Salvatore stood on the deck of the ship watching the elf ship draw near. Captain Lucio was pulling every scrap of canvas they had to keep pace with the nimble raiders, but even so their chase had gone on for hours and the wait wore on him. A stern chase, the Tilean had called it, and had warned him that they were rarely brief.
"Patience, gosling." Beatrice murmured at his side. The arquebusier showed no more tension now than she had a week ago when they left Tobaro, and were it not for her gentle blowing of her smoldering match cord she might have been at a picnic.
Salvatore was too eager to calm himself, however. "But they'll get away at this rate!" He exclaimed. His lover just chuckled, which annoyed him but he graciously didn't mention it to her.
"Just as well if they do. I can think of plenty of reasons for us not to catch them, and they all clink in a purse. Hard to be rich when you're dead."
"Bah, you're just getting lazy and grouchy in your dotage, old woman. Besides, I'm not afraid of an elf. I already bested one in honorable single combat you know." She ought to know, it wasn't the first time he'd told her.
"That's nice." She replied in the same tone of voice she used for 'I believe you, really', which was a blatant lie. The woman was on the small side of average, and had been rather plain even before a misfire had taken her eye along with the left side of of her face. Salvadore didn't care about her disfigurement, he was pretty enough for both of them.
Theirs was not a love that bards would sing of through the ages. Beatrice claimed she only bedded him to scratch an itch, often repeating 'you're lucky you're cute' or some other admonition whenever she grew vexed by his enthusiasms, which happened not infrequently, but she smiled when she said it. For Salvadore, it was her sardonic wit and sharp tongue that had first caught his attention. Well, that and seeing one of the novel weapons admittedly. They both sought to cross the Tilean Sea, he seeking adventure and perhaps avoiding awkward questions involving a duel with an elf, while she was returning to the peninsula to retire to an old dog's home maintained by the Band of the Red Wolves.
They had collaborated to cross. Salvadore had more than his share of luck at dice, and when his fellow gamblers' grumbling grew too ominous she would act in a delightfully menacing way to deter trouble before it start. They had delayed sailing often enough that Paco had inquired as to whether they would remain in the cliff-city indefinitely, but eventually Captain Lucio of the Foam Dancer had arrived offering to pay for fighters to fend off overly bold Sartosans. The money had been good, all told, and as Beatrice had said it wasn't often someone paid you to go where you wanted anyway. He'd hired her on the spot, and after a recommendation from her (and besting four large men with a belaying pin) Salvadore as well.
Three days ago, a sail had been spotted on the horizon. Were the Foam Dancer any other ship, it's captain any other man, they would have avoided it. But Captain Lucio, for all that he was a dog-beating Tilean whoreson, was a Remasian born true to his roots. Upon the crow's nest confirming that it was an elf slaver, he'd spared no thread of sail in attempting to close the distance. The elves, for their part, had toyed with them, letting the Foam Dancer close only agonizingly slowly.
Today was probably to be the day they came to grips with the other ship. the slavers rode low on the seas, always seeming to be at risk of capsizing even in moderate swells, but one of the sailors, a man by the name of Pieter, would occasionally point out some bit of seamanship the elves performed that exceeded expectations from the human crew. If the only worry the two ships had were wind and wave there would be no way for the slower, less nimble Foam Dancer to catch the elves even if they were riding low. But with the stony cliffs ahead of them and a strong wind blowing southerly, the elves were caught between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis. They couldn't veer north or else they'd be caught in irons, and turning south meant navigating the rocks that were eager to bite through their hull. Their only option was to stand and fight.
Eventually the elf captain saw what Salvadore had, and the Estalian's smirk faded like a Remasian asked what his fathers name was. Half a dozen elves stood on the decks with their slaves bound before them. The bastards were using one of their slaves as a pavase while their elves began stringing crossbows. The various mercenaries aboard the Foam Dancer queued up likewise, most sporting either a bow or a crossbow and waiting for no coherent signal. A pair of Abasko shepherds fired first, their hornbows landing their shots well short of the other ship. A single return bolt took the younger sibling in the gut, his screaming being the first sound either side had made thus far.
That unnerved the mercenaries enough to start becoming sloppy. A few more shots were loosed, and one even lodged into the deck of the other ship. The elves' return fire was not perfect, but as many bolts found meat as wood. It was soon apparent that any sort of duel of archery would favor the fewer but more skilled elven crossbowmen.
