The Boss, Part I
Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:52 pm
36th Day of Ash, 122nd Year of the Age of Steel
“I won’t lie to you.” Sabrione said, arms crossed in front of her as she leaned against the dungeon wall. She faced one of the cells in which a nervous and battered looking half-hatori stood. Alsariph hadn’t handled his captivity well. His hair was a mess and his face slick with tears. Masagh found he pitied the man, surprisingly. He might be a bumbling fool, but he hadn’t really meant them any harm. An opportunity had presented itself to him, and he had taken it. His dull wit was no match for the ambition of Temishi, Masagh guessed. “The chance of you making it out of here alive is not high. But perhaps if you give us the information we need, you can survive.”
They had returned last night cold and wet. Sabrione had received lacerations along her arms and shoulders for the pact price of her aether expenditure. Temishi the sea captain had escaped them, though most of her crew and her ship were suck to the bottom of the bay. They had let Alsariph worry himself in to a panic, hungry and cold in his cell. Now Sabrione and the knights were in the dungeon, ready to wring some answers from the man.
“I’ll tell you anything! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” Alsariph said. “I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know! I don’t want anything to do with whatever this is and I will never tell another soul anything about it.” The words escaped from his mouth, stumbling over each other in his eagerness to get them out.
Cleon gave a cruel laugh from where he stood with the small cudgel.
Sabrione waved the knight off and turned back to the elf with cruelty in her eyes. “The Ork Temishi escaped our blades, but had lost her ship. Where will she go in the city?” She asked.
For a moment his face was oddly blank, then surprised flooded Alsariph’s face. His eyes darted over the assembled knights outside his cell. They were as different from him as a person could be. He was dressed in finely embroidered silk and satin, they in dyed dark leathers and wool and brigandine ragged with wear and age. Where his eyes and hair were bright and vibrant, theirs were dark and sapped of life. And they wore death about them like a silent promise.
“I’m not sure, but I can tell you where we’ve met before.” He said, fidgeting with his coat. “My manse for one. On the Southside of Gel’Grandal… Are we still in Gel’Grandal?” His gaze shifted between them.
“You’re friends must think you clever, Alsariph Aistmar.” Sabrione said, her words flat and cold. “Where is this mansion in the Southside?”
Alsariph looked sheepish and smiled faintly. “Apologies. It is Thirty-three Goldwrought Rd, just near the Imperial Plaza.” His boast landed flatly amongst the ghouls and he frowned at that. Apparently he had expected Masagh and the other grave born to weigh his superficial social status as heavily as the gentry of the living.
“Where else, you said there were more?” Sabrione asked.
“The Jade Fox, a poetry saloon along the beachfront in the Southside.” Alsariph said.
“From what we saw of her, that doesn’t really sound like her scene, Aistmar.” Masagh said, stepping forward and wrapping fingers around the bars of the man’s cell. He peered in at him, willing the truth to make itself known on the man’s face. There was something about his oily, perfumed elitism that Masagh didn’t like.
He himself was amongst the most elite of ghoulish bloodlines left to the world. Yet their privilege came with a strict duty and sense of responsibility. He could not see any of his siblings thriving in the easy entitlement of Aistmar.
“Ah well, I could hardly be seen cavorting with sailors in the slums too often could I? What would my clientele think?” He touched a soft and long fingered hand to the ruff on his chest. “Besides, we hardly ever met there anyway, she was always more comfortable, ah, giving me my orders at my place. The only other place was the warehouse that you burned down.” He said the last with an accusing note in his voice. “Took me seasons to set aside the funds for that place. No matter, the insurance will probably cover it…”
“Shut up.” Sabrione said. “Where’s this Jade Fox place?”
“I told you, the beachfront! But not on the eastern promenade, too many social climbers.” Alsariph frowned in mild disgust and shook his hands like he was flinging something from them. Masagh ground his teeth. It had been a long time since he had wanted to feed someone to the menagerie, but he did now.
“So west promenade.” Sabrione touched a fist to her lips in thought. “You sit your perfumed ass right there. If I come back with more than I left with you get to live another day. Otherwise Cleon here will be seeing how long you can watch your own entrails spill out on the floor before you die.” She warned, a wild smile creeping across her face.
Alsariph said nothing, his mouth going agape. He took a small step back and held his hands before him protectively. Sabrione stared at him a long moment before turning on her heel to exit the Creth dungeon.
“Come on, knights.” She barked. The Creth Knights fell into step behind her.
Back in the Entrance Hall they all gathered around her. “We’ve bit off a lot with this one, I won’t lie. This Temishi is a pain in my ass. What started as a bit of light sabotage is now a full blown hunt. We need that woman dead, then the elf goes.” She gazed around at them all, eyes sharp. She waited until they had all grasped the weight of the situation.
“Masagh, you are going to scout this elf’s mansion.” Sabrione said, turning abruptly to him. “Go in one of your shapes and fly around, see what you can see. The rest of us will go to the Jade Fox, I think he might be trying to pull a fast one on us.”
Masagh nodded with the rest. They all prepared their kit for a night raid. Masagh used the necrotic edge whetstone in his pack to hone the edge of his pact blade. The stone was an ancient Creth practice, designed to give an extra edge in a fight. Coating the blade in necrotic curse essence, it ensured that even if an enemy walked away from the fight, they would suffer on. He may need whatever edge he could get tonight.
