"No, I did not relate our afternoon's adventures. I didn't think that it would be prudent until discussed with the remainder of our group, or some opportunity presented itself that was too good to wait on."
"In other words, I didn't feel that simply casting about in murky waters would be a wise course."
"You were not able to glean anything from Mr. Arrow?"
"A recipe for least-effort porridge, a method for applying, to an entire kitchen at once, a thin veneer of curmudgeon... Oh, to be fair, he's not as bad as all that. Not consistently, in any case. I believe there's a decent man there, somewhere under burdens he might have put down years ago, in the manner of the monk."
"One might have thought a private breakfast a good opportunity, and our group seems to find trouble easier than consensus... I might have cast into those waters. But I've never been accused of wisdom, nor prudence. Well, not lately."
Tendal and Gristav arrive back at the Fish and Fortune and spy their three comrades seated at a table in the common room over a more meager breakfast than the one they enjoyed at the Port-Governor's.
Braddon looks up.
"Ah, you're back. Alive. I knew you would be. I wasn't worried at all. Especially about you."He points a thumb to Tendal, takes a large bite of his meal, almost chokes but manages to gag it down.
He wisely sips at his drink to wash down the food.
Not entirely sure if the half-elf is poking fun at him or not Tendal breezes past the comment as he joins the men at the table.
"Yes, well, it was touch and go for a while there with the gambling and the wine and all. I almost didn't survive." he says in a deadpan.
"Have you discussed our requirement for a private space with the proprietor, or were we thinking of just using our quarters upstairs?" Tendal asks quietly.
Braddon blinks, takes a smaller bite of his meal and, chewing thoughtfully, turns to look at Phillip.
Noting Braddon's glance Phil shrugs "Slipped my mind... can't see why the quarters wouldn't suit well enough though."
Braddon nods, takes another bite and turns back to Tendal.
Tendal back and forth from Phillip to Braddon and back for a few moments, wondering at the unhurried and unharried response.
"I suppose that I was assuming there might be a bit more...excitement? I will endeavor to match, but I do not believe that I can quite achieve, your level of languid repose gentlemen." responds Tendal, stretching his legs out underneath the table as a moue of studied indifference slides, mask-like over his visage.
"Well enough. But the lady is known to the house, and will draw eye and interest. More of the wagging tongues if she comes to the room - though it shouldn't be obvious which room she came to - than if a more common room were used. And a lady might refuse to climb those stairs."
"If a need arise to deny our reason for meeting, another might be provided. I believe this woman may have been the magical part of a failed attempt to board and inspect the Flying Cloud. It's perhaps arguable our conversation was about that attempt. Particularly so, if part of it, is. And more believably so, given I was part of the defense of that ship - in fact, the nail that cost them the horse."
"So, when she arrives, whatever room she's to go to, I might be best, already there. Perhaps, most of us? Surely a tale to tell, if five men, take her upstairs?"
"Tendal, you, too, ought not be publically associated."
Braddon continues to watch the talking heads while contributing nothing.
Tendal nods to Gristav's suggestion.
"Upstairs then?", he asks, starting to get to his feet.
"I will procure some wine to take upstairs. It might be good to be welcoming. Set the stage for the performance."
Tendal walks over to the barkeep and after a few comments about day drinking and hair of the dog, procures two bottles of passable wine, a few goblets and carries the whole lot up to the room.
Tendal nods to Gristav's suggestion.
"Upstairs then?", he asks, starting to get to his feet.
"I will procure some wine to take upstairs. It might be good to be welcoming. Set the stage for the performance."
Tendal walks over to the barkeep and after a few comments about day drinking and hair of the dog, procures two bottles of passable wine, a few goblets and carries the whole lot up to the room.
Gristav raises a hand, mathing aloud. Well, loud enough for Tendal, and any other fellow who'd followed, but hopefully not any stranger. "We'll all want to be there, in rooms for two, or three? And whatever third-or-more she brings, beyond the man who will bring her? There won't be room to lift a bottle. So, we'll need a larger room, and a group held in reserve, against whatever mind-commanding magics she might mount. I've witnessed such, from her. And we'd want eyes looking outward, in any case."
"There'll be a storeroom, a kitchen, a common room empty at this hour, something. Not a room to receive a lady, but maybe a table across which business be spoke."
"Barkeep. When you've a moment, please?"
"I could smash down the wall between the rooms and throw the beds out the window," Braddon suggests helpfully.
