Knowing that she was seen when she didn't want to be seen makes Magda's pride shrink a bit, but she imagines the nose helps. She also nods at the implied brutality of the croft. "Don't get bit. Good words no matter if you are talking about a fight or going to dinner." she thinks for a moment "Um... two more questions. One, if we got to fight him and we don't want it to go past the point of not coming back out of it, making it as easy as possible makes the most sense. Any tips on beating him, if it comes to that. And... where is he?"
When Marcus offers to give him a spot in the mercenary company, her ears perk up, and she nods, "possible - but his pride would likely mean that he would want to lead the company. And he's not cruel but... like many lycanthropes, he isn't merciful - we are taught from a young age of survival of the fittest."
She adds, "when you asked if there's any tips to defeat him in a fight - I think Marcus could hold his own for a while, and Erasmo would certainly cause him a lot of trouble if you caught him alone - but I've never seen him even get hit in a duel. It's one of the reasons he's in charge, now."
She shifts uncomfortably, and looks at everyone's weapons, "if force is required, silver weapons are the only ones that do much damage to us."
"Each company is small and requires its own leader. Being the head of them just required organizing the inflow and outflow of work. Unless he's more interested in paperwork than fighting, I think he would be happy leading the company of wererats. We'll see." Marcus nods to her words. Silver. Just like werewolves. Makes sense. "The armories in town may have some silver weapons. I have a dagger." He says, pulling it out.
Magda's eyes widen "I... thank you." she knows how much trust Eries is showing them by revealing a weakness like that. She runs her hand through her dark hair, looking uncomfortable for a moment at the weight of it. "We won't let you down. I promise. They promise too. We'll make sure your friend will be part of this city."
Erasmo refrains to point out that those buried in the graveyard are part of the city. "I'd prefer to buy some thing that makes my own sword silvery..."
Yaziyah looks at Erasmo curiously. "You know of such thing? I would rather have that then. I am fond of this hammer and don't like the idea of exchanging it for another weapon, even briefly."
Saying goodbye to the Yellowest of Eyes, Magda tries to remember where things like silvering can be bought, quickly.
"Yeah, it is called silversheen. Good for weapons... terrible taste."
Marcus frowns, then turns and directs the frown at Erasmo. "Why...why did you eat Silversheen?"
"I... do not recall. I was drunk, so I don't even remember if it was a prank, a lost bet, a dare... or simple dumbness." Erasmo shrugs.
"Mhmm. We've all done pretty stupid stuff when we're drunk." Marcus faces back forward, letting the imaginations of his comrades run wild.
"I've never been drunk" Magda admits with a shurg and a kick of a stone, mildly sullen, then adds "With all of this..." she waves her own hands at her ears "I ain't sure what would happen if I did."
"Aren't you curious?" He asks, once Magda confesses she had never been drunk. "Not about the drinking... it is fun, but there are better funs things to do. I mean about your voices... do they stop? Do they increase? Do you chance to hear the voices of the drunk?"
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"The voices?" she seems surprised at the question. "A voice. Only one, but in different ways all the time. Sometimes a whisper, sometimes in the pigeons' coos, ONCE it was the way a rock tumbled down the cobblestones after being kicked by one of midwifers. Never know until I hear it which is the voice and which is just noise. Yay, all the time, even when I sleep, cause the city never does and it is the city talking to me. Only time it was quiet was... when we left... don't want to do that again."
Erasmo scratches his chin. "Hum... this makes no sense to me... but since I have never heard this voice, I guess it is hard to understand. I always thought you heard different voices, like echoes, or something like that."
"Nevertheless, we should be going and buy the silversheen so we can get into trouble."
As Erasmo and Magda talk about voices, Vera is focusing on her cards, slowly turning one over, setting it down, and studying it. She chimes in with her own distracted thoughts. "The man who wrote that book about Andaisin--he was obsessed. And mad. And dedicated. He worshipped her. There has to be a connection. A great evil at work."
.
Magda finds a shop on the way and disappears inside to grab a few weapons. Returning with a morningstar, warhammer, and light hammer, all silver. "Remember we don't WANT to use these. Buddies over Broken Bits." handing the light hammer to Erasmo, the morning star to Marcus, and the warhammer to Yazi. "Vera and I'll watch." she grins, since they don't have fancy weapons.
