The Lodge
Officially, it is a lodge. Brass plaque by the door, dues payable quarterly, two flights of stairs up from the shopfront. At the top of them: a fire going in a stone hearth, deep leather armchairs with nobody sitting in them, shelves of books nobody has opened in years, and a bar with a brass rail and no barman behind it. Help yourself and write it in the book. Regalia hangs on hooks the length of the wall, sashes and aprons and collars, blue and oxblood and black, and every last one of them itches. Over the mantel there is an oil portrait the size of a door, and the plate screwed to the frame beneath it says FOUNDER, which is as specific as anybody has ever got about him. There is a raffle at Christmas. Ossie has won it twice.
There are three hundred chapters like this one from Bangor to San Diego, full of perfectly ordinary men mumbling an oath not one of them could explain. America is thick with these places. The Elks, the Moose, the Odd Fellows. Nobody looks twice at another one, and that is the most useful thing the Guild owns.
The Room Upstairs
Because upstairs there is a room the membership does not go in, and in that room sits a hundred and sixty years of work. Files. Photographs. Crates with the customs stamps still on them and, in at least one case, air holes. The old-timers call it the Guild of Adventuring Heroes when they are being funny about it, and then they say it again without the joke when somebody new needs to hear it out loud. They send people out. The people come back with stories, and a good many of them come back with the thing they were sent for.
The Guild Master
The Guild Master is Bartholomew Crane. Sixty-eight years old, bad hip, war record, and a way of asking a favor that leaves you certain you volunteered. He has been in the chair eleven years and in the building since before most of the current membership was born.
He knows where every file is. He knows which freighter clears on Thursday, which sergeant at the Tenth still owes him, and exactly how much trouble you are about to be in. Ask him and he will tell you straight, and then he will wish you luck and mean every word of it.
The Charter
Down in the archive there is a locked case with the original charter in it. Eighteen seventy-one, signed by nine men, sealed twice. Nobody living has read it but Crane. Ask him what is in it and he smiles and says it is mostly about the dues.
Welcome to the Order. Dues are quarterly. Try the coffee, it is terrible.