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"Speaking of magic..., Gristav interjects, as if anyone but he had been, "There's a smattering of healsome alchemys about, and at hand?" "Aye," Daynadrian nods, "the scribe had one when we caught him trying to get of town, and Volo had one as well, not that it did the bastard any good. Lil's other patsy," he explains to the men new since the opening gala, "the one who led Thuvalia astray. I think Malkith has them."
Daynadrian bristles at the suggestion. "My schedule's not yours to arrange," he tells Tendal before turning to address the table more generally and Saul in particular. "I thought I'd go back and check in with my contact at the temple, the one who helped us find Lil's flat in the first place, see if anyone there has had word of her since she supposedly took off on this sea cruise. If she's the one who has it in for the Goblin, she might be making her own plans for Sunday night."
He glances over at Daynadrian before responding, "Yep, we got 'em all. The well-dressed man requested you be collected. So, we're here to let you know you can come down now." With that, Snake tips his hat and starts back downstairs. "Yes, it's perfectly safe," Daynadrian adds, stepping up to take her arm. "You can give me back the mace now. We need to head up to Lubbertown anyway; you're tasked with hiring musicians for your dance on Sunday, remember?" He leads Thuvalia down the stairs after Snake to rejoin the others on the casino floor.
Daynadrian frowns at the wizard. "I don't like letting a man insult us and endanger our people, while we do nothing to make him regret it. We don't answer this attack in some way, it'll only make him think we're an easy target. Where I come from, we don't have the luxury of refusing any possible advantage that might fall into our hands."
Having finally divested himself of Thuvalia and laid her down on the settee, Daynadrian joins them. "Could have arranged it before she left," the elf points out. "What better alibi than not being in town? Or maybe Weatherby's lying to us about her whereabouts ... or, even more likely, she lied to him." Dayn turns a chair into a makeshift grappling hook, setting it across the inside of the doorway to the audition room before tying the rope to it. "That should hold, and if it doesn't, the two of us ought to be able to brace it between us," he tells Malkith, pointedly leaving Tendal out of the equation.
"He's an Abadarite, yes? From the armor, and the scales? Then his word might bind him better than our chains, if perhaps less well than Lil's. It's she we fear, I'm told rightly so. Let a part of his parole be proving he's beyond her grasp, if not her reach. Let him provide better and willful details of her plans, or even letters of introduction for us. Let him by those letters put arguable evidences in our hands of his complicity. Evidence held against any future perfidy." "Former Abadarite," Daynadrian puts in pointedly. "He broke his vows to his temple and his god; why should he keep a promise he makes to us if it looks more beneficial to him to break it?"
"What about the other things he asked about?" Dayn asks. "The ledger, and the knothole, and the manacles, and whatever you did after you left the Wharf District yesterday?"
As Braddon strolls back up the corridor, Daynadrian gives Malkith a questioning look, seemingly asking if he wants to take advantage of the half-elf's absence to play "good interrogator."
Daynadrian leads Braddon and Malkith down and around a sharp corner at the foot of the staircase into a long, narrow corridor. He passes two doors on the right and then turns left down another set of stairs leading even deeper beneath the surface. Down in this sub-basement there are two more doors on the left before the hallway turns to the right. The elf pauses in the corridor. "All right," he says, lowering his voice, "he's in there. It's some sort of old kennel for blood sports; they've got him in a cage. I've the key if we need to get him out ... but he only leaves this level blindfolded or unconscious. Don't drop any hints as to where he might be." He opens the second door onto a rather dank stone room, the floor littered with some moldy straw. Cages of various sizes, from tiny up to man-sized, are stacked against the walls. Only one is occupied, large enough to hold a man without undue discomfort but not quite tall enough for one to sit upright in. Hunched over in it is the scribe Weatherby. He shields his eyes against the sudden light of the oil lamp, blinking and squinting to try to see who is entering the room. While the bars of the cage appear corroded with age, the lock securing its door is shiny and new.
"Do you talk business? He'll probably understand if we treat it like some kind of deal." "Not I," Daynadrian answers in the negative as they enter the kitchen. He opens a door, revealing a staircase descending beneath the surface, and lights a lamp to carry down with them. "Saul could probably do it, if we weren't keeping him a secret. Here's a question: How do you know when to stop kicking? What if he really doesn't know anything more than he's told us?"
"Saul wants us to keep his name out of it," Daynadrian warns as the three walk out of the guest wing, "and not let him know where he's being held: let him think we're working strictly for the Gendarmes or his wife and avoid any plots of revenge he might cook up."
Malkith is meditating over his cards, and Braddon is deep in troubled dreams about green, glowing pirates when each hears a rap at his door. "I'd imagine our guest might be feeling communicative by now," Dayn greets them. "If we go have a chat with him now, we might use the promise of a bit of breakfast to loosen his tongue and jog his memory."
"I'll go along to Lubbertown in the morning too, if you don't mind," Daynadrian puts in with a hard glance at Tendal. "Just in case Thuvalia runs into any old acquaintances." |