Fortunately, even the quickfiring elven crossbows only had so much time to find targets before it became time to board. Beatrice coldly kept her fire until the last moment as Sal stood before her, acting as shield and gunrest. "Close your eyes for a moment, gosling. This is going to be lo-" The resulting roar was startling to Salvadore even as he was half-expecting it. What he wasn't expecting was one of the human shields to stop crying and topple back, pinning the equally dead elf behind it. Turning to look at his lover in surprise, Sal took a glancing blow from a bolt meant for her instead. "I'll be fine, gosling. Keep them busy." Beatrice was already pulling another wad of powder free from her bandoleer.
Without checking to see if the bolt had rebounded or penetrated, Salvadore joined the mass of Remean sailors attempting to swarm the elven corsairs. Arriving in time to skewer one elf and unhand another that were both about to make short work of Pieter, Salvadore brandished his sword bellowing for the captain to come out and face him like a man. What he saw instead was-
--
Salvadore woke with a start, a knife appearing in his hand just long enough to fly across the deck of that ship and...sink into the door just in front of a servant's nose. Swallowing, the liveried man bows politely and retreats, still bearing the pitcher of fresh water for the wash basin. Before the door closed behind him it opened again, a somewhat dumpy woman with her hair bound up in a cloth and a tattoo of a black fleur de lys stretched from her left eye down to her cheek. Her attire was simplistic but well-made and clean, which was a slightly surprising difference from most of the peasants Salvadore had seen here. She was also normally proportioned, unlike the woman's younger assistant whose mother had apparently been skimping and only gave the girl three fingers on either hand and a misaligned jaw that gave her a sullen cast.
Without so much as a by-your-leave the older woman reached out and seized Salvadore's ankle like a vice, lifting it enough to remove the boot and bandages covering the wound. "He's been walking on it, like an idiot." The woman told her assistant. "See here where the poultice broke open, and it smeared along..." without missing a beat the older woman snapped her fingers twice in front of her assistant's face. "Pay attention girl, or I'll make him wear a sack over his face." The words were in Tilean, one of the southern accents if Salvadore was to make a slightly sleep-and-dream-addled guess.
"Good morning, honored strega." Salvadore greeted with a smile that was only slightly forced, ignoring the manhandling. It was far from the first time he'd been fussed over like this, and thankfully the senior of the two was by all measures more interested in his foot than anything above it. The other was...well, almost certainly a local and an apprentice. "Were you the one to treat my injury before?"
Rather than answering, the strega pointed to one of Salvadore's discarded socks from the night before. "Make him shut up."
"But Madame Rossi, what about asking him questions?"
Madame Rossi snorted contemptuously. "Any patient who knows anything useful is just going to lie to you. And this one's an Estalian scoundrel, their heads are almost as empty as yours is. He's just a pretty face without the sense Rhya gave a goose."
Salvadore grinned. "I'm afraid it's quite true, my dear. Bring my beloved uncle in here and he can help the good strega list my many, many faults." He winked at the girl conspiratorially. "A profound lack of common sense seems to be a popular starting position." Well, actually Uncle Baltasar would start arguing with the Tilean woman as soon as it looked like they might agree about something, but Salvadore wasn't in the mood to fish for complements like that.
The girl giggled, but strega Rossi applied her thumb near the wound that caused Salvadore to gasp in pain. "None of the painkillers for this one, girl. They dull the wits and this one has too few to afford the loss." A scrape of something on the floor being dragged closer. "I said gag him, girl."
Complying, the apprentice looked for the cleaner of Salvadore's socks and held it up before him. "Um, would you please-?"
"No, you're asking. Don't give me a choice in the matter, be firm. Tell me what's going to happen." She blinked, then with a severity that was drastically undermined by how obviously flustered she was the girl wadded the sock up and held it before Sal's mouth.
"Bite this and keep it there." Salvadore did so, mostly as a way to keep from laughing at her and hurting the girl's feelings, even if she did look like a sulky kitten trying to be stern. It also helpfully kept him from biting his tongue when the two women started trying to milk pus out of his foot. When the Tilean didn't find as much pus as she expected she went digging for more, a process that made Salvadore grateful for the sock as he flailed a bit trying to distract himself from the discomfort. It wasn't the worst he'd ever been hurt of course, but a strega was the sort to salt a wound to make sure the injured person would remember the pain of the moment and spare her the work in the future. Salvadore suspected if he didn't ham it up she'd rub some stinging ointment in just in case.
