GM Harrow’s Curse of the Crimson Throne - AE

Game Master GM Harrow

He'd come to with Dendren kneeling over him which had been a surprise given how badly wounded the retainer had been. His inside information had been useful in procuring some of the group's supplies over the last two days, but Dendren seemed shady. His disgust over Ileosa becoming queen appeared genuine enough, but there was more to the reasons he was here...

"Travik!" the woman with the bloody apron calls to him. The greasy haired man looks up from where he scowls over his steepled fingers. "You alright, mate?"

Travik's scowl deepens. "You just had to have that bloody dress, Merell, yeah?"

Merell blinks and mutters some kind of apology. "I 'idn't know it'd go like that. Why in 'Gug's name those little do-gooders got git involved?"

Travik looked back at the table in front of him strewn with various plans of the heists and scores he'd been involved. Dendren sure had been quick to support Merell's desire to break into the tailor's and get that dress. Arnut was too stupid to notice anything unless it was food or skinny effeminate men, but Travik had noticed that. A little out of place it was. Dendren being a noble house retainer generally made him more reluctant to stick his neck out, but a stupid, bloody dress? Something was off. Like that bird-headed warrior.

Travik's hands clutch into fists and his jaw tightens as he thinks about the disgust and contempt with which that helmeted warrior had looked at him. She had caught him off-guard, and he hadn't expected such a hard determination to bring them to justice. The lump on his head throbbed from where she struck him with his own cudgel. The knuckles of his hand popped and he realized his jagged nails were drawing blood on his palms.

He forced himself to relax. Getting worked up wasn't going to shake this feeling, this need to be the one standing over her showing that bird lady who was higher, who was mightier.

"Oh, I'll get 'nasty' with you, Lady Bird...and your murdering bard's two gold like I promised. Someday soon."

’Shrike’, your card is The Cricket. The journey you’re on will go quickly, yet take longer than expected. There is strife on that path, but also rewards to be had.

Abella, you’ve chosen The Avalanche - a dangerous card. Something is coming, beyond our control, that threatens to ruin everything you’ve strived for.

Audria, The Crows is also an evil omen. Murder most foul is in the air.

Garrett, The Juggler controls fate and the gods. Events will move quickly, but if you keep your footing, you can keep to your goals.

Lina, I don’t hold a grudge for what you may have had to do as a child. Now, the card; The Rabbit Prince. Fighting will often not be worth the risk - even a prince can fall in battle.

And finally, Nicolai. The Demon Lantern. Wheels within wheels, tricks and traps - the situation you find yourself in may seem bigger than you can manage, but a guide may still come for you to follow.

She almost leaves it there, but curiosity gets the better of her. It is not hard to tell that Audria is almost despondent, but unless it is a residual depression from having a hand in the deaths of the Lamm gang, there is no reason Shrike can understand that she should be. "Why?"

The young paladin shuffles her feet, feeling every measure of her youth as she waits for Shrike's answer. She is probably being silly. Trinia is loved by almost everyone who knows her, and the missing children from Lamm's lair are more likely to be in danger, but...

But she's seen how cruel the city can be, and this madness is not something she's seen. It makes her nervous, and she can't shake the nagging worry about her friends.

"Please," she adds a moment later, "I just want to quiet my own fears, and I would rather not have to explain why I'm leaving at this hour to anyone."

I have reached out to some of you to indicate if I believe your planned story is a good match for a Harrow Card drawn during one of the spreads in the same vein as an Eye of the Raven post. Please reach out to me in Discussion or PM if you have questions.

For an additional Harrow Point, please describe one of the dreams that really sticks with you upon waking. The dream memory need not be tragic, but perhaps of a happier time and one that gives you hope or drives you forward. No pressure, of course. You may certainly disregard this if you wish.

For an additional Harrow Point, please describe one of the dreams that really sticks with you upon waking. The dream memory need not be tragic, but perhaps of a happier time and one that gives you hope or drives you forward. No pressure, of course. You may certainly disregard this if you wish.

For an additional Harrow Point, please describe one of the dreams that really sticks with you upon waking. The dream memory need not be tragic, but perhaps of a happier time and one that gives you hope or drives you forward. No pressure, of course. You may certainly disregard this if you wish.

