Regeris looks over the cloak curiously. "Or it coudl just be a useful cloak with an unpleasant symbol on it. Easy enough to rip out embroidering and do something more tasteful but some time to properly investigate it. After all, what's one more curse?" Regeris lets out a miserable sigh.
Grau weighs in on the cloak after giving it a close inspection.
"I think a competent tailor could remove the embroidery."
He offers it back to Nebbin.
"In any case, you don't need to report back to Commander Kroft in person on this. I'll write up what you've told me and send it by courier. If you want someone from the guard to investigate this book, you can leave it with me as well."
"If there's anything else I can do, name it. If not, be discreet as you leave. I trust my own people and have the streets outside under constant watch, so you being here, now, should be safe. But if Kroft wants your connection to us off the books, I expect she has a good reason. And I'm reasonably sure it has something to do with the Queen's Physicians."
His eyes find Emi's in the jumble of people in the office.
"If you're there in the morning, at the temple? I'll do my best to keep things calm."
Emi is still of the opinion that urgency is needed. Some things, like the book and cloak, can wait a day or two if they must. Others, like what to do about the coming door to door search, can't.
"The problem I see with only cleaning up signs of infection at the cathedral is this. If we don't take anyone, or only those who might be identified as sick, out of the cathedral we're running the greater risk. If the search doesn't stick to the methods and reasons we expect, we can't do anything about it by the time we know for sure what it will be like."
"If we just take everyone who's willing to go out because the expect the worst and we're wrong, we overreacted but there's no harm done. I just don't believe we can take the chance the searches will be only medical and not political."
Kayleigh says nothing at first when Emi speaks up. After giving the matter some more thought, the cleric raises one eyebrow.
"Maybe we can do both," she says, turning toward Tassira. "Could you make all or most of us invisible when the physicians come calling? If they don't try anything underhanded, then we'll know the Lambs and priests should be safe on their own. If the physicians or their Gray Maidens try anything, we can intervene...forcefully."
"If we do that, though, wouldn't we all become fugitives?"
He doesn't like to disagree with Kayleigh -- he hopes she won't get mad at him -- but he thinks they need to choose. Remove everyone, or trust that the physicians at least are trying to help, not just enforce the queen's will.
Kayleigh's not mad with Nebbin: She gives him a look of apologetic regret before nodding at his assessment of the likely fallout from her plan if things go south.
"The problem with Emi's plan is that we'd probably have to keep shuttling folks from place to place to stay ahead of the physicians, and I'm not sure we have enough safe houses to do that. Also, once the physicians become commonplace or even established in Old Korvosa, such a moving around of people will look suspicious and likely be reported, either by a well-meaning citizen or any number of enemies we've made here...Pilts Swastel comes to mind. And we don't know if the Temple of Aroden is their first stop because it happens to be close to the bridge or because someone's already reported that a group of orphans is now living there. If, say, the Temple of Asmodeus gave the physicians a heads-up about the Lambs but there are no orphans present when they search the place, that will likely raise suspicions."
"I know it's dangerous, but with my plan at least we'll know immediately where things stand with the physicians. We've got so many irons already in the fire that I'm loathe to add another."
"I haven't used up any of my 2nd-circle magics today." Tassira nods. "I could make you all invisible, one at a time."
"Of course, it'd only last for a few minutes, even if I put a little extra juice into each casting. I'd have to cast them just before the Physicians show up."
"They'd have to knock, wouldn't they? You could cast it then. And maybe we can hide too, just in case?"
*******************************************************
Kayleigh nods to Nebbin and smiles. "Plus, we have Majenko and his family for lookouts!"
Regeris frowns before speaking up. "You may be right Kayleigh, I think they're coming to us because they have a tip-off. Gods know we have enough enemies. It's clear we don't trust what they will do with plague victims once they have them. Why is that? What do we mistrust?"
He shakes his head. "If they take the children, I want to go to this hospice and see it for myself. Let's get back to the temple. We can bring the book and figure it out as we go."
Emi purses her lips but lets the subject drop. Kayleigh's the one who knows about healing and such.
