The watch and the wererat were all but forgotten as Norto made his way back from a local forge with casting clays and daub paints in a basket, carrying his load through the main serving room of The Merry Time Tavern. He inclined his head only the slightest bit toward the innkeepers, who shared a confused shrug of their shoulders at one another before turning their attention back to their paying, drinking customers.
Norto set the basket down long enough to unlock his door and push his way inside, thumping his purchases on the bed roughly and darting to the radio, turning the nobs until he found a broadcasting station that was piping a steady stream of modern music, a style that the jafts and minotaurs referred to as ‘deep hums’. It had become quite popular in Desanadron in the previous year, and though he was older now and much more conservative than his young apprentice, Norto liked to stay up-to-date on the arts.
Unwrapping one of the casting clay containers, Norto took the material over to the table and started flattening it out, looking at the sketches he had thumb-tacked to the wall beside the table. “Hmm, should probably start with the handle,” he muttered to himself. He fetched his roughwork tools from his trunk, and set to work forming the model handle for his initial concept.
As he worked, he wondered how Dren’s sketches were coming along.
**
Andrei thanked the sergeant for the book as the officer handed it through the bars to him, seating himself on the floor of the cell and opening it to its table of contents. ‘Known Wyrms of Tamalaria: A Study’ was one of the less commonly referred-to guides to dragonkind, but the freelancer had seen several copies of it passed around among the members of the mercenary corps he’d signed on with back when he encountered his first green dragon.
The minotaur’s eyes throbbed, his vision blurring as a high-pitched whine stabbed through his skull. He let out a groan, dropping the book into his lap as he pressed his hands against his forehead, eyes crunched tightly shut. –Something is wrong-, came the voice of the powerful spirit he’d named Finn. –Andrei, you need to get out of here-.
“I can’t,” the freelancer snarled through clenched teeth.
-You need only one of us to enhance you for a moment, to bend or break the bars-, Finn replied evenly. –It would not be difficult-.
“Not what I mean,” Andrei retorted, mindful to keep his voice down. “There’s the guard at the desk, a station full of constables, and the fact that I’d be facing even more charges than I’m already sitting for.”
-One of your companions is in danger, Andrei-, Finn warned. –If you do nothing, they will come to great harm.-
“Taking action is not by its own merit always better than inaction,” Andrei answered, once more quoting his father. “Some things, we must leave to the gods.” He pulled his hands away from his face, reaching down for the book once more.
-Very well, then,- Finn answered quietly, its powerful echo fading. –Let us see how the gods contend with these events.-
**
Holly squinted at the paper for a long minute, considering the details Dren had worked into his sketch. “Mmm, I’m not sure about this,” she said after a moment longer, setting the drawing down on the bed and tapping the rings set along the handle Dren had drawn. “Won’t they get in the way, make it more difficult to grip?”
“No, see, the fingers go through those,” said Dren, sweeping over from the table, dressed only in his undershorts. He scooted onto the bed beside the naked cuyotai mage, covered only partly by the bedclothes as she reviewed his first few drawings. “It’s kind of like having brass knuckles along the handle, in the event that a slashing or stabbing angle isn’t available because of immediate range of the opponent.” He quickly mimicked an uppercut motion in the air, and Holly nodded appreciatively.
“I see. So, these add a little ‘oomph’ if the wielder has to give themselves more room to work with,” she said.
“Precisely,” said Dren, plucking up the sketch. “I’m telling you, I think this is going to be good. I haven’t seen the old sot so enthused to work on something, not in a long time. I wonder if he’s going to fetch casting materials to work up a prototype or two,” he mused aloud, looking for his clothes. “It’s getting late, but I’ll wager there’s still someplace I can pick some up of my own.”
Holly grappled him by the wrists and yanked him back over atop her, eliciting a giggle from the each. “Maybe you can let that wait until the morning,” she said playfully. “I can think of something else you should be putting your efforts into for tonight.” Dren made no objection, and for the remainder of the evening, neither of them spared a thought for the older smithy.
