"I'll be honest," the dancer hisses, "I'm not the best at locating things, I have not good spatial awareness past my own body. So if someone could point me in the right direction," she trails off.
The four infiltrators spend a few minutes looking through the office, but failing to locate the secret safe. Of course, if it was easy to find it wouldn't be secret. As one of them tries to pull out a desk drawer, a thump and clinking of glass is heard from the shelf to the south.
Rusmonya shrugs. "'s not my job to know the names of drinks." Her speech has gotten a little rougher as she figures Rose for a fellow guard. "Give it time. Fancy folk like them want ya to say yessir a lot and keep yer mouth shut otherwise."
"Good advice, I'd recken," Rose nods, taking another sip. "'s long as they get ter feel high an' mighty an' you don't screw up, eh?" she continues, and grins.
A few minutes pass in which Rose attempts to make smalltalk on topics such as local rumors and tourist-worthy recommendations. When the sound of klinking glass comes from the other room, she lazily looks that way and sighs. "Wonder wot they'd be toasting about. Probably some joke at the new girl's expense. Just like they passed off head duty fer a week like some initiation test. A week! Can you believe it?"
She pulls a nasty face and looks away. "Prolly just don't respect the rookies, that's what it is, as if they weren't one 'emselves once," then, she looks at Rusmonya and slowly frowns, as if deeply concentrating. "Say... you're an experienced fighter, aint'cha? Got some noice tips fer me on self-defense? Maybe that would help 'em takin' me serious!"
'I hope I can distract her long enough for them to get to that safe... seems to be taking them a while if they're still looking. Are they searching for traps or something?'
Rusmonya shakes her head. "If you're after their respect, you'll be a long time waiting. Kids like you have their head full of ideas like that." She stretches her arms over her head, lacing them behind her neck, seemingly enjoying her role of wise elder. "Just take their coin and try to stay alive. Everything else is just bonus. As for fighting tips... I ain't one for fancy technique, I just hit them until they stop giving me trouble." She grins at that, showing off her tusks.
Marius turns his head from the window, cloak still pulled up. "Were you in the Phalanx?" he asks Rusmonya.
"Your Grace, please don't start knocking things off the shelves," Lotti remarks distractedly as she studies the pearl. "Hmm. This one might not be missed though." Deftly she pockets the gem before turning back to the other infiltrators. "Any luck?" she asks softly.
Adriel winces as she hears the clinking, but perks up at the thought of it being a hint to the safe or secret door. She goes over to investigate.
Adriel notices two things: one, the frame of the painting depicting General Arnisant effortlessly fending off a horde of undead is slightly askew, and two, one of the bottled ships displayed on the shelf is... moving. Not only is the shoe-sized bottle hovering off the shelf, but speckles of water move about the deck like a crew, arming a miniature ballista and preparing to take aim at the curious elf.
Bold can act:
Lotti
Adriel
Ship in a Bottle
Mirann
Konstiantina
Adriel raises a quizzical eyebrow as she leans in closer to get a good look at the miniature before realising what is happening. Reacting instinctively she makes to grab the bottle to throw it away from her.
The bottle quickly swerves sideways and out of Adriel's grasp, while the activity of what she can now see are tiny water elementals grows more frantic.
"What're you up to?" Lotti asks quietly, glancing over at the elf and the bottle she's... stealing? Smashing?
"A trap? No, I would have noticed its aura earlier... A guardian." Lotti mutters something under her breath, then straightens back up with a determined look in her eyes. "Take it out quickly - I'll run interference." She whispers a few more words that begin to echo around the room as she pulls a bit of lint from her pocket, tossing it in the air as the sounds of merriment and rough women's voices cheer incoherently.
The diminutive crew of water elementals finish arming and aiming their ballista, which fires at Adriel. As it does so, the bottle shatters with a sharp sound, spraying broken glass all around it.
The tiny bolt catches Adriel in the soft spot between clavicle and neck, burying itself deep.
In the main room, Rusmonya perks up at the noise. "What in the hells are they doing back there?" She gathers her legs under her, preparing to get up, but not in a hurry about it.
Adriel
Ship in a Bottle
Mirann
Konstiantina
"Sharing a toast, sounds like." Marius says, straining to make his voice casual even as his right thumb rests on the sap hidden under his cloak. "Seems a bit premature to me--the captain always has like to count her chickens before they've hatched. Whatever she's cooking up with the Earl has her has close to giddy as she ever gets." He shrugs, moves to the next end of the bar to retrieve a bottle and wills himself to ignore the commotion and pour a drink. His hands are steady, notes with a touch of pride. "Above our pay grade, if you ask me."
