Bruce cocked an eyebrow at the wiry rodent. "That's just, kind of a common name, is all," he said.
"Yeah, well, it's mine," replied Steve the rat. "And I'm gonna make sure that prick bastard remembers it," he snarled, jabbing the air with the toothpick he'd drawn out of a slice of cheese. The group had gone to Helga's, a diner on the south side of Bronze Pot after getting Steve the gift of speech, to break their fast and discuss their grievances. They had mostly walked in silence, following Bruce's lead, and though the hostess of the diner had given Azira a petulant look for his pet rat, perched on the greenskin's shoulder, she had brooked no spoken argument about seating them.
"And how, pray tell, are you going to do that," Azira asked. He shook his head, arms folded over his chest. "The four of them are already on their way to Southun, and after that, who knows? They don't exactly all live together, you know?"
"I don't know," Steve replied. He bit into the cheese slice, scooting aside as Bruce pinched a few walnuts from the platter in the middle of the table, eagerly chewing. He swallowed hard, sighed, looking away from the goblin skirmisher. "I don't know much outside of what I can read in the papers the kid's father brought in the house, and books."
"You can read common too," Melissa asked.
"Some of my kind can, but most are just, well, animals," he said with a shrug. "That Ralphie kid listened to a lot of radio, too. His pops didn't care much for it, called it a 'devil box', but the mother was very indulgent."
"The pudge on the kid could've told us that," Azira quipped with an unkind sneer. "Anyway, the four of them are well-known public figures, even beyond the borders of the kingdom. I know Ko doesn't even live in Graneck anymore, he runs a bodyguards-for-hire company out of Ja-Wen, in the capital. Toka Mano, the elf mage, he would probably be the hardest of the four to get after; he serves now as magical advisor to Crown Prince Terrance. King Trayech's own court sorceror, Mo Katano, is about the king's age, and will likely pass around the same time as his majesty if all goes by nature."
"You say 'get after' as if we can just brawl with these people like common thugs in the street," said Bruce, shaking his head. "But you and I have both seen these Saviors in combat, we know what they're capable of. And no offense to our furry friend and Melissa here, but their addition to you and I does not exactly make us any kind of formidable fighting force." He leaned his head forward, elbow propped on the table, forehead on his palm. "What sort of action could we possibly take against any of them?"
There was an uncomfortable silence among the quartet for several minutes, until finally, Melissa cleared her throat and took a swig of her orange juice. "Well, you don't need a knife to cut a man down," she prodded. The others looked to her, remaining silent. "Think about it. What's the one thing we all really agree on here?" More silence from her compatriots. "That the Saviors of Graneck aren't as grand as their reputations let on. Well, if we can't take them on physically, damage them in body, we take them on in other ways, damage them reputationally."
Azira liked the notion, though he couldn't immediately think of any way the four of them could manage such a thing. Everyone in Graneck loved the Saviors, treated them like they were gods among mortals. What could any of the four of them say or do to cause the Saviors any real, lasting harm?
"Do you have any ideas," the goblin skirmisher asked.
"Wait a minute," said Steve, sitting back on his haunches and scratching his chin with one tiny claw. "The rogue woman, Talya Jacobson, she wrote a book about their little adventure and fights against Pel Droma's people. And I heard once on the radio that she goes and gives talks to crowds about it all, too, to promote the book. Could we use that somehow?"
"Disrupt one of her events, maybe," Melissa asked. "That's an idea, a good place to start. Do we know where her next talk will be after the parade in Southun?"
"I know where we can find out," said Bruce, snapping his fingers. "We need a messenger bird."
**
The quartet agreed to meet at Helga's in a couple of days for breakfast, and Bruce would bring his response missive if and when it came. Until such time as they got one, each of them would be thinking on different ways to get their payback against the Saviors of Graneck. Azira wasn't fond of using indirect attacks; he had been trained by the men of Clan Batang to be a skirmisher, to use ambush and speed to cut his enemies apart before they could react, then dart away and prepare for more swift hit-and-run attacks. He had never been built for long engagements in battle, but nor had he been trained for stealth or subterfuge. This was beyond him.
Steve the rat, however, seemed quite enamored with the idea. "We could find out where they live and fill the walls with my kind," he suggested that first evening in Azira's condo. "Chew through all the insulation, mess up the wiring if they've got electricity! Course, I might lose a few cousins that way, get the ol' zap-a-dap."
