Post by Heret Velnnarul on Dec 25, 2019 20:59:06 GMT
7 Nightal
It almost looks better than before, thought Heret as he sat at a small table near the stage in the Gilded Mirror and let his eyes wander across the velvet-draped walls, the gilt fixtures, and the darkly shining wooden furniture. It was very strange to recall that earlier in the year the place had been torn to pieces by a magical undead band-leader and his putrefying seven-piece ensemble. That’s a good story, he thought, she might like that one.
The young human was wearing one of his favourite outfits: a dark green tunic-and-trouser set embroidered in yellow with designs of leaves and vines; over it a black satin knee-length jacket with wide sleeves and intricate gold trim; plus a gold and jade necklace and his usual rings. He sipped a cup of dark wine and leant back in his chair, trying to appear relaxed as he listened to the (definitely alive) band play a gentle Moonshae reel, occasionally nodding and smiling to this or that guest or gambler he'd come to know in his year of living here. Under the table, the restless fingers of his left hand were constantly turning the small pearl he had brought with him for luck.
For her part, Wendy was of course exactly on time, and without her large bag of post, which though expected was still unusual to see her without it. She looked the same as she always did as she entered the crowded room and turned without hesitation to where Heret sat, but as Wendy approached the table he could see that her plain black dress had been changed for a nearly identical one, but with more intricate designs woven in black shimmering thread. Her long braid was still present, but was a little looser, with only a few large twists before it ended in an uncharacteristic gold ribbon.
“Hi, Heret,” she said, smiling as she sat down in the chair across from him. “That’s a fabulous jacket. I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
“Ah, Wendy! You look even more delightful than usual. Please don’t worry, I was just passing the time here anyway.” He raised a hand to signal a member of staff before turning his eyes back to her. “What would you like to drink?”
“Oh, I’ll have whatever ale they have here,” she replied, settling herself. As her order was taken, she turned back to Heret. “So, what do we have in store for this evening? You’ve been staying here for a long time now, you must know the very best things.”
"Well," he replied, "I am at your command! If you like music, Leocanto himself is to give a performance here tonight. I hear -" he added in a confidential tone, leaning forward a little, "- that he may be sharing with us a brand new piece! Or if you prefer, we could try the gaming tables - there are games for everyone from the beginner to the expert, and I've a little sum put aside that you would be most welcome to hazard to skill or chance. And later in the evening, of course, there is always dancing if one is in the mood. But first, perhaps, something to eat?"
"Oh I'm not especially hungry," she said airily. "All the rest of that sounds fabulous though. Let's play a game while we wait for Leocanto to play his new songs!"
"Perfect!" the young man beamed. "A game of chance or of skill? Of course there's always some of each, but in different degrees."
She grinned, a little more wickedly than perhaps he had seen before. "Why don't we leave this evening up to chance, Heret?"
"'Risk undiluted, thrill unalloyed'," he quoted, offering an arm. "Giants and halflings, then?"
---
As they left the gaming table, Heret joked that the giants had defeated the two of them even more decisively than they had overwhelmed Jarvenol.
It was true: from the moment he'd dropped a small purse of gold coins on the table in front of Wendy and invited her to make the first roll, their luck had been bafflingly, hilariously bad. The croupier had rolled the highest possible Knee for the first giant, and Wendy the worst possible attempt by the halflings. When the croupier rolled the same Knee for Heret, they'd looked at each other and smiled. When his halflings did barely better than hers, they'd chuckled. When Wendy's turn came again and the croupier rolled a ten for the third time in a row, they'd laughed out loud and Wendy had thrown her dice without even looking at them: another terrible roll. By now the house had taken six gold pieces from Heret's purse.
