A three-legged stool balances on the narrow, clapboard stage at the far end of Cracktooth's Tavern. On the stool balances a halfling with a shock of brown hair, a long nose, and a small mouth. On the halfling's lap balances a mandolin that's a little too big for him, but he makes up for the awkward chord progressions with his enthusiastic singing.
"Oh the Arbiters are worried, House Leroung's running scared,
They can’t deport three thousand men you see,
And we’re not gonna let them send Dalreen to the Eye
We’ll fight for Dalreen Arches, and keep Korvosa free!"
The last chorus of his song over, the Halfling sets the mandolin down on the stool and takes a bow to polite but unenthusiastic applause. A portly human with a wide smile and a prominent chipped tooth bounds onto the stage. "Citizens, you've just heard Henk Snellet singing 'The Ballad of Dalreen Arches'. Up next we have Thom Rixton with his standard 'I'm Changing my Name to Fort Rannick.'" Henk, the halfling, and the portly man step quietly off the stage as the next act comes on.
"How come you didn't call my song an old standard, Jesk," says Henk with a smile and a friendly jab at Jesk's thigh. Jesk waits til he's behind the bar and given Henk a half-pint of ale to respond.
"First," he says, with a wink and a return of his patron's grin, "cause you didn't write it. From what I hear, the fellow it's about, this Arches, wrote it about himself. Second, cause it ain't a standard. Last time you were here at all was almost two years ago. Third, cause it didn't come true, did it?"
"I guess not," says Henk, taking a humungous gulp of ale and popping up on his stool as he hiccoughs. He looks at the mug with a scowl. "'Scuse me. Sabina got me before she got him, but they sent him back to Sargava in the end."
"Hmm," grunts Jesk, thinking of something to say. "Is that where you've been, looking for him?"
"Nah. See, Sandpoint's my home, has been since I was seventeen. But I was born in Westcrown. Ameiko has a sister there, Amaya, and when she told Ameiko what the Children of Westcrown had accomplished, she knew I'd want to see for myself."
"And?" The barkeep seems genuinely curious, but also disgruntled at the mention of one of his business rivals. Henk often patronized her tavern in preference to his own, a legacy of the years he had lived at the Rusty Dragon following his exile to Sandpoint.
"Well, they say the rout of the Shadow Beasts and the Council of Thieves is the greatest blow for freedom in the Empire since the fall of the Stavian Arch," says Henk, waving his mug around in the shape of an arch. He looks like the comparison hurts his pride. He had fled Westcrown when one of the others on his work gang had learned his grandmother had been involved in the plot to destroy the Arch.
"But you don't agree?"
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't," says Henk. "I do know the Hellknights are still around and kicked me out as soon as they learned who I was. You ask me, the situation down there is the same as the situation in Korvosa. Thrune's still in power, and in a couple of years, Egorian's control over the place will be greater than it ever was. Nothing will have changed.
"There's got to be somewhere out there," he muses, finishing the last of the ale and clunking the mug down on the bar, "where the whole rotten edifice is ready to come crashing down. None of this nonsense about one corrupt local power moving in to take the place of another."