With some persuasion, and for an additional fee, the proprietor of the Fish and Fortune makes available a separate room, bare of furnishings and clearly rarely cleaned, but larger than the bedrooms and, perhaps most importantly, private. After some additional negotiations, the group secures permission to move in from the common room a table and enough chairs for the expected company, to which task Braddon applies a little elbow grease while Tendal provides the wine and goblets.
Phillip suggests that Braddon be put to greeting the lady, with Phillip secreted in the corner of the common to watch and ensure that no unwanteds follow before joining the group. The others to wait within the secured room.
The halfling considers but doesn't bring his crossbow out, instead relying on daggers secreted among his person... and uses his sleeves to adopt a slightly more ragged and trailworn appearance to blend further into the tavern wall.
Tendal lounged, chair tipped back and boots up on another chair, wine goblet in his hand.
"A thought. I do not believe that friend Gristav is known to be an associate of ours by the group on the ship. Contrarily, if I were to go to a meeting with an unknown threatening group on supposedly neutral ground, I would do my utmost to ensure that I had someone to scout the lay of the land first, and suss out who and what were arrayed against me. Gristav's allegiance could have already been discerned," Tendal muses aloud.
Braddon seats himself conspicuously in the middle of the common room, watching the door and slowly sipping a drink. Given the taste of the stuff, he doubts he could drink it quickly even if he wanted to.
He is comfortably armed and armoured, swords visible but not on display.
He radiates an air of undeserved importance.
Braddon waits, wondering if he'll recognize Ishana when she comes in. A woman and a Garundi: there don't seem to be an abundance of women in Roderic's Cove. Not like in Riddleport. He redirects his thoughts away from the Riddleport women he knows with an effort, determined to keep his eye on the door.
There is only sparse traffic through the Fish and Fortune in the morning hours, though the clientele does pick up as lunchtime approaches, mostly dock workers looking for a mug of ale and a place to sit out of the sun over their noon break. The potables are certainly a bigger draw than the greasy and unappetizing slabs of fried fish that are offered as the lunch special.
It is with some of these that Brett Scabb enters the establishment. He glances around the room easily, offering a nod to apparent acquaintances and one just like it to Braddon, just as friendly and casual. Without approaching the table, he strides up to the bar and orders an ale, nodding the companion who follows him into the common room in Braddon's direction.
The Garundi woman is no great beauty, but she carries herself with a self-confident and dangerous swagger. Every eye on the place is on her as she enters, with lust, fear, or a mixture thereof, but she pays not the slightest attention to anyone else in the room, including Brett Scabb once he has directed her. She walks immediately to Braddon's table and stands with one hip swayed out, looking down at him appraisingly. "I hear you have a proposition for me?" she asks, the lilt of an accent giving otherwise blunt words an intriguing melody.
In the long wait through lunch, Gristav busies himself checkboarding dust from the tabletop, striping stains of spilled ales stripewise from the seats, losing lozengy layers of limitless lunches' leavings off the legs, vying in vain for vairy at a wave, electing to evade ermine... Sighing, he smiles, and revisits his canvases, leaving each cleaned clear.
It was not a vaunted venue, but by the time Ishana evidenced, it was worked toward worthiness, as much as empty hours of elective effort might effect.
"Tendal, would you mind? I trust your particular perception as sharper than mine, way-worn and sand-seasoned. Of whatever your wit's aware, re-weave or -weft, un-wear or -worry, as you would. You've my license and my thanks."
"Cantrip practice then? Not my usual way to pass the time, but I can see how keeping my fingers limbered might not be a bad idea."
Cup grasped loosely in his left hand, Tendal spins small spells out across the room with his right, as his eye alights upon inconsistencies. A plank here, a knob there, the edge of a table, Gristav's tunic when his back is turned, all catch small splashes of magic. Corners become sharper, knife marks disappear, cracked boards anneal, threads reweave across the room.
Its not long before the worn furniture, scuffed floor and faded wallboards all seem, if not as new, somehow brighter and fresher as years of hard use are erased.
"I hear you have a proposition for me?" she asks, the lilt of an accent giving otherwise blunt words an intriguing melody.
Braddon looks up from Ishana's hip to her eyes and smiles.
"We do," he says rising to his feet."There's a room out back where we can proposition some more."
Braddon heads out back assuming she'll follow.
Snake simply shakes his head at the Ranger as he walks away. Rising, he looks over at Ishana, "He actually does mean to talk business," he tells her. He then looks back toward Braddon's direction a moment before looking back to her, "I hope."