Eventually the strega stood up. "I don't know what crackpot you bought the potion from, but you got lucky this time and it seems to have done its work without crippling or poisoning you beyond what you had in you already. With someone else I'd tell them to stay off their foot for the next several days, but because you're obviously going to try to anyway, and will likely try to sweet talk people into helping you...Henri!" She called with a bark of command that left Salvadore wanting to salute. A large figure obscured the doorway, mostly shaped as a man writ large, but the clay he was shaped from was not handled by a master. The length of his arms was mismatched, though each contained more muscles in just the forearm than Salvadore had in his thighs, and he walked hunched over either by long practice being indoors or a deformity of the spine. The face was the most ghastly of the things about him though, as the head was partially caved in as though Henri had been struck by a horse at a young age, which had sunken in an eye to near-unusability and made it impossible for him to close his mouth properly. It was, all told, a sight to frighten children with. The heartless Madame Rossi continued. "Henri will carry you wherever you need to go in the residence. The servants know what you're allowed to have to eat as well, so don't get any ideas." The strega began smearing something cold and slimy on his foot while maintaining eye contact. "He's a simple boy, with a simple heart to go with his simple mind. You play whatever games you want with the master of the house, he's a clever one he is. But whatever your games, I would hate" her hands gripped Salvadore's injured foot and twisted just enough to hurt a bit "for Henri to get mixed up in them. It would just break. My. Heart."
Giving his third most annoyingly understanding smile, Salvadore wordlessly signaled his understanding. Charming woman. An absolute harridan, but charming all the same.
--
Alonsico found his cousin in a small side room staring at reports while propping his injured foot up on a bench dragged in from outside. It was too long to fit into the room properly, keeping the door from closing and allowing Salvadore to keep an eye on anyone coming to his little cubbyhole. "Have you decided to become a scribe, cousin?" He asked, half in jest but with a note of mild concern as well. "You look like you've stained your fingers already."
"Not quite." A wry chuckle. "I suspect I am being given the typical reward for giving our esteemed host something to think about yesterday, however. No good deed goes unpunished, and Mousillon is not exempt from that it seems." A truthful answer, but not an honest one if Salvadore was willing to be unflinchingly honest with himself. To his lack of surprise, Maleagent had 'just so happened' to have heard about Salvadore's trip to a certain bookshop yesterday and, entirely coincidentally, had a number of additional details the rumormonger either didn't have or didn't share. But Salvadore wasn't going to be the one to lessen his cousin's opinion of him for dabbling in bad habits picked up in Tilea.
Alonsico raised an eyebrow questioningly before sitting down and reaching to pour himself a cup of wine. Finding the first earthenware pitcher empty, he eventually found a second that still held half its bounty. "And what is your punishment? Being kept inside on a lovely day like today?" A peal of thunder accentuated his sardonic remark. Then he grimaced and carefully set the vessel back down. "Ah, perhaps the answer lies in the wine."
Salvadore waved it off. "Henri brought the wine, and it would be cruel to confuse the man with unnecessarily complicated instructions. Perhaps it is some wise goddess' way of encouraging me to become more temperate in my appetites." That got a polite chuckle from Alonsico, good man he was. "But no. Lord Maleagent has agreed to help me find my way to Périgord, and while waiting offered me something to contemplate." Turning a map of the duchy to his cousin, Salvadore consulted the notes he was brought. "You heard that a large fleet of elves passed through here mere weeks before we arrived, yes? That ship we fought was a straggler I think, a weak fish trailing the school looking for any last worms in the dirt that might be snatched up before moving on."
Alonsico's hand subconsciously went to his arm where Salvadore suspected he'd find a new scar. So, Little Lonsci wasn't so little anymore it seemed. "A straggler?" Salvadore pretended not to see a chill go down his cousin's spine. "I...see."
