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Artana was a large city, devoted almost completely to accepting goods produced on farms and sending those goods downstream on barges. It had few factories and little pollution beyond cooking fires. The smells of cooking defied belief.
The city contained slaughterhouses where meats were salted or smoked or dried. In various manufactories, spices were processed, grains ground into flours, cheeses cured. Chicks were bought and sold, at all ages, dead or alive. Fruit was dried or packed in honey. Vegetables were pickled or packed in oil. Wines were bottled. Beer was barreled. Bread was thrice baked, packed in oiled or waxed paper, then sold at an insane rate as traveler's bread.
Artana's textiles industry was not nearly as extensive as Linkton's. The specialty here was light wool, knitted or woven. Many of the pieces made into clothing were embroidered. Astrea said the workers in the local sex industry often did piecework for shops, but I noticed that nearly everyone in the city, male or female, young or old, who worked at a job that involved any amount of waiting spent some of that time with needle or needles in hand. Even the watch could be seen crocheting on occasion.
Marion and Joe, in human form now, asked to stay in town for a few days. We shifted schedules around so everyone spent time awake during their preferred hours and made sure at least two in the group were always at the inn. Jack and Leroy dutifully checked in with their guilds. With no attempt on the party by Squiddie in almost two weeks, we decided to risk some separation. We were getting a little sick of each other's company. Rushi stuck very close to me, however, as did Irvish, Mervish and Dervish. I think they felt that if Squiddie decided to pick on anyone, they were first in line. I saw no flaw in that line of reasoning.
We visited bookshops and two libraries, one belonging to a guild and one private library for which Juliana had given us a letter of introduction. Juliana hadn't been sure where to find the mages and priests she'd given us introductions to, but we were finding our way around. Neither library was as extensive as Juliana's, but the guild library noted a service it had provided Tzika about two hundred years ago. This was very recent and therefore very exciting. The guild was cagey about the object of the service (we could work out the nature of the service on our own), but eventually coughed up a name that meant nothing to Jack or Leroy. They shopped it around the rest of the group. Rushi asked about the date, and said that name and that date meant the then-high priest of Squiddie.
We talked that into the ground, concluding it was a strong sign Tzika would help us, if she was still alive.
The bookshops netted the journal, in several volumes, in varying conditions, of one Athaliah, who claimed to be apprenticed to Tzika about a century ago. She made no claim to magic talent, but instead described a devious career as a bard and sometime diplomat. After having a son who caused her all kinds of problems, she'd found Tzika, who thought Athaliah might have potential helping gods retain their worshipers and therefore their power. Athaliah's journal was fancifully written. I expect journals to contain only a few snatches of dialogue and description, surrounded by lists of daily events. Athaliah's journal, by contrast, was a detailed, blow by blow account of dramatic, emotionally tense encounters, complete with what all the participants were thinking from one moment to the next. The characters of this tale included Athaliah, in a prominent role, Tzika, primarily advancing Athaliah from one encounter to the next, and an improbable pantheon of client gods and goddesses.
Athaliah was good for a giggle, but not much else. Debate on whether such an obvious fiction could have sprung up during Tzika's lifetime was hot and heavy, but inconclusive. Even mages jealous of their reputation could miss a tale or two over the centuries.
The second full day awake in Artana, Leroy asked me to spend a few hours with Joe, describing what things looked like to me. For a long time, I saw things most people could not or did not. Vira's horse, for example, wouldn't be allowed in most stables if people saw it for what it really was. Most horses couldn't tell the beast wasn't a horse, either. No mage wanted to be around me the amount of time it would take to sort out what I was seeing. Joe had no problem, however. I asked him why that was, and he considered the question for ten minutes before answering, "I'm a bear, not a human, and I'm a witch, not a mage." He was not able to explain further, so we proceeded with our task.
