The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel) by Matthew Beard

halflings for child beggars, and Pyla explained that it was a mistake often made by newcomers to the slums, and which the halfling thieves exploited to cut purses and steal other valuables.
    “How can they stand to live like this?” asked Padlur, looking about their path through the streets. “So closed in on each other, and with everyone else so dangerous?”
    “You will not find the rest of the world much like Haven,” said Pyla, rubbing his hands on his belly.“These people have nowhere else to go. If they did, they’d be there.”
    “It’s a sad place,” said Luzhon. “I’ll be glad when we pass through it, into the nicer parts of the city.”
    Kohel shook his head, seeing on Pyla’s face what he did not even have to say. “We will not be going into the rest of the city, or past the walls. The slums are where we will find those desperate enough to help us, for what we have to offer.”
    The others looked stunned, but Kohel did not share their dismay. Inside the keep, he would be a villager among great men. In the slums, among the low? There he was a future chief, above the dirt and the dung, and there he would gather some fallen heroes, or else hopeful ones, with which to save his village.

    The city was alive in a way they had never imagined. The streets were teeming with people. Noise came from every building: shouts and music and laughter. Vendors sold food and drink at every street corner. They sold other things, as well: flowers and jewelry, weapons and animals, crosses and orbs, and phials of liquid that promised to heal one’s wounds and mirrors that promised to tell one’s fortune. Everywhere were people trading coin for goods, and furs for coin. Everywhere, merchants stood behindtables or in doorways, beckoning and enticing passersby. And near the merchants, invariably, were larger men and women—some human, but many not—with fierce faces and fiercer weapons slung at their sides or on their backs. Danger and opportunity mixed and flowed back and forth moment to moment in every interaction. Merchants judged a customer easy prey or a confidence man at a glance, only to find themselves mistaken on a second, sharper look. A coin was spent on a dried scrap of meat, became the change given a customer a minute later, was stolen by a cutpurse an hour hence, was spent on a drink after that, and paid as wage to the same man who bought the meat that very same day. In the city, everything was in constant motion, like the flow of the river through its center.
    “Where do we even begin?” asked Luzhon. “How in the wide world do we find the people we need, people we can trust, people who can help us, in this great crush of individuals?”
    “We find a place to stow our gear, park our cart, and rest, and we ask, I suppose,” said Kohel. “Yes, friends?” Padlur shrugged, but did not object. Luzhon raised an eyebrow, but had no amendment to the plan. And Nergei knew he was not being consulted, so he did not say anything.

    As he had upon the mountain, in the woods, and then on the plains, Padlur scouted ahead through the city streets, left the others to wait in a seemingly safe square. Pyla had tasked him with finding some secure place for them to sleep, but there were few inns in the part of the slum they were in, and Padlur did not wish to roam too far, not where he knew so little of the sights and smells, the ways of those around them. On the mountain, there was nowhere he would not go, and no danger he feared too much, at least not before the coming of the kenku, whatever worse power they represented. He had seen much in his years, first at his father’s side and then on his own, but none of the skills he’d learned in the wilds applied to the city, or so he first believed.
    After the first hour of wandering on his own, away from the distracting chatter of the others, he began to detect the rhythms of the streets, the ways of movement that separated the hapless citizens from the thieves and