A Gilded Thread
Twenty-Second Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
One might be forgiven for thinking that the small child-like figure swinging through the wildly arching and twisting skyscape of the Goblin Market was nothing more than a Gremlin with a brand new toy. The chain rings were a marvelous toy, after all, but Glyra wasn't playing. She was looking for a spindle, a very particular spindle. Like many of her kind, she didn't like loose ends, a tale half told. Well... not unless she was the one who picked apart the thread, but then she wouldn't be the one holding the tangle so all would be well.
All was not well, and Glyra did not know why. It was like the sound of loose stone giving way underfoot, the smell of hot iron in the air, or the taste of willow bark on the tongue. Lucky for her, Glyra wasn't a mortal to drive herself mad thinking herself 'round and 'round the same question. If something smells rotten, you go to the most rotten fellow around.
The Gremlin swung through the old creaky door feet first, rolling to a stop in the middle of the shop floor beyond, her nose stopping just shy of the big black spikes on a giant shield, far too big for a man too lift.
Was that a drop of poison welling to the surface of the metal? she wondered idly.
Neat trick.
All around her the crowded room was filled with broken dreams and memories of pain. Bloodied teeth pulled right from the mouth strung out on golden chains, weapons that had been used to kill kith and kin while tiny wind chimes sang with the voices of lost children.
Who kills with a rolling pin? Glyra wondered. She did not find it was funny as she once might have, but it was still supremely silly.
"You buying or selling?" a voice like thorns scraping stone asked. The merchant that emerged from the shadows of the shop looked kind of like a Gremlin if one got turned half-way into a plant and got wings out of the bargain, but Glyra knew he was far more than a Gremlin... an ordinary Gremlin, that was.
Swift as a striking snake, she cast a thread of steel around merchant, binding all four of his wings, and drew him to stand before her as with her other hand she drew a wand to seal him inside a sphere of sorcery woven. "Come closer, I don't bite." She smiled, careful to show all her teeth.
"What's the meaning of this?" snarled the creature that was not really a Gremlin. "I run a fair establishment, you can't just..."
"If you're fair then I'm an Imp's uncle," Glyra japed. Looks like he didn't fancy his chances in a fight since he wasn't even trying to push her back, never mind drawing blood, which he had been careful to avoid. "I'm looking for a spindle..."
"Yeah, I heard. Everyone's looking for it," the merchant interrupted her. "Mortals, wizards, huge iron dragons, even Him that stays hidden, I heard, though he's looking for it to see it stays lost."
Glyra's nose twitched. The rot just got a little thicker. Why would he be giving her a secret unasked and unpaid, that the Hooded Lord was looking to weasel out of his bargain, unless someone else was paying him to say so.
"Say that again, proper like," Glyra replied. "Say 'the Hooded Lord's looking for the spindle to make it lost'."
"Not my fault you didn't hear the first time," the four-winged Fey sneered, reaching into one of his many belt pouches.
"Never mind that," the Gremlin pretended to huff, dramatically flourishing a second wand to vanish from the shop. Standing of a roof some half mile away she finished to herself. "Heard what you didn't say as much as what you did."
Who was it that wanted it to be known that the Hooded Lord was trying to cheat, and how did they get a Hunter in the Dark to lie about it? Glyra wondered. One thing was for sure. It would be fun trying to figure it out.
OOC: I was tempted to append the next part which will be a Malarys interlude to this, but the shift in tone just felt too jarring, plus Malarys will need time to conduct investigations.
