I’ll be the first to admit, I have a healthy aversion both to conflict and to injury, but I try very hard to suppress this when performing my duties, and I think I do a pretty damn good job most of the time. I say this because this particular instance was not my finest hour. I gurgled, I scraped at the liquid and the warm bits it contained, I hopped around in circles spitting and yelling. Finally, a huge hand on my shoulder stopped my gyrations.
“Stew,” said Boog.
“Whuh?” I replied.
“Stew, Marty. It’s stew.” Boog pulled something off my cheek. A large slice of carrot. I stuck out my tongue and licked my face. Salty, but good. Needed something –– maybe more tomatoes.
“Let’s go,” shouted Boog. He vaulted the bar, his staff in one hand. I clambered over it after him.
We needn’t have hurried. As we entered the kitchen, I stumbled over an embroidered boot. We passed the upended stew pot among the other dishes, spoons, and cutlery scattered on the floor. As we neared the tavern’s back door, the floor took on a reddish hue, and we began to see bits of charred flesh and bone mixed with expensive, gaudy shreds of orange and red fabric. The air was smoky and the odor oppressive. We found most of a leg. I felt a bit light-headed, but Boog pressed on undaunted.
On the floor of the kitchen, in the center of a torn and smoking red jacket, lay the pendant Stennis had kept from the mysterious scarred woman. It was clean, untouched, and it no longer danced or screamed. The talisman at the end of the chain was of a strange design – a metal ring containing two symbols. On the right was a moon of beaten silver, and on the left, a sunburst of gold, peeking out from behind the moon.
Boog went over to one side and picked up something. I glanced over and immediately wished I hadn’t. Boog put it down and pulled a few long, brown, oily, curly hairs off his hand. “Looks like we caught him, Marty.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and sighed. This was going to be hard to explain. It’s not every day your prisoner explodes.
2
Bar Examination
It took us several hours to sort out the situation. First off, I ordered everyone to stay at the tavern. Given the recent display of sorcery, the fight, and the unfortunate thunderous demise of Stennis, this was not a popular idea. I wondered if I might suffer either disobedience or bodily harm, until I hit upon the grand scheme of using one of Stennis’ coins to buy a few rounds of ale for the surly patrons. Their resulting inebriation sometimes helped and sometimes hindered our questioning, but the important thing was that the Swan’s inhabitants no longer wanted to rip me limb from limb.
Boog ducked outside and gave a girl a copper to summon the city guard. I wiped off the stew as best I could. While we waited for our support, we questioned the bartender and the regular patrons. With my charming manner and incisive intellect, we made some real progress. It also helped that Boog stood next to me fiddling with his staff.
The bartender was a good source. Sable told us the mysterious sorceress first arrived a week and a half ago. She sought out Stennis right away, on the first night. They didn’t know each other before that night, but they spoke a great deal then and for the next few nights. The bartender didn’t know the woman’s name. Early on, the woman put some silver on deposit to pay for food and drink, enough for a few weeks. She spoke with a northern accent when she spoke at all, and she seemed like a decent person. She worked no magic before tonight. Her drink of choice was Gortian bloodwine, and Sable had tracked some down a few days previously.
An old man with few teeth, a regular at the Swan, said that he’d once heard Stennis call the woman Novara. He also recalled that this Novara frequently wore a pendant like the one Stennis had, which now lay on the bar in front of me. I was a bit reluctant to touch it given its recent history. The old man didn’t think this was the same one Novara had worn. I thought he was probably right, because this matched one of the pieces of jewelry Countess Moriff reported stolen a week earlier. We had more than enough evidence now to place Stennis as the thief, especially after his face had appeared in the Augur’s Pool back at headquarters.
We asked several other patrons but learned little else of interest about Novara. No one recalled Stennis having much money recently, but one serving maid recalled seeing Novara and Stennis conferring the previous night at a table in the back, and she thought she saw Novara push a purse across the table to Stennis at one point. She remembered that Stennis had given her a silver coin as a gratuity at closing time, and she proudly produced the coin, probably more than she made in a week serving the wretched population of the Swan. The trident stamped on the side showed that it was of Gortian origin.
This prompted us to check the contents of Stennis’ pouch, still sitting on the bar. Boog picked it up and rather indelicately dumped its contents on the stew-covered counter. The room quieted a bit, this silence followed by a great deal of whispering. There must have been nearly fifty gold coins there with a number of other lesser ones. Sable's eyes bulged, and the serving maid’s pride at her silver coin seemed to evaporate somewhat. Almost all of the coins bore the Gortian trident, which was quite rare here in Frosthelm.
“Is that a fair price?” asked Boog. “For the jewels?” He glared at the other patrons, hopefully quashing any ideas they had of liberating the treasure.
“Hard to say,” I replied. “From what her ladyship Moriff said, many of them are very rare – black pearls, fire emeralds from Zindis, and a number of other stones and pieces of more sentimental value. They’re worth much more than that on the open market, but they’d be hard to sell. Maybe as stolen goods, this is fair. And who knows what Stennis would take for them?"
Boog grunted and began scooping the coins back into the pouch, apparently oblivious to the muttering and neck craning going on behind him. “I’m guessing this is Stennis’ fee, and that Novara has the jewels. All except the one thing she wanted most.” He gestured at the moon and sun pendant on the bar.
I nodded, chewing my lip. “But why’s the pendant so important to her? What’s it for?”
“Blowing up Stennis?” replied Boog.
“Could be,” I said, remembering how the pendant had glowed and danced after Novara’s departure. Could Novara’s spell have triggered the explosion? “But that can’t be what Novara wanted it for. Neither of them knew we were here, or that we were going to interfere with them. And Novara definitely didn’t want Stennis to keep it.” I rubbed my eyes, still stinging from the smoke and the stew. “Also, why does Novara have one like it? I doubt she wants to explode herself.”
“Well, something had to blow up Stennis. I don’t think it was the food here, though I’m not ruling that out.” Sable glowered at Boog. “And the pendant has to be enchanted – it glowed, and it survived the explosion unharmed.”
I stretched. “What was that business about the chicken?” I wiggled my fingers.
“Chicken?” asked Boog, incredulous.
I signed to him. Chicken is love. You idiot.
Boog slapped his forehead. “Agh. Trap. Set. The trap is set. I forgot the pinkie.” He looked at his traitorous fingers with disgust. “I always get those mixed up.”
There was a commotion at the door, and several armed guards pushed through. I knew the sergeant, Serena Wolfhorn. She wasn’t a pleasant woman, but she’d handle the crowd here with her typical competence. She pushed through the patrons to us.