It's a relatively short walk from the constabulary to the temple. People in the street are going about their business as best they may, but most of them have their mouths and noses swaddled in cloths or hidden behind veils,. The flow of traffic can't be more than a quarter what it would normally be on a mild, late afternoon.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the steps of the Temple of Aroden. Petitioners crowd the steps of the church in a coughing, irritable mass.
"Oh!" Ishan cries, when he sees the gathered mob.
Of course the doctors will come to the temple first if they're seeking the sick of Old Dock. This temple and its crowd stand in plain sight of the Northpoint guard posted on the wall just across the Narrows.
As the party approaches, some in the crowd begin to stand and move towards them, eager to plead their case to the healer of the house before their neighbors have a chance to do the same.
The color drains from Kayleigh's face as she spies the throng gathered on the steps of the Temple of Aroden. Squeezing through the crowd, she enters the building and seeks out Garlan and Crayden, telling them about the impending arrival of the queen's physicians. She asks if there are any more sick folk inside the temple before asking the elderly priests' advice on what she should do next...and whether the priests and/or Lambs ought to at least temporarily abandon the church.
After listening to their replies, the young Milanite excuses herself and climbs the stairs to the bell tower. There she speaks with Majenko, asking the little dragon what he or his family members know of the three potential hospice locations . She asks how rough the neighborhoods are, the stability of the buildings, and if they are easily accessible (and easy to escape from if the Gray Maidens come calling).
People in the street are going about their business as best they may, but most of them have their mouths and noses swaddled in cloths or hidden behind veils.
Nebbin moves in front of Kayleigh and Tassira, shielding them from anyone who might get too exuberant in the crowd.
"Should we warn them they need to move away or they'll be taken away by the Gray Maidens?" he asks the others urgently. "We can't just let them stay here too!"
With a heavy sigh, Kayleigh answers Nebbin. "No. I have some time--Ishan and I can treat as many folks as possible and then send them home. The physicians and their guards aren't due 'til morning. We'll have to tell everyone about that, I guess. Let them decide for themselves if they want to put themselves in the hands of the queen's doctors or wait until Ishan and I can get a new hospice up and running. But we'll have to tell them to stop coming here."
Ishan stops at the doors, letting the others file into the church.
"I'll see what I can do to start treating these folks and sending them home while you check on the people inside," he says to Kayleigh and Regeris as they pass. "But are you sure we should be telling people about tomorrow? If the doctors hear folks were warned, and they trace the rumor back to here. They're bound to wonder how you knew. Might make them more ---interested in you."
---
Inside Kayleigh is relieved to find all of the orphans and both of the old men relatively healthy. Kayleigh's care of Crayden overnight seems to have paid dividends because the old man is strong and alert.
Garlan nods gravely as Kayleigh gives him the news.
"Well, I've kept the doors of the temple closed today, despite all the petitioners outside. I took water out to them a couple of times, but I was the only one that went, and I was careful, and kept my face wrapped up when I did it. Anyone spying us across the square would have seen we didn't take in the sick... aren't harboring nor hiding them."
"So I see no reason for them to treat, nor seize nor arrest any of us. And I can't see why that shouldn't stand for the orphans as well. You've driven the Veil from our doors. That should spare us the attention of these physicians."
---
Upstairs, Majenko stomps around in a circle, flicking his tail and snorting bubbles as Kayleigh explains what she needs.
"Mine will find this for you!" the little dragon proclaims. "Many places today are hollow, with no bodies living in them anymore. Many in the Old Dock, many in the Bridgefront. Not so many," he says, shaking his head, "up on the hill."
"You say to me, what you need and where. And mine will find it!"
Emi peels off from the the group before entering the temple.
"I'll find Trap and see what his and his mom's situation is like. Then I'll be back."
Nebbin sighs in relief at Garlan's words. "Then maybe we can just act normal and everything will be OK? They'll see there's no illness here, and leave."
He looks around.
"We should just make there aren't any signs of the bloodveil in here, too, just in case."
He'll begin searching the temple for any signs of sickness that they can remove.
Kayleigh smiles at the small yet proud dragon and repeats the three addresses she'd heard to him, telling him of her plan to open a secret hospice for the sick. She adds that she's open to other locations, but it's essential that the location have relatively easy access for the sick but preferably a built-in escape route.
