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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Universe" data-source="post: 2373611" data-attributes="member: 8944">Chapter 2 - Salvation L’Aurel of Greenwood  They’d spent the better part of two days languishing in the dirty cell beneath Thanesport’s City Watch. They’d had a few itinerant companions – mostly thieves and drunks, but by and large they’d had only themselves (and the rats) to dull the monotonous boredom of the cramped, barred room.  She had expected a warmer reception when the alarm bells brought the city watch to the docks that night, but that had proven extraordinarily naïve. Thanesport’s harbor may have been assaulted by the living dead, and the members assigned to no less than a dozen of its watchposts may have been slaughtered. There may have been multiple sightings of bizarre lizardmen throughout the city that night, and there may have been panic and riots in the streets that still had not completely abated.  There may have been any and all of those things. But there was also a fired steeldrake cannon, two sunken ships, and uncounted dead bodies along the harbor. Unfortunately, all were in close proximity to a half-dozen armed and armored civilians when the city watch arrived. Efforts to explain the situation had been less than successful thus far; their heroism eclipsed by the uncaring law. She hated cities. This would never have happened in Greenwood.  And so for two days they had subsisted on gruel and water, regaling each other with tales of each other’s pasts—discussion eventually devolving into ever more elaborate games of “scissors, rock, paper.” Kaereth had stopped playing with an angry cry almost three hours before, furious that the others could not admit that rock was clearly superior (“better for smashing,” she believed he had said) to scissors or paper in any concievable situation. An Apectan priest had stopped by the cell the night before, clucking in disapproval at finding a warrior dedicated to his order locked away. He had emphatically denied that anyone so dedicated to the Light could have had anything to do with the “false alarms” that had echoed through the city. L’Aurel thought he was going to vomit when she learned that the alarm bells had been rung at the young paladin’s request. After a heated discussion in which Justice had threatened to unman the arrogant priest, he had left in a huff, his paling features clearly relieved that iron bars separated the beautiful warrior from her blades and him.  And so it was – a seeming eternity of waiting, locked away from the wind and sun that had been L’Aurel’s most constant companions. This was not how she had anticipated ending her journey of discovery – she just prayed that when they finally decided to execute them, they’d do it outside.  A metallic clang against the bars shook her free of her gloomy thoughts, and it took only a moment for her eyes to adjust to the almost-absent light below the city watch. Behind her, Justice squinted into the darkness, her own eyes unable to pierce the shadows. “Who’s there?” the paladin called, pulling her long legs out from under her, bracing against the bars to stand. “Big noise for a rat,” Edriss muttered darkly. He and Selura had traded words the night before, as privately as the cell had allowed. The others had tried to give the two as much seclusion as their cramped quarters permitted, and had actively attempted to ignore whatever words passed between the two, who were obviously well acquainted with each other. The dwarf, the oldest of them, had simply shrugged as the argument ended. Lovers spat? he had mouthed hours before, speculating at the cause of the anger that crossed between them.  They had remained quiet, though their anger had been almost palpable. Whatever the argument, Selura seemed to have won, and Edriss’s comments had become increasingly sullen as time had passed.   A deep voice emanated from beyond the cell’s bars, the hint of a smile evident in the man’s clipped, professional tone. “I must take issue with your characterization, young man. This rat may well have saved your life – all of your lives, in fact.”   The smile was contagious. L’Aurel could see the tall, aging man standing before her, hands clasped behind his back in what almost seemed a parody of military discipline, her clear vision even in this low and dying light part of her mother’s heritage. Dark eyebrows stood out beneath a thinning, gray mop of hair, and the rumpled blue and gold uniform of the Thanesport City Watch hung loosely on his broad shoulders, tightening around a slightly paunched middle. He squinted into the darkness of the cell just as Justice squinted out. Human.   “Now,” he continued, the quirk in his lips disappearing as if it had never existed, “I’d like to go over the events of a few nights ago one last time…If you don’t mind, of course.”  Stunned, they answered him only with silence.  They'd already been questioned a dozen times - what mroe could he want? He frowned. “I can return tomorrow if you have a pressing appointment…” he finished, turning as if to tread back up the distant narrow stairway that separated this hole from the rest of the Watch headquarters.  “No!” they called in unison, desperate to keep whatever contact with the outside would that this man would allow.   “Very well,” he answered, once more clasping his hands behind his back. Unlike the others, he had no parchment. This was not a routine set of questioning.   He began without preamble, heaving his slight frame onto an unlit desk near the bars, “You are of course aware that no ‘large, man-shape reptiles’ have been found in or near the harbor?”  “So we’ve been told,” Justice growled from behind her, her lack of patience bleeding into her voice.   Ignoring her comment, the man pressed on, “and you are aware that even touching a steeldrake, cannon or otherwise, without leave from the Crown is a capital offense?”  None of them answered. Their next words would likely seal their deaths. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course you are. Everyone is,” he said, pausing to draw a pipe from somewhere in his rumpled jacket. “Now, ah…Mistress Fairweather?” he said, his voice only slightly muffled by the pipe hanging casually from his lips, “You’re a member of the Apectan Order, I’ve been told. That’s correct?” She grunted an affirmative, sliding down onto her haunches. “What of it?”  “Simply that your order does have a charter to train and employ draconeteers. I don’t believe that you personally possess a related dispensation, but that may have been merely an error in paperwork, or perhaps due to the action of one of our unfortunately numerous cutpurses?” he said, light flaring from a drakestwig cupped in the palm of one his hands, rising just enough to illuminate his face before settling into carved wood of the pipe.   They answered him with silence, and he continued unabated, “So, of course, it may have been that the use of a steeldrake cannon was not as damningly illegal as it would have immediately appeared to this particular arm of His Majesty’s Watch,” he paused, finally, allowing the significance of his words to reach them. L’Aurel sighed quietly – freedom waved in front of their faces by this undoubtedly cruel man, a phantom chance at release dancing before her eyes. She knew, knew that he’d soon reveal that sentence had already been passed on them. She expected the hangman to come measure them for nooses before another day had passed.   “Unfortunately, I have several reports from other officers at this station that report that the steeldrake was not fired by you, Mistress Fairweather, though you were incarcerated at the scene.” He was still going. She prayed to her ancestors that this mockery would end soon. “Could it have been that they misheard your statements? Mightn’t it?”   Justice stood, smiling, as L’Aurel buried her long, unpretty face in her hands. The fool girl was providing even more entertainment for this unfeeling bastard. “It might have been. Things were happening so quickly, there were so many people around, so many creatures. I fired the steeldrake.”  “You’ll swear to that?” the older man asked from across the iron bars. “If you’re lying to me, I’m sure your order will be less than pleased – even less less-than-pleased than they are now, having one of their recent devotees languishing in a lightless cell.”   She grimaced, but continued, “If I’m lying to you now, may the Light strike me down by His own hand!” she called, slowly squaring her slender shoulders to face the flickering light of the officer’s pipe.  As her words echoed through the largely empty jail, they were answered by a sudden crack of sound, as if the thunder of the heavens had all crashed into the wretched dampness beneath the streets of Thanesport. Justice fell to her knees, her arms covering her head and neck at the first hint of sound. L’Aurel was ashamed to find that she, too had dived for cover. She returned a furtive gaze to the officer, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he had not been replaced by some avenging angel.  Acrid smoke from a half-concealed steeldrake mingled with the grandfatherly aroma of the pipe, and the old man chuckled mildly to himself as he reholstered the pistol. Justice slowly rose, shocked and relieved to find that the Light had not chosen to fulfill the terms of her oath. “You’re going to have to get a lot better at lying than that if you’re going to survive what I have planned for you,” he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement in the pipe’s light. “Anyway, you’re free to go.” Standing, he fumbled at his belt for a set of keys, his fingers settling quickly on one that seemed indistinguishable to L’Aurel from the rest on the ring. It slid easily into the lock that held their cell door closed, and the door swung outward noisily on ungreased and rusted hinges. Stunned, they remained within the bounds of the cell. L’Aurel spoke, echoing the sentiment she imagined the rest of them were feeling, “What!?” “You’re free,” he answered simply, motioning them out of the cell. “Well,” he amended, “not precisely, entirely free – but free of this cell at least. Come on. Get out of there – I’ll get you food, water, and then I’ll give you the terms of your release.” Arfin spoke this time, “But why?” A deep, resonant basso echoed from the shadow of the earthen stairwell. “Because I vouched for you.”  The voice was familiar, and soon its bearer stepped into the glow of the officer’s pipe. A long mustache curved around smiling lips; a humorless laugh (tinged with madness, L’Aurel would later conclude) spilled from his narrow mouth. John Darkson – the captain from the Rusty Scabbard. The one who’d told them about pirates. “Good luck to all of you. All of you,” he continued, his pale gaze settling first on Edriss, and then Selura. “The Captain and I have been friends for some time, and I thought he might have a use for a few people condemned to die. You live by his whim, and incidentally by mine.” “You should thank me,” he said, his tone suddenly serious, all traces of a smile gone from his lips as if it had never been. “I’ve done you a great service, though you’ve done a great service for Thanesport, and the Falcon Kingdom, the law leaves us unable to recognize it. I have little doubt that without you sinking that ship and raising the alarm, this city would nothing but cinders and refugees. Had either one failed…” he mused, his lips twisting into an angry grimace.  It disappeared as quickly as the smile had; the gravity his voice had gathered reforming itself into whatever passed for levity with the man. “But I have little doubt that the dangers to Thanesport, and the rest of the kingdom, have only just begun to show themselves. Even now, the enemies of the Crown are altering their plans, preparing new ways to attack.” The watch officer cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to him, apparently less than comfortable with Darkson’s dire tidings. “Yes, well – that’s precisely why we’ve freed you. This attack may not be an isolated event, and I can’t spare the manpower to investigate all that I would. Since your lives depend on Captain Darkson’s willingness to align his own testimony with your own perjury, and upon my own readiness to lie on your collective behalf, you work for me, now.”  The old man’s soft, kind features hardened into something that was almost threatening as they treaded up the stairs, back into the light of the day. “And the moment I suspect any of you of doing anything other than what you’re told, I’ll have you on the gallows before you can blink. Understood?” He didn’t wait for their assent. L’Aurel mused, just for a moment, that he didn’t have to.  This was not what she had expected. </blockquote>

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