I wrote a lot of words about sneaking. And stuff
The Hochlander delivers exactly as promised, taking Eike along on one of those little tasks that never reach your ears but fill the Hochlander's days when he's not on your direct orders and keeps the flow of the EIC's commerce going smooth.
An EIC Interlude, Part One
Eike had a problem.
It was a 'noble's problem' sort of thing, of she understood her grandmother correctly- one that was about personal ambitions and worries, not survival or money like a farmer or a merchant. It was a vexing problem, insidious almost, that nibbled at her happy moments and kept her awake at night; one that she could not bring herself to speak to her master of.
In short: she worried it was all downhill from here.
How could she not? Granted, it wasn't the first time she had had this worry. When she left her mother and all the banal terrors of traveling poor, and joined her grandmother's household, she could not have imagined anything better than being plucked from obscurity and raised up as an heiress to a merchant empire. But then she went south, and saw the mountains, and learned she had magic. When she went into the grey college she could not imagine things being any better- to learn that she was special, and the world would bend to her will alone, and all the legendary stories with wise wizards and terrible warriors could be starring her? She felt as if the world has seen her wildest dreams and demanded that she stop thinking so small. Then she became her masters apprentice.
How could life POSSIBLY get any cooler than it has been these last years? She had lived among dwarves and been practically accepted as one of them. She had spent months among the half-mythical elves, learning their ways and tongue, as no more than a fistful of humans has ever done. She had put her name to work that aspired to equal the legends of the golden age, she had been THERE when the deepest mysteries of magic were dragged into the light and secrets spoken that could have broken kings.
What could top that?
So in a way, she was grateful for her new assignment. A jaunt along the Reik shadowing a perpetual? It sounded the sort of low thankless busywork that filled the lives of most grey Magisters. It would be, she considered, a good preview of her journey and mastery, a look into what she would likely be doing after leaving the exalted orbit of the Lady Magister. Something more... Banal.
With expectations firmly set she was dropped by gyrocopter into Altdorf and headed west to meet with the mysterious figure her master and grandmother had only ever refered to as The Hochlander. She found him in a back corner of a tavern, as expected. What was unusual was that it was well lit by candles, and several folios were scattered in front of him. He grunted when he noticed her appearance, and tossed her a bridle bit.
"Tell me what you think of that."
She hmmm'ed to herself as she looked it over.
"Cast, not forged, from the file marks on outer edges. Part of a large number of similar bits then... Alloy is decent, not too much lead or tin, so it's got to be dwarven or out of Nuln? But dwarves don't do horses, and... There's no maker's mark. Well. That's deliberate."
She looked up at him.
"Smugglers trying to disguise the origin so they pay less in tariffs?"
His smile was small, and hard to read. Some surprise, some smugness? Ah. She had impressed him with her analysis but gotten the conclusion wrong. Damn.
"Close. This was recovered after taking down a small group of river pirates, who thought they were going to meet a buyer. Which means?"
"That those pirates are done as a group, obviously, so we aren't hunting pirates ...that a buyer exists, because they didn't doubt the bait. He's nearby. And... you mustn't know who it is or the work would already be done."
"Very good. Did your grandmother teach you to think about the other side of a deal like that?"
Eike blushed.
"The Countess Roswita, actually. My master had a copy of her work on the economic war against vampires laying out and I got so distracted by her thesis that I missed lunch. It's not the same thing, with sellers being criminals instead of buyers being vampires, but..."
"The Hunter Countess? Aye, she's done her father proud, that one. Alright, you now know almost as much as me, have a seat. These are the toll records for the major roads around here, and the last census that was done. Let's see if we can find someone playing games."
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A week and a half later and Eike was having flashbacks.
The low ceilings choked down; smells of stale ale, ink, paper, and grilled animal fat lingered in the back of her throat. She'd been reading ledgers for days without a break. It was like taking lessons from grandmother while traveling with mother. She was sick of it. She was grimly satisfied with her predictions of how this adventure would go. She was looking forward to the next part, and perked up noticably when the hochlander broke his silence.
"I've got a hostler who bought a mansion with gold coin while he should have been making silver, and a retired major who sells goods that I can't find on any records of tariffs on. How about you?"
"Just a baronette who is so poor he settles his gambling debts in material rather than coin, but if you give me a bit more time..."
She trailed off. They both grimaced. Then realized the other was making the same face. The hochlander made a quick decision.
"We've got some possibles to check out and we'd have to do it sooner or later anyways, so might as well do it now. We'll start with the major since he's closest, and since I'm nice I'll give you the whole ride to figure out how you want to determine his innocence, or prove his crimes."
Eike stood, then hesitated. Partially because she felt some responsibility towards the mass of books and notes and pens scattered across the table, partially because she felt unprepared for navigating the rules of imperial law and justice. She was a merchant princess assassin diplomat wizard after all, not a judge!
"How would I do that? Or rather, who's doing the judging?"
He just smiled at her.
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The retired major lived in a generously proportioned but not very cohesive house nearby the river, on small hill with good sightlines. It looked like it had once been a hunting lodge or wood cutters shack, but over the generations it grew like a snail's shell, each addition spiralling out a little larger, a little grander. The current patriarch seemed to have added a tower with arrow slits at the top and a tall set of (closed) front doors made of oak beams with elaborate wrought iron fittings.