Ishana leisurely follows Braddon and Snake, appearing not to notice the undercurrent of leering murmur that floods the room behind her. Just as she reaches the door, however, her hand twitches the whip coiled at her belt, and the lunchers immediately fall silent.
Just past the threshold she pauses, and her eyes flicker quickly around, taking the measure, it seems, both of the room and of its inhabitants.
"Hi, I'm Braddon. We're after Lil Scarlet. Word is, we'd be doing you a favour."
He grins then looks at the other faces around him.
"What? Too much, too fast?"
"Braddon..." Gristav sighs, any disdain in his tone belied by his smile. "Typically, with a lady, wherever you might go with her, you allow her to set the pace."
Holding a chair away from the table, Gristav requests, "Madam? Let us at least, move, further from the door - enough to close it?"
Tendal rises to his feet as Ishana enters the room, and sketches a quick bow, hand lightly grasping his cane, as he takes in the woman's commanding presence and wicked coiled whip hanging smartly from her belt.
It appears that Gristav and Braddon have taken the lead. I think I shall remain silent and mysterious for the moment, Tendal quickly muses.
Remaining still and quiet, and Tendal waits for the lady to make the next move.
Ishana accepts the chair proffered by Gristav, spins it around, and straddles the back as she sits at the table. "So you are looking for this Lil -- who I am not saying I know," she qualifies as an aside. "What has it to do with me?"
Braddon looks confused.
"She's on your ship."
He turns to the others.
"Isn't she?"
"Occasionally", Gristav answered Braddon in mathematical tones, a pensive pacing keeping him from meeting Ishana's gaze, if it came. "Too often, and too long, it's hoped we might agree. And for the last time?"
"But it's typical to establish mutual bona fides - mala, fides in this case? - before talking such business. There are two, I think, open questions: Can you... Miss? May I call you, Ishana? Is there another title, or honorific due, or desired?"
"Back to the questions: Can you deliver her? And, I expect you're asking, can we, take her?"
"Would you like a beverage, while we reassure each other?"
"I am afraid your information is out of date," she smiles waspishly. "The woman you are looking for is no longer aboard the Teeth of Araska."
After watching the Garundi woman walk through the inn and watching the scene for a while, Phillip stares down Scabb before rising and walking slowly through and into the private room. Coming up behind the woman he's got a dagger in hand, though flipped behind his arm and out of easy view... he also after a moments pause reaches into his shirts and unlimbers the Savored Sting's sigil and sits it upon his breast. Sliding through the door he ensures that it's closed behind Ishana and that there's only the room to concern themselves with.
Momentarily he sizes up the woman...
...before asking a simple question that stretches a few exchanges into the future in an attempt to circumvent some of the small talk "As I can see it there's two possibilities here... one, you approve of your Captain's dalliance with a whore that could bring the ill attention of the Unquenchable Fire's high whore mistress upon the teeth... or two, you don't." holding to see if Ishana turns to face him or not before continuing "So save us the dance... this isn't a courtship, and state which it is."
"Captain Ishana? Am I correct in assuming that you command the Teeth of Araska? I am Tendal Deverin, gentleman, businessman and scholar. My associates and myself are looking for Lil Scarlett for a matter of business, a debt that is owed," Tendal announces, by way of introduction.
"As both a woman of the sea, and I am certain, a businesswoman as well, you know how important it is to ensure that debts are settled appropriately."
Ishana visibly stiffens at your blunt statement, her expression curdling. It would appear that Brett Scabb did not overstate her dislike of the tiefling.
"I am not the captain," the woman corrects Tendal, "but I appreciate the principle of a person getting what is coming to her." Her eyes flicker over to Phillip. "The woman you are looking for is no longer aboard my ship. What do you want from me?"
"Tell us where she is and we'll kill her for you," Braddon offers eagerly.
"Would you prefer quickly or slowly? I'm good with my hands."
Braddon grins again.
Relaxing from his state of coiled tension a few motes Phillip shrugs and nods "As the man says... give us means to take her, and we remove her from your concern."
"Slowly, always slowly," she chides Braddon. "In both lust and revenge, the anticipation is everything." She glances back at Phillip. "She is not aboard my ship, and I will be glad if she never returns. It is always back and forth with her: Riddleport, and the haunted island. Fortunately for you, we dropped her at the easier end to get to, back in Riddleport, but if she is in the wasp's nest, she will be well protected, as you should know."
"Slowly it is then. As Gris says, let the lady set the pace. Though, there's nothing wrong with getting the target on the first go."
