58

The cellar is cramped and stacked high with bags of wheat and barley, as well as sand pits full of apples and barrels of who knows what. There's the smell of great potential, of raw ingredients waiting to be properly arranged.

Three figures you don't recognize are sharing a wineskin, using a grand hogshead as a makeshift table. Kitty Harlowe is with them, looking right mysterious in a black cameo and hood.

"There you are at last," she says as you approach. The others—a dark-skinned woman your mother's age and bearded men who practically have the look of twins—regard you carefully.

After some quick pleasantries (during which nobody offers you any wine, much to their discredit), Kitty turns her eyes and attention to the other woman. You follow suit, trying to stand at ease. Whatever they want of you, they're apparently about to begin it.

Onward