Adventure of Rika Everwood

The cooperage workers remain behind at the sealed cisterns as Rika follows the harborward markings alone. Her scraped forearm aches beneath her sleeve while the raised stone archive emerges above the flood channels.

The archive hall smells of wet stone, old ink, and river silt. Damp ledgers sag on their shelves, while sealed route charts lie stacked beneath a warped clerk’s table.

On the central desk, a water-stained harbor map displays the same black sigil burned into the drainage stones. One section has been deliberately torn away, leaving ragged fibers across the warehouse district.

Fresh oily droplets mark the map’s lower edge, then continue across the stone floor toward the archive’s eastern doors. They gleam faintly whenever rainwater trickles through the hall’s channels.

A brass seal presses one route chart shut, stamped with the archive’s crest. Beside it, a damp ledger lies open to recent waterway entries, its final lines smeared but not erased.

Beyond the eastern doors, the oily trail disappears toward the harbor warehouses. The archive is quiet except for dripping water, leaving the torn map and sealed records within reach.

Rika searches the archive shelves from floor to lintel, comparing harbor ledgers with the torn map’s ragged edge. Her scraped forearm stays clear of the dripping channels.

Her feared reputation urges a quick sweep and careless yanks, but she reins herself in, checking each shelf before shifting its damp bundles.

Keen elven senses catch a faint disturbance behind a row of river-tax registers: old paper fibers, trapped dust, and a narrow pocket where a chart was recently withdrawn.

Rika slides the registers aside without disturbing their order. Behind them rests the torn harbor section, folded around a thin slate bearing warehouse marks.

The map fibers match the central desk exactly. Its inked routes reveal three warehouse names and a concealed drainage line converging beneath the easternmost building.