After several hours, Joe had developed an embarrassing degree of respect for my vision. He'd drawn a chart of colors and visible textures, associating them with magical and astral alignments and attributes. He kept changing it, asking me to look at more things, until I got hungry and insisted on eating. When our food arrived, I pointed out the purple dots scattered all over the surface of the food to Joe, who said he could not see them, but warned me not to eat anything. I tartly responded that I knew better than to eat sleeping powder. After a few moments, he agreed, and asked for Elizabeth, our hostess, to investigate or to let us do so. She stared at the food, went to her office, returned with a glass, through which she peered at the food. She said she could now see for herself the sleeping powder on the food, and apologized for its presence. She invited us to go back to the kitchens with her to talk to the cook.
The cook, Donald, was a plump, stoic man. He looked at our food, dabbed at his forehead with a cloth, extracted a pair of spectacles from a pocket in his capacious apron and stared down at the food through the spectacles. He agreed that sleeping powder had been scattered all over the food. He assured us he had not put it there himself, but added that as the kitchen was hot, he generally did not wear his specs. He could not be sure at what point the powder had been added. With our consent, he took a pair of slender sticks, which I had seen some people eat with, and poked around in the vegetables and rice, peeking under the chopped meat. He said that since the powder was present only on the surface of the food, it had probably been added later. As a gesture of good faith, he invited us to inspect the pots, pans, sauces and dishes in progress in the kitchen.
We looked everything over, concluded that someone else had introduced the powder, and thanked him for his assistance. Elizabeth's assistant had delivered the food to our table, so Elizabeth suggested we talk to her next. We asked Elizabeth how long Belinda had been working for her, and Elizabeth said over two years, and had never been anything but utterly trustworthy and forthright. When we could not immediately find Belinda, we searched the inn thoroughly, and found Belinda bound and gagged in a cellar storeroom. Belinda had been bashed on the head and was woozy, insisting that the last thing she remembered before waking up in the storeroom was feeding the chickens in the yard behind the inn. That was before breakfast.
Illusion or disguise had been used by a criminal masquerading as Belinda to drug Joe and me. Joe asked where the orcs and Rushi had gone. We went upstairs, where they had retired after an earlier luncheon, and followed the snores to their rooms. They did not awaken when we shouted, and while we could wake them briefly by shaking them, they fell asleep again almost immediately. The entire party had been targetted by whoever had tried to drug Joe and me.
Joe and I kept watch until everyone else trickled back to the inn. No one outside the inn was successfully drugged or otherwise attacked. By evening, Irvish, Mervish, Dervish and Rushi had all awakened, as had Astrea (who had not been drugged). No one thought Squiddie was responsible for the attack directly, although Ivan and Mauser figured that any god who hired someone to improve their image was probably not above hiring human minions to tackle enemies that were not directly susceptible to the god's power. Jack and Leroy thought that reasonable, and instituted a buddy system whereby not only would at least two people be in the inn at all times, but no one was to go anywhere on their own. We would also eat all of our meals at the inn, after having Joe, Elizabeth, Donald or me inspect the food immediately before eating it. We discussed other precautions, but most of them were so onerous we were unwilling to take them until the opposition had demonstrated it had some chance of success against us.
The next day, Jack and Leroy headed into town together, and did not return until late. Most of the rest of us stayed at the inn all day, playing cards or dice games, or reading some of the books we'd collectively picked up at shops in the city. Some of us had also picked up the habit of sewing or knitting while in Artana. Seeing everyone from the watch on the corner to the streetwalker to the woman running a scroll shop with needle and thread was powerfully suggestive. Also, our undecorated clothing felt conspicuous, and we had it on good authority that as we traveled south, the embroidery would only grow more pervasive and garish.
