Trader's Row · Arabel · oldest licence in the city
Where the city drinks, deals, and disappears.
Step inside
Ground floor
Nobody remembers what kind of dragon it was. Nobody asks. The jawbone has hung above our door since the founding landlord came back from wherever he went, and the house has been pouring ale beneath it for longer than most of Arabel has been standing.
Purple Dragons drink beside caravan guards. Merchants close their deals over the long tables. A whole pig turns on the spit most nights, the bard plays whether you listen or not, and the kitchen never fully closes. Honest folk find it welcoming. Other folk find it busy enough.
Keeper, keeper of accounts, and keeper of the corner seat
Twenty years under one landlord. The house runs because these three run it, in roughly that order of opinion.
Landlord
Ran with a mercenary company for twenty years and has run this house for twenty more. He does not care what your business is, so long as you do not do it in his common room. The scar is from a bar fight, he says.
"He keeps a cudgel behind the bar and has never needed it twice on the same man."
Barmaid & Bookkeeper
Orders, money, staffing, and the memory of the house. She can tell you what you drank three visits ago and exactly what you still owe for it. Regulars are family. Newcomers earn it.
"Nothing crosses that floor without Bessa marking it. Nothing."
The Fixture
Thirty years in the garrison, and longer than that in the corner seat by the fire. He dozes, he mutters, and once in a while he says something so sharp you wonder who exactly has been listening all these years.
"Buy him a proper drink, not the mild, and he remembers a very old city indeed."
From the spit, the barrels, and the beds
The food is better than it has any right to be. The ledger below is Bessa's, and the prices are not a discussion.
Quiet, smoky, stale. Bessa sweeping up around Harken and the hungover caravan guards.
The lunch trade. Merchants and deals, Mordecai behind the bar.
Peak noise. The whole city passes through, and the Purple Dragons arrive after shift.
Thinned out. Darker. Business best done quietly, done quietly.
By the door, under the lantern
Work, notices, and the occasional plea. Take a nail from the tin if you are pinning something, and do not pin over the house rules. Tap a notice to read it properly.
Up the back stairs
Six guest rooms, simple and clean: a straw mattress, a washstand, and a door that locks. Along the balcony, four curtained booths overlook the common room, popular with those who like to watch without being watched. The booths are let by the evening. Coin first. No exceptions.
Baths can be carried up. Ask Bessa, not Mordecai, unless you enjoy the look he gives you.
Room six is not presently to let, and the house will thank you not to ask why at the bar. Its last lodger kept to himself, settled weekly, and one day simply did not come back down. His belongings remain as he left them. There is a notice about it by the door, for those with word to offer.
The staff do not go in unless they must.
Down the kitchen stairs
Barrels, stores, and a strong room that stays locked. The cellar runs further back than the building above it, which is common enough in old Arabel, where every house stands on the bones of three older ones.
Mordecai will tell you, if pressed, that there are draughts down there that do not come from anywhere they should. He says it the way a man says something he has decided not to think about. Bessa scrubbed a mark off the cellar door frame last week and has thought better of mentioning it since.
Press and hold the door frame, if you must know. Bring the candle if you cannot see it.
