Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [88]
We entered a tavern, passed behind the bar, and up a staircase to a set of furnished rooms. Kitten put a key to one of the locks and opened the door to my new residence.
The furnishings were modest, but adequate-a comfortable bed with a warm quilt and firm pillows, a chest, a lantern, and a table with two chairs. Upon the table were two small purses and an envelope.
"I see our payment has already arrived," Kitten announced, hastening to the table to snatch the purses, the larger of which she pocketed, the smaller of which she tossed to me.
"Here," she volunteered, "your accounts of the past few days have been settled, Murph's cut deducted, and your rent paid for the next two weeks. That wasn't too hard now, was it?"
At this point I noticed her arms were empty. The package bearing the manuscript was nowhere to be seen.
"The package," I sputtered, "where did it go?"
"I delivered it along the way," she answered coyly. "Maybe you're not as observant as I thought you were." With a toss of the head, she danced past me to the doorway, pausing only briefly to kiss my cheek. "I have to go now," she said, "but I'll be in touch."
She saw the look of disappointment in my eyes, and added, "There's plenty more where that came from. You are no doubt a man of great potential."
"A man without a past," I reminded her.
"Whatever," she replied, then added, "I'll drop by later to show you around town. Our relationship doesn't always have to be just professional."
Before I could blink, she had left the room, and I was alone in my new home.
I felt the bag of coins and instinctively knew there was more than enough to fill my needs for a while-and provide a few amenities that were lacking. I could do some shopping later.
All that remained was the question of my identity, the shadows of my past. I remembered the envelope on the table before me. Perhaps an answer was within?
Picking up the missive, I saw that it was unaddressed. I tore it open. Surprisingly, it was not a letter, but rather a page that had been extracted from some arcane volume. The paper was old and brittle, and featured text in several different languages or codes. My eyes were immediately drawn to an illustration that showed a circle of cowled figures around a prisoner in a set of stocks. The caption below it read:
In rare instances of mercy, the Lords of Waterdeep would accept indenturement in exchange for clemency for someone accused of crimes against the lords or the City of Splendors. The accused would have his identity wiped clean, returning him to a state of innocence prior to his commission of said crimes. In exchange for various services provided to the lords, the accused would be granted clues to his past. These services always were of a sensitive nature, for which the lords desired plausible deniability, and often resulted in the death of the accused, upon which time the accused would be pardoned of all crimes and receive a proper burial. Such men are known as Lord's Men.
A different ink bore the message First Payment.
As I finished reading the page, it and the envelope burst into flames, leaving nary a whiff of smoke.
Strangely enough, I was not troubled by this recent revelation, as if I had already accepted this fate at some earlier time.
The mysterious Kitten, my protector, and nurse Lothar, and the silly business of retrieving a manuscript by some hack writer didn't seem as important as living from day to day, and paying off the terms of my indenturement.
I was eager to accept my next assignment-to earn another clue to my identity.
Tertius And The Artifact
Jeff Grubb
As I sat on the balcony of the Nauseous Otyugh in Scornubel, suspended between the hangover of the previous evening and the one that was yet to come, I meditated on the phrase "should have stayed in bed." Sound advice, probably postulated first by some spell-flinger after a particularly bad morning of fireballing and lightning bolting and whatnot.
Of course, it did me little good since I was in bed the night before when everything went south. Except me, of course.
Let me explain.