When all were ready they moved out of the sunken entrance to the Compound and into the mausoleum above. Their war band of knights passed the few maligners and their disguised minions without a word, minds lost on the duties of the night. There was a rift between the Maligners and the Knights on the best days, but they did not try to impede their progress. Perhaps they saw something dark in Sabrione’s face as she lead her killers out into the garden graveyard beyond. As Masagh stepped out into the open night he could not help but feel a sense of trepidation.
Something about Alsariph did not quite sit well with him. He didn’t like leaving the man in the Creth Compound with all the knights gone. He knew Arthur, Cyran and the Bonecasters could defend the place suitably well though. He tried to take comfort in that. And all the gods and dragons help the one who crossed Emerande Creth.
They spread out in the graveyard. Masagh took out the pterincus totem and held it in his fist. Sabrione and the others watched his transformation into the small reptilian flyer. His body shrank and his dead, pale skin turned to leather. After a few moments the pterincus was folding its wings amidst the towering figures of the knights. Sabrione knelt down and tapped his beak gently.
“Just get over there and see what you can find, no heroics.” She said. “We’ve rolled the dice enough this season on that sort of thing…”
Masagh dipped his small, beaked head. Then he turned and beat his wings into the space Sabrione stepped back to make for him. There was a rush of wind in his ears and a swirling of air and he was aloft. The tiny pterincus, decayed and gaunt, beat its wings like a macabre bat towards the city proper. He hurried, expending energy where he might have taking a more leisurely pace on another night. The longer Temishi walked the city unchecked, the more danger they were in. He took comfort in the fact that she had no way to know who they were or where they would be.
The Creth House had been a shadow of a presence in the city for hundreds of years. This season had already seen more bloodshed and risk than the average, but Sabrione and the knights had worked hard to snuff out any involved. They had left bodies all over the city, but Masagh was confident safety had been maintained.
It does not matter how bloody a path you leave, if you leave none to follow it.
This was different though. Temishi had proven a strong adversary, slippery enough to escape them on the water. And there was Alsariph, the pompous fool in their dungeon. Masagh’s mind was clouded with these two when he eventually came to the right neighborhood.
The wide roadway and shrub-lined walkways bespoke of a high class neighborhood. You could always tell the opulence of a neighborhood by how much space was between their roadways and houses. You wouldn’t find flora-lined streets and decorative property fences deep in the Northside. It was a long half hour of swooping down and checking street signs and house numbers before he found the correct street.
Alsariph’s claimed mansion was one of the most modest on the street, although still impressive. The house rose to a second story and made a C shape around a courtyard complete with a fountain. A glow shone through the high, paned windows of the first floor. Someone was home.
Masagh flew down and glided onto the fountain, perching on the lip of the second tier. He stared into what appeared to be the lounge or library of the home. He saw movement there but could not make out the forms, though his infrared vision made them stand out bright against the windows. Masagh hopped down and shuffled forward.
His tiny pterincus form was not tall enough to see in the window. Voices murmured above him, inside the room. Masagh invoked his Animus rune, mind twining the pterincus with the cobra. He felt the shifting form move within him. The beak receded and his neck elongated. The forked tongue flicked the night air and Masagh found his pterincus had a cobra head and neck now.
Hissing softly he slunk the new extended neck up the wall. He peered into the room and what he saw made his heart leap.
Temishi stood there with her hands on her hips. She was facing two men in brigandine armor and patchwork iron, mercenaries of some sort. They each carried a longsword.
“Look I told you I don’t know where the boss is.” Temishi was saying. “I just run the ship, ran the ship.” She reached up and tugged at the braid of her hair, agitated. So there was someone above Temishi?
“What if he’s dead?” A gravel tone.
“He isn’t, he’s quite slippery.” Temishi said. “Besides I checked the warehouse after they sank the ship. Ramiro and Thalen were dead but the boss was missing.”
The boss was missing? Masagh felt his gut drop out of him. Alsariph. The boss must be Alsariph. But Temishi was talking as though he was the leader and she the lieutenant.
“If they burned the warehouse they could have taken him.”
“No, if they did they don’t know the pit viper they have in their hands. He will escape and make contact. Besides I don’t have any idea where they might have him.”
“Shoo! Shoo!” A broomstick rapt Masagh on the head and all the heads jerked to look. He shrunk back and turned his snake head to look. An old woman in servant’s garb stood before him wielding a broom like a spear. “Be gone wit ya!” She screeched at him. “Nasty half-starved ting.”
Masagh made to waddle away on his short legs. Be fore he could make it more then three steps there was a creaking and a tight fist gripped him around the back of the head. He hissed and flapped his wings hard.
“Don’t touch it, mister. Whatever it is must be diseased!” The old woman said, still brandishing her broom.
One of the armored mercenaries was turning Masagh’s chimera form in his hand and frowning in disgust. “It looks more than half dead, some kind of hell spawn. Look at this.”
Temishi and the other approached the open window. Masagh felt the panic rising in him and he beat his wings against the man’s grip with all his strength. He saw Temishi’s eyes narrow.
“Not half-dead, undead. Fherran, kill that thing!” She spat, eyes widening and hand going to her saber.