**
Tarik waited patiently under the bed, nibbling on a bit of bread he’d snagged from the pantry down in the serving room of the tavern’s main level. He wasn’t the only rodent making use of the space between the walls to traverse the interior of the building, though he was both the largest and the only one that was a lycanthrope. The other rats and mice, as well as all manner of spiders and other bugs, gave him a good, wide berth as he moved about, not wanting anything to do with the creature they knew immediately as a threat to them all.
Tarik pondered this curiously as the pudgy old smithy began softly snoring just overhead, stretched out in his cozy rented bed. He’d never been much for violence, and was no fair shakes as a fighter. He’d never spent much time learning to tangle with others in melee combat, and his skills with a bow, throwing weapons or the dwarf-crafted firearms that had gained popularity were average, at best. He wasn’t a physical man by any means; instead, he relied on stealth, wit, guile, and playing up the reputation of his race as agile and dexterous hit-and-run sorts. Mostly, he dealt with people by making sure they never knew he’d been in their lives to begin with.
This was different, however. The hume had cheated him, and blatantly, to boot. He’d welched on a bet (the unfairness of which in the first place didn’t factor into the gotrin’s thought process), and pocketed what was meant to be a quick and easy means of repaying that wager debt. Such a thing could not be allowed to stand.
Locked and hidden out of sight in his animus form, the gotrin had observed Norto all day. The smithy still had the watch in a pocket of his tunic, and the wastrel now lay sleeping directly overhead, still wearing said article of clothing. Tarik finished his bread, rubbed his snout clean, and darted out from under the bed, dashing into the washroom and clambering up into the tub.
The shapechange from his usual bestial half-man/half-rat form down into the animus was a silent affair, but the return to his standard, everyday form involved a little bit of noise. Not a great deal, but shapechanging right beside the smithy’s bed would likely have woken the man up. Careful to avoid making any sound as he stepped out of the clawfoot tub onto the bathmat, the gotrin leaned forward and peered into the main suite, letting out a shallow breath as he spotted Norto, still unconscious on his bed.
Tarik slipped the dagger free from its sheath under his left armpit, a minor precaution only, should the man wake up and be understandably hostile toward his midnight visitor. After all, not only had the smithy locked his door, but he had no weapon of his own in arm’s reach. He might feel a touch vulnerable if he came to only to find this dark-garbed sneak thief in his chambers.
Tarik could just waggle the knife at him to cow the man, then take back the desired pocket watch, then make a mad dash out of there. There would be no need for a ruckus.
The gotrin crept into the main suite, still moving as silently as a shadow as he drew nearer the bed where the hume lay snoring, several pages of sketchbook paper sprawled on the bed with him. Tarik quirked his head to one side to consider them; to his surprise, they were actually quite good illustrations, drawings of various kinds of blades, swords and knives. Whatever the man was working on, it would be quite the weapon to behold when all was said and done.
Moving ever so slowly, Tarik stretched his free hand down toward Norto, slender, furry fingers seeking the bulge of the pocket watch in the pocket just on the waistline near the hume’s rising and falling gut. All he needed was to get the watch into one of his own pouches, then shapechange back down into animus form, his garb and gear whisked away to the strange null-space where all such things remained when a lycanthrope performed the shapechange into their animus form. Even if Norto should awaken at that point, all the smithy would see was a wandering rat that he would likely swat lazily at before going back to sleep.
Tarik’s fingers were now only an inch away from the man’s pocket. With infinite tenderness in the darkness, they slipped into the pocket, pinching on the nub of the watch’s latch spring button, then slid out, their query carried until he could adjust his grip and peer at it properly.
Tarik held the watch in his left hand and popped it open, smiling broadly as he looked at the smoothed out inner hatch. He nodded to himself, and clapped the watch shut.
Too loudly.
A hand grasped his right wrist suddenly, and without thinking, reacting only by blind instinct, the gotrin torque his hand to secure his grip on his weapon, and he thrust it up and forward, until it came to a violent stop.
In the pale streetlamp light coming into the room through the windows’ curtains, Tarik saw the shock-widened eyes of Norto Bialik, his dagger buried in the man’s throat, his blood soaking into the fur on the ball of Tarik’s hand.