The next Knee was low - so low that Heret's halflings easily beat it, but also so low that he did no more than recover the two coins he had bet. On Wendy's turn, the croupier rolled a one: a giant's kick, automatic defeat for the halflings without her even getting to roll. She laughed incredulously, and then laughed even harder when the croupier turned to Heret and rolled exactly the same for him. Heret, in parodic imitation of a stage tragedian, declared that he had committed the grievous crime of bringing to Tymora's table a lady as charming and mysterious as the goddess herself, and for this she was punishing them both; then he suggested they play until the tenth round and call it quits. The next turn was another Knee so low that victory did no more than regain the stake; the eight turn was the first to actually bring a real win, with the croupier handing back Heret's two coins and giving him two more. The ninth set a Knee for Wendy that was high enough to offer real winnings but still low enough to hope to beat it, but Wendy rolled eleven and her halflings were eaten by the hungry giant. After an anticlimactic tenth round in which Heret once again merely won back what he had bet, they both looked at the ten coins sitting on the table - half the original contents of the purse. Certainly enough to justify a feeling that the game had not been a great loss. Enough to be worth walking away with. And yet…
"One last throw?” he had asked, pushing the pile of cash toward the croupier and placing the dice into Wendy’s hand (with a deliberate, but very slight, touching of skin to skin).
Repeating his opening number as an encore, the croupier had rolled the highest possible Knee once again. And then, with a twinkle in her eye, Wendy had rolled two sixes. The lofty giant devoured her halflings, and the Gilded Mirror swallowed nearly seven days of Heret’s wages as the two of them laughed delightedly.
Which was when Heret made his joke about Jarvenol. It wasn’t until he’d said it that he realized quite how profoundly grim it was, and he felt his stomach flutter horribly. Nine women out of ten, no, forty-nine out of fifty would be appalled or at least perturbed. But he felt, against all the evidence, that luck was somehow secretly on his side tonight, and so when the thought came to his mind he had let it out. Still, he was nervous as he glanced sideways to catch Wendy’s reaction.
Wendy, as the fiftieth woman, giggled as she turned away from the table to look back towards the stage, where the last act was just finishing up. "I think they're setting up for Leocanto's performance," she said. "Shall we get a table? You never did finish telling me about your stories of war."
---
As Leocanto, resplendent in a long blue flared coat and breeches, performed a series of graceful and lyrical waltzes switching between his now very recognisable golden lute and a wooden kazoo, the pair chatted companionably at their little round table near the stage. Heret began with a fuller and more dramatic telling of the story of the K'ul Goran War’s mysterious conclusion and his latest brush with death. He tried not to sound rehearsed but the truth was that he'd been thinking about how to tell it since she'd called at the OMTC factory to deliver a parcel the other day and her interest in the short version of the story had emboldened him to suggest this rendez-vous. The additional detail he was keenest to share – for in truth it had been playing on his mind anyway – was the unsettling but also oddly exciting thought that the last drop of blood that finally sated the land’s centuries-long thirst might have been his.
Wendy sat rapt as Heret spoke, still clutching her mug of ale. She asked a few questions about specific people, certainly the people from the Dawnlands that she knew, and especially those who had died. They were almost normal questions save for a slight excited tone, her fascinated expression, and how she focused in on descriptions.
"So you were unconscious but having your blood drained into the dirt? Could you feel it while you were out?" She asked, face intent.
“Ah,” he smiled, “Well, I certainly felt it for a few moments as I lay on the ground, but I must have passed out very quickly because I remember nothing after that until Faye and Kalta revived me. It was they who told me afterwards how thirstily the snow had been draining me. But,” he continued, as Wendy’s interest seemed to waver slightly, “I have felt the same thing before. Earlier in the war. I and some others were asked to extinguish a dangerous wildfire; Bubbles – have you met Bubbles?”
“Oh of course,” she said quickly.
“Well, she thought it would be a fine idea to smother the fire with rocks, so she used magic to collapse the side of a mountain. Regrettably,” he said with a sardonic smile, “we were standing on the mountain at the time! We were all overrun by the landslide and buried.”
He paused and finished his cup of wine. He hadn’t intended to revisit this memory. After that avalanche he’d had a tenday of nightmares of darkness, panic, cold; the crushing pressure of the rocks, the gasping for air; the silent house, the snow-blocked windows, the still body. But it was too late to abandon the anecdote now. He hid his shaking hand under the table and continued. “I was badly injured. Bleeding. Completely surrounded by rocks and earth. And I could feel the blood draining out of me – in all directions!” He tried a laugh but it didn’t come out quite right so he hurriedly went on. “It was like… you know how it is when you’ve cut yourself on something and you suck it to clean the wound?”
There was a pause, and Wendy seemed to notice how intently she’d been listening, and adjusted herself on her seat. “I’m glad you made it out ok,” she said. “It must have been such a disturbing experience. Do you think that the ground killed as many people as weapons did during the war?”
"What an interesting question!" Heret replied brightly, noticing her sudden change of tack but suppressing his investigative instincts in favour of pleasant conversation. "I hadn't thought of that before. Often in combat death comes not instantly on one's feet but slowly fading on the earth. Ordinarily physicks can find some of those and save them before their hearts fail, but in K'ul Goran one would have to be very fast indeed to stop the land finishing off the fallen. Yes, you're right, many must have found their end that way." As he finished the thought, his academic enthusiasm suddenly left him as the idea of someone slowly dying, of help arriving too late, collided with the memories he had been trying to put aside. He, too, changed the subject. "But, forgive me, I have been speaking a great deal. Please, tell me about yourself! How did you come to be a courier in a little town on an unknown continent?"
Wendy shrugged, gesturing vaguely with her mug. “I’ve been a courier my whole life, Heret, like you’ve been in business I’m guessing - it’s who I am. I was freelance for a long time, but when I arrived here it was just too interesting to leave. I came here on a job just as Daring Heights was starting out and decided this was the perfect place to get a steady job going.”
She looked around at the room again, full of Darites, Fey creatures from the Back Door, Spray the Water Genasi and more, and beamed at them all. “It’s just the most fascinating place I’ve ever seen. So many people’s journeys have brought them here - the portal delivering them to this new life. And a postal route like mine is easy and never dull. I’m not sure I ever want to leave. Don’t you feel the same way, Heret?”
"To show you my true books," he replied, "I know not. This country has much potential and there's much I want to do here. And you're right: it's never boring. But compared to Crimmor or Keczulla… There we could walk just a few streets and find half a dozen establishments as fine as this one - and with better drinks! Not to mention theatres, jewellers, tailors, baths… But then, by the time my work here is done, I hope Daring Heights may have all that and more." He notices her mug, the same one she ordered when she first arrived, still more than half full, and continues, "In the mean while, I try to take small pleasures where I can find them here: the best food and drink, the best music, the best company of course -" he grins "- and I encourage you to do the same this evening. Please don't feel you must nurse your drink: have as much as you want! And if one isn't to your liking, just set it aside and try another. Everything tonight is my gift."
Wendy laughed, somewhat awkwardly and rested one hand over her mug and her other on Heret's hand across the velvet-covered table. "I'm fine, thank you Heret. I'm having a lovely evening, one of the nicest I've had in a while actually.” He beamed with satisfaction as she continued, “I know what you mean about Keczulla, it's full of wonders and opulence. I once made a delivery at one of the grander theatres there, and got to stay for the whole performance!" She proceeded to recount a tale of sitting blissfully through a tragic play full of murder and intrigue, and spending most of the next week exploring the area. From the recounting, it seemed clear that her freelance lifestyle had seen her travel quite extensively.
It may have been another evasion but Heret was delighted to have stumbled upon an aspect of her life that she was happy to talk about, and even happier to learn that she’d been to and enjoyed the city he’d lived in for many years. He jumped on the theme and asked her many questions about where she’d been and what she’d done in Keczulla, and then about her wider travels.
Always the professional, she was very limited in what she would say about her actual jobs - exactly who she was delivering to and what. As she began to talk more animatedly though, she seemed to enjoy focusing on the delivery - the setting, the interaction, the bodies she had seen along the way and how she would often explore the area in her spare time. Heret nodded and listened intently throughout, asking encouraging questions here and there.
One story which involved Keczulla again, she had made a delivery all the way from Daggerford to the Amnian town, and had arrived in the middle of a festival. Navigating parades, parties and punch ups, she made her way to the Platinum Flagon, in the Emerald Quarter, perhaps the rowdiest of the most elite drinking establishments.
"And so there, in one of the fanciest places in Zullah, I met my contact easily - no one even drew a sword this time, which was nice. Then the Gem Guard suddenly stormed the place! It was a mess - something about fake diamonds or something. Fights breaking out everywhere, drinks spilling, tables being overturned, so I decided it was time to skip on out so I jumped out the back just in time to see the flames start. That was when I decided I should give the town a miss for a while. It got a little too exciting!" She laughed uproariously.
Heret clapped his hands together with enjoyment. “Mithral!” he exclaimed, “Solid Mithral! Wendy, I think you’ve had more adventures than half of those I’ve met here who call themselves ‘adventurers’! And,” he added carefully, “you must have been very young then, no?” For the stories of the raid and burning down of the Platinum Flagon had already been some years old when Heret had moved to Keczulla at the age of 12 or 13, and Wendy was only a few years older than he was. He felt both alarm and admiration at the thought. Certainly in those days cousin Pehllus had used him as a message-runner around the city from time to time, and he’d known others of similar age doing the same – but to think of a girl not even a decade old and travelling all over Faerûn, alone, delivering letters and parcels to some very dangerous places…
Wendy's smile faded immediately, and she grimaced. "Was it really so long ago?" she said, almost to herself. Then the smile returned. "Well I was certainly younger then. Come on, Heret, we've been talking for ages and you promised dancing!" She jumped up from her seat and held out a hand to him. He chuckled and took it.
---
She was, he thought to himself as they made their way to the area below the stage that had been cleared of furniture, a fascinating and mysterious woman, and he hoped to have many more opportunities to learn more about her. But as they danced, he somewhat forgot about her past, and his, and let himself get swept up in the synchronized swirling and stepping, the flash of her smile and her bright black eyes, the occasional touching of hands or arm round the waist as they swung past each other in formation. In fact, as the evening went on, the young man thought less often of uncovering the mysteries of Wendy's life and more often about uncovering her in a more literal sense. That was not for tonight, though, and probably not for next time or the time after that either. But seeing her laughing and dancing with heart and enthusiasm (if not with any great elegance) he felt at any rate that there probably would be a next time, and that was a glad thought.
(Co-written with the inimitable andycd of course.)
It almost looks better than before, thought Heret as he sat at a small table near the stage in the Gilded Mirror and let his eyes wander across the velvet-draped walls, the gilt fixtures, and the darkly shining wooden furniture. It was very strange to recall that earlier in the year the place had been torn to pieces by a magical undead band-leader and his putrefying seven-piece ensemble. That’s a good story, he thought, she might like that one.
The young human was wearing one of his favourite outfits: a dark green tunic-and-trouser set embroidered in yellow with designs of leaves and vines; over it a black satin knee-length jacket with wide sleeves and intricate gold trim; plus a gold and jade necklace and his usual rings. He sipped a cup of dark wine and leant back in his chair, trying to appear relaxed as he listened to the (definitely alive) band play a gentle Moonshae reel, occasionally nodding and smiling to this or that guest or gambler he'd come to know in his year of living here. Under the table, the restless fingers of his left hand were constantly turning the small pearl he had brought with him for luck.
For her part, Wendy was of course exactly on time, and without her large bag of post, which though expected was still unusual to see her without it. She looked the same as she always did as she entered the crowded room and turned without hesitation to where Heret sat, but as Wendy approached the table he could see that her plain black dress had been changed for a nearly identical one, but with more intricate designs woven in black shimmering thread. Her long braid was still present, but was a little looser, with only a few large twists before it ended in an uncharacteristic gold ribbon.
“Hi, Heret,” she said, smiling as she sat down in the chair across from him. “That’s a fabulous jacket. I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
“Ah, Wendy! You look even more delightful than usual. Please don’t worry, I was just passing the time here anyway.” He raised a hand to signal a member of staff before turning his eyes back to her. “What would you like to drink?”
“Oh, I’ll have whatever ale they have here,” she replied, settling herself. As her order was taken, she turned back to Heret. “So, what do we have in store for this evening? You’ve been staying here for a long time now, you must know the very best things.”
"Well," he replied, "I am at your command! If you like music, Leocanto himself is to give a performance here tonight. I hear -" he added in a confidential tone, leaning forward a little, "- that he may be sharing with us a brand new piece! Or if you prefer, we could try the gaming tables - there are games for everyone from the beginner to the expert, and I've a little sum put aside that you would be most welcome to hazard to skill or chance. And later in the evening, of course, there is always dancing if one is in the mood. But first, perhaps, something to eat?"
"Oh I'm not especially hungry," she said airily. "All the rest of that sounds fabulous though. Let's play a game while we wait for Leocanto to play his new songs!"
"Perfect!" the young man beamed. "A game of chance or of skill? Of course there's always some of each, but in different degrees."
She grinned, a little more wickedly than perhaps he had seen before. "Why don't we leave this evening up to chance, Heret?"
"'Risk undiluted, thrill unalloyed'," he quoted, offering an arm. "Giants and halflings, then?"
---
As they left the gaming table, Heret joked that the giants had defeated the two of them even more decisively than they had overwhelmed Jarvenol.
It was true: from the moment he'd dropped a small purse of gold coins on the table in front of Wendy and invited her to make the first roll, their luck had been bafflingly, hilariously bad. The croupier had rolled the highest possible Knee for the first giant, and Wendy the worst possible attempt by the halflings. When the croupier rolled the same Knee for Heret, they'd looked at each other and smiled. When his halflings did barely better than hers, they'd chuckled. When Wendy's turn came again and the croupier rolled a ten for the third time in a row, they'd laughed out loud and Wendy had thrown her dice without even looking at them: another terrible roll. By now the house had taken six gold pieces from Heret's purse.
The next Knee was low - so low that Heret's halflings easily beat it, but also so low that he did no more than recover the two coins he had bet. On Wendy's turn, the croupier rolled a one: a giant's kick, automatic defeat for the halflings without her even getting to roll. She laughed incredulously, and then laughed even harder when the croupier turned to Heret and rolled exactly the same for him. Heret, in parodic imitation of a stage tragedian, declared that he had committed the grievous crime of bringing to Tymora's table a lady as charming and mysterious as the goddess herself, and for this she was punishing them both; then he suggested they play until the tenth round and call it quits. The next turn was another Knee so low that victory did no more than regain the stake; the eight turn was the first to actually bring a real win, with the croupier handing back Heret's two coins and giving him two more. The ninth set a Knee for Wendy that was high enough to offer real winnings but still low enough to hope to beat it, but Wendy rolled eleven and her halflings were eaten by the hungry giant. After an anticlimactic tenth round in which Heret once again merely won back what he had bet, they both looked at the ten coins sitting on the table - half the original contents of the purse. Certainly enough to justify a feeling that the game had not been a great loss. Enough to be worth walking away with. And yet…
"One last throw?” he had asked, pushing the pile of cash toward the croupier and placing the dice into Wendy’s hand (with a deliberate, but very slight, touching of skin to skin).
Repeating his opening number as an encore, the croupier had rolled the highest possible Knee once again. And then, with a twinkle in her eye, Wendy had rolled two sixes. The lofty giant devoured her halflings, and the Gilded Mirror swallowed nearly seven days of Heret’s wages as the two of them laughed delightedly.
Which was when Heret made his joke about Jarvenol. It wasn’t until he’d said it that he realized quite how profoundly grim it was, and he felt his stomach flutter horribly. Nine women out of ten, no, forty-nine out of fifty would be appalled or at least perturbed. But he felt, against all the evidence, that luck was somehow secretly on his side tonight, and so when the thought came to his mind he had let it out. Still, he was nervous as he glanced sideways to catch Wendy’s reaction.
Wendy, as the fiftieth woman, giggled as she turned away from the table to look back towards the stage, where the last act was just finishing up. "I think they're setting up for Leocanto's performance," she said. "Shall we get a table? You never did finish telling me about your stories of war."
---
As Leocanto, resplendent in a long blue flared coat and breeches, performed a series of graceful and lyrical waltzes switching between his now very recognisable golden lute and a wooden kazoo, the pair chatted companionably at their little round table near the stage. Heret began with a fuller and more dramatic telling of the story of the K'ul Goran War’s mysterious conclusion and his latest brush with death. He tried not to sound rehearsed but the truth was that he'd been thinking about how to tell it since she'd called at the OMTC factory to deliver a parcel the other day and her interest in the short version of the story had emboldened him to suggest this rendez-vous. The additional detail he was keenest to share – for in truth it had been playing on his mind anyway – was the unsettling but also oddly exciting thought that the last drop of blood that finally sated the land’s centuries-long thirst might have been his.
Wendy sat rapt as Heret spoke, still clutching her mug of ale. She asked a few questions about specific people, certainly the people from the Dawnlands that she knew, and especially those who had died. They were almost normal questions save for a slight excited tone, her fascinated expression, and how she focused in on descriptions.
"So you were unconscious but having your blood drained into the dirt? Could you feel it while you were out?" She asked, face intent.
“Ah,” he smiled, “Well, I certainly felt it for a few moments as I lay on the ground, but I must have passed out very quickly because I remember nothing after that until Faye and Kalta revived me. It was they who told me afterwards how thirstily the snow had been draining me. But,” he continued, as Wendy’s interest seemed to waver slightly, “I have felt the same thing before. Earlier in the war. I and some others were asked to extinguish a dangerous wildfire; Bubbles – have you met Bubbles?”
“Oh of course,” she said quickly.
“Well, she thought it would be a fine idea to smother the fire with rocks, so she used magic to collapse the side of a mountain. Regrettably,” he said with a sardonic smile, “we were standing on the mountain at the time! We were all overrun by the landslide and buried.”
He paused and finished his cup of wine. He hadn’t intended to revisit this memory. After that avalanche he’d had a tenday of nightmares of darkness, panic, cold; the crushing pressure of the rocks, the gasping for air; the silent house, the snow-blocked windows, the still body. But it was too late to abandon the anecdote now. He hid his shaking hand under the table and continued. “I was badly injured. Bleeding. Completely surrounded by rocks and earth. And I could feel the blood draining out of me – in all directions!” He tried a laugh but it didn’t come out quite right so he hurriedly went on. “It was like… you know how it is when you’ve cut yourself on something and you suck it to clean the wound?”
There was a pause, and Wendy seemed to notice how intently she’d been listening, and adjusted herself on her seat. “I’m glad you made it out ok,” she said. “It must have been such a disturbing experience. Do you think that the ground killed as many people as weapons did during the war?”
"What an interesting question!" Heret replied brightly, noticing her sudden change of tack but suppressing his investigative instincts in favour of pleasant conversation. "I hadn't thought of that before. Often in combat death comes not instantly on one's feet but slowly fading on the earth. Ordinarily physicks can find some of those and save them before their hearts fail, but in K'ul Goran one would have to be very fast indeed to stop the land finishing off the fallen. Yes, you're right, many must have found their end that way." As he finished the thought, his academic enthusiasm suddenly left him as the idea of someone slowly dying, of help arriving too late, collided with the memories he had been trying to put aside. He, too, changed the subject. "But, forgive me, I have been speaking a great deal. Please, tell me about yourself! How did you come to be a courier in a little town on an unknown continent?"
Wendy shrugged, gesturing vaguely with her mug. “I’ve been a courier my whole life, Heret, like you’ve been in business I’m guessing - it’s who I am. I was freelance for a long time, but when I arrived here it was just too interesting to leave. I came here on a job just as Daring Heights was starting out and decided this was the perfect place to get a steady job going.”
She looked around at the room again, full of Darites, Fey creatures from the Back Door, Spray the Water Genasi and more, and beamed at them all. “It’s just the most fascinating place I’ve ever seen. So many people’s journeys have brought them here - the portal delivering them to this new life. And a postal route like mine is easy and never dull. I’m not sure I ever want to leave. Don’t you feel the same way, Heret?”