For an additional Harrow Point, please describe one of the dreams that really sticks with you upon waking. The dream memory need not be tragic, but perhaps of a happier time and one that gives you hope or drives you forward. No pressure, of course. You may certainly disregard this if you wish.

For an additional Harrow Point, please describe one of the dreams that really sticks with you upon waking. The dream memory need not be tragic, but perhaps of a happier time and one that gives you hope or drives you forward. No pressure, of course. You may certainly disregard this if you wish.

Yet...you feel the need to turn around. Again the road, but this time it is filled with all the steps you've taken throughout your whole life. And just as Talanaliel is always admonishing you, you immediately begin focusing on your mistakes.

But something...is off. These dreams seem to depict moments you thought you failed, but show a different side. Maybe a goodness that came from what you had thought a bad decision, or how despite disappointing someone instead, you made them smile and remember what it was like to be young. Upon waking many of these dreams fade, but you have a feeling of hope and that perhaps you are still on the path you should be.

For an additional Harrow Point, please describe one of the dreams that really sticks with you upon waking. The dream memory need not be tragic, but perhaps of a happier time and one that gives you hope or drives you forward. No pressure, of course. You may certainly disregard this if you wish.

"Do you think you can help me get out of here without anyone noticing," Audria asks. "I'm worried about one of my best friends. Eliana is probably safe enough, but Trinia lives in a part of town that isn't as well defended as a noble's manor or even here. I just want to make sure she's safe." [...] "Please," she adds a moment later, "I just want to quiet my own fears, and I would rather not have to explain why I'm leaving at this hour to anyone."

Shrike does not move. Her arms remain crossed. "Can't help you much with sneaking. Your armor makes you slow, and loud. It reflects light. You've good feet but they can't make up for that. But you don't need to sneak out. The priests are all distracted with kids and strays. Just walk past with purpose." Her mask shifts minutely as her gaze goes to the ragged cut left on the girl's neck by the imp's stinger, and her voice grows harsher. "But then what. You're in the street. With mobs, looters, imps, guards. You're not going to hide or run from all of them. Not in all that chain. You might get lucky and not see anyone. Or you might get unlucky and have to fight. Have to kill, or be killed."

After a heavy pause she says, more gently, "I know you're worried about your friend. But you don't need my help. You need your bird's."

On that cryptic note, she uncrosses her arms and is clearly turning to go.

"Thanks for hearing me out, at least," she mumbles as Shrike passes through the doorway, leaving her alone with Talanaliel.

Then there was what Shrike had said. She never really expected that she would have to kill someone, much less suspected that she had the capacity to kill someone. Even as much as she hated Gaedren Lamm and his cronies, she never thought about killing them, only getting away and maybe finding enough evidence to have the guard come down on their heads.

Even after she started learning how to fight under Bartholomew's tutelage, she never thought she would kill someone, despite the old man's warnings and lessons. Violence never entered her mind as an option.

At least, not until last night.

The memory of Giggle's and Lamm's hot blood on her skin as they were killed, Giggle's by her hand and Lamm by Abella's, sent icy fingers of horror racing over her as she curls up on her bed. She might have to kill someone again. Maybe not that night, but with the city in chaos, there was more than a slight chance she might have to make that decision. She had risked her own life before, and knew that she could do it again if she felt that the risk was worth it.

Taking someone else's life, or even putting someone else at risk, she found, was much harder for her.

She didn't know how long she lay there curled up. Time passed without measure for her in that moment.

She felt Talanaliel land on her arm and looked up at the bird.

"I remember where Trinia lives," the thrush said in the soft calm voice she used when she could see Audria needed someone to comfort her. "I can fly there and see if she is well."

"Tallyfeather," Audria started to say, but was cut off by the thrush's twittering laugh.

"Get some rest. I can handle myself," Talanaliel reassured her charge.

Audria closed her eyes and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

"Thank you."

===

It hadn't been hard for Talanaliel to sneak out of the Sanctuary of Shelyn. The central atrium was open to the sky, and no one had been paying much attention to small songbirds. Indeed, there were dozens of them that roosted in the sanctuary, safe from malicious imps and hungry psuedodragons. Talanaliel could blend with them easily, and soon enough she was flitting through the city streets.

