Bob The Innkeeper 34 Chapter 34 A Dragon?

"Cookie?" asked Bob, stepping into the kitchen.

It had only been there a couple of days, but it was already full of pots and pans and all manner of food items. Bob had given them permission to send the kids out for whatever they might need.

"Yes, Bob?" she asked, looking up from the batch of cookies she was in the middle of making.

"Could I speak to you and Benjie for a few minutes?"

Benjie looked up from the meat he was chopping into chunks for Liam and quickly moved to clean his hands.

As they joined him out back of the inn, Bob smiled at them.

"Cookie, do you realize Benjie can't talk?" he asked.

"Oh! That explains why he never really answers my questions." Cookie looked at him as he shrugged. "I guess I was just so grateful to have someone willing to listen, I didn't notice."

"I'm going to talk to Sam about building Trudy and Liam their own room, and I was wondering if I needed another built for the two of you?"

They looked at each other in surprise, as if the idea that the two of them might be considered a couple, hadn't occurred to them. As Cookie turned to answer, Benjie gave a quick nod to Bob behind her back.

"I'm not sure. That sounds… I'm not sure if I should keep talking, the curse gets worse the more fl.u.s.tered I get… and he looks so lickable… er, likeable…" she covered her face with her hands.

"Just let me know before I talk to Sam," Bob chuckled, heading back into the inn.

Grabbing a bowl of soup and a bread roll, he headed out to sit at one of the tables with some of the adventurers.

"Sure would be nice if you could serve something to drink," grumbled the dwarf that sat across from him.
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"I plan to, but unfortunately, I don't have a source for good dwarven ale. Would you know anyone, good dwarf?" he asked, taking a piece of the bread and dipping it in the broth of his soup.

"I might, but the question is whether or not you can afford it," said the dwarf, running his hand down his ornately braided beard.

"How about you bring me a small amount of each type you can get your hands on, and we'll see how well I can sell it."

The dwarf studied him for a few moments as he calmly finished his soup and bread.

"All right, you've convinced me. But you better buy what I bring," said the dwarf nodding.

"How did he convince you?" exclaimed one of the men sitting nearby.

"The boy hasn't cheated me on any of the business he's done with me or my kin. If he says to bring him dwarven ale to buy, then I'll do just that."

"Thank you," Bob said, noticing an interesting individual step inside and look around.

"Are you the owner of this business?" asked the woman as he approached her.

"I am," he said, nodding to her.

"I felt a stronger presence appear in this town than Alastair, and decided to investigate. Do you know Alastair?"

"I do. You can find Alastair at the magical store near the center of town," he said.

"Alastair's magic saturates this place. You must mean a lot to the mage."

Bob looked at the strange aura that almost blasted off of this woman. He found it interesting how she was able to talk about Alastair without mentioning she was the grimalkin, and wondered who she might be.

"Is there something I can help you with?" he asked.

"Yes. Inform your City Lord that I mean no harm to this city, as long as no one comes into my mountains to hunt me," she said, her eyes traveling over the adventurers in the room.

"Surely you must know how difficult it is to control adventurers who believe there may be treasure if they just explore further," said Bob with a smile.

"I understand the annoyance of adventurers, but I speak of the armed troops that are ama.s.sing outside your city," said the woman.

Bob looked at her for a moment as he realized who he was talking to. This must be the dragon that had been spotted in the mountains!

"I shall pa.s.s on your message," he said with a nod. "The troops are here because of the orcs who have been causing trouble."

"That makes sense," she said thoughtfully. "The orcs are being chased out of the mountains by wyverns. If the adventurers would like to take care of the wyverns, that would be nice."

"I have a mission board, if you would like to post a notice for the adventurers to hunt the wyverns," said Bob, pointing at the board that had been moved over from the shop, the night before.

She moved over to check the board out, as several adventurers left, and other people started showing up. Sam was talking with two men as he stepped in. Bob knew he was going to grab some soup before getting started, so he nodded and moved towards Martha as she stepped in and looked around.

"Good morning, Bob. How are you doing today?" she asked pleasantly.

"Good morning, Martha. I'm doing all right. Are you interested in making me some bedding for my new inn?"

"I would love to! How many are you needing?" she asked.

"I have roughly fifteen beds, not counting my workers'," he said.

She nodded, trying to do the math in her head for how much fabric that would take. "I'll need an advance, to be able to buy the necessary fabric for that many beds."

"You know that I don't have a problem with that. Trudy had mentioned that you had some people interested in jobs?"

"Yes, and they should be arriving shortly. I wanted to get here before them, so I could double check on that."

"Well, I need people to work in the barn, with the animals and here in the inn itself," he explained.

"I checked around to see if I could find someone who could milk a goat, and Primrose was the only one I could find. The problem with that was she said she wanted to focus on the babies she was caring for instead."

"Did you find someone able to help her out? I hate the thought that she has to work so hard all by herself."

"Excuse me," said Dianna, joining them. "I couldn't help but overhear you talking about someone trying to take care of babies?"

"Yes, Primrose is an older woman who lives in the poor section. She takes in all of the very young children, when their mothers pa.s.s away. The problem is that there are so many young orphans, she isn't able to care for all of them," explained Bob, shaking his head. "There's plenty of people who would like to help, but they need to make money in order to survive themselves, and Primrose can't afford to pay people to help her."

"That's terrible. If I had a temple, I would love to open an orphanage for all those poor children. I could provide food and housing for those who would join my church and help with the children."

"Would you have any services for adventurers?" asked one of the pa.s.sing adventurers, who had stopped to listen in.

"I would be able to offer more things if I had a temple. Right now, all I can offer is a basic heal and maybe a restoration. If I had a temple, I could offer spells to regrow limbs, bring back the dead, and several other more powerful spells."

"That sounds great! How much do you need to raise in order to build a temple?" asked another adventurer. Several others had stopped and voiced the same question.

"I can't have a temple built until I acquire some land to build on," she told them.

"I may be able to help with that, depending on how much land you need," said Bob.

Dianna perked up. "I'll go check to see how much it will cost to build a church, and post a donation mission!"

"I would check with Jackson. He's the local stonemason," said Sam, approaching them.

"Great! Thank you!" said Dianna, leaving the inn.

"Martha, if you tell Nora at the fabric store that I will pay your bill, you can fetch the fabric you need to get started," said Bob as Sam stood waiting to talk to him. "Sam will probably have the beds finished by the end of the day, so the sooner you can get started, the sooner my customers can sleep in beds."

She laughed and headed out as Sam shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"How much do you think you can get done today?" asked Bob with a grin.

"I've got two guys here to finish your bar pretty quick, along with the shelves I'm a.s.suming you're wanting behind it. Then I have a bunch of guys who are going to show up about lunchtime, so we can try and have all of the beds finished by this evening. Whatever other furniture you might want in the rooms, will have to be finished tomorrow."

"I appreciate that," Bob said, letting him get to work.

"Why does it smell like dragon in here?" exclaimed a tall man at the door, looking over towards the woman near the mission board.

"Fred?!" she exclaimed in surprise. "It's been forever since I saw you last! How are you still alive?!"

"It's a long story, but when you become a lich, it gets really hard to continue your study with all of the interruptions. Is that why you came to town?"

"No, I didn't wait for the interruptions to bother me. I figured I would nip it in the bud before it could start."

"Figures. You always were one to jump the gun."

"What's a gun?" whispered one of the adventurers.