.
.
----------------------------------
With Ishan
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"We could be vague about the physicians' arrival...just say that they'll probably cross the bridge any day now," Kayleigh counters. "I wish we knew more about them and how they're treating the blood veil. We've just got bad feelings because the queen has cut legitimate clerics out of the process. But I don't trust them...them or their Gray Maiden enforcers."
--------------------------------------
With Emi, Nebbin, Regeris, & Tassira
--------------------------------------
Kayleigh nods to Emi, reminding her that she's got one channel left for the day, should Trap and/or his mother need it. She suggests that someone go with Emi, even though she doubts her friend will want any company.
While Nebbin scours the temple, the priestess asks Regeris if he can help her and Ishan give basic medical aid to the crowd outside so they'll disperse sooner rather than later.
"Our choice of neighbourhood will matter if we're finding a new place to treat the ill," says Regeris. "Frankly somewhere that's hard for a crowd to mass outside would be ideal but I have no idea how to handle that."
Looking at the crowd, Regeris risks the miasma to start tending to the ill. He looks over to Kayleigh and Ishahn. "I'll triage and sort the crowd out. You see to the sickest."
With that, despite his own misery and exhaustion from just - well everything - he starts briskly ordering the crowd about, picking out people from the crowd as the most in need of medical aid and sending them to Kayleigh and Ishahn. first.
Thinking back through her dealings with Trap, Emi cannot recall any specifics about where he lives, but given her outstanding offer to pay him for information on Tallisan's whereabouts, one place to look is around the Church of Abadar.
Nebbin goes through the temple with a critical eye. It doesn't look like a sick ward. It looks like a place crammed too tight with people. The kids jump up and come over to ask questions about what he's been doing. Garlan sits back down at the table where Hal reads from a musty tome. He notices that the boy reads well, with a strong voice that echoes in the high ceilings.
Kayleigh and Regeris join Ishan in the sorting and treating of the ill. Talking with the sick and the families that brought them, it's clear that word is spreading door to door that there's succor to be had at the House of Aroden. Many of the cases are very early onset and the families need advice how to manage the disease until it burns out or progresses.
Unfortunately there are two cases who are quite far advanced, delirious, and apparently not accompanied by well-folk to take care of them or to even take them away. Ishan shakes his head grimly as his gaze meets Kayleigh's.
"Their fevers are raging uncontrolled. They will die tonight barring a miracle."
Kayleigh gives Ishan a grim nod and quietly asks the man to gather the two dying men in a discreet place away from what remains of the crowd. "I'll use my last channel to remove the disease from them...but this is unsustainable."
When Emi tries to follow her intuition and cross over into North Point she comes up to the back-side of a crowd. Thinking of the contagion she resists the urge to step closer to hear what others are saying.
Through snatches she gathers that the Queen's Physicians have setup a checkpoint of some kind at the gatehouse on the other side of the bridge. To pass into the city the easy way, she's going to have to subject herself to some kind of examination.
A glance at the nearest side bridges over the Narrows shows no one on them. The hard ways into the city may be closed.
With a start, Emi realizes that this is the cordon that they're extending into Old Korvosa in the morning. They've moved quickly in setting up this quarantine pocket over there in North Point, where the city population is less dense. Here in Old Dock there are more people by far. She knows from experience that the crowded streets of Bridgefront are an order of magnitude worse.
She despairs of her mission to get through this and find Trap. She questions anew whether the street-wise boy would even allow himself to get caught with such a line between himself and home, wherever that is.
She hesitates and moves to step out of the flow. A kid comes darting through the crowd playing 'BlackJack' with his friends. Not Trap.
He angles her way until his eyes meet hers. She knows the game. She knows the trick. He's smart enough to see she knows and picks a different mark, darting into the crowd directly away from her.
"BlackJack!" she hears someone call a minute later, beyond her sight.
Her sense tells her something's happening in the city beyond the cordon. It could just be tension building over the coming raid - it's hard not to think of it as that.
Or it could be something else. The soldiers on the wall on the other side of the Narrows seem tense and watchful. Korvosa's wheels of justice and commerce turn over there in North Point, in the forms of the Longacre building, City Hall and the Church of Abadar. There's alot to be tense about.