The paroxysms of violence that had begun the night before continued. Mobs swarmed guardsmen in small groups, crying death to the Usurper as the beat them down. The Korvosan Guard responded by sending in squads backed by mages from the Academae. As brutal as those suppressions could be, they were nothing to those of the Hellknights of the Nail. Domina's Devils, they were called, and as merciless as devils they acted. Blood flowed freely where they marched.

The sky was no safe place, either. A psuedodragon cried out in death as a small group of imps laughed at their handiwork. The laughter was shortlived as soon they shrieked in fear and flew away from an angry swarm that surged like a storm front to deliver justice. Talanaliel had to be careful, gliding from hiding spot to hiding spot, all the while hoping that the monsters that inhabited the Shingles would not notice a small songbird hiding at the edges of their domain.

A part of Talanaliel was frustrated. She wanted to do more for Audria, to help her grow. She knew she'd been sent by Shelyn, but she had this nagging feeling that she was less than what she had been before. Something was missing. She knew it, but she couldn't figure out what it had been.

She pushed it aside as she approached the window of Trinia's apartment, and hoped that the young woman was safe. At the very least, she could rest for a little bit before heading back to the Sanctuary.

This does not stop the masked figure crouching in the branches of a stunted tree on the riverbank nearby from waiting and observing the apparently abandoned building for long enough that a pack of ape-drunk dockworkers stumble by, shouting with laughter. Each one wears a handful of rings and other jewelry that glints with real gold and gems over his rough homespun. One trips and his hand catches in another's necklace, breaking the strand and scattering pearls over the West Dock street. No one pauses to gather them. The injured party complains to his fellow, who merely laughs harder.

A few minutes after their coarse voices have faded to the north, a squad of heavily armored Korvosan Guard pounds southward in a tearing hurry. None of them notice the fallen pearls, which are trampled into the dirt by their passage.

She waits until they too have gone to drop from the tree and dart for the fishery. To her relief, the main door they used yesterday is still unlocked. She steps inside, closes and locks the door behind her, and stands silent and listening in total darkness. All that greets her is the smell of rotting fish and death. She lights the candle-lantern and takes stock.

All of the bodies are lying exactly where they fell: the fop, the knife-wielding gnome, the dog, the crazed half-orc. Their blood is dried and the initial stiffness of death starting to fade as decay sets in. Right now they make only pitiable figures. But the girl's blood and her own is also dry on this floor. She thinks of Isi's hollow cheeks, Kizzy's injured leg, the half-elven boy Nathiel's wrapped stump of a hand. The banked coals flare white-hot. Shrike gets to work.

It is a matter of a few minutes to drag them all into the main room. A few more to find four long gaffs in the room where the Lambs slept and break off the metal hooks, leaving sharpened stakes behind. Perhaps half an hour to poke out four knotholes from the boards covering the windows, then to widen and angle the holes to match the similarly narrowed ends of the stakes.

But there is a more difficult task ahead. Shrike picks up the dog's body and carries it out to the walkway where they jumped down to the lower level. She tosses it down but does not jump after it. Instead she continues on to the hulk of the derelict ship. Its sails are shredded and only the memory of a warning creak from the mossy boards saves her from putting a foot through the rotting deck, but it has plenty of rope remaining that will do for her purposes. She saws out a good chunk of cargo net and some twenty feet of line. At the jumping-off point of the upper walkway, she hangs one corner of the net over the nearest piling and uses it to descend like a rope ladder.

Then comes the hard part. Shrike carefully unlocks the door to Lamm's lair that she locked last night with the brass key. She pushes it open and takes in everything she can from outside before entering. The lizard is still floating there, playing the role of a log once more. And so is what remains of Lamm's body, bobbing under one corner of the square walkway around the room. It is missing all of the organs in its chest cavity, half its face, and one leg, but it is recognizable.

She had been worried that the lizard would not be hungry enough to cooperate, but it comes to attention at the first rattle of the chain when she attaches the dog's body to its chain-and-hook feeding contraption, and immediately starts to rise out of the water and lazily snap at the offering. Meanwhile Shrike reaches under the dock with her guisarme to hook Lamm's clothes and pull him over to herself.

She has just succeeded in dragging the corpse up to the walkway by main force when Gobbleguts notices that she is stealing its leftover meal. Tail lashing furiously, it surges out of the water and snaps its jaws closed around what it can reach of the body. But by luck, it also bites down on the haft of the guisarme, and then opens slightly in surprise at chomping on an unexpected piece of hard wood. As Shrike scrambles backward, pulling on the corpse's collar, and half-staggers, half-falls back out the door, both body and weapon come with her. She slams it closed and leans her back against it, breathing hard, for a long minute. Only when her heartrate is under control does she check the damage.

The corpse is missing an additional half of a foot, and there are unmistakable large teeth marks and splintered wood in the shaft of her spear. But she is in one piece. Thank you, Hunter, for this lesson.
1d6 + 4 ⇒ (5) + 4 = 9 The guisarme is at 6 HP. It can take 1 more damage before becoming broken.

The brass key turns again in the lock. The rope goes around the body. Shrike swarms up the netting and laboriously hauls Lamm up to the upper level. The waterlogged corpse feels at least as heavy as the much bulkier half-orc.

After that it's easy. Or at least it's just muscle-work. The candle has burned out, but she doesn't need it to see outside. One. Two. Three. Four. Time to vanish. It would be pushing her luck to leave a written message. Better to take to the Shingles tonight. The closest way up would be—

"Hey! It ain't safe to be out, you need to get on—" The pale hook-beaked bird mask with flat black elf eyes whips around in the alley to face two men, volunteer firefighters by the soot stains and wet rags tied over their own faces. There is a frozen moment of stillness, broken when one man elbows the other and points at the fishery across the street. "Desna weeps!"

Hanging suspended and pierced through the chest on spikes protruding from the wall of the old fishery at Westpier 17 are four bodies. A human man in red, shot in the chest and throat. A gnome with a shock of brown hair, chest slashed and throat slit. A half-orc with an eyepatch, nose broken, slashed in the chest and thigh. And a hideously maimed thing, barely recognizable as a once-human old man for all the flesh and bone missing from the corpse.

The two men turn back to the alley. It is empty.

However, nearer her home but in an unfamiliar detour from the rooftop routes she knows, taken to avoid the notice of the gray thing, disaster strikes. A mangy dog trailing a snapped rope, clearly someone's rooftop guardian gotten loose in the confusion, sniffs her out and gives chase, snarling and yipping. It has not actually bitten her, so killing it seems unwarranted. But in trying to jump to another roof where it can't follow, she is rushed and comes up several feet shorter than a leap she could usually make without trouble; cannot even get a hand on the top of the ledge, much less cling to it to avoid falling; and then falls twenty feet into the house's garden compost pile. It isn't the closest to death she has ever come, but it is an object reminder not to take the dangers of the Shingles lightly, and bruising to her pride as much as her bones.
Acrobatics, long jump: 1d20 + 8 - 1 ⇒ (5) + 8 - 1 = 12
Reflex, grab edge: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (1) + 6 = 7
Acrobatics, soften fall: 1d20 + 8 - 1 ⇒ (4) + 8 - 1 = 11
Nonlethal damage: 2d6 ⇒ (2, 3) = 5

She is forced to slink the remaining two blocks home on street level, and take another detour when it transpires that their main street has been barricaded with broken furniture, firewood, sandbags and other makeshift walls to discourage mobs and looters, just like at the Sanctuary of Shelyn. No doubt Junie organized the neighbors to do that today. Lania sluices herself off with several buckets of water from the rain barrel and takes off her mask before entering the house, and Junie is not best pleased when she comes in dripping on the kitchen floor. She is somewhat mollified when Lania explains that she was rescuing more children who had been in Isi's position, and getting them safely to a temple.

Once she gratefully collapses into her bed a little after midnight, Lania finds her dreams unsettled. She is on stage after stage, auditioning for wildly different characters and dances as Merula, but always in the same unsuitable costume: her chain shirt armor, close-fitting dark gray clothes, weapons, and the shrike mask.

Mostly the dreams are mere snippets informed by the past, insubstantial and impossible to latch onto, but one in particular is clear. It is a brilliant summer day at the Kendall Amphitheater, a little over two years ago. She cannot remember the name of the production now; some bizarre confection about a kindly nymph queen who loses the ability to love and causes all manner of tragedies.

In reality, the director of the traveling dance troupe had been an idiosyncratic but pleasant halfling woman, and her own part a mere trifle: several different courtiers of the nymph queen, none named, whose natures changed as the queen's did as the acts progressed. But it had been the first real role she had earned as Merula, and had restored her faith in her ability to support her family through performing.

But in the dream she is auditioning for all the roles, one after the other, or perhaps only one role but in many different styles, and she is doing so for three figures whose faces she cannot quite make out. She does not know the dances for each part, either, and while the directors seem undeterred she grows more and more frustrated.

"Can you do it again, only this time, a little... merrier? Remember, you are a grig."

"I am not merry," Merula says finally, only it comes out as Shrike's croaking rasp. She claps a hand over her mouth, horrified.

"That is more like it," says the middle director, and Merula looks at her properly for the first time and sees the austerely beautiful face of her father's oldest sister, Malaniethar; untouched, as ever, by time or scars or pity.

She wakes with a start.

She sighed. The rain wasn't likely to let up for while, she thought. No use in prolonging the inevitable. Still, rushing back wasn't the wisest course of action either, although it wasn't wisdom that guided her.

She tried to pull the hood farther over her head with her free hand, but it was like trying to tighten a belt already set in it's last hole. It just wasn't going to get any better. She set out into the rain with a single thought in her head, best not to keep the old man waiting. He was not known for his patience.

She navigated the city streets in the dark, sticking to the alleyways as much as possible. The gold she carried couldn't be traced back to it's owner, at least not by the watch, but the guards wouldn't care. They'd throw her into a cell regardless. One dressed as she was didn't carry that many coins.

It wasn't the watch she feared, but the old man. The delay would not sit well with him, and she would not be the one paying for her tardiness. She gritted her teeth as she remembered the last time she was forced to watch as his thugs had whipped the others in her stead. A lash for every minute she was late he had said, and she didn't doubt his word. He was vindictive if nothing else.

Before she realized it, she was standing underneath the overhang of a building, staring at the door she used every time. Her eyes drifted down to stare at the puddle at her feet, her vision drifting to another time, before she had met him, before he took her in. You knew what you were getting into but, but what choice did you have? Die poor and hungry in the dirt? At least she had a dry bed to sleep in. That's what she had kept telling herself.

She opened the door a crack, just enough to reach in and slip the wire of the hook before she pushed the door the rest of the way open and ducked inside. She heard the waling scream, slammed the door closed and darted for the main room. "I'm back" she called out as she entered the dank room.

"You're late" he said, "three minutes, to be precise. You know I get...bored, when kept waiting."

"I'm sorry, I had to avoid the watch." It wasn't a total lie.

"No excuses. You know the rules." He turned and looked at the burly man holding the belt. "Proceed."

Two more lashes and it was done. She handed the old man the pouch and rushed to the girl's side. She took her weight and started to help her to the cot when the old man held out his hand.

"You're payment, unless you don't want it" he said with a leer.

Lina tried her hardest to maintain a neutral expression, but a frown still found its way free as her eyes looked to what he was holding.

She adjusted the girl's weight to free her hand and moved to accept the small vial. She tucked it into her belt and carried the girl the rest of the way to her cot, laying her down on her stomach as gently as she could. After wiping her back with a wet rag, she finally took a seat on her own cot.

She didn't know how long she held the vial in hands, only that the night was getting later. Trying to hold the tears in, she popped the top off the vial and downed the contents before she laid down. Her eyes only stayed open for a few more minutes before she drifted off to sleep, the last image before she faded away of the burly man with his belt tossed casually over her shoulder and one hand holding up his pants as he smiled.

