Arc 9 Post 69: Of Words Unspoken and Witnesses Unseen
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Of Words Unspoken and Witnesses Unseen
19th of Kuthona 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
For a heartbeat you freeze, breath caught in your throat, then a warm and distinctly feline personage starts twining themselves between your feet. When you look down he gives you a meaningful look and you remember the hags and how that Pepper knows many strange things, and not always the same ones, for dreams run deep and range far. "I know much about the duergar and none of it makes for a pleasant telling, though a worse hearing I'd imagine from those who don't know their ilk." Launching into a only slightly exaggerated tale of the deep dwarfs you are unsurprised when Sirim starts correcting some of the finer details. As it happens, they do not enslave apprentices who fail their trials, they just drag them in chains to Hagegraf where their throats are slit before an altar of Droskar, the 'Final Mercy' they call it. Though even that is a cruel jest for those souls are doomed to serve the dark smith in his forges until the flames consume them past recall and memory.
The governor listens stone-faced, and the princess with a gleam in her eye as unreadable as silver lost in deep waters. You have the uncomfortable feeling of being judged by someone more used to lies and half-truths than even you are used to, but having committed to the task you give it your all as Sirim reaches out to the princess with the truth, or at least as much of it as you have been able to piece together. The assassination still doesn't make as much sense as one might hope.
As you speak Eutropia's expression shutter, her left hand twitching in the direction of the true silver sword at her belt. Alike it is to the the swords a knight might wear, but the elvish metal makes it lighter by far. Hopefully that's not an omen for how much she's likely to believe the elves over strangers just met.
The more you speak the more entranced she seems at your words, and the more enraged against the duergar who had presumed to infringe upon the territory of the Empire and the likes of its citizens.
"How dare they! The wretched scheming curs, slaves of some cosmic failing!"
For all the world she is a girl incensed at injustice. To be quite honest you'd believe her too, if Sirim did not confirm in your mind that she had heard him out and would like to see proof. Thankfully proof you have even without Captain Scorpio, as the scrying focus in the governor's study is still there as is the account of Sir Pisca, a noble in good standing from a great house.
So you are feeling quite at ease when the princess sends away the man in yellow, his name still a mystery to you, if a petty one. One wonders if he's as worried as he should be when she sends two of her guards to escort him back to his his cartridge since 'one can't be too safe with assassins and other foulness lurking about'.
"You have my thanks, brave souls..." she starts to say once the man is well out of earshot.
"Oi, I helped too!" Cob grouses.
The tall Ulfen guard's face darkens like a thunderstorm about to break as he looks at the goblin, but the princess, seeing perhaps that he had addressed her in perfectly understandable Taldan, if absent any of her titles, shakes her head.
"I didn't mean to exclude you. master Cob," she lies smoothly. She is not one for making enemies when she doesn't have to.
Princess Eutropia then sends for Pisca and, after the governor admits to his existence, for how else would you know of the Aspis' dealings in Zirnakaynin, Saenar.
The guards go out... and they return empty-handed. Both the knight and the alchemist are missing, though none of the palace staff had seen them leave the chamber in which they had been holed up.
What do you do?
[] Offer your services to find them
-[] Write in how
[] Maybe it's time to step away from all these intrigues, surely the princess has the magical skills to find them, or if not the political weight to make House Basri admit to their wrong doing
[] Write in
OOC: Edited.
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