**
Andrei sleepily thanked the officer for the tray of food and shuffled back over to his bunk, easing down onto the thin mattress with a sigh. There issued from the bars a quiet rapping, and when he looked over, he found captain Dean leaning against them. “Captain,” he mumbled with a nod.
“Mister Dolstov,” she replied with her own nod. “How are you feeling, now that you’ve had a few days of our hospitality?” Andrei made a non-commital noise low in his throat and shrugged. “Well, I wanted to come by and let you know that when your friends come to see you today, we’ll be releasing you.” Andrei raised one eyebrow silently at her. “You’ve been quite well behaved, and with the weekend coming up, we want to have as many of these cells available as possible,” she said plainly.
“Things get that busy at the end of the work week,” Andrei asked with a mild grin.
“You know how it is- people get off of work for a few days, they lose their minds,” said captain Dean. “I’ll be around for a little while, some reports to review and performance updates to file. If your people come by before you see me again, swing by my office for a minute, I’ve got something that might interest you.” Andrei nodded, then turned his attention to the soggy flapjacks and oatmeal he’d been given for breakfast.
When he was finished with his food and had used the toilet, he settled on the bunk once again with his guidebook of known dragons, returning to the dog-eared page he’d left off on. The guide had proven quite useful in terms of delivering information about both Hevka T’Chall and Effrain the White that he hadn’t known before. To begin with, there was a small Freehold village named Osak, not too far from Bios, where the residents apparently were thralls of the elder wyrm. For close to two-hundred years, the folken of Osak had served as Hevka’s eyes and ears in the territories. There were no permanent human residents, however, according to the guide; the elder white wyrm didn’t want to compel the service of multiple generations, and as such, none of the short-lived races were expected to live in Osak. They weren’t discouraged from visiting, or staying for long stretches, but the village had a rule expressly prohibiting humes, goblins, kobolds, or lizardmen with offspring from living in the village’s limits.
Another tidbit that Andrei found intriguing, and possibly useful, was a passage in the section regarding Effrain the White which claimed that the younger white dragon could not resist the sight of a goat near its lair in the mountains. According to the guide, no mountain goat could come within three or four miles of Effrain’s domain without being snatched up and devoured like a particularly irresistible snack. Farmers in the plains near the base of the mountain range the wyrm lived in had ceased keeping them among their livestock, as every time Effrain flew overhead, he would swoop down and snatch them up without a moment’s hesitation.
“Need to hit up a butcher shop before we leave,” the freelancer whispered to himself. He did a little more reading, and a little over an hour later, Holly and Dren, a little disheveled but looking quite pleased with themselves (or, more likely, one another, Andrei thought), arrived outside of his cell with the duty sergeant, the officer unlocking his door and sliding it open as Andrei gathered the books he had borrowed in his arms.
“Your gear is in the yellow trunk down at the end of the corridor,” the sergeant said, leaving the trio to themselves as he shuffled back toward his desk.
“So, I can see you’ve been putting your time to good use,” Holly remarked as Andrei stepped out of the cell, rolling his head to crack his neck.
“Yeah, figured it couldn’t hurt to do a little research on our possible subjects here,” the freelancer replied. “The captain wanted me to swing by her office on the way out, if you guys don’t mind.” Dren and Holly gave no objection, and when they arrived at her office, the door stood open and the captain waved them in after Dren knocked on the door. Andrei deposited the books on an empty chair, and she stood up, offering him a slender journal of some sort with no markings on its plain beige cover.
“This belonged to a man named Derick Malard,” the captain said by way of explanation as Andrei accepted the journal, thumbing it open. The page he opened to had a detailed sketch of what appeared to be a dragon’s foreleg and claws, with tiny scribbling here and there to describe different spots along the drawing. “He was an unassuming man, a professor of draconology at Palen University.”
“Hmm, never heard of him,” said Andrei, slowly turning the page to reveal another sketch, this one some sort of medical design of a dragon’s espophagus.
