The Man in the Fountain
Garrus Gelentara staggered backward with an arrow through his neck. He tried to hold the wound closed, but his legs gave way beneath him. His body struck the marble rim of the cathedral fountain and slid into the water. The reliquary Fern had used to lure him there fell after him.
The guards surrounding the square held their positions until Garrus stopped moving. Captain Hreda looked down at the young man they had spent a year hunting, then let out a breath that seemed to belong to the whole Cove.
The Mincer was dead.
From the bare branches above the fountain, a raven opened its wings and flew away.
Fern suggested searching Devilish Silk before the family had time to conceal anything. Hreda raised a hand. The immediate danger was over; from this moment forward, the investigation would have to survive the scrutiny of warrants, reports, and the Duke’s office. Garrus’s grandfather sat on the merchant council. Breaking into his home and business while customers shopped for gala clothes would give a powerful family reason to turn the guard’s victory into a scandal.
Nys offered sworn statements from the witnesses at the fountain. Hreda trusted her, but trust was no substitute for procedure when the dead suspect belonged to one of the Cove’s richest families. He intended to speak with the Duke before going any further. For all his discomfort with how Garrus had died, Hreda admitted that taking him alive might not have held him: with his family’s influence, the young guardsman could have been released before the night was out.
Nys had another concern. She asked Hreda to keep Sindatari’s name out of the report. The truth involved an angel, a murderous scythe, and a piece of armor made to speak by magic. Hreda did not need to be persuaded. A report claiming that an unseen divine being had supplied their evidence would be an invitation for Garrus’s family to challenge everything the guard had done. He would attribute the breakthrough to police work and record the killer’s beliefs as delusions.
Nys disliked how easily the truth disappeared into that account. Hreda reminded her how readily the Dissonant Whispers could turn a case about divine influence into a story about her executing a boy because a god told her to. To most residents of the Cove, magic meant a useful cantrip or a dancing dress in a shop window. A sword that could twist its bearer into a murderer would sound like a convenient explanation for a wrongful death.
She asked him to credit Neptune Ironbreaker, whose response on the night Nys was attacked had kept her alive. Hreda’s face changed. The Duke had dismissed Neptune from the force. When reporters demanded to know why the Mincer had escaped that night, he needed someone to blame, and he chose the commander who had remained at the scene directing the pursuit through sending stones. She had followed procedure. That had made her easy to identify, not easy to defend.
Nearby, Detective Anna Anderson watched the guard gather around Garrus’s body. His grandfather had paid ten thousand gold to put him in their ranks. Anna had spent the last year checking dark alleys while the man’s investment walked beside her in a uniform.
Garrus had wanted to be a hero. The family could buy him a position, Anna said, but the story he wanted had cost the Cove one life after another. Now that they knew his name, she expected to hear a great deal about discretion, the dignity of the bereaved, and the public’s confidence in the guard. Someone might even make a generous donation.
Her report would say what happened. Garrus Gelentara was the Mincer. Ten thousand gold had bought his uniform; they would see what it cost to keep his name out of the papers.
Hreda glanced at the Scythe of Penance and its velvet scabbard at Nys’s side. He did not want a Spellguard technician handling an artifact that might make another Mincer. She could keep it, provided she took it out of his city.
Before the party left the cathedral, Nys put a copper in Avandra’s wishing well. She whispered her thanks, and an apology for the mess at her shrine.
The Last Penny
The bodies at the Last Penny Hotel had barely moved since Fern and the Prophet’s bar fight. Goblins and bugbears lay amid the wreckage of tables while the last of the beer sputtered from the broken keg. The Prophet sