Prompt Serial: Part 1
Here is the first part of the weekly prompt story. Our protagonist's friends are missing, she was forbidden to go with them on the assignment that has resulted in their disappearance, and at least one person doesn't really trust the Adventurers' Guild official who both sent her friends out and stopped her from going with them. She has also been hired to find one of the missing party. Follow her efforts to find out where they were going and what has happened to them.
This piece runs to 2,555 words.
Because an Index Page seems to work well for Anadrasata, I will be doing that again.
Finmauw had liked being part of a team. What she hadn't liked was the way she'd been removed from it - Master Tyroque, the Adventurers' Guild's new Assignments Master had told her, in front of everyone in the Assignment Room, that he couldn't see what she added to her team and he was taking her off it. When she and her teammates had protested, he'd pointed out that they weren't a registered team but one thrown together by the previous Assignments Master to answer a need, and thus the team's composition was indeed up to him. The penalties for her "happening" to catch up with them after they'd left on the assignment had been made plain to them, so Finmauw had watched her four closest friends leave the Guild House with their new fifth member to do whatever job it was that Master Tyroque had given them.
The markers on the assignment board said that the job was expected to take about three weeks, so Finmauw settled down to the errand running and odd jobs that let a Guild member with no other affiliations and no speciality make a living.
Five weeks later, they still weren't back.
Six weeks later, as Finmauw was about to start making careful, delicate enquiries with the other Guilds and organisations her friends belonged to, because Master Tyroque was not a man to annoy, her clerical friend's spiritual mentor came to see her. The old man sat down opposite her at the desk where she was copying out a list for the Quartermaster and said quietly, "I want to hire you to find our missing mutual associate."
Without looking up from her task, because Master Tyroque was over the other side of the room and she wasn't sure how good his hearing and lip reading were, she replied quietly, "Shouldn't you take your commission to the Guild?"
"On this occasion I prefer to hire a particular Guild member rather than let the Guild organise the search. You know my young friend and those they are travelling with. I think that you have the best chance of finding them and getting them home." He sighed. "I have prayed about it, but I cannot find it within myself to lay my concerns before Master Tyroque."
"I will take the job if you go through the Guild to hire me," replied Finmauw as she continued to work on the list. "That provides us both with protections but avoids the gentleman in question as the task doesn't need to be assigned. Master Baylor will be able to help you - his office is off the first landing of the staircase on the right."
Once the paperwork was completed and her commission was up on the board, Finmauw sat down to consider what she knew. Firstly, the assignment her friends had gone out on hadn't been lodged with the Guild in person, but rather had come by letter, delivered by mail. Secondly, they had left the city by Leathermen's Gate. Thirdly, Master Tyroque had thought that for this job they'd need more muscle because her replacement in the team had been heavy set and a member of the Mercenaries' Guild.
Her first stop was the Guild's map room. The road out of Leatherman's Gate was the Northeast Highroad. It followed the River Sendry upstream for three days' foot travel, in good weather, until you reached Lastbridge, which occupied both banks of the river. From there the major roads went up both sides of the river, out to the east and west, and down both sides of the river. There were ferries lower down the river to take you across, but for the most reliable of those they would have taken Bakers' Gate. Lastbridge had its own house of the Adventurers' Guild, so it seemed likely that wherever the letter had come from was closer to her own city, unless the writer had some reason not to engage the Adventurers’ in Lastbridge. There were minor roads going west off the Northeast Highroad before you got to Lastbridge, but most of those went to small, sleepy villages that managed their affairs so as not to need adventurers.
It would, Finmauw reflected, have been useful to know why the assignment had been marked as being expected to take three weeks.
If the previous Assignments Master had still held the post, Finmauw's next step would have been to ask him what he could tell her about the assignment and the letter that had brought it. However, Master Tyroque was still looking at her disapprovingly every time they crossed paths, a thing that made meals in the dining room uncomfortable, so she decided to check the missing group's other affiliations first.
Because her commission was to find her missing clerical friend, Finmauw's first stop was the joint temple of Eccos B'haytairt and Hurcos Easb'hay, the brother gods. Eccos B'haytairt, whom her commissioner served, was the god of artefacts and consequences. Hurcos Easb'hay, who her friend served, was the god of edges, borders, and fringes. Fortunately for her, her commissioner had shared their intention to have someone look into the missing clergyman's disappearance. She was greeted warmly and by name, and everyone was still smiling after she asked them whether anyone in the temple had heard from him since Master Tyroque had handed out that assignment. Had he come here to stock up on specific unguents, talked to anyone about specialist prayers, had he written to or otherwise messaged the temple in the last six weeks, or had anyone from one of their temples in another town happen to mention that he had dropped in to pray while passing through?
The people she was speaking to realised quickly that the only one of her questions they could definitely answer was the third one, so Finmauw was offered refreshments and/or time for personal prayer and reflection while the temple staff made inquiries and checked memories and records. It took an hour, because it turned out that there was extensive intertemple correspondence to look through, but all they had was his requisition from stores before he left and a brief mention from the temple in Lower Stey that might have been him late on the day the group had set out. Lower Stey was a day's journey up the Northeast Highroad, so that did seem probable, but the supplies he taken from the temple, although consistent with a three week expedition, didn't indicate that he was stocking up for any particular problems.
Finmauw's last business at the temple was to ask for a sealed signed permission to ask questions about this commission, and have them answered truthfully, at any temple of the brother gods.
From the temple of the brother gods she went to the Fallen Tower of Arcane Arts. It used to be an upright tower and then, it fell over. Most people would have demolished it and rebuilt. The wizards, sorcerers, mages, and other assorted magic users of their Guild had bought the land the tower had fallen on, and then reconstructed the tower as a horizontal building. They probably wanted to avoid further falling over instances and Finmauw thought they'd probably achieved that. At some point a tiled roof had been added along the length of the building and windows opened out of the new space directly under the roof. Public entrance was through a foyer in what had been the ground floor. On the right side of that lay a closed door that led to the section that had been built over the original foundations and cellars. The door looked like it had been built to contain explosions and whatever else magical research might result in. To the left was the door that led to the Guild library and offices. A gated stairway at the back of the room led to the second and third floor where, as Finmauw knew from the year she had studied here, there were classrooms, offices, and an emergency dormitory.
Today the desk was manned by Rudgar, a former apprentice whose master in indentures had misdrawn an element of a summoning protection circle. Rudgar's outer circle of protection had been perfect, and he had had the sense to flee for help, but seeing the eldritchly animated body of his master had not been good for him, or any of the rescuers. Rudgar's work in the Fallen Tower involved him with real people who moved in normal ways and spoke in their own voices. One day he might do magic again. Today he greeted her with, "Finmauw, how are you? Alladel's not back yet. Do you want to leave another message?"
Finmauw smiled back. "I am well, thank you. And yourself?"
"Keeping up." He continued, "So, are you here about Alladel or about something else?"
"It is Alladel, actually." She became serious. "I've been commissioned to find one of the other members of her party and I came to ask if she came here before they left and said or did anything that might give me some idea of where they were going. My other question is whether she's communicated with the Guild since she left, or if someone has mentioned seeing her."
"I see." Rudgar was serious now too. "If you could take a seat, I'll make some enquiries."
Finmauw sat on one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs clustered around the foyer and waited.
It was interesting the number of people who came to the Fallen Tower in the space of an hour, and Finmauw got to see them all. A class's worth of eight year olds arrived separately and went up the stairs either singly or with such of their fellows that had arrived at the same time. Three people came to leave small stacks of handbills announcing the delights of various entertainments. Five Guild members came in to collect their mail. Two children came in with a litter of kittens, offering them up to become familiars instead of being put down by drowning. A baker's lad brought in a basket of bread rolls, and was paid for the order. The bread rolls were collected by someone who came from the left hand side door. Someone else came from the same door and took the children and the kittens back the same way with them. Finally, a sensibly clad mage came to fetch Finmauw back to their office in the library.