More importantly to Eike, there was a chest high wall that defined the outer edge of the property, and with perhaps two hundred yards of open fields between it and the house. The front door was no good; she hadn't had time to prepare any sort of social attack- her three P's that the grey order taught didn't give her any openings. Personas were limited by her age and clothing, props like warrants or summonses would take too long to create, and as for people... She had a grey perpetual who could
probably support whatever she did on the fly, but he wasn't going to be able to memory hole anyone. She had a description of a man she was to investigate but no name or other information for lies and leverage. So just going up there smiling was out.
Having justified what she had wanted to do from the beginning she left her horse with the hochlander, and h'mmed happily as she ghosted her way from bush to boulder to grass covered ditch and into the lee of the wall. Her plan was simple: avoid notice, check the cellars and any books, see if anything stuck out. She wouldn't have tried this on a roadside inn much less a real castle, but a glorified farmhouse with an old retired army guy and his family? They likely had a boy with a bow in the tower and that was it. She actually pittied him, whomever he was. He only had one job, and he was about to fail at it.
Fortunately, she was a grey wizard and thus able to hold more than one thought in her head. Ruthlessly, she circled around to the west where the wall met the river, picked a spot between the sun and the tower, and found a shadow to hide in where she could see a bit inside the arrow slits. (The late afternoon sun helped, penetrating deep into open windows and casting long but not too long shadows.) She snorted to herself. It might be good for reikland but no one who'd seen eastern stirland would think this hodgepodge of a farmhouse with martial pretensions anything but a joke. They even had first floor windows without barrable shutters!
Occupied with roasting the architecture in her head, she absently noted a flash of a face in the tower, then counted until she saw it again twice, confirmed no one was on this side of the house or by any of it's windows, and hopped over the wall. She quickly drifted up to the house's foundation while imagining the tempo of the boy in the tower, glancing once more in her direction- but two seconds too late.
From there it was a simple matter to slip around river-wards while staying beneath the sightlines of the windows. There were voices from that side of the house, ones that she hadn't really been able to see from the wall, but she had noted something of a porch. A trick, her instructors at the college had told her, was to take any risks of revelation quickly, so even if there was a random person looking in your direction, you could be hidden again by the time they realized they'd seen something.
As it happened, there were three men all looking in the other direction as she nipped around the corner and rolled under the porch into the crawl space. She stuck her tongue out at them. Then, she observed.
The trail down to the now-visible dock was a foot path, without wagon tracks or heavy use. The three men were standing and smoking pipes, looking out at the sunset and the river. One missing an arm, one missing an eye, one grown huge about the midsection.
Losing interest, she kept moving, taking only a quick glance back to make sure she was unobserved as she rounded the corner. And saw a door opening out mere feet in front of her.
Her heart jumped in her throat, but she wasn't new at this. Darting forwards, she tucked herself flat between the opening door and the wall, and waited only a moment to glimpse the back of a milkmaid with a bucket as the door bounced off of her, then followed it as it closed. She didn't peek- she was in the house's shadow now and the silhouette of her head breaking the line of the door would be far too obvious. So she waited until it almost closed, then moved quickly past as she stopped it from actually shutting. There was someone else inside that she could hear, so she knew it would be only a matter of moments. But she had spotted the cellar doors and gotten ambitious; or rather, preemptively impatient.
One heartbeat- she ran quietly, crouching low. Two heartbeats- she skidded to a stop and gripped a handle. Three heartbeats- she slid open the latch and lifted the door. Four heartbeats- she tucked herself inside and lowered it almost closed.
"Ugh. KAYLA! You need to SHUT THE DOOR!"
And with the fading of the little girl's shout and the loud slamming of the house door, she dropped the cellar door fully closed.
Smirking to herself (it was a bit vain, she would immediately admit if confronted, to want to have a face as iconic as her master's smug. Which is why no one could ever know she practiced the smirk in the mirror) she paused a long moment to let her heart slow and listen while her eyes adjusted. Big, was the first thing that came to mind. There was a staircase up into the house a dozen yards away that let in some light- Kayla really must be careless of doors after all, Eike thought- with an insulated door into a cold cellar nearby. But straight in front of her and off to her right there were shelves and crates stretching off into the dimness. Her position near the top of the cellar stairs gave her a view over the top; it almost seemed larger than the building above. Four sets of footsteps moved on the floor above her head.
The crates contained bridle bits and hatchets, shovels and pots and pans and all sorts of odds and ends. All metal, or sealed wood. No leather or foodstuffs, nothing that could spoil or dry out. She h'mmmed softly to herself, the pieces of the puzzle assembling themselves.
Leaving was child's play, with magic. She just opened one cellar door a crack and peeked though, then the other one. She spotted the returning milkmaid but no one else, marked the shadow of the tower stretching long now across the cleared land, and waited for Kayla to reach the door.
It played out exactly as she hoped. The door was opened and words were shouted before it was ostentatiously slammed. She slipped out and let the cellar door close at the same time, then pivoted to look up at the tower.
It was sunset and ulgu was flowing through her.
A quiet chatter of nonsense syllables. A deft fold of the finger and flick of the wrist.
There was a 'pop!' on the far side of the tower. And she booked it for the tree line, hiding in the contrast that was the shadow of the building behind her.
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"So I deduced that the stories of him selling things were definitely true, but he wasn't getting anything from the river, and he had a couple of old army buddies with him but no one that was about to start hustling crates. Three other unknowns inside, and a poor boy in a tower. The goods in the cellar looked like the non-perishable loot of a village or three, if you really stripped everything and pried out the nails, so I'd like to check where his unit was when he was a major. We need to confirm, but it looks like an old man selling off the extra that his men took while he was in command. Not our guy."
"Mmmmmm. Then we continue."
