Last Gasp
<Previous City of Brass Infiltration
Next>
Tenth Day of the Ninth Month 293 AC
There were a lot of things about the Bazaar of a Thousand Sins that were strange and fanciful, the smell of herbs bitter and sweet to numb the mind and befuddle the senses, the sound of brazen bells that seemed to weep with every toll, but there was much also that was familiar—the reek of offal not quite overpowering the scent of fear as visitors and slaves moved under the gaze of fiery-eyed Efreeti and coldly calculating Devils.
One might almost prefer to be a slave than a foreigner here, Maelor thought, for at least the slaves only had to worry about their masters' whims, the foreigners had to worry about everyone. Almost.
"Stay close, Bronn, and don't breathe the smoke too deeply," the boy warned the sellsword beside him.
"I'll do my best to get over the habit," he quipped back, probably a little more snappishly than he intended. The place got under his skin, Maelor knew.
What had he seen in that brothel to make him come back so grim and get drunk right after? a small part of him wondered. The rest of him wisely put the matter out of mind.
Up ahead a enormous frog, tall as a man and six times as wide, burst one of the oily pustules on its skin, covering everything around it in thick cloying smoke.
Instantly weapons rattled in the dark as every customer and merchant looked first to his own hide.
Yet when the smoke cleared nothing seemed to have taken advantage of it, nothing had changed... other than the girl who had appeared at their side. She looked about eight or nine, dressed in dirty grey robes, her hair shorn off, making her enormous dark eyes all the more prominent.
At fist Maelor thought her one of the city's 'nail-clippers', beggars in all but name save that they could offer to trim nails, brush hair, or clean ears to offer some meager protection against the slave catchers. But this one did not have any tools on her and she
did have a collar, a slave who had slipped her master's watch in the confusion, maybe a new enough one that she thought she could just get clean away.
Poor kid, Maelor sighed inwardly knowing there was nothing he could do. He stepped around her, still intent on scouting out the competition to the shop now that they were open for business.
"Have you seen the Light?"
Both mage and sellsword froze, for she had not spoken any of the thousand bastard tongues of the city, neither the hiss of flame, the rumbling of earth, or the whisper of wind in her words, but Low Valyrian accented with the harsh undertones of Slaver's Bay.
Seemingly encouraged by their reaction the girl continued: "Do you know of the Sun and of Him Who Is above the Sun, of Azor Ahai who is to come in g...?" The question cut off abruptly into a painful gurgle as the girl clawed at her throat. From behind her a
thing that was half-flesh-half-writhing-shadow-stuff smiled as it
slowly closed its fist, obviously enjoying her terror.
Horrified, Maelor stood rooted to the spot, unable to look away even though he knew he could not help the girl... too many people... too many eyes. There was no way he could get away with stealing a slave in the middle of a bazaar.
If only he acted sooner maybe...
The girl collapsed, her pale limbs twitching upon the hot cobbles, only one word understandable among the desperate gasps, calling for her mother. It was always that or water that the dying called for.
A year ago he would have kept his head down and walked away. Two years ago he would have been gone before her master even found her, but Maelor was not the boy he had once been, who scurried in the shadows like a mouse, who closed eyes and stoppered his ears. He would be a lord some day soon and it was the lord to make judgments, not just to hear and obey. The girl was from home... they had to know how she had gotten here.
Maybe he could buy her...
Thought and deed were almost one, with a swiftly muttered
spell he soiled his robes as though with soot and sand from a child's hand and called out to the monster: "Your slave has laid unclean hands upon my robes! I demand..."
The sound of bone snapping echoed through the bazaar. "She has been punished," the thing said in a sickly sweet voice, turning on his heel and leaving the small broken body in the dirt for the rag-men and the dogs.
"Fuck," the young mage cursed under his breath, briefly imagining shattering the slave master's head with magic like melon hit with a hammer.
"Come on, there's nothing we can do here," Bronn said. From his tone the boy guessed the sellsword was afraid he might cause a scene.
"We need to recover the body for questioning," he shot back.
Fortunately the usual sorts of scavengers who prowled the Middle City looking for scraps weren't the sorts to ask too many questions if a glamoured stranger showed up asking for a particular corpse from the pile. That was likely as not how most of the necromancers in the city got their supplies, so by the end of the day the girl's mostly intact corpse had been brought into the shop which still left them in a conundrum. Should they try to raise her, and possibly waste gold if as Maelor suspected she would rather be safely dead than alive in the City of Brass, or should they just ask what questions they could of the corpse?
"You could have the Red Priestess do it, too... Melisandre, right?" Bronn asked. "She was carrying on about her god before she died, likelier she'd answer that than old Malarys."
"Which would involve letting her know what we are doing and where," Maelor pointed out. "I have a feeling the King does not trust her any further than he can toss her... when he's
human I mean."
What do you do about the Ghiscari slave found in the City of Brass?
[] Investigate further
-[] Question the body with Speak with Dead
--[] Write in questions
-[] Try to have the Companions raise her for interrogation
-[] Call on one of the Red Priests to raise her
--[] Melisandre
--[] Thoros
[] Do not investigate further, concentrate on setting up the shop and keeping it above suspicion
[] Write in
OOC: Just to make this clear investigating does carry risks of being trailed back, this is not the Prime material where magic is rare and those who use it with any skill even more so. On the other hand people do move a lot in the City of Brass so the window of opportunity may be narrow.