Although Emi is unsettled to find the bridge blocked and an effective cordon isolate Old Korvosa from the rest of the city, she isn't at all surprised. In fact she had predicted it earlier when they were with Grau.
It is exactly what she would have done if she were in charge of the coming raid. Whoever laid the plans must have expected word would leak out it was coming. The response would be an early exodus from the areas targeted by the raid. The solution: announce a day and time for the raid internally (almost unavoidable for it to take place), then move earlier to bottle up the area before those who planned to leave before the raid could do so.
Emi turns back toward the Temple of Aroden. Even if she could figure out a way through or around, getting back in afterward might be no easier. She could well find herself stuck in North Point while she was needed at the temple.
If she had to put money on it, she'd bet Trap lives in Bridgefront or Old Dock anyway. With no other way of figuring out where to find the boy, Emi must admit he's probably on his own. She decides to make one other visit before returning to the temple. She turns toward Orisini's academy.
While it's extremely unlikely Vencarlo is unaware of what is happening, it can't hurt to double check with him just in case. Besides, she hasn't seen him in days, and who knows what the next few days might be like.
While she hurries along she still keeps her eyes peeled for Trap, just in case some incredible coincidence might occur.
No incredible coincidences happen for Emi on her way up the hill to the Dueling Academy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her sharp eye picks out stacks, a dozen deep or more each, of bodies filling two out-of-the-way stalls of the River Run Market. An old tarp does what it can to hide the nature of the stack, but Emi's passing eye catches it.
The Wain service seems to be falling behind here in Old Dock. The mind shudders to think what Bridgefront might be like this afternoon. Perhaps she and her friends had picked a good day to be out for a swim.
There are no signs of dead in the streets of Garrison Hill, however. The little shops on the square are orderly and open. When she comes to Orisini's there's a stranger bent over the front door lock. He seems to check that the door is locked, puts a key in his pocket and turns as she walks up. He's a young man, something close to Emi's age and height with brown curly hair and expensive looking clothes.
He jumps in surprise to find Emi behind him.
"Hi!", he stammers. "Master Orisini's not in. If you're looking for him."
After Milani's blessing has driven out the two men's active disease, Ishan mutters several prayers of lesser restoration to put them back on their feet. As they regain consciousness, one of the men clutches at the sleeves of Ishan's robe, crying out his thanks.
Ishan nods his own thanks to Kayleigh, and begins quietly explaining that they must go home to their families.
Hours later, with the steps of the temple clear of petitioners, Ishan comes over to Kayleigh.
"Well, I can't be found here by the Physicians tomorrow. That's certain. I've been forbidden to treat the sick and that's just what we're doing here. If the church learns of this I'll be expelled. Not even mentioning the, borrowed item."
"The truth is, I owe a great thumping tithe that I presently cannot pay. Fees I'm supposed to have collected for healing practiced prior to the Queen's prohibition. I'm supposed to be contracting my services as a clerk to earn the money now."
"Need a clerk?" he asks with a chuckle.
"You're bedding down here then, and waiting for the Doctors in the morning?"
Emi is extremely disappointed to find Vencarlo away. So much for that bit of extra time I have.
"Yes, I'm here to see Master Orisini."
She steps forward and offers her hand to the young man.
"Emileva Mavrakis. I'm a personal friend of Vencarlo's, not a student. Do you know when he will be returning?"
Emi doesn't expect she would be able to wait, but she wants to leave him a message at least. Since she hasn't the slightest intention of handing over a note to the man she's talking to, that means getting him to unlock the door and let her in.
"Jarold Allisain, miss. At your service. I'm a student of Master Orisini's."
He shakes his head in the negative. He's about half-a-head taller than Emi. Square build and narrow-jaw.
"No. I don't know where he is. I thought to find him here, but no one answered."
Jarold's reply strikes Emi as odd considering what she saw walking up.
"No one answered? Were you not inside?"
Emi points to his pocket.
"You just put the key away after locking the door did you not?"