Yaziyah nods as she accepts the weapon from Magda. "We'll use these as a last resort." She cocks her head towards Vera. "I fear you are right. Has your mother's spirit spoken to you about this sickness since the Harrowing?"
After procuring the weapons, the party makes their way back to the Midland district. Some folks are gathered around a manhole near where Yelloweyes had indicated Girrigz’s den is located. Attached to a nearby lamp pole is a rope, and hanging from the rope appears to be a wererat in hybrid form, hands bound behind his back, tongue lolling in his mouth, eyes bulging.
The mood is celebratory, and the burliest dockworker with a barrel chest is toasting their seeming success. The mob of people seem to be chatting about further expeditions to “get the dirty bastards who brought the disease into the city” and such, drinking from bottles of dark brown ale that someone has seemingly brought to the party.
Those gathered seem to have thrown caution to the wind compared to the more level-headed citizens, and are slapping each other on the back. No Grey Maidens, doctors, nor guards are in sight.
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Magda had been behind the others but then is suddenly in the midst of the mob. "This isn't right. You just can't Say something is the cause of the disease without any truth to it. It won't stop the sick spreading, just make you darker on the inside and more deserving of the rot. What if someone said it was your kid or your sister that is spreading it. Makes no sense just to say that, worse to scream it with her hanging dead next to you!" her voice is loud but it is nothing to the bellowing of the last ""
Her expression dark, Yaziyah steps next to Magda, crossing her muscled arms and looking those gathered in the eye. Someone had tried to blame the Shoanti for the king's death, now someone was trying to blame the wererats for the sickness. She agreed with Magda, this wasn't right.
"The wererats are not the ones spreading the disease. And if they were, is it really smart to hunt them down? Get close to them? Get scratched and bitten by them?" She pauses, letting her words sink in. "Leave them alone, stay away from them, they're not the cause of this."
Marcus stands there glowering, sharp eyes sweeping the crowd, using his full height loom behind the others in a way very suggestive of "If you disagree with my companions, I suggest you use your words".
However Marcus was much more a man of action than of words or personality, and his face suggested incontinence more than anything else.
"What would your families think if they saw you like this? Your children?" Vera pleads, taking advantage of her innocent youthfulness.
Vera looks for anyone who might look like a leader of this mob.
The biggest, burliest man, stinking with the stench of cheap beer, sneers at Magda "no? They're filth, little girl." He turns back to the others, who seem skeptical, and some even seem ashamed, shocked somehow by Magda's words. Others seem to be standing in the sconces nearby, confused by the situation. It doesn't look like they participated in the killing, though there is a young woman holding the side of her bruised head, with a black eye, giving the mob the stinkeye.
The big one laughs, "what, you're gonna arrest all of us? You 'do gooders?' Get out of here, and there won't be trouble."
Magda knows they have a bias towards Baiting and Wit.
Erasmo knows they have a bias against Allegory and Logic.
Marcus knows they have a bias towards emotional appeal and presence.
Vera knows there's no bias towards flattery nor red herrings.
The leader of the mob is swaggering, clearly using the presence of the mob of people to back up his arguments.
Erasmo whispers to the others. "These people don't appear to be the sharpest tool, if you know what I mean, and the drinking isn't helping. No point in appealing to logic or anything that requires them thinking!"
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"'There won't be trouble'? Pfah! Too late for that, friend." scoffs Yaziyah at the leader. "You call us 'do-gooders', and you mean it as an insult." She fixes him with her gaze, then rakes her eyes across the crowd. "Is it, truly? Or do you know, deep down, that what you did is evil? That you had no right to take this life? That any retribution visited upon this city by his kin will be on your heads?" She crosses her arms, watching the leader again from her imposing height. "What do you think happens now? The plague ends? The sick will be cured, and those who died will live again?"
The crowd looks more skeptical, and begins murmuring. Some of them spread away from the larger crowd, gulping nervously.