Garret kneels before one of the shelves along the front wall working on stocking. His father is talking to some workers who came in looking for supplies. A few others are moving through the aisles looking for what they need. The door bell jingles and a waft of stale fish must comes in with the sound of a yapping dog. Old Ms Littleflow and her dog Ginger came in. The dog was always with her and seemed to never stop yapping. She lived in a rotting shed over an old fishing warf. She often came in looking to see if there were sells to improve her small home, but she never really bought. Unfortunately, she also tended to drive other customers away.

The workers around the counter saw her coming in and quickly made their goodbyes known as they hustled out the front door.

The elder halfling went to the counter and said, "Good morning Mr. Goodbarrell, I was wondering if you have any spare wood pieces." Garrett's father gave her a pleasant smile and the two began to discuss wood. A pair of feet shuffled past Garrett as another customer quickly exited the store. Garrett slowed his work restocking and listened to his father as he talked to the elder halfling woman and the shop cleared until it was only the three halfling and the yapping dog that Garrett's father was feeding a piece of beef jerky too.

After a lengthy talk, Ms Littleflow left the store and Garrett stood up and walked over to his dad shaking his head. "You have the patience of a saint." he told his father.

Abe laughed and says, "Ms Littleflow means only good for those around her. Being kind to others brings a little kindness back into your own life lad."

Garret shakes his head as he slowly wakes, the memory of the throbbing headache from listening to the yapping dog still echoing in his head.

The Dream
It started with that maddening chuckle, the eponymous giggle that heralded the brutality to come.

That was how all of her worst nightmares started.

Audria covered her ears as the laughter grew to a bellowing roar that shook the sky and ground. She screwed her eyes shut, though there was nothing to see in the stygian blackness she had found herself in. She wanted to shut out the vicious, glee-filled grin on the half-orc's face as he readied his whip. She knew what would come next.

"You're nothing without me!" Gaedren's snarl cut through the laughter, a damning call as clear as a trumpet's but without the joyous, brassy tones. It dripped with contempt, hatred, and... envy?

Audria's eyes cracked open as she heard that note. Had it always been there? The laughter lessened, and there too she heard something different. Fear?

No, it couldn't be, she told herself. Even as the thought ran through her mind, she knew that it was nothing more than her suspicious side, the part of her that she'd buried deep after coming to the Sanctuary of Shelyn, that was saying that out of reflex. It was nothing more than a hedge against an uncaring world.

"Why are you hiding in the dark," another voice asked as the laughter continued to fade. This one was sweet, melodious. It sounded as if it would burst into song at any moment.

Audria looked up, uncovering her ears as she sees a young woman, no older than herself, crouching down in front of her. Wings like those of a thrush folded against her back. Her hair and eyes along with her voice reminded her.

"Tallyfeather?" The question came out in a croak.

"Who else would I be," the woman answered as she helped Audria to her feet and held her in a hug.

Love flowed with the warmth through that embrace. Audria closed her eyes and clung to her guide and mentor as Talanaliel stroked her hair.

"It's over, Audria. Lamm's gone, and you've proved him wrong."

Audria sniffed as she shook her head.

"He lost," Talanlaiel said, her voice more emphatic. "Look!"

A gentle hand lifted Audria's head up as she watched herself fighting Giggles. The half-orc's manic laughter filled the fishery as Audria fought him. He seemed so confident, so sure, until Audria looked into his eyes. Uncertainty, doubt, frustration, and fear. She could see it now, could almost hear his thoughts. Why isn't she cowering? She should fear me? Why isn't she begging for mercy. Why is she still fighting?

Then the horrid realization that he had, at last, found his match. He realized as Audria gave him his mortal wound, that he had been beaten by a young woman he thought of as nothing more than one more waif to brutalize and grind beneath his heel. He wanted to scream, to deny it, to tear out Audria's thought and bring her with him.

But he had not the strength. It was gone, flowing out with his blood through the cut that had ended his brutal reign of terror. Korvosa's orphans would be safe from Giggles, and Audria had made sure of it.

The scene faded and she was beneath the fishery now, and could see Lamm as she asked him why she should listen to him when she had a goddess on her side. Audria was surprised to see the look of shock and fear on his face as she grabbed him and overpowered him. He was a frail old man, true, but she was nothing more than a waif he'd beaten and left for dead. Why was she not fearful of him? Why did she not cower before him? How had she gotten so much stronger?