Kayleigh considers Ishan's words carefully before answering. "I think we should wait for Majenko, our tiny dragon friend, to make his report before we finalize plans. Still, I'm thinking the Temple of Aroden and its inhabitants are as clean from the blood veil as you're going to find in Old Korvosa. I want to be close by to watch how things go when the physicians and Gray Maidens arrive, but we don't want to force a confrontation by being present if the Queen's people are actually looking for us."
Tassira lingers about, unsure of how to help.
"Do you think we should be outside too?" Nebbin asks.
Eventually, Kayleigh turns back to Ishan, one eyebrow quirked. "Exactly how 'thumping' is the tithe you owe your church?"
Jarold smiles.
"Yes, that's true. I did, didn't I. Well, Master Orisini gives out keys to some of his older students. For times when we might do helpful things around the Academy, and I... have one of those. And was doing a... helpful thing."
He puts up his hands in defense.
"Please don't ask me to let you in,"
---
"Oh, it's north of 250 gold pieces. I'm not sure of the exact sum," Ishan answers with a shrug.
"I've collected just under 33 gold crowns for my services. The Golden Father will provide."
Emi doesn't disbelieve Jarold, but she really wants to leave a note.
"Is Master Orisini's butler Erold inside? He lives there after all. I need to leave a note for Vencarlo. It's extremely important."
She avoids sounding combative but does insert a sense of urgency in her tone of voice.
Jarold relaxes a little at the name drop.
"Ok, if you know Erold then I guess it would be ok to let you go in and leave a note."
"No, Erold's not home either. The place was locked when I got here."
He produces the key from his pocket and opens the door for Emi. Beyond the entry, the house seems lifeless. The first room off the hall is Vencarlo's study, where Emi knows there's loose paper. Jarold follows politely, lingering in the study doorway as she scrawls her note.
Out of the corner of her eye she notices several rolled up parchments, very like arcane scrolls sitting on Vencarlo's desk like they were just placed there.
"I've been saving up to buy a wand of lesser restoration to augment my...our...healing abilities against this plague. Once I have that, maybe I can help pay down your debt to your church."
That said, the priestess awaits the return of Majenko and/or his family.
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Sitting at a cluttered table in the priest's office, Tassira considers the two texts, Serving Your Hunger and Scriptum Extereri. Flies or spiders...
Flies first.
The tome from the river-bottom is thoroughly dry now. It is ornate. The spine must have been beautiful before the briny estuary waters got to it. It's withered pages are stuck together in chunks along the edges. Peeling them apart destroys more than half of each page, including the entirety of the page margins. It just crumbles away to dust.
The fragments of text left behind are revolting. The tome is a cookbook for eating humanoids of all types. It's a treatise on cannibalism, and Tassira finds herself relieved that most of the illustrations are ruined as well. The text would surely have been worth a fortune undamaged. To someone.
She's just about saturated her interest in the subject when she luckily separates a page with something legible scrawled on the surviving part of the leaf. The recipe makes Tassira blush. The poor woman in the illustrated ritual is being tortured and eaten, and judging by the amount of ink on the page, Tassira has the sinking notion that to whoever owned this text, this might have been a favorite part.
Curiously, the name of Urgathoa is lined through on the page and scrawled above it in bold letters is the name Andaisin.
Emboldened by the discovery, Tassira begins leafing through the rest of the text with more energy. She finds other places where the same replacement has been made, but in the end this is the best clue she finds.
Tassira focuses on the name "Andaisin" as a way of blocking out the vile images in the book.
Now, about the Scriptum Extereri...
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So much has happened, and so fast. One thing upon another upon another and its prevented Tassira from really examining some of the written evidence that the group has acquired. And everything Tassira subconsciously dreaded about the scriptum turns out to be true in spades.
It's dense. It's written in a cramped hand, in tiny letters that discomfort the eyes. It's chaotic and nonsensical. Dark menacing poetry drifting through a haze of paranoid delusions. Her mind strays to that instant where cultist started confounding everyone in the room with passages from this tome. This is how she died. Or how she thought she had at the time. One the end of Nebbin's terrible sword.