Continuing on, Salvadore explained. "The elf armada was apparently based out of the Claw of Dominion, of which..." a fragmented sketch is presented, purportedly by a survivor of their raiding parties. The silhouette in it was a nightmarish thing of twisted spires and tortured, screaming faces leering out from the mist. Accompanying the sketch was a description given by the survivor, which was 'fevered' at best and mad more probably, of both fear and pain. The man had died of slowly liquefying organs, according to strega Rossi. "Little is known." Which isn't surprising. The bounty boards of many seaside tavernas in Remas have standing bounties on credible news of the movements and status of any slaver-elf ships, and the promises for Black Arks were...substantial. Also rarely claimed.
"And Señor Malegent, he wishes for you to...track these elves?"
Salvadore snorted. "To what end? If Foam Dancer were the fastest hull made by Men, which she is I promise you not, and if she were to leave at the beginning of a raid by the slavers, with favorable winds she might arrive at the next city to be attacked if the slavers take the time to offload their catch to..." he gestured at the nightmarish sketch. Whatever the appearance of the Claw of Dominion, the citadel of misery and terror were surely its truth. "Following in its wake is likewise both unnecessary and unwise. It is not difficult to tell where it has been, and there will be more stragglers. I would place my crew against another such raider as we found, if I felt it necessary, and they would fight with the same stalwart determination that has done me proud so far. But if they thought I was risking their lives for nothing, I would lose them. Once we made port, my mast would stand empty." A pause. "Paco would maybe stay, and Pieter. He's accidentally made the right choice before...." Salvadore trailed off, realizing that he'd stopped answering his cousin's question and begun voicing his own...what, doubts? Regrets?
Taking a moment to soothe his hackles, Salvadore composed himself. No, he would get nowhere charging the elves with naught but righteous fury and his own self. The dead lie uneasy in the past, but the living needed aid he could render still. "But no. He is as curious as I am about several fishing villages on the coast of Mousillon that were near the Claw of Dominion." A pause, before continuing. "Who, seemingly, were largely unscathed by its passage."
"What?" Alonsico sat up straighter, jostling the bench and making Salvadore flinch. It didn't hurt much actually, but including it just enough to remind his cousin of his injury to encourage him to be more aware in the future. Next time Salvadore might actually have a wound that needed more pampering. To his credit Alonsico looked properly chagrined, but didn't slow down. "How?"
Salvadore took a cautious sip at the so-called wine once again. "I don't know, and neither I think does Señor Maleagent. These villagers are apparently somewhat" a quirk of his lips, to show a faint hint of humor "taciturn even in good days. The recent times have turned them downright unforthcoming." Salvadore hummed thoughtfully for a second before shifting minutely in his seat to more directly face Alonsico. "How ready are your troops to march? Say, for a two week jaunt?"
Alonsico winced at that. "I...think they can travel. Waiting would be better, and they march like..." he trailed off before saying 'marched like conscripts', which was an insulting but accurate description of what he had to work with. "Like they aren't accustomed to it."
"Because they aren't, Alonsico. Remember, only the knights get to worship their Lady. Peasants get to hoe turnips and call that their martial duty done until their lord calls them to war to fill his formations. Oh, they keep men under arms, but neither they nor the usual levies are what we would recognize as proper militia." Seeing the young man grimace sourly, Salvadore nodded to himself. Southern Estalia had memories of brave knights in gleaming mail coming to relieve them from attack by the Arabian Jafar, but was far enough removed from those knights' homelands that they didn't have the regular reminders of those same knights' other peculiarities to dampen the common Estalian's admiration for their chivalric virtues. Salvadore had the advantage of first the Academia de Marcial's careful deconstruction of what he thought he knew followed by months at sea seeing the world, and Baltasar long years of life showing him the difference between assumption and fact, but Alonsico was still learning that even the noblest of chivalry still shits.
Rather than let that linger on the man's mind, Salvadore ploughed forward. "Focus on making sure they are ready to march in a day or two. We're going upriver maybe thirty leagues as the crow flies." Which a small party on good horses could have covered in two days back at home, or a single day if they pressed hard and had remounts. But Salvadore acutely doubted that a small party could cover that sort of ground so quickly here in Mousillon even had they all two splendid remounts each. They would be slowed by the marshy ground and limited hours of effective daylight for sure, and Maiden only knows state the local roads were in but Salvadore was not expecting a grand highway like those seen linking the great cities of Tilea. If he was being pessimistic, a poorly maintained road that looked like a goat path in places seemed more what Mousillon was prepared to give him. He was willing to travel those roads alone if he needed to but what would trouble half a dozen men often seemed far more manageable with three score and change behind oneself.
--
"I really do wish you were coming with us, captain." Pieter said. "Your...way with people might give us an in with one of the vintners, maybe a minority share in a vinyard. I don't suppose there's anything I could say to make you change your mind about staying?" The rain came down outside like the heavens were flogging the duchy, the very weather itself scourging the city in a very dark and stormy afternoon as dark as night.
The first mate's voice made it clear the question was purely pro-forma, but Salvadore responded anyway. "Of course. You could tell me that this Magdalene woman is aboard. Did she seek you out, Pieter? Or have you gone and returned with her over the last day or two?" His first mate didn't say anything, and Salvadore held up his hand. "That was churlish of me. I should not have...well, I do not ask you to forgive me, but I do offer you an apology."
"There is nothing you need to apologize for, captain." Pieter said, if a bit woodenly. "I should have known the answer to my question before I asked it." There was a bit of sting in his tone, but Salvadore ignored it. Spending weeks on the same ship with a man would show you his ugly side as well as his fair, and one learned to take it in stride where they could or one went ashore before too long. Sensing they needed a change of topic, Pieter reached for what was at the top of his mind. "We're set to nearly fill our holds, if we can move everything we picked up in town. I'd rather not pick up more than passengers here, if that's all the same to you, but we should make enough profit to keep sailing without too much trouble."
Salvadore picked up his cup and stared into it thoughtfully. "And what's our cargo bound for Bordeleux?" Pieter winced at that, which was enough answer for Salvadore.
"Captain, I would of course answer if you insist...." But it would be better if there were some things you didn't have to lie about, apparently.
Deciding he'd studied his prey enough for now, Salvadore swallowed the wine. It burnt on the way down in ways the others yesterday hadn't, but whatever Henri was served was obviously bottom shelf. A fetching shade of red, though. "I'll give you leave to sort things as you deem fit, Pieter. Just remember, a ship with a barren hold can be filled, a ship without her crew...."
"Yes, captain. Am I to wash behind my ears every day as well? Perhaps if I tie myself to apron strings you'll be enticed back aboard after all?" He smiled as he said it, however forced, so Salvadore decided he'd avenge that remark by pouring the man some of the horrid wine. "The men would be glad to see it at least. Though I daresay they'd be willing to sail with broken arms all by now."
Frowning, Salvadore motioned for him to continue. "What exactly happened last night? The reports I've heard so far have been...incomplete."
Pieter bared his teeth at his captain in what was only technically a smile. "You are aware that mindless dead wander the streets of this city? They are not unknown south of the river, one or two pops up every so often it seems, but the north side is considered theirs, all but along the north bank. You can tell too, all the buildings are barred at night and there's usually someone that stands a watch." Salvadore's grimace wasn't due to the wine this time, he could tell where this was going. "Well, apparently every so often some will wander by. Last night, near as we could figure, some of the dead managed to escape a cellar where more than a few'd been collecting for Raven knows how long. They'd been lured back by some idiota treasure seeker, following his blood trail back to us. First we knew of it was a banging on our door, then screaming. The innkeeper refused entry, of course. No one crosses a threshold at night unless they're up to mischief, apparently."
"Could not the door hold until morning?" Salvadore asked. He suspected a stout door would be a priority of the innkeeper's, but given the moisture in Mousillon he could see half such doors already rotting from the inside without any knowing. It seemed that any baker's dozen of eggs would find at least one rotten here, and there wasn't anything that didn't show at least a bit of decay. All that was old and grand is now laid low, all that is new is clearly worse than what came before. Dove, but what a tragedy.
Pieter gave a shrug. "Probably, though I doubt we'd know for sure. I'm a bit unclear myself what happened next, but one minute the men and I were doing what we could to keep the building secure, the second we hear sounds of fighting outside. At some point, and don't ask me when or how for I can't think of any reason someone would want to do this, two of the other guests snuck out the inn over some rooftops and made it to the warehouse where the villagers were sleeping, told them the inn was under attack and they'd scrambled to come help."
Salvadore spun the mostly-empty cup around the table with his hand. "Maleagent doesn't seem to believe they've much fighting spirit in them. Are you suggesting to the contrary?"
