Post by Celina Zabinski on Jan 31, 2022 21:34:04 GMT
This follows on after the 'Trial By Cunning Fire' session
(Write-Up Here)
Co-Written with the fabulous Riah
After the others have left, Celina lingers in the temple of Waukeen to talk to the Patriot…
“Since the others are gone, are we safe here to talk freely? Or do you know somewhere more private to talk in this place?”
She doesn’t get a response with words. Instead, the Patriot, holds up a gloved hand, a gesture that says to wait, as the acolyte who ran to the Temple of Selûne returns, the High Diviner in tow. Her eyes track the two’s quick dash over to the sequestered chambers Mrs. Fabblestabble was taken to. Not a moment later, the second acolyte comes out, her expression hollow but hopeful.
The Patriot glides over to this acolyte and speaks to her quietly. Celina cannot hear what the two are saying, but she does see a flash of gold pass from one set of hands to the next. The acolyte gives a shallow nod, glances back to the door, looks back to the Patriot, and nods again, firmer. Then the Patriot begins to glide over to a small door on the opposite wall.
“We have more business we must discuss, Miss Zabinski. Do come with me!” she elegantly trills in her persona’s disguised voice. “May our Lady of Gold and the Maiden of the Moon help Mrs. Fabblestabble with a quick recovery! Ugh, such a horrible fate.” She gives a very visible and genuine shudder again.
“Of course. Poor Mrs. Fabblestabble,” Celina copies the Patriot’s reaction regarding the elderly gnome woman, trying to match the same sympathy she’s showing. Celina follows the Patriot as she leads the way.
After a few moments, she looks at her and asks curiously, “Have you come across other people who have ended up in Mrs. Fabblestabble predicament before?”
The Patriot puts a hand to her face in horror. “Lady of Coin, no! Never before. You must tell me everything, Miss. Zabinski. In here,” she opens the door and ushers Celina inside, “We can talk more privately.”
The room is small, more in the style of an unused office. A simple desk with one chair behind it and another in front of it in the centre of the room, with bookshelves along one wall filled with various texts and scrolls. Closing the door behind them, Celina is surprised when she hears a small squeak from within the folds of the Patriot’s sleeves.
Peeking out from the ruffles of her left sleeve is a small field mouse, with a black furred stripe running down its back. She offers it a piece of cheese, saying a few whispered words in a language Celina doesn’t understand. The air stirs a little, making the silken headdress the Patriot wears ruffle as if in a small breeze. Then a little mouse quickly runs down the Patriot’s fine dress, squeezing itself underneath the door.
“Now,” the Patriot begins, softly clapping her hands together as she heads over to the chair behind the desk, still speaking like the noble woman she was disguised as. “What happened? What all did you find?”
Celina takes a quick glance towards the mouse as it leaves the room, wondering where it’s going but she ignores it. Celina then walks towards the other seat in the room and sits down. She grins towards the Patriot and pulls out the items she managed to sneak from the chest: the documents, ledger, letters and papers. She places them all down in front of the Patriot.
“As requested. No one saw these disappear. The others only saw an empty chest. Are these what you were looking for?”
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” she says with a coy smile. The Patriot picks up a letter, briefly scans it and puts it back down. She does this a few more times, the divot between her eyebrows growing deeper as she goes, before the Patriot comes across a letter written on a different type of paper. This one she reads thoroughly a frown curving the corners of her lips down as she goes. “Hmmm…”
As the Patriot reads the letter, Celina’s eyes look across to the other papers on the table. One of them catches her eye. She spots a receipt for a proof of purchase for some stolen goods that were meant to go to Thia’s Refuge but were never received. “Stealing from the poor… wouldn’t have guessed Mrs. Fabblestabble as they type to do that. Did you know about all of this? Interesting Lady… I guess you can’t judge a book.”
“Sometimes the less seeming someone appears, the more cruel their heart actually is,” the Patriot states, casting a look at Celina before flipping over the letter. She sees the drafted response on the back, tuts and folds the letter, tucking it away somewhere Celina doesn’t quite catch. She then pulls the ledger over to her, opens it and begins flipping through the pages.
Celina looks at the Patriot. “You know that lady’s place was a maze, so many rooms and so many traps… Did you know? You know in the future a heads up on that type of thing would be nice. Could have died… but didn’t. Look at that. However this is probably why you gave an expert like myself this request, right?”
“An expert like you should have been able to get through a safe’s security easily enough. No need to make it seem much bigger than it was,” she laughs softly, dismissive.
“Interesting.” Celina stares at the Patriot, curious again. “So, I am to believe I was the first person you sent there to retrieve this… stuff?” Celina gestures towards the items on the table and then she sits back into her chair.
The Patriot briefly glances up from the page she is reading, a quick but brief inquisitive look, then returns to reading the ledger, flipping to the next page.
Celina continues, “So the Mrs. Fabblestabble with no face appeared to have been trapped in a safe of mazes and couldn’t get out. Which was strange because when we went in there was another person there that appeared to look like Mrs. Fabblestabble, but had her face.” The Patriot stops mid page flip. “Clearly someone was pretending to be her for a while and had her trapped. Trapped in a top notch place might I add. I don’t even think prison would be as hard to get out of!” Celina laughs at her joke. “Anyway, so I might take a wild guess here and say that you may know who this mysterious person is that was pretending to be Mrs. Fabblestabble? And it was their evidence you potentially wanted retrieved?”
The light and airy demeanour of the Patriot’s noble merchant persona has disappeared completely. Instead, the person looking at her is the Patriot Celina has gotten used to seeing, and in her eyes in a seriousness that reminds the young tiefling a little too much of the look the Patriot had when Celina had been caught spying on her. Celina smiles brighter, hiding sudden nerves.
“A wild guess indeed – and entirely wrong,” the Patriot says in her noble, accented voice. Celina’s eyes narrow but there’s no mistaking it – the Patriot is telling the truth.
She folds her gloved hands over the ledger in front of her, leaning forward. “Now you’re telling me those horrific flesh masks that Investigator was waving around in my face were the belongings of someone who was pretending to be Mrs. Fabblestabble? How convincing was this interloper? How good was their disguise?”
“I mean potentially… or else they were holding them for someone else. You told me to bring all the contents in the safe and they were there, so I thought you knew about them.” Celina laughs. “Oh their disguise, I think they were quite good. Even Mr. Citywatch Detective didn’t pick anything up and nothing really gets past him. He’s quick to point something off in a place and has a good read on people. Heck he’s always looking at me. I just laugh it off but with this person… nothing. The Mrs. Fabblestabble we met in the shop at the beginning looked healthy and well. She was super cheery and chatty. So in contrast, much different to the one we brought back.”
“Hmm,” the Patriot intones. “That description does match the Loopmottin I’ve known for years…”
She pulls out the letter she was reading before, flipping back and forth to the drafted response. Then she flips forward a few pages in the ledger, her lips pursing more and more as the divot between her brows returns. Spinning the ledger around to face Celina and placing the letter beside it the Patriot taps two points on both documents with her gloved hands.
“You know how to keep books. Tell me, what do you see?”
Celina looks first at the ledger. At an initial glance, it seemed like a normal sort of bookkeeping document, with lines detailing the purchase and selling of goods. But as her eyes roamed down the page, Celina started to notice the way the numbers did not add up. Buying goods at less than market value price wasn’t unheard of but the amount Mrs. Fabblestabble had paid was staggeringly low to do anything but raise eyebrows – which was what Celina’s eyebrows did. In the column beside it was the detail of sales for each item which showed a skyrocket in value for such meagre trinkets. But then, by contrast, the column next to it showed the amount retained didn’t match the same percentage as the lines at the top of the page.
Of course, despite not knowing exactly what the items were – some of the names were illegible words that were clearly a form of code and without the key Celina would not be able to figure it out – Celina could still say with some level of certainty that Mrs. Fabblestabble was marking up her wares and keeping the extra cash she was earning for herself.
Then she looked at the letter. It addressed Mrs. Fabblestabble with a certain level of familiarity, which seemed odd as there did not appear to be another letter written in such a hand amongst the papers arrayed on the desk. The letter was offering assistance to solve a problem for the old curios shop owner. Glancing back to the top rows in the ledger, Celina notices the sales had been dwindling dramatically. Possibly a lack of foot traffic? That wouldn’t surprise the Apple Shop owner. The location of Thistle Do Nicely being just enough off the main thoroughfare of the Dawn Market must make it hard to gain new clientele.
But this letter read as if the writer knew more than any concerned citizen should know…
“Interesting… looks like Mrs. Fabblestabble was charging ridiculously high prices for items. Even higher than normal shops and she was making a decent profit. Wow… like, even I wouldn’t even do that! Ah I can see you there looking for payment. So she didn’t pay… I can also tell from the ledger that she was making a massive loss. So I get it now, that’s why you wanted me to look into this lady?” Celina looks up wondering if she’s worked it out correctly now. “And I also see another person found out about her debt and offered to help her. Since it’s not signed and there’s no meeting place mentioned Mrs. Fabblestabble had to have known this person… Potential gang rival? Any idea who this person could be? Someone we need to be worried about?”
“We cannot rule out a rival business. On the principle alone that someone is going around stealing people’s faces is reason enough to be concerned. It certainly instils a level of mistrust even amongst one’s closest allies. If this person’s performance as Mrs. Fabblestabble was as convincing as you detailed then who can we trust? What if this person were to steal your face and get close to Mr. Plumstead?” the Patriot asks with a pointedly raised eyebrow.
Celina stares at the Patriot holding her gaze. Then she sighs and says, “No… That would be… not good.”
She nods. “As for whom or what the person pretending to be Mrs. Fabblestabble is I do not have any concrete idea – yet. However, now that I have all this I am confident I will find a trail to pursue.”
The Patriot smiles and it conveys a sense of pride in the young tiefling woman sitting across from her. “You did well, Miss Zabinski.”
Celina smiles widely pleased with herself. “Why thank you! And I’m sure you will. I mean nothing gets past you. Also I will add, nice disguise with your outfit today. You almost look like a proper noblewoman.” Celina grins and gives a wink.
“Oh-ho,” she says, her tone becoming serious. “Think you can speak to a lady of noble birth in such a way? Were I Jean Auber, I would have you scrub the toilets in the Daring Council Hall for a month for such cheek!” Then she grins widely and responds with her own wink to Celina. “Fortunately for you, I am not so boorish as that nobleman.”
There’s a little squeak beside Celina's foot and she jumps as the field mouse has suddenly returned. The Patriot, understanding something it is communicating with it’s squeaks. There’s a light knock at the door and Celina turns towards the door, a rising panic at all the papers arrayed across the desk. She begins to stand, to say something like “Wait a moment!” or “Hold on!” or something to discourage the person on the other side from turning the door knob when the Patriot, fully embodying her noble merchant woman’s persona, calls out with a clear bell-like voice, “Come in.”
The door opens and the acolyte the Patriot spoke to before stands in the doorway. “Excuse my intrusion, my lady, but the High Diviner has finished his spell. You asked to be notified when you could see the, uh…”
“Yes, my dear. Thank you for coming so promptly. Miss. Zabinski,” she turns to Celina and nods once, “I must bid you adieu. May our Lady of Gold bless your house with wealth, in coin and in friendship, for the deeds you and your companions have done this night are truly worthy of such gifts.”
Then she sweeps from the room, following the acolyte. The papers and ledger gone, the mouse nowhere to be seen.