"To show you my true books," he replied, "I know not. This country has much potential and there's much I want to do here. And you're right: it's never boring. But compared to Crimmor or Keczulla… There we could walk just a few streets and find half a dozen establishments as fine as this one - and with better drinks! Not to mention theatres, jewellers, tailors, baths… But then, by the time my work here is done, I hope Daring Heights may have all that and more." He notices her mug, the same one she ordered when she first arrived, still more than half full, and continues, "In the mean while, I try to take small pleasures where I can find them here: the best food and drink, the best music, the best company of course -" he grins "- and I encourage you to do the same this evening. Please don't feel you must nurse your drink: have as much as you want! And if one isn't to your liking, just set it aside and try another. Everything tonight is my gift."
Wendy laughed, somewhat awkwardly and rested one hand over her mug and her other on Heret's hand across the velvet-covered table. "I'm fine, thank you Heret. I'm having a lovely evening, one of the nicest I've had in a while actually.” He beamed with satisfaction as she continued, “I know what you mean about Keczulla, it's full of wonders and opulence. I once made a delivery at one of the grander theatres there, and got to stay for the whole performance!" She proceeded to recount a tale of sitting blissfully through a tragic play full of murder and intrigue, and spending most of the next week exploring the area. From the recounting, it seemed clear that her freelance lifestyle had seen her travel quite extensively.
It may have been another evasion but Heret was delighted to have stumbled upon an aspect of her life that she was happy to talk about, and even happier to learn that she’d been to and enjoyed the city he’d lived in for many years. He jumped on the theme and asked her many questions about where she’d been and what she’d done in Keczulla, and then about her wider travels.
Always the professional, she was very limited in what she would say about her actual jobs - exactly who she was delivering to and what. As she began to talk more animatedly though, she seemed to enjoy focusing on the delivery - the setting, the interaction, the bodies she had seen along the way and how she would often explore the area in her spare time. Heret nodded and listened intently throughout, asking encouraging questions here and there.
One story which involved Keczulla again, she had made a delivery all the way from Daggerford to the Amnian town, and had arrived in the middle of a festival. Navigating parades, parties and punch ups, she made her way to the Platinum Flagon, in the Emerald Quarter, perhaps the rowdiest of the most elite drinking establishments.
"And so there, in one of the fanciest places in Zullah, I met my contact easily - no one even drew a sword this time, which was nice. Then the Gem Guard suddenly stormed the place! It was a mess - something about fake diamonds or something. Fights breaking out everywhere, drinks spilling, tables being overturned, so I decided it was time to skip on out so I jumped out the back just in time to see the flames start. That was when I decided I should give the town a miss for a while. It got a little too exciting!" She laughed uproariously.
Heret clapped his hands together with enjoyment. “Mithral!” he exclaimed, “Solid Mithral! Wendy, I think you’ve had more adventures than half of those I’ve met here who call themselves ‘adventurers’! And,” he added carefully, “you must have been very young then, no?” For the stories of the raid and burning down of the Platinum Flagon had already been some years old when Heret had moved to Keczulla at the age of 12 or 13, and Wendy was only a few years older than he was. He felt both alarm and admiration at the thought. Certainly in those days cousin Pehllus had used him as a message-runner around the city from time to time, and he’d known others of similar age doing the same – but to think of a girl not even a decade old and travelling all over Faerûn, alone, delivering letters and parcels to some very dangerous places…
Wendy's smile faded immediately, and she grimaced. "Was it really so long ago?" she said, almost to herself. Then the smile returned. "Well I was certainly younger then. Come on, Heret, we've been talking for ages and you promised dancing!" She jumped up from her seat and held out a hand to him. He chuckled and took it.
---
She was, he thought to himself as they made their way to the area below the stage that had been cleared of furniture, a fascinating and mysterious woman, and he hoped to have many more opportunities to learn more about her. But as they danced, he somewhat forgot about her past, and his, and let himself get swept up in the synchronized swirling and stepping, the flash of her smile and her bright black eyes, the occasional touching of hands or arm round the waist as they swung past each other in formation. In fact, as the evening went on, the young man thought less often of uncovering the mysteries of Wendy's life and more often about uncovering her in a more literal sense. That was not for tonight, though, and probably not for next time or the time after that either. But seeing her laughing and dancing with heart and enthusiasm (if not with any great elegance) he felt at any rate that there probably would be a next time, and that was a glad thought.
(Co-written with the inimitable andycd of course.)