A snort. "Captain, these people have been hurt, scared, made powerless and then shown the things that hurt them and theirs can bleed. They have...I wouldn't call it 'fighting spirit', but I've seen that kind of mood before back home, and it would always lead to a riot. The villagers, they weren't fighting so much as lashing out. I honestly don't know if they knew they were fighting zombies until near the end, though it didn't seem to hurt their enthusiasm much."
Hmm, a lot to unpack there. The first question was probably whether Maleagent orchestrated the attack. It wouldn't take too much to presume that it would be within his means, certainly. Walking dead were easily available, keep them in a storage location set to be released in controllable quantities and have a traitor goat lead them to their target. He almost certainly had the means, and it didn't seem beyond question that it would be of his method...but motive? Salvadore was tentatively confident that his host's objective was to win him over through charm, sweet reason and sweeter gifts. An attack on his crew, even a deniable one like that didn't fit with the stratagem. What then? "What can you tell me about these other guests?"
Pieter looked thoughtful. "One was a Kislevite, didn't talk much. His friend translated for him mostly, seemed to get by on pointing and grunting as much as anything else. Walked with his legs a yard apart and had one of those short bows. His companion spoke the local language and a bit of a real one, he helped us talk to the innkeeper. First we knew he was gone was when the fat bastard started panicking and no one knew what in Ranald's left nut he was talking about."
"The second man was fat?"
His first mate shook his head. "No, the second man was tall, broad shouldered and bald. Strong chin, if you like that sort of thing. Had some good armor in his room, saw some use before too. Either a gryphon or a demigryph painted on it, didn't see too much. He lead the villagers to us." So, a shadow-game, with Maleagent's agents working to protect their lord's investment in the crew of the Foam Dancer against one of his local enmities, or was this all a matter of pure happenstance as it seemed?
Drumming his fingers on the desk, Salvadore made up his mind. "Sail with the tide, as planned. Take our wounded and leave for Bordeleux, including Gonçalo. I'd not leave a man stranded here had he both eyes, much less blind and helpless." He set a heavy purse on the table. "This is for him. If he wants to see if the local priestesses will heal a sailor who fought valiantly, he has my blessing. If he wishes to live ashore..."
Pieter nodded. "There'll be a collection, captain. He'll get a fat purse, at least."
"Good. One last thing." He handed over an envelope sealed in wax but unmarked by a seal, just the sort of thing that would make any good spy's hands itch to see. "I don't know what's going to happen here while you're gone, but I suspect you're going to be suitably pleased to not be particularly involved with it." Pieter's expression gave all the agreement Salvadore needed as he continued. "I have drawn up a list of contingencies depending on some of the more likely outcomes." He pulled out a second purse, smaller than the first. "Make sure to buy yourself a nice, fancy hat while you're there."
"Your scheme requires me to have a fancy hat?" Pieter asked with a tone of amusement. "I cannot wait to hear your reasoning."
Waving off Pieter's question with an air of aloof smugness with his hand, Salvadore grinned. "Oh, mi compadre, it is really quite simple. If all goes well, you will need the very nice hat to make these nobles take you seriously."
"And if it goes poorly?"
"Every good captain must have a splendid hat, and I suspect mine will be joining me on a pike somewhere after I have overstepped a welcome." Salvadore's smile was like a young man looking forward to a romantic encounter, eager and impatient.
--
Maleagent's schedule was a rather busy one, when one could examine it closely. If you only met him once or twice during a day he seemed...not slothful, but at ease or unhurried. When viewed more closely however it was clear that it was a matter of pacing. When he was not hearing petitions from various notables from the city, he was reviewing reports of some sort, or off to inspect some aspect of the city. Salvadore wasn't entirely sure when he found time for the practice yard, though a bruise did appear along his jaw and wrist part of the way through the next day. The lord made an effort to have a word or two with the other Chavez family members as time permitted, but it was obvious that it was Salvadore that had captured his attention.
Alonsico was only briefly in attendance, as he scrambled to make the villagers ready to march. It was slow going, it seemed, between his inexperience, the language barrier and their own sullen demeanor it would be a modest miracle of they managed to leave the city before they all grew roots. The city continued to be lashed by rains like a penitent mortifying flesh, coupled with winds that grounded all shipping coming through the Grismire. The locals took it in stride, even as the rains seemed to cause filth to surge from the crevices of the city. Rather than clean rain washing away the refuse, it seemed to breed it instead. Of course, the sewers were unlikely to be in much better condition than the rest of the city.