Flipping ahead to the page that's marked by the black ribbon, the page the tome was open to when it was found, transports Tassira back to the scene where the book was recovered. Oily candle burning low beside it. Magic circle on the floor before it containing a formless nightmare thing. The disturbance of the ring, the death of the cultist and the spawning of the spider demon by the clock two floors below.
The page illustrates the same magic circle and explains its purpose in containing a living nightmare, conjured into the real world from the Dreamscape via a ritual that she finds two pages back. The nightmare must consume an offered soul to transcend from spectral to physical, or else rapidly fade back into the realm of dreams.
The writing descends from there into a mad allegory that Tassira skips through to come to its conclusion, where the protagonist of the story kills himself in order to offer his own flesh over to the apotheosis of the Hunter of Dreams, Mog Lathur.
Here it launches into a maze of unconnected narrative descriptions of places Tassira's never heard of. Thumbing through it, she comes to find that what she thought was page damage further into the tome is actually another bookmark. It's a piece of thin paper and when she flips to it, it's marking another ritual. This one speaks directly of the apotheosis that the first ritual only hinted at with its story. Of the joining of sacrificed bodies and souls into the recrudescence of the Slumbering Hunter.
The paper itself that was crushed in the bindings of the mad poet's tome is an illustration of a tall grandfather clockwork device called a Clockwork Soul Trap. It looks very much like the clock that was destroyed. It struck a chime when it trapped a soul, and ran a hand backwards for an hour before releasing that soul upon its fated path. It could hold 11 souls at once and told the current number by the hour. Upon the twelfth soul trapped, all were released.
Below the description of the item is a scrawled note.
"Could it work to feed a conjured nightmare upon souls snagged by the clockwork?"
Tassira sits back, comforted by the knowledge that the bastard that almost got her killed died without knowing the answer to his question.
Yes, it could work.
Afternoon shadows grow long by the time Majenko and his sons return to the temple. He sits preening himself on the bell tower sill when Kayleigh comes up the stair and she's suddenly struck by the notion that the little dragon might have forgotten the whole thing already. They do have a reputation for being flighty.
"Mm. This place, number 1. It's no good. No more hollow places here, just many people. Everywhere people. If some hollow places here, they're buried so far inside, no way of escape like you ask."
"These places, 2 and 3 are better. And another place my son knows in Bridgefront too! Maybe a good place for you."
"And has dead taint!" a thick voice croaks from the shingles, and for the first time Kayleigh spots Majenko's sons lingering outside the belltower, near enough to hear the conversation. His son is a black and blue version of himself, with a voice that is somehow a note deeper than his own.
"And has dead taint," Majenko agrees. "And Bridgefront is farthest from here. Don't know is that good?" he cocks his head.
"Mine can lead you to these places. When you want to see them."
Kayleigh thanks the dragon clan for their help and says she'll let them know if she'll need a guide a bit later, after she's spoken to her friends. She floats the vague idea of some sort of future reward for their efforts.
Downstairs, she gathers her friends and fills them in on what the little dragons reported. "I'm in no condition to battle undead if that's what Majenko's son meant by the place having a 'dead taint,'" she says, adding a reminder that, as a merciful healer, she couldn't use her positive energy channels against such foes...even if she hadn't already used up her daily allotment.
The cleric asks if the others are up for some site scouting and then staying at Helvara's place overnight or if they'd prefer to find nearby shelter for the night to get more sleep and not need to make another long hike early in the morning to be present when the physicians and their armed escort cross the bridge.
Annoyed with herself, she subsequently scrambles back up the bell tower stairs to ask the dragon clan for a clearer definition of 'dead taint.'
Nebbin frowns at the idea of dead taint, wondering what that means. He's glad Kayleigh decided to go ask what that meant.
"We don't have to permanent decide right now, right? I mean we could go to one of the first places quickly, and then look at the Bridgefront site?" Nebbin says. "I don't know if we have time to go fight anything right now."
Tassira eventually emerges from studying the tomes and goes to find the others.
"Well. I've finished with these." She holds up Serving Your Hunger and the Scriptum Extereri.
She relays what she's learned from them.