Rose calmly keeps her seat and sighs deeply at the door. "Yeah, and we both know how that goes," she replies to Marius, nodding solemnly. "Damn Merril again, I'd recken. Can't keep her drink down worth a crap. Prolly broke the Earl's damned gilded bottle, too, and I told them she was a lightweight, but do they believe me? Noooo...".
She takes another sip of her drink. "Well, they can't blame this one on me! No ma'm. You'll say I was here, right? Wait, who am I kidding. Of course they'll find some way to pin it on the newbie. So... um, can we just pretend this didn't happen and spare my cap'n the shame to the earl? Please? For my sake?"
Rose looks at Rusmonya imploringly.
Mirann draws her dagger and moves to flank the construct with Adriel.
Rusmonya slumps in the chair again, sighing heavily. "They usually don't start breaking things this early, gods damn it. I'm not looking forward to cleaning it up." She lifts a hand to Marius at the bar. "Pour me one as well, yeah? Why should they be having all the fun?"
Konstiantina curses beneath her breath, the words inaudible, and around the central table, her thick cloak trailing behind her. Draws her blade as she goes, keeping it close in these tight quarters, and when she gets close enough, lunges to impale the crew of elementals.
Wonder at this marvel will have to wait till after the threat is dealt with.
Speck-sized elementals are difficult to stab with a blade, and Konstiantina's lunge is harmlessly evaded.
"Well, s**t." Ariel curses in a very unladylike fashion as the bottle slips from her grasp. Pulling out one of her shortswords, she does her best to slash at the bottle with the flat of the blade.
Lotti continues to focus on her illusion, trying to make it sound like a slightly-rowdy party with glasses breaking rather than a violent struggle in the back room.
The model ship is quite sturdy, and Adriel's blow only manages to chip its hull a little. It backs up a little, then gathers speed to ram her.
Hearing the sounds of party continue and wondering why it was necessary for presumably Lotti to maintain it so long, Rose casts a worried glance to the door. "Yeh, that's pretty rowdy. I'll go grab a bottle."
Rose stands up and walks over to the bar, and looks at Marius. "So, I'm new and can't really go in, but I'd be feelin' fer ma'am Rusmonya. Mayhap you go and ask the cap'n ter go easy while we go 'n share a drink here?"
She gives Marcus a meaningful look, a small sideways nod to the room and a raised eyebrow. Maybe thing were going the wrong way and he could help the others?
Then, she walks around the bar, grabs (near?) the same bottle Neffery got for her earlier, takes a pack of cards from beaneath the counter and returns to Rusmonya, intent to keep her company for now.
Mirann tries to stab at the boat, but misses entirely as it rams into Adriel.
"The Earl's meetings are usually a lot quieter, your captain really is a handful then, eh?" The chandlery guard perks up at the sight of the cards. "What are we playing, and - more importantly - what are ye wagering?" She grins at Rose as she sits up in her chair, leaning her elbows on the table.
She nods her head towards the office door. "Your captain knows the command word, yeah?"
"How's about three rounds o' Dead man's hand? Winner takes all!" Rose grins and draws three silver pieces from her money pouch. "Can't really afford all that much an' all but should do for something fun to pass the time."
She sits back down and take the cards out the deck. "Of course, then we'd be gettin' ter the most important question: Is cheating allowed?"
Widening her rogueish grin at the guard, she starts shuffling. When the other woman mentions the command word though, she pauses. "Hm... command word...?" she cocks her head sideways and thinks. "Don't think the cap'n mentioned anything like that to me. 's that important? Should I check?"
Marius gives Rose a nod of understanding and moves around the corner to the officer door--but pauses at the mention of a command word.
"I wasn't made aware of any command words either, is there a ward we should know about?"
Konstiantina clenches her jaw and attempts to slide her blade into the bottle, aiming for greater precision this time.
Rusmonya starts laughing when Rose mentions cheating, a deep, belly laugh that resonates through the otherwise quiet front room. "You're very cheeky. You can try, but if I catch you..." With a lightning-fast movement, she draws her dagger and stabs it into the wood of the table, where it vibrates fora few moments as she leans forward to watch Rose with an intense grin.
She then leans back and digs three silver from her own money pouch, tossing them on the table as she nods at Marius. "Them constructs that's guarding the office, if they don't know your captain they might attack. You have to say a word to get them to stand down - "inheritor". The Earl should have told your captain that." She shakes her head with a long-suffering sigh.
"Ah, thank you," Marius pauses a second for Rusmonya to turn back to her card game, then opens the door. His eyes widen as he sees Konstiantina, Adriel, and Mirann flailing at a floating ship-in-a-bottle, but he recovers smoothly. Assuming the professionally neutral expression of a long-suffering guard Marius still allows a bit of reproach into his voice.