The captain wasn't there to hear Maleagent speak with his uncle, though he couldn't imagine Baltasar Chavez being too talkative to a foreign ruler when leaning on his disposition for quiet was an option. Salvadore had managed to interrupt a rather genteel interrogation of Alonsico by the Lady Elaine, who had the young man eating out of her hand until Salvadore walked in. Her demeanor cooled rather quickly, and Alonsico's better nature took the lead when confusion ruled the field; he sided with kin before strangers. Mateo Chavez's son was not typically one to interfere with a man's natural ardor, but they all needed Alonsico to be thinking with his larger head for the time being. Still, it had been entertaining to see the grail priestess flounce out of the room in a huff for more reason than one.
It was perhaps three bells before the sun would have kissed the horizon, were it visible behind the clouds, when Maleagent 'happened' to run into his guest in a corridor admiring the two tapestries in his antechamber again. It was artifice and both men knew it, but it served to prompt Maleagent to ask the Estalian about the exotic works of art and song he had encountered in his travels, which lead to Salvdore sharing tales of Estalia and Tilea which lead to less sophisticated tales. As he was leading into a mostly-true retelling about dueling a pistol-wielding bear for a maiden's honor in Luccini, the two men strolled into an underground corridor that branched off to a cellar to the right. They continued walking left.
"I suppose this is a situation where you tell me the servants listening behind the walls cannot hear us and you wish to speak frankly." Salvadore mentioned casually.
Maleagent's only response was a momentary pause of surprise before continuing, almost as quickly as before. "We can speak frankly, I suppose." A non-answer that was answer enough. "But we should do it quickly. This hall is lined with salt, which seems to interfere with the Cabal of Nine Kings' scrying, and Bassot's spy is kept busy for the moment. I would ask you to make a detour after delivering your message in Périgord, to a place called Chateau Hane. There is a...man there" A vampire, by his hesitation "Who holds quite a bit of power in Mousillon beyond the city. I would ask your evaluation of him. If we were to make common cause it would be exceedingly...convenient for me, for a number of reasons."
Assuming this was a vampire...no, assuming this was an influential vampire, that could mean more than mortal supporters. He'd have men under his banners for sure, but more telling would be his coterie of necromantic minions, both vampire-kin and other creatures of the dead that flock around them. Not to mention black witchery. It was said that Nourgul's most fell witches came from Mousillon, and an influential man - or vampire - would be the most reasonable sun for them to orbit.
It should not be impossible to respect one's foe. Blanchman's words, on the ship. Why...? Oh, damnation. Maleagent was another whose orbit they might be caught in, and it was said that he kept scholars from...Eastern Stirland.
No, that was circumstantial. Suggestive, but... Maleagent had noticed the pause, saw Salvadore thinking. Think this through; scenario the first. The man was as he presented himself, a lord of the land beset by myriad misfortunes seeking any alliance he could find. Grasping a branch with a viper to beat at wolves. Scenario the second. Maleagent is already in league with the lord of Chateau Hane and seeks to send him into danger where he could be dealt with out of sight from the incoming knights for the tournament. Salvadore was confident in his ability to fight his way out of an ambush, and both Alonsico and Baltasar were able enough horsemen if they must run, but should this be a trap such would likely be taken into account. The Estalian was not concerned for his own self, but Alonsico was unseasoned, and Baltasar not as young as he once was.
"You would be compensated for your...discrete efforts, of course. I know I have little to offer you I can spare, but a month of corvée labor within the city is something I can promise." Why specify stopping on the way back? It could be in deference to Salvadore's stated preference of delivering his message as soon as humanly possible, but it would also give any trap being sprung extra time to be set up. "And I have already declared that any ship of yours would be waived any harbor fees henceforth, while a warehouse set aside for your own use is being cleared as we speak. A thanks for the services you have already rendered."
Salvadore saw a discoloration in the stone ahead, presumably the end of the warded area, and knew that if he was to give an answer it would now or not at all.
[ ] Maleagent has treated fairly with the Chavez's so far, and a slight detour is a small favor to ask. Accept.
[ ] Many things are rotten in Mousillon, and this offer seems one of them. Refuse his request...politely.