"Hmph. If you ask me, whatever we do to them, it won't be enough for my liking," Azira groused, pouring himself a shot of whiskey from the bottle he kept under his canned foods cupboard. Steve sat on his sink counter, tail twitching lightly as he mused over the possibilities. "I'd just like a shot at that reptile, man-to-man. Take him from a broadside, slip one of these up under a rib," he snarled, patting the sheath of his left hook knife.
"Dat guy would slaughter you," Steve replied. "You said so yourself, he cut through your people like it was nothin'. Hurtin' Jarek Ko is gonna take more than a couple a knives and willpower." Azira grumbled wordlessly, but acknowledged that the rodent had a valid point. The goblin skirmisher thought on what he knew about Ko. He knew the lizardman ran a protection outfit, one with a fairly pristine reputation. He knew he himself didn't have the resources to hire a third party to go after Ko or any of his people. Even a run-of-the-mill mercenary outfit would charge an exorbitant price for such a service.
But an organization like Ko's relied largely on their reputation to keep business coming in. Azira quickly drank off his beer and belched, putting his hand down on the countertop. "Come on, I've got an idea," he said.
"Where we goin'?"
"The Freelancers' Guild has an outpost just north of town, and guilds tend to have a lot of information about outfits like Ko's on hand. We're going to do some fact-finding," the goblin proclaimed.
**
"Thank you so much," Melissa said with a nod to the gnome bookseller, shuffling over to one of the lounge-style couches with her purchase. The hardcover book, 'Unlikely Heroes' by Talya Jacobson, featured a magnificent oil painting reproduction of the Saviors of Graneck on its left half, exaggerated and epic, and on its right half, a Mage's Eye capture of the actual Saviors themselves seated round a tavern table, ale glasses raised in salut. At least, Melissa assumed it was from a Mage's Eye spell; photography had become quite popular in the realms of Tamalaria since the dwarves fine-tuned the initial machines their cousin race, the gnomes, had produced, making them smaller and more stable.
The back cover of the dust jacket featured a brief blurb and a picture of the human rogue woman herself, smiling coyly in a set of adventurer's leathers. Melissa grunted; they looked to be fashioned more for allure than protection. There's no way she actually wore those in the field, she thought. No adventurer would let her tits and chest be that pronounced in a combat situation. She opened the book, curious to see to whom it had been dedicated.
Melissa frowned a moment later; there didn't appear to be anyone to whom Jacobson wanted to give thanks within the first pages. After the Table of Contents, the rogue's story began, with no preamble or forward. The young waitress shrugged and began reading. Only a handful of pages in, Melissa had already formed at least two clear opinions about Miss Talya Jacobson. Firstly, the rogue held herself in superbly high regard, heaping praise on her stealth and nimbleness. Secondly, while Jacobson may have made a natural tale-teller and liar in face-to-face situations, her writing style and word choice simply didn't effectively translate to the page.
An hour after cracking the adventure memoir open, Melissa was about forty pages in, with a number of questions, jotted down in a small notebook she had brought with her. Most people, she figured, wouldn't be reading this book with a critical eye. It would, for them, be a feel good read. But people who read such things for good vibes seldom stopped to ask a lot of questions.
They would be less likely to catch the numerous contradictions and unlikely scenarios laid out by Miss Jacobson's prose.
One other point came clear to Melissa as she read- Talya and Jack had slept together during their journey. This wasn't implied by the text, but overtly and, in one instance, grotesquely stated. Their first incident had been written along what Melissa thought were rather graphic lines, whilst the second and third instances were merely mentioned in passing. Before Jack's return from his victory against the forces of Pel Droma, such material might have made Melissa weep; now, she just thought it only made sense.
Heading back to the flat she shared with a couple of roommates, Melissa considered what she had gleaned from her first stretch of reading, nimbly navigating the afternoon traffic of the town's market area. Jacobson had mentioned, on a few occasions, her mentor, a half-elf named Sviton. It wasn't much of a lead to go off of, but Melissa soon found herself making her way not home, but east, toward Bronze Pot's lone constabulary station. If the mentor had ever been arrested or charged in the Kingdom of Graneck, the station would have a record.
With any luck, they might also have a last known address.