Sighing Phillip gives a knowing nod to Ishana "When was that? - and you're right that if she's in the nest she'll be well protected." before adding with slight emphasis to the others "Though is she is back amidst the faithful then we've other concerns in play." raising the possibility that the whore-mistress may have put them out of Riddleport with a purpose.
It seems that we have come out this way in error. Lil doesn't come this far north but rarely. We might be better served skulking our way onto the Devils Elbow. Tendal thought as he listened to the discussion.
Decades ago, a merchant named Yaris Neraken raised money and workers in Magnimar to construct a settlement on the island, in the hopes of harvesting its rich lumber, but those who invested in his enterprise lost everything when the business failed and Neraken himself disappeared, no doubt one step ahead of his creditors.
Failed businesses, particularly risky ventures in pirate-infested waters, are common, but the local sailors were convinced that Neraken's plan fell prey not to ill fortune, bad weather, or poor management, but to their superstition that the island itself was haunted and, thus, the arrangement had been doomed from the start.
Sighing Phillip gives a knowing nod to Ishana "When was that?"
She purses her lips as she counts backward on her fingers. "A week tomorrow," she concludes. "He took her in on the boat on Oathday with the Teeth anchored off the Boneyard. She is a celebrity, you know," she explains in a mincing tone. "She can't come aboard and disembark at the wharf like a regular person, or she'd be mobbed by her adoring public."
It occurs to everyone in the room that Ishana and Thuvalia could have a long and mutually-supportive conversation on the subject of Lil Scarlet.
"When did she get on board? Did she get a letter? What's on this haunted island? Is it really haunted?"
"When did she get on board?"
Ishana waves her hands irritably. "Three, maybe four days she was aboard." You get the feeling that sums and accounting are not Ishana's strong suit.
"Did she get a letter?"
"From whom?" she asks. "Little birds in the air? We took on no packets and met no envoys."
"What's on this haunted island? Is it really haunted?"
She shrugs. "I have never set foot on it, only seen it from the sea. Trees, cliffs, a few abandoned towers. They say everyone there died of the plague. Ships would not approach to bring them supplies for fear of the sickness, and in their anger, the spirits of the dead never left their shores, vowing death to any crew whose ship dares to make landfall."
"Perhaps. But surely, we're aware of other instances, where ghosts are really men, cowing the credulous. Or would you credit this other woman with the bravery to face such fearsome phantoms?"
"When she goes ashore there, is your captain in her company? Others of the crew? An oarsman, at least? Surely, she's not stroking, herself?"
"I like where your thoughts are leading." Tendal says, nodding at Gristav.
"It sounds like the Devil's Elbow is her place of refuge and safety. Perhaps we could pull her fangs, or find some way to reduce her presence in Riddleport through investigation of the isle?" Tendal muses.
Braddon's eyes go wide.
"Look, if it's really haunted, we should just let the ghosts kill her. Ghosts do exist you know."
He nods a few times for emphasis.
"Perhaps. But surely, we're aware of other instances, where ghosts are really men, cowing the credulous. Or would you credit this other woman with the bravery to face such fearsome phantoms?"
"When she goes ashore there, is your captain in her company? Others of the crew? An oarsman, at least? Surely, she's not stroking, herself?"
Ishana lifts a diffident shoulder. "It is more than Treeg is worth to convince the crew to take the risk. The Teeth anchors offshore, and he takes her in in a jollyboat. Then again, that is also how he drops her at the Boneyard, just the two saying their farewells," she finishes bitterly.
Pressing on one other line of inquiry "Any knowledge of when she's due back in your Captain's presence?"
"Beside the lady herself, any passengers or unusual baggage conveyed to this island? Or elsewhere, at her direction?"
Pressing on one other line of inquiry "Any knowledge of when she's due back in your Captain's presence?"
"'Never' would be best," she answers darkly, then goes on to give a more helpful response. "She seeks passage to the Devil's Elbow perhaps once each six weeks. There and back again. She never spends the night on the island."
"Beside the lady herself, any passengers or unusual baggage conveyed to this island? Or elsewhere, at her direction?"
"Only what she may carry with her," she shrugs. "Nothing large enough to be baggage. Except for the caged bird. If Treeg has conveyed anything else for her, I have not known about it."
Tendal wonders at what use a bird would be on the island.
"What sort of bird is it? And what use?" he muses aloud.
Tendal thinks back, trying to remember if anyone had ever mentioned Lil having a pet bird. If nobody knows anything about a pet, then perhaps it is a tool of some sort. he thinks.