"Dead in the alley behind. Only people come drop off bodies. Otherwise hollow place." The little dragon is half-perched on a freshly killed pigeon. Majenko's biggest son drops down from the eaves above to share the meal. He's bigger and more robust than Majenko, and Kayleigh is reminded that the little purple dragon they rescued has been through alot. The tears in his wings are just scars now.
"Could be danger," the blue growls. "Smells wrong."
"Could be danger," Majenko agrees before tearing out a piece of bloody meat from the bird and gulping it down his long sinuous neck.
"But place is far from these doctor-men. Doctors could come to other places next day. Two days."
Majenko hops up to the rail to let his son eat and regards the cleric with his golden cat eyes.
Kayleigh reports the dragons' findings to her friends. She adds that she fears the alley of death may be the very one in which they previously found bodies with the fang marks of vampires on their throats.
"Maybe we should go to one of the other spots tonight, and then in the morning look at the other place Majenko's son is suggesting?" Nebbin offers. "It sounds like that might be better if it's safe."
Emi nods her head in appreciation. "Thank you Jarold. I won't take long."
Before she had arrived at Orisini's place, communicating with Vencarlo hadn't seemed very important. She figured it to be extremely unlikely Orisini wouldn't know about the coming sweep by the Gray Maidens and doctors. Nor did she think it presented any danger to him. Really it was she'd been thwarted in her search for Trap, and she wanted to see him. It has been a while.
But discovering that both Orisini and his butler not there rattles Emi. Not that such a thing is impossible, and she doesn't think Jarold is lying, it just seems off to her for some reason she can't explain. Now Emi does feel an urgent need to hear from him.
It's a great relief to Emi that Jarold decides easily to let her in because she couldn't push much more. Of course she couldn't fight with him over it. The only other thing she could do is try a power play by telling him some things that would almost certainly be better left unsaid.
When Emi thinks what she might have said to try to persuade Jarold she's horrified. She would surely have embarrassed herself, probably embarrassed Vencarlo as well, and it wouldn't have worked anyway. She would probably would have looked stupid, or desperate, or naive. After all, she doesn't really know much about Vencarlo's habits or lifestyle. Jarold might already know all about her.
He has a key to the academy, who knows what else Vencarlo has made him privy to. They must be close. And then if I'd begged him to let me in because I'm boffing Vencarlo, he might think 'oh you're THAT one' and have a good laugh to himself because I thought it meant something to Master Orisini.
It's at that point Emi has to will her brain to just stop and back away from the rabbit hole.
Just leave the note. That's all. Everything is fine if you can just shut the f!&! up. Stick to the problems at hand.
As she turns into Vencarlo's office Emi can't resist trying to fish just a little.
"It's so odd to see this place empty. I've hardly ever found Master Orisini out, and even if so Erold is reliably here. Isn't it unusual?"
The note Emi writes is brief and simple. She informs Vencarlo of the coming sweep, and that the bridge is already barricaded. She tells him they believe all the Temple of Aroden's resident are sufficiently well enough to remain safely at the temple, and that is probably what they will do until it is possible to move around freely in the streets again. She also asks him to send word as soon as he can because there are new developments concerning subjects they have previously discussed and she is anxious to hear any further input he may have to add. She hopes he is safe and well.
The only part of the note that gives her trouble is the closing before her signature. She knows what she wants to write, but Emi is unsure how private the letter might be. She is also feeling rather vulnerable given her very recent troubled thoughts. On the other hand she doesn't want to sound completely impersonal and cold. She decides on 'Yours, Emi', which sounds to her like a safe choice since it can be as intimate or businesslike as he wishes to interpret it.
Emi folds to note and places it on top of the rolled parchments. She's curious about them since Vencarlo has never mentioned any ability with magics. She looks for any exposed writing to see if they are in a language she recognizes. She doesn't go so far as touching them though. She doesn't want to do anything that might cause Jarold, who is hovering in the doorway, to regret letting her in.
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After leaving Orisini's academy Emi hurries back to the temple and delivers her news.
"I wasn't able to find Trap. The bridge is blocked with a checkpoint now. Nobody passes without questioning and observation. We're cut off here from the rest of the city."
Finally it occurs to Emi. Oh! Maybe Vencarlo is stuck on the other side of the bridge! I'm such an idiot sometimes!