at this time to make himself scarce. He saw a dogfight coming on.

In the forests of Eastern Arden , a shadow stirred. He’d been waiting far too long. He was getting angry. Someone wasn’t upholding their end of the bargain, and it was feeding time.

Ordinarily this would be a catfight but since Angel’s kobold heritage came from the jackal subspecies as opposed to, say, the puma subspecies, and Ravenna was a werewolf, anything catlike about it went out the window.