"Never take a life lightly," Talanaliel told her as she turned Audria to face her. "But also remember that sometimes you will have to. Lamm and Giggles had plenty of opportunities to surrender. Don't beat yourself up just because they never took them."

The pair turned to look back on the road Audria had traveled so far. Along the way, there were plenty of dark nights and times where she felt hopeless, but there were also plenty of other scenes of joy and laughter, especially after she and Eliana had joined Shelyn's clergy. Even before Lamm and his cronies had beaten her bloody and left her for dead, she could see the surprise and hope filling the faces of the children, her fellow Lambs, that she'd helped when they were certain that the would face another beating from Lamm or Giggles for failing to met their quotas.

"Perhaps it was not what the law would have required, but you did help bring two villains to justice," Talanaliel told her as they turned to the road ahead. It twisted and turned and dipped into valleys hidden in shadow, one of them yawned wide before them. "You were chosen not because of strength or ability, but because of your heart. You care. It was unfortunate that events lead to death that night, but sometimes we cannot show mercy because those that we fight and stand firm against will not accept it. Don't tear yourself apart because Lamm and Giggles refused to see reality and realize that their doom was upon them."

Talanaliel hugged Audria again, almost squeezing the breath from her.

"I'm always here with you. You won't have to face your doubts alone."

The dagger Pip just pawned is the same style as the one the prop department for the production purported to have been used by the legendary killer himself. Just what was Gaedran Lamm doing with such an item.

Cainabeth wipes her brow and lets down her hair, shaking it out. Her bounteous golden tresses naturally fall just perfect, the kind of controlled mess others spend hours in front of mirrors toying with. She flashes her brilliant smile for her sister. ”How are you, Bel? Another productive day?”

Abella closes her book with a snap and stands up from her “desk”—really a few planks on cinderblocks. ”Just more studying. You know how it is.” By which she means pretending to study. Abella putting effort into anything is a shared fiction, perhaps even an unspoken inside joke. All of Abella’s journals are full of doodles, enigmatic diagrams, charts recording her abortive experiments, and none of it makes any sense to anyone but her. ”Catch anyone naughty today, Beth?”

Cainabeth sets her sword by the door and begins the process of removing her breastplate. ”Oh heavens no. I let a few go actually.”

”More of those children.” Abella’s voiced disdain is overwrought, more about teasing Cainabeth than representative of any actual dislike. ”How are those little kiddies going to grow up to have any respect for the law if you keep letting them off easy?”

Beth finally tosses the breastplate aside and drapes herself over a chair. ”But of course! We need this generation’s master criminals to get their start early. Steal one piece of moldy bread today and, who knows, they might take three next month. We could have the world’s first moldy bread cartel in ten years! Best toss out yesterday’s bread fast or I will get you for distribution.” She laughs her bright, clear laugh, the one that Abella has seen turn every head in a room.

Abella saunters over to her sister and produces a few strips of jerky. ”Hungry, Beth? Aloisus had a whole bunch today. I already had mine.” That was, of course, a lie.

Cainabeth takes the jerky, but leaves one for Abella, pressing it into her hand. ”I had a big lunch, dear sister. I do not think I can eat all this.” That was, of course, also a lie.

Abella reluctantly takes her portion. ”I am glad you are eating well. You have to keep up feeding those gorgeous muscles of yours, Beth.”

Cainabeth tears off a bite and winks. ”As long as you make sure to keep feeding that big brain of yours.”

Abella actually, honestly, without foresight or premeditation, having no ulterior, interior, or exterior motive, smiles.

The thrush preened slightly and chirped a chuckle. Audria was such a worry wart over her friends. At least this friend wasn't in any danger. She flexed her wings to get ready for the return trip...what? Did she just see a person's shadow on the roof across the way? Hmm, perhaps so. There were often those who chose to use The Shingles as a means to get around sometimes it was safer than the streets below, but...was that person watching Trinia's window? No, it had to just be coincidence since they'd already moved on. And speaking of moving on, she really needed to get back. Korvosa did not get safer as the night drew on...