That night, Astrea woke me up. She'd returned from ramblings about the town, she whispered, to stumble across bodies on the bedroom floor. She wanted to know if I knew anything about them. I lit a lamp, and looked around. I said I had no idea what they were doing there. We looked them over, but they were not sleeping. They were unconscious and showed no signs of returning to life soon. Astrea pulled her sword and dagger, and watched over them while I went down the hall to wake Jack and Leroy. There were no bodies in their room, but we found one or two in everyone else's rooms, unconscious like the two in mine. The total, after a thorough search of the inn, was eight. We lined them up in the corridor, and Marion got Elizabeth. She suggested we move them down to one of the empty cellar storerooms, lockable only from the outside, with no windows. We dragged them down there, and as we did so, we discussed what to do next.
Elizabeth felt we should give them a day or two to snap out of it, and if that failed, we could try to find a healer. The rest of us thought that was being a bit soft, but figured there was no harm in deciding later. Jack, Leroy and Astrea searched the unconscious bodies, finding an array of lock picks, skeleton keys and assorted booty one might reasonably expect to find on a party of thieves. The unexpected bit was the pack one thief was wearing strapped to his torso, which contained three volumes of a journal. The journal was turned over to me to read along with a request to share any findings with the rest of the group, as no one else had any interest in puzzling out the thief's poor handwriting. After some further discussion, a co-operative watch was established with Elizabeth and her employees, and those of us not presently on watch went back to sleep.
In the morning, I learned that the group in the cellar was still out cold, and the night had held no further excitement. Joe wanted to know if I'd felt anything before Astrea woke me in the night, or had any unusual dreams. I told him I couldn't remember my dreams. Joe said he thought perhaps that, like Squiddie's attempt on our party, the thieves may have attempted to cast a spell on me and had it backfire on them. I told him that sounded reasonable, but we had no way of knowing until they woke up. He said they might not even remember when they woke up, since generally a sleep spell eliminates the memory of the last moments before it takes effect. I asked Joe if that might apply to Squiddie, if he might perhaps have forgotten that he attacked us, and even why he had attacked us. Joe got a faraway look in his eye and said he'd have to think about that for a while.
While Joe thought about it, I scrutinized my breakfast and the breakfasts of everyone else who'd gotten up about the same time, and ate. While I ate, I worked my way backwards through the journal.
The author of the journal referred to himself as Wiseguy, and his partners in crime were Smartass, Two-face, Bludgeon, Boss, Dopey, Awshucks and Whipple. They had had a partner named Jerkface, but a brief shuffling through the other two journals suggested he'd departed the gang in the first third of volume two, but was memorable enough to be mentioned near the end of volume three. Wiseguy was a relatively recent member of the gang, and stories told to Wiseguy by Two-face, Boss and Whipple, the oldest members, were scattered throughout the journal. I had to plow through several of these while working my way back through the events of the past week.
Wiseguy's gang had been working their way east from a city called Farbeyond. I gathered they moved on primarily to avoid their reputation, which included not paying guild dues, and being overly greedy. Wiseguy characterized their fleecing every mark who passed their way as efficient, modern thievery, but the guild saw it as killing the golden goose. Wiseguy considered the guild a parasite on the living, healthy body of freelance thieves. The guild saw itself as an prophylactic dose of law and order, taken to avoid the full, potentially fatal, attack. Wiseguy tended to write extensively and repetitively on this subject whenever the gang was between towns. They did not work in the country, only in the city. Upon arriving in Twessol, a town west of Woodven, they'd been hired to continue through Woodven and into Artana. Once in Artana, they were to find us, and take every scroll, book or other written media from us and deliver them to an address in Marsven, northwest of Artana.
Smartass and Awshucks had been opposed to taking the job on two counts. One, it would entail backtracking, and every time they'd ever backtracked, they'd wound up spending time in jail. Smartass and Awshucks hated that, and wanted to keep moving east. Second, it involved working in Artana, and they had heard the guild and watch there co-operated to ensure that no illicit thievery occurred in town. That sounded like the kind of thing that ended in jail, also.
Boss overruled them, however. After establishing themselves in Artana, and discovering that we had not yet arrived, Whipple decided it would be a good idea to pass the time with a few games of chance. They had begun cautiously, but after three successful days of fleecing tourists and citizens with everything from rigged dice to crooked craps to marked cards and several variations on shell games, they settled in to rake in the easy gold. Wiseguy said he grew concerned that they were not even watching for the people they'd been hired (and paid half of the fee) to rob, so Dopey and Bludgeon were detailed to keep an eye out for us.
Wiseguy's diary entry for the two days before it ended was much longer than usual. It detailed a string of catastrophes. First, Bludgeon and Dopey had found us. They had reported to Boss, who'd dismissed them, saying, "Take care of it yourselves." Bludgeon and Dopey had proceeded to try to do just that. They had purchased a simple illusion spell, which Dopey had used. Bludgeon had bashed Belinda (in the diary, referred to as "the serving wench") on the head and hidden her in a closet while Dopey continued with Belinda's duties, dosing us with sleeping powder. When Dopey had seen us spot the sleeping powder, Bludgeon and Dopey had left the inn and discussed the matter with Wiseguy, who advised them to tell Boss. Wiseguy was not sure whether they ever did or not.
Meanwhile, the rest of the gang was having a horrible day. Whipple was running a shell game, and a mark came up and kept knowing exactly where the pea was. When Whipple, exasperated, removed the pea entirely, the mark had slipped another pea in in its place. Unfortunately, Whipple was slow on the uptake, and blurted out, "How could you find a pea? You cheated! There wasn't a pea there to find!" and been forced to run from the understandably angered crowd. Less than an hour later, Smartass, also running a shell game, also removed the pea and also got caught. This time, the mark grabbed Smartass' wrist, flipped his hand over and extracted the pea where Smartass had hidden it in the web between the thumb and the palm. When Smartass had reached for his dagger with his other hand, it had been missing. He found it waved beneath his nose by the mark's partner, who asked if him whether he was looking for the pea, the knife or the money owing to the crowd here. Again, the thief had had to turn tail and run from an angry crowd.
Awshucks was running a blackjack game with marked cards, which one of his marks could read. Two-face got caught dealing from the bottom of the deck. Boss got caught with cards up his sleeve. Wiseguy himself complained that his best loaded dice were broken open and exposed. Everyone escaped their tormentor, and after collecting all the tales of woe, Wiseguy swore that only two men had been responsible for all their troubles, and provided a composite description of them, including some amateur drawings which he attributed to Whipple.
When Jack and Leroy arrived, I showed them the drawings, and asked what they had been doing. They read through the preceding pages, checking Wiseguy's journal for accuracy. Leroy said that he'd slipped a pea into the shells three times before Whipple caught on to what was happening. Jack said that while he'd extracted the pea from Smartass' hand, he'd flipped over the shells in turn. They complained that Wiseguy was not giving them credit where credit was due. They discussed tracking them down, and I reminded them that these were the thieves we had in the storeroom. Jack and Leroy looked at each other, grinned evilly, then went downstairs to check. None of us had looked at their faces earlier, as none of us knew any thieves, except Jack and Leroy. It had not occurred to them that these might be the same men.
After confirming they recognized all of them, and making sure they were all still unconscious, Jack and Leroy returned upstairs. While they were gone, I got to thinking about why Jack and Leroy would have spent an entire day wandering all over Artana, finding excessively crooked street games and exposing them. If we'd been anywhere near Lytton, I knew what the answer would be: the watch or the guild had hired them to deal with the problem. But we were in Artana and no one knew who we were.
Or did they? We'd collected bounties in Waston, and Jack and Leroy had checked in there and in Artana, because they'd also visited the library in Artana. Was it possible local enforcers had decided to hire them? When Jack and Leroy returned, I asked them, and Jack said yes, news from Waston had reached Artana before we had, and it was not uncommon for guilds to distribute lists of useful people along with lists of people they'd rather have gone. Leroy went on to explain that when they'd checked in at the guild, they'd heard the thieves' guild had an outstanding bounty for harassment of the new thieves in town: anyone who annoyed them to the point of getting them to leave town, or who could convince the town to post an official bounty could collect the bounty from the thieves' guild. It all sounded very complicated. I asked if they'd collected it, and Leroy said not yet, but they had planned on continuing to peck away at them until discovering we had unintentionally nabbed them. Leroy and Jack discussed options, then went to visit the thieves' guild to see if they had any preferences in the matter.
I spent the rest of the day perusing Wiseguy's journal. Earlier escapades of the gang, with and without Wiseguy, gave no reason to believe the gang had ever had a collective intelligence much greater than a moderately clever dog. The only interesting part of the puzzle was who had hired them to come after us. The man who hired them in Twessol did not have a name in the journal, but as with Jack and Leroy, Wiseguy had conveniently gotten Whipple to sketch a full body profile and a face, and Wiseguy had added some notes indicating where and when they had met him and a fuller description of the colors of the clothing, which the ink sketch did not supply. I asked Elizabeth if she knew what was at that location in Twessol. She asked me to wait a moment, and went to her office to get a map of the town. The address was a private residence, and the map listed the name of the owner and other people known to reside there at the time the map was made. It was a few years old, but it was a start. I wandered through the inn that evening, showing everyone in the party the sketch, and the list of names, and asking if anyone recognized the man, or had dealings in the area around Twessol, or recognized any of the names on the list. If I'd been thinking, I'd have started with Rushi, but as it was, other than Astrea, she was the last person I thought to ask. Rushi frowned, and went back to her room to pull out her copy of the holy book. In the back, she referred to tables of names of priests and temple functionaries, locating two of the names in a table for Twessol. We had no way of knowing if the man Wiseguy talked to was either of the names, much less which, but we had evidence that Squiddie and minions were up to no good once again.
Over the evening meal, I brought everyone up to date. Leroy and Jack informed us that the thieves' guild had not had an opinion about what to do with the thieves. The watch, however, when they learned where we'd found the thieves and in what condition, had checked Jack's references at the two guilds, and decided to believe our story. We could do whatever we liked with the bodies, up to and including dumping them at watch headquarters for incarceration, but if any of the bodies actually died, we were politely requested to dispose of them in a sanitary fashion, preferably outside of town. The watch was unamused by the riots the thieves' cheating had incited, but were in no hurry to offer a bounty for someone who might not be in a position to cause more trouble any time soon. I thought that was cheap of them, but Leroy said it was typical. Everyone knew these jerks would have moved on of their own accord soon enough, so no one wanted to waste any more time or energy on them than was absolutely necessary.
We discussed what we might do to and/or about the thieves, but other than checking on them to make sure they were both breathing and unconscious, we let them lie in the storeroom undisturbed.
Predictably enough, that night, the thieves' came to. As Joe had suggested might occur, they did not recollect what they were doing immediately prior to becoming unconscious. They were thoroughly disoriented, and, after seeing Jack, Leroy and the rest of the party, showed no inclination to fight. We got them some bread, water and soup, and guarded the exit while they used the facilities. When they were settled down some, we asked what they did remember. After a few pathetic, fumbling attempts at lies, I showed them Wiseguy's journal, and pointed at Jack and Leroy. I informed them of what the watch and guild had said about their disposal. They would have preferred to be incarcerated, as towns inevitably kicked them out of jail and out of town, not wishing to feed and house them indefinitely. Artana had some unemployment, and so did not have work gangs as did Lytton. This lot had never encountered work gangs, and quailed at the thought of forced labor.
After Bludgeon and Dopey returned from their unsuccessful attempt to drug us, and the rest of the crew collected at their campground outside the city limits, they realized they'd better finish their assignment and get out of Artana as soon as possibly. To that end, they'd staged a night-time raid on the inn. They had intended to sneak into our rooms, and if anyone woke up, cast a sleep spell on them, which Dopey had purchased. He'd got it from the same shop he'd bought the disguise spell from, so there was no reason to believe there was anything funny about the spell itself. Dopey had used sleep spells in the past with no problems, so we didn't think that Dopey had cast the spell incorrectly. That left theory A, the spell bounced.