Master Locksley had been the librarian in the Fallen Tower when Finmauw and Alladel had been seven year olds attending the basic common classes in the rooms upstairs. Alladel had been properly apprenticed to a mage of good repute, her family's connections used for good purposes, while Finmauw had lived with far looser tutorial supervision in the Adventurer's Guild. Master Locksley had introduced all of them to both research skills and the idea that one's hands should be clean when using books. Today he didn't seem much older to Finmauw than he had back then. He offered her a seat, leaned back in his own chair and said, "I'm glad that someone has started looking into this group's whereabouts. One doesn't like to appear to cast aspersions on a colleague's competence, but you are all still very young."
"I am glad to have the excuse to go looking," Finmauw admitted. "Do you have any clues as to where they might have been going or what they might have been expecting to face? I suspect that I won't be able to get much of our Assignments Master's time when I go to talk to him about this, so I'd like to be able to really make my questions count - particularly if there's a confidentiality bond in place."
"Ah." Master Locksley seemed to be thinking, hands templed across his midriff. "I can't find that Alladel researched anything for this assignment before she set off. Our commissariat gave me a list of her purchases," he leaned forward, picked up a page from his desk, and passed it over to Finmauw. "It looks like a standard restocking of useful items to me. Except for the beef chews. Of course, she could have made other purchases, elsewhere."
"She could," agreed Finmauw. "The beef chews don't surprise me - she eats those the way the rest of us eat sweets."
"That brings us to my other concern," replied Master Locksley. "Alladel is an extremely...exotic young woman. She is one of the only two cat-human hybrids that I know of in existence. There are persons who like to collect exotic people - the reasons vary but collecting sentients will always be a morally dubious activity. It is possible that she and her companions have fallen foul of an opportunistic collector or supplier to collectors. It may not be likely, although I know there have been feelers in her direction in the past, but it is worth keeping in mind."
Finmauw considered what he'd said, and answered, "I am going to have to try and contact her counterpart, aren't I? Or her associates if she won't talk to me. In case someone in particular has been nosing around lately. Or," she added as an idea occurred to her, "in case Alladel has returned to the city and is keeping out of sight in an area where people will expect to see a cat girl."
"Indeed." Master Locksley raised his eyebrows. "That was something I hadn't thought of. Are you quite sure we can't tempt you back into the study of magic? I know that you never managed to move beyond the simplest spells, but I'm sure you'd be an excellent researcher. It can pay quite well, you know, and I know that you know how to treat books properly."
She smiled back at him. "Thank you. I may come to consider it, but at the moment this is the matter on my mind. Thank you for your time today, Master Locksley."
They stood and made their farewells as he escorted her back to the Fallen Tower's foyer.
From there, Finmauw headed towards the regular haunt of her contact within the thieves' kitchen of Gallowsshadow where her friend, Skeith the licensed property reclaimer, as he liked to style himself, lived and had most of his personal contacts. She needed to talk to those contacts and ask them the questions she'd been asking everyone else, but now she needed try and get the name of someone to talk to in the organisation of thieves and associated trades that Morgasmerrin Straun ran in the northern part of the city. One Straun or another had been running an organisation up there for at least a generation and no-one Finmauw knew had direct contacts with them. However, when a young Alladel had managed to swap minds with her intended familiar, and the startled, frightened cat had run off with Alladel's original body, she had wound up with the Strauns. Because of something, something, proprioceptive morphic fields (the only phrase in a long winded explanation that had made any sense to Finmauw) both bodies had changed into a hybrid human-cat form. There had originally been talk of switching their minds back, but the change had been in place for over a decade now. Alladel had said that her counterpart had always refused a meeting, but now Finmauw was going to try and change her mind.