Undeterred, the man glares at Yazi, and she realizes he's got some meat on his bones as well. He slicks back his hair and says, in a calm voice, "think of what we've started to lose, think of how it tears at your heart. The queen and the guard have too much on their plate to deal with these vermin. This isn't retribution, this is justice for what we know is wrong. This outsider comes here, and we don't know her, she tries to honey her words to rob you of what you know you deserve." As he speaks, his voice rises in volume, and he raises his arms, his voice quavering with obvious emotion. "She is in league with their type. All these outsiders - come to rob our birthright as Korvosans!"
Some of those who hadn't started to leave yet nod their heads, obviously angry at something.
"I am Korvosan!" Magda hollars "My parents died here, my friend's died here, poor people, street urchins, dying all the time never raises a hand for 'This is Wrong', what's more Korvosan than being ignored when ya suffer." she looks at the people softening a bit, pleading even "The city cares, all it wants is for all of us to do the same."
The burly man smirks, and takes a swig of the ale, "cares - of course it cares," he raises his arms and looks around, "this is how much it cares. We're working its will. The true will of Korvosa is in its people. Regular people - tired of being pushed around by pretenders. Our ancestors built this city from nothing. The Varisians did nothing. The Shoanti built nothing. We did. It's our city" he sniffs indignantly, and a lot of people seem to agree with him now. They heft clubs menacingly towards the party. "Run along, kids. I can't control this lot if you say the wrong thing."
"Run along? You can't control them?" Erasmo asks the bully with indignation. "What are we? Animals? Where are the 'civilized people'?" He leaves the question in the air.
"I'm not a history expert, but if I remember it correctly, that big ass pyramid was already here when your ancestors arrived in Korvosa!" Erasmo points in the direction of the castle and then to the people around. "So none of you, none, have a varisian or shoanti aunt, or mother, father... no one?" He raises his eybrows, skeptical. "None of you will sleep with the dogs tonight if you get home and tell your wives about the no good Varisians and Shoantis?"
"Don't get me wrong, but I know for sure you humans love to stick your pickle on everyone, no matter the race or ethnicity!"
The man scoffs, ”who here can meet your high standards, halfling. Of course you don’t understand, you’re an outsider too. My great grandfather had a servant like yours. Too much lip and not enough sense. One too many backtalks from that uppity sl…ervant - well, he had patience - but not infinite patience.” He grins maliciously. ”See? Even the servants think they can go above their stations. Keep listening to me, everyone, and the mongrels, the low, the servants, and the ursurpers, they’ll know their place. The place where even the poorest of our noble heritage will be above them.”
The people in the audience are starting to grow agitated. They’re swinging their makeshift clubs against their hands. They don’t even all appear to be chelaxian, but the promise of power and status against the other is growing intoxicating.
A burly dockworker wouldn’t have had family members who owned halfling slaves in Cheliax. But he doesn’t sound like he’s lying either.
When the party doesn’t respond, he sighs and takes a swig of his ale, brilliant white teeth shining. ”Nothing else to say, I guess. Typical. Move along.”
He gestures for the party to head out.
"No one round here would have enough anything to have family members with halfling slaves" she whispers to her friends "no way he's a dock worker." she hazards a guess at the end.
Yaziyah wanted nothing more than to wipe that smug expression off his face with the business end of her hammer, but for Magda's sake she makes one last attempt.
"Ah, yes, someone of your noble heritage will know this story then..."
It's something she makes up on the spot, inspired by Magda's mutterings about the man not being who he claimed to be - a story about a pretender infiltrating a king's court in an attempt to enrich himself, but who ends up giving himself away in a most spectacular fashion and the king orders him publicly humiliated and then exiled.
The man opens his eyes wider, and then narrows them suspiciously.
He snorts, and raises his hand, "you... you wastrels. You, a shoanti would talk about pretenders? You pretend as if you built the pyramid yourselves, but you live in huts in the Cinderlands! You have no culture - you produce nothing! The chelaxian at least have hewn productivity from the land." He looks a little nervous though. Some around him begin to eye him suspiciously. One of the older, tougher looking fishermen whispers to his friend and points at the man's hands.
The man looks around, and licks his lips, then calms himself down, "these people don't even know about the city. You, Civis, when your loom broke, who in Midland contributed to the fund? We did. Sassof, your applecart - who watches it whenever you go on a bathroom break? Fandrick - when your son caught this disease - likely brought in by a wererat, mind you, who chipped in to have them healed? The neighbors - because we stick together." He smacks his hand for emphasis, as if trying to point out something plain and logical. "They can try to trick everyone, but you all know you've done nothing wrong. It isn't as if these so-called guards, or ex-guards, can even prove what happened. Let's tell them to leave us be." He turns back to the party, collected, and serious - his voice controlled.
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Marcus suddenly snarls and steps up to the man, casting a shadow down. "And what will you do when things get tough and you have to make the hard calls? When your people are bleeding and you have to decide between a retreat and pushing on?" He points back to the crowd. "When Civis's problem isn't a broken loom but a burned home, or when you have to look Fandrick and the eye and tell him his son isn't just sick, he's dead, because you-" He jabbed the man in the chest, driving the point home. "-decided to escalate. That you-" He jabs again, forcing the man back. "-thought because you break bread with these people that you were ready to decide who among them lives and dies, that YOU-" He jabs the man so hard he was likely leaving a bruise. "-thought you were a soldier!" His eyes stare down hard at the man. There was no threat in his words or presence, but there was...history. The weight of hundreds of battles. His worn armor, his visible scars, his battle-beaten weaponry. But most of all his hard, cold eyes, even now reading the man in front of him and feeding information to a jaded mind that can't help but unconsciously prepare for the most efficient way to dispatch of the potential threat in front of him.
The man doesn't move when poked. The flesh is unyielding, to some degree, and hard.
He isn't tall, but his eyes are clear - and when Marcus looks down on him, he sees coldness, presence, and malice. The man raises his voice, and speaks, "Maybe - maybe you're right, but you don't know any of these people, and they don't know you. You run a mercenary company, right? When did you protect them from robbery? You grub after coin - requiring payment. All of your companies do. The 'warriors' who claim to serve Korvosa. And yet - you protect the nobles before all of us. We have banded together to do things you claim to want to do, but don't seem to have the stomach for."
Somehow, though, Marcus' words swayed the others, and the man seems off-put for a fraction of a second. A murmur rises up, and the crowd seems to have begun to turn against him.
The man's lips curl for a moment, and he starts to speak, only to Marcus, saying, softly, "Step away, young man - over there if you wouldn't mind, for the remainder of our discussion." He holds Marcus' gaze.
Marcus is compelled to move away from the man.
Marcus disengages and moves back to the group.
The man cracks his neck and seems to recenter himself. "Let us be done with this. The people of Midland don't need advice from a mercenary man who looks like he ate the other half of shortstuff there - a disgraced ex-guard, and what is that... a fortune teller?" He shakes his head and chuckles, "and a teenager - maybe she's the sister of the one who smells like a sewer. And they're... led by yet another outsider, that big woman - who is likely related to the King's murderer! You're a party of the worst elements of our fine city!" He shakes his head in disbelief. "Honestly, you should find a better and safer line of work." There's an edge to his voice.
Some in the audience chuckle, but it's clear that they're mostly on the side of the party.
Magda's eyes go a bit wide as the irritating pompous ugly rat of a man casts a spell! She looks around expecting the crowd to go Whoa! with their own wide eyes and open mouths, but NO, it had been too slimy of a casting and no one had any idea... except maybe the wall who was walking away. Maybe to get clear of the spell, no that didn't make any sense, the wall has never backed down from anything ever even sensable things.
Everyone is watching though, so she can't just tell everyone else.
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"Oh, but they need you to tell them what to do? Someone who talks about their family having owned slaves? You talk about us getting above our station to these people? They probably work harder in a week than you've worked in your entire life, you and your noble heritage." Yaziyah turns to face the rest of the crowd, now ignoring the instigator.
"You have your troubles, and times have been hard on this city. It is good to stick together and help each other - we do so as well. Marcus is giving people a place to learn a skill and where to belong. Vera may be young, but her wisdom has guided the others to help many children who were being mistreated by Gaedren Lamm, I'm sure you've heard of him. Magda has the kindest soul I've ever seen, but I guess for some refined noses a little stink matters more than that. 'Shortstuff' earned his freedom with wit and courage." She tilts her head northwards. "And I don't turn away anyone from the community center I built in Old Korvosa. If all this makes us the worst elements in the city..."
The man stares at Yaziyah, raising his hand aggressively, and sputters ”noble? You keep prattling on about nobility- but you wouldn’t know a noble if you saw one, filthy shoanti. Dangerous berserkers who lost Korvosa because they were too weak and now come into the city scrabbling for scraps like miserable dogs. Your community center is a joke - built in a slum that is past its prime. And the rest of you are jokes too!” He huffs and puffs himself up angrily, growing red in the face, ”fools at that - wastrels and vagabonds! And you… even look like Trinia - I can see it! I can see it you must be related! I know because I saw her get stolen away by the scoundrel, Blackjack!” His eyes widen, ”you were all there - these… this villains are in cahoots with him. Look, let’s get them and let the grey maidens sort them out!”
Nobody in the crowd moves. The man looks around nervously and says ”now listen - why would I lie about this, we all just want justice and order.” Someone in the mob hefts a rock and throws it towards the guy, yelling, ”get out of here!” The man looks around for support, but finds none and with surprising, almost supernatural speed, bolts down a nearby alley.
The mob disperses, but not before one climbs up and brings down the wererat, loosening the noose from around its neck. They stand nearby, not knowing what to do. The lycanthrope looks like he’s dead. After a moment he seems to revert to human form - that of an older teen mixed heritage street urchin.
Magda nudges Yazi, with a big ole grin splitting cheek to cheek. "You're good at that."
As the body was brought down, Magda bends down to start cleaning the kid up a bit, pulling out a blanket. "Wordy one there knew us. Each of us and tried to turn those people into weapons against us." laying the blanket over him, she smooths out all the wrinkles, then rolls him and the blanket over. It is obvious she means to wrap him up in it. "He used magic to. I don't know what kind, all of that makes no sense to me, but wordy one is our enemy, I think he'll be back." some rope comes out to secure the wererat. "I'd ask the wall to carry him, but he and most of you need your weapon hands free, just in case. And we don't want to drop him quick like if we can help it." so she hefts him over her shoulder. "Ready?"
"I don't need my hands to be dangerous. You do." Marcus carefully takes the body from Magda. "Yes, he forced me to disengage with magic, I felt the meddling. Come, the faster this body is gone the faster the crowd will disperse."
"Okay." Magda might be the argumentative type most days, but maybe she has grown a bit? Instead she shrugs and helps settle the body on Marcus's shoulder. "You need me to carry anything, just let me know."
Yaziyah nods at Magda's assessment. "He was far too well spoken for a simple labourer or craftsman. I'm just glad we were able to defuse the situation without this turning into a brawl."
She takes another look around them, silently encouraging the stragglers to keep moving. "Let's go, and keep an eye out for that instigator."
Erasmo is a bit disappointed as the man flees... he was so annoying that he would really like to teach him a more painful lesson. "When this 'job' is done, we should look for him. As Magda pointed out, he knew us and will probably return to haunt us... I'd prefer to face him on our own terms."
The mob disperses and Marcus lifts the man onto his shoulder, carrying him with one arm as he goes. The party descends into a larger sewer, rarely explored.
Through the disgustingly visible haze of noxious sewer reek, the flow of unmentionable slop through the sewer tunnel’s filth-slick channel unexpectedly forks. Most of the muck continues on its expected path, but a small stream of ooze diverts off through a wide cleft in the moldy masonry wall. The man-sized crack cuts deep into the rock behind the wall, and wisps of thin white smoke issue forth.
Magda doesn't remember whether this hole was present when they did the survey.
"Oh, A Cracked Fork. Or a fork that's cracked?" she scratches her ear as she tries to decide something "I can't remember if I've seen it, and that's weird, since it seems rememberable. Hmm..."
Erasmo shrugs, not feeling it is that important to know if it is a new place or not. He looks around for any immediate threats. He moves ahead of the others scouting the place.
Marcus slows down with a skeptical gaze. "Hmm. How long would it take is to go around this? Magda, give us a light we can throw in there."