The thieves had no wish to mess with us further, and wanted only to leave town and get as far away as possible. We thought we could rely on them not to return west and consult with their employer for this job, but Leroy thought we could improve on that. He proceeded to lay out, in detail, who we thought had hired them, describing the nature of Squiddie, in both versions, and the lengths to which Squiddie was willing to go to get what he wanted. If possible, the thieves were even further terrified, but at some point, Boss got mad. He swatted at his partners' heads, and pointed out to them that they had been had. They had no idea when they were hired how evil their ultimate employer was. Sure, they were thieves, but they were decent people, not ignorant bigots. And unlikely as it seemed later, Leroy whipped the eight fools into a frenzy, pointed them out the door, and we watched them head back towards Twessol, intending to harass their former employer, and possibly make a gold piece or two into the bargain. The entire time Leroy was speaking, my ears itched. I kept scratching them, and noticed a lot of sparking whenever I did so.
Astrea and Dervish tailed them out of town, but other than stopping to pick up their gear, they kept right on going west. When Astrea and Dervish reported back, I asked Leroy if he seriously thought this was going to work. He shrugged, and said we'd know soon enough. Tomorrow night, we would follow them west, to visit their employer in person and see what we could learn. I asked if maybe that was a tiny bit hazardous, and Jack pointed out that anyone who needed to hire a gang that incompetent was unlikely to be a threat. Besides, he said, you're with us. How can we lose?
I had no answer to that, so I set about packing for our departure the following evening. Marion and Joe reverted to their normal forms in the morning, and most of us slept through the day, maintaining a watch.
That evening, we left Artana. We traveled west to Woodven. Upon arriving in Woodven, we discovered the party of thieves still in the small village. Since we expected them to be a full day ahead of us, they should have been in Twessol already. When I say we, I do not include Jack or Leroy, who were expecting to find the thieves in Woodven. Jack and Leroy went over to talk to them, indicating that Astrea and I should join them. We sat down at a long table and our hostess, Delilah, brought us mugs and a pitcher of small beer. She came back with a platter of toasted bread, drizzled with fragrant oil and topped with grilled vegetables. Astrea ordered a glass of wine, and we settled in to see what Jack and Leroy would do this time. The thieves were obviously nervous, shuffling their feet under the table. Leroy insisted they keep their hands on the table. They kept looking at each other, but mostly at Boss and Whipple. They kept muttering how they'd decided not to go on to Twessol because of the sharp things, and the screws and the hot things and the other things that they stab up under your fingernails. I had no idea what they were talking about. Astrea hollered for Rushi to join us. Rushi came over, and Leroy made a point of asking Rushi if the priests in Twessol ever tortured people. Rushi looked shocked and said no. Then she thought about it and said that priests often kept acolytes and wayward members of a congregation awake for days and nights on end, chanting and listening to sermons. They were also fed unusual foods, or irregularly, or required to fast. If that was torture, Rushi shrugged, then they tortured. Leroy asked if any sharp things or screws or hot things or things stabbed under fingernails were used in Twessol. Rushi said she'd never heard of such a thing. She looked about ready to say something qualifying, maybe that her new knowledge of Squiddie led her to wonder if maybe she'd been kept in the dark about a few things, but Astrea quelled her with a look. Rushi tried the toasted breads, and focused on collecting as many of the grilled peppers and tomatoes as possible onto the bread and into her mouth without falling off. To tell the truth, I was paying a lot of attention to the food as well.
Leroy got to talking again, in that way that makes my ears itch, explaining that they'd heard from the proverbial horse's mouth that they hadn't anything of the sort to fear in Twessol, and they had a lot to gain in terms of honor and perhaps additional booty. He got the thieves revved up again, and they bolted after about an hour, headed west towards Twessol. Jack watched them go, thoughtfully, and asked Leroy if he thought that would take. Leroy shrugged, and finished off the bread, remarking as he popped the last bit in his mouth that the vegetables were vanishing. Fortunately, Delilah brought more.