“He was a gnome, a talented illusionist and scholar who spent the vast majority of his life studying dragonkind in every way he could,” said the captain. “Mostly, he used his spellcraft to make himself undetectable and observed dragons in their native environs, sneaking right into their caves and lairs to watch them for hours at a time. Sometimes, he would track down dragon hunters and perform post-mortem examinations of the wyrms they slayed, documenting all of his findings. This journal is one of the only ones he never had professionally adapted and published by the university press.”
“How did you come to have it,” Dren inquired. The captain let out a sigh and shook her head.
“It was about twenty years ago, before I was even serving here. The professor had come through with a few dragon hunters who were going up into the mountains to try challenging Hevka T’Chall. They’d heard that he was partial to goats, so they purchased one from a local farmer and headed north.”
“Let me guess,” Andrei said, shutting the journal and tucking it into his bag, adjusting the straps on his armor’s shoulder plates. “It was Effrain who showed up instead.”
“Just so,” said captain Dean. “Their information was just accurate enough to get them killed by the wrong dragon. Hevka T’Chall is dangerous, yes, but he has also shown a great deal of mercy with those who confront him over the centuries. Effrain, not so much. The journal was among the detritus left behind, found by wilds rangers. The rangers brought it all back here, since Bios was the closest major city to the incident.”
Andrei thanked the captain for the journal, and the trio headed out into the city’s streets, basking in the morning sun for a long moment. The freelancer took a minute to let his eyes adjust; he hadn’t had much sunlight in his cell, and the throbbing in his head came now not from sobriety, but from adjusting to being able to see clearly without daylight being filtered through a reinforced window screen.
“We should go tell Norto that we’re going to get going,” Andrei said to Holly.
“I’ll come with,” Dren said cheerily, patting his own rucksack. “I have some sketches for the weapon we’re going to make for the monks to compare with his ideas.”
“Sounds good. Lead the way,” Andrei said with a flourish of his hand, and together, they headed off toward The Merry Time Tavern.
**
That can’t be good, Dren thought as they drew within eyesight of the tavern where Norto was staying, staring at the covered wagon with the large red ankh on its side, a universal symbol of healers in Tamalaria. Several constables stood in a semi-circle around the front deck of the tavern, keeping people from entering, and a smallish crowd had gathered to rubberneck and try to see what was going on within.
“Let’s hustle,” Andrei said, starting to jog ahead of Holly and Dren, his weapons and armor jangling as he shoved off. When the trio came to the rear of the gathered onlookers, Dren started casting about for some sing of Norto among them, hoping that the snarly old drunk would be amid their number, grumbling about not being able to get inside to his room.
Holly slipped to one side of the crowd and pressed her palms together, lowering her head as she closed her eyes and drew upon her mana. Within seconds, she was looking down on herself, her vision grayscaled, the sounds of the crowd somewhat muffled by the force of the magic she was manipulating. With a careful effort, she pushed her perceptions down and forward, gliding unseen by the officers, up onto the deck, and through into the main serving room of the tavern.
The owner/operators were inside the serving room with a pair of brutish-looking jaft officers, one of them with a pen and pad of paper in hand, taking notes as the male of the ownership duo stood with his arms folded defensively over his chest, making some statement that Holly couldn’t quite make out. She turned the perspective, and spotted a gnome with a medical bag coming down the stairs from the second level. Holly slipped by him, up the stairwell, and down toward an open doorway, where another jaft officer stood just by the door, keeping guard.
Inside the room, a pair of elven men in traditional healer’s robes stood beside the bed where Norto lay, his eyes popped open in the shock of death, his throat, chest and bedclothes drenched in darkness from what she could tell was a wound to the throat.
Holly’s perceptions snapped back to herself as she gasped, hands flying up over her mouth at what she had seen. She felt hands upon her shoulders, a large one on her right, a smaller, gentler one on her left. She blinked, and found Dren and Andrei standing before her, the silent question in their eyes jointly.
“He’s dead,” she stammered to them, sensing the sudden stiffness in Dren’s hand. “He’s been murdered.”