"Captain? Small reminder: the Earl hasn't actually signed anything quite yet, and you'll want your head clear. Also she," he inclines his head to indicate the guard. "Says the bottle is a construct, so please don't touch it. Passphrase is "Inheritor" if it comes up though." Closing the door, he retreats back to his drink at the bar with a rueful shake of his head.
"Boy, if you keep sticking your nose where it don't belong you'll find it an inch away from the deck again as you scrub every last stain off my ship!" Lotti bellows back, but Marius can see her giving him a grateful look and clasped hands of thanks before he shuts the door. Crawling under the table, the "captain" whispers furiously at the construct, "Inheritor! INHERITOR! Now stop this at once."
"I'm not hearing a 'no'?" Rose replies, trying not to seem too nervous over the superior knife skills brandished right in front of her. A moment later, she just chuckles and raises her hands. "Eh, wotever. You seem too nice an'all to fleece ye. How about I teach ye some-?"
"Boy, if you keep sticking your nose where it don't belong you'll find it an inch away from the deck again as you scrub every last stain off my ship!"
Wincing, Rose turns around to Marcus and the doorway. "Ah, cheer up! 'least she treats most of us equally - like shit, that is. Want in on a game?" she asks him as he walks back, gesturing to an empty chair at the table. "Door's locked anyway. Buy-in is three silver."
The miniature ship and its miniature crew stop attacking and return to sit on the shelf, now minus the bottle they were contained in, and plus a wet stain on the floor where the water spilled.
In the front room, Rusmonya pushes a chair with her foot in invitation for Marius to join the incipient game of cards.
Mirann grimaces as the ship-out-of-a-bottle returns to the shelf.
"Anyone know how to fix that?"
She resumes searching for the safe.
Adriel points out the painting that is slightly askew. Looking behind it, the wall safe is revealed.
Mirann thanks Adriel and begins cracking the safe.
Mirann fiddles with the four-digit combination lock for a little, but does not manage to unlock it.
"Blast it, I can't imagine the man is clever enough to remember a real password so it must be something easy and I'm just missing it."
Konstiantina lets out a sigh of relief as the elementals return to their shelf, and then steps back, allowing the others to move around and reveal the chamber's secrets.
To watches with sober consideration as Mirann fiddles with the safe, and then, hesitantly, offers, "Perhaps - this is just a thought - but perhaps given Vernisant's obsession with his ancestor, the combination could be a year of significance to General Arnisant?"
Mirann presses her forehead into her palm and sighs. "Obviously. And thank you."
As she keys the combination, she narrates, "Arnisant died in 3-8-2-7 AR."
Marius declines the offer of cards, worried Rusmonya might recognize him, and instead nurses a finger of whiskey.
Lotti crawls back out from under the table and lets the sound of merriment subside down to the volume of more casual chatter. "That's brilliant, you two!" she says with a relieved and proud grin. "You two keep at that - Adriel, gather up as many of those glass shards as you can without bleeding on them and let's see if we can stick them back together." She pulls a few sheets of glue paper from her belt pouch and gets to work helping the elf reassemble the shattered jar. "Wobblekins, stop licking the rug and help us hunt down these shards would you?"
The glass bottle has shattered in a thousand pieces and would be impossible to put back together without magic. Perhaps with some artful rearranging of the shelf display it would be less noticeable that it's missing.
The door of the safe opens with a *click* as Mirann enters the combination. Within the safe are two documents. The first is a ledger that records a long series of payments vaguely labeled as “gifts” to various naval officers, spanning the course of a year. The second is the deed to the chandlery, showing ownership officially transferred to Earl Vernisant over a year ago.
Rose suppresses a sigh of relief and continues her card match, hoping the other team had managed to grab the documents. What followed now would be the escape. She idly realized they hadn't discussed what to do in this particular case of the ruse lasting all the way, but she'd follow whatever Lotti and the others were planning.
"Gosh there are a lot of these," says Mirann, anxious about the time they've already spent, the broken bottle, and how they were going to remove these documents.
Lotti finishes "mopping" up glass shards with her sticky paper and bundles the mess inside a spare towel. "Right, there's that," she murmurs before walking over to the two tall folk investigating the safe. "What do we have? Please, lift it down so I can see."
"Interesting..." Lotti looks at the others and nods. "I'll explain more when we're outside, but this should be enough evidence. Let me know when you're ready and we'll make our exit."
Marius finishes his drink and returns to his vigil by the windows, wondering how much longer Lotti, Adriel, and Mirann would need.