Other platters followed, some with cut raw vegetables, others with salads, some with cold slices of meats, cheeses, pickled vegetables and bread, others with hot noodles dressed with oil and a tart, salty green vegetable, or a sauce made from tomatoes, or cheeses and cream, and eventually, a stuffed chicken wrapped in bread. We rolled off to bed, comfortably full, and very pleased.
We made a point of buying a large supply of similar foods from Delilah that night to bring with us on our trip to Twessol. She explained how to prepare the noodles, and because they kept well dried, we bought more to add to our staples. Perhaps three hours west, we encountered, once again, the party of thieves. Again, they whined about the sharp stabby things, and the hot things, and again, Leroy wound them up like a top and sent them on to Twessol. A smaller group, more motivated, however temporarily, and less laden, they quickly out paced us, but some time after our midnight meal, we caught up with them again. Rushi protested that this was perhaps a little cruel. Leroy reminded her of what these people had tried to do with us. Jack started to describe to the thieves what we would do to them if we saw them again outside of Twessol. Leroy started in again, but as we neared Twessol, his ability to keep them convinced in the face of their immediate fear was reduced. Astrea started pointedly looking at the necks of the thieves and making remarks that Jack should insist they wash, because she hated the taste of dirty, sweaty skin when she ate. Collectively, we got the group moving again, but this time, we could see their dust cloud ahead of us the rest of the way into town.
We arrived in Twessol. Delilah had recommended an inn, not run by one of her doubles. Martin welcomed us, and the thieves. We settled in for a meal, and arranged a watch to make sure the thieves didn't take off during the day. We also asked Martin where we could obtain an up-to-date map of the town and information about which property was owned by who. He directed us to an office above a shop across the street. Rushi and I visited it before going to sleep for the day, and confirmed that the address of the thieves' employer was indeed owned by a priest of Squiddie. That building abutted Squiddie's temple, which was large for a town the size of Twessol. Squiddie, we learned, was not allowed to have a temple within a day's travel of Artana. The gentleman who helped us with the record files in the town's office said legend had it that was the requirement laid on Artana by a mage who'd saved the town from a series of pestilences at some point in the distant past. When pressed, he allowed as how the mage might have been Tzika, was definitely a woman, and the time frame was less than four hundred years ago. He thought Artana would have records of the event, and described a shrine commemorating it that he had visited, but couldn't recollect its exact location within the city.
We slept for most of the day, and collected that night in the dining room to devise a plan. Jack and Leroy assumed we would herd the thieves ahead of us to the temple, and work it out from there. Rushi was concerned this might leave us open to attack. Astrea pointed out that Squiddie could attack us from anywhere. Rushi said gods tended to be more powerful at their temples. Astrea said that Squiddie, under either name, wasn't on any of the lists of elder gods, and, despite Squiddie's powers, was probably a jumped-up junior godling, unlikely to be able to take full advantage of ground consecrated to him. Mervish and Dervish had some well-developed opinions on the subjects of gods, consecrated ground and priests of varying degrees. They did not agree with each other, and neither agreed with Astrea or Rushi. We let the four of them duke it out verbally while we tried to elaborate on the idea of making the thieves go in first. The thieves were not happy about the plan. Dopey and Whipple both made attempts to escape, and Wiseguy pulled a knife. Jack took the knife away from Wiseguy and scratched up his hand for a while before allowing Ivan to patch him up. I pointed out that Jack had rendered Wiseguy's writing hand unusable, possibly permanently, but definitely temporarily. How were they going to keep that journal up to date? Jack stared at me briefly, then pointed out that since we were all together, I could keep them both up to date, or Wiseguy could learn to write with his other hand, or one of the other thieves could pitch in.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 1999.
Created: July 8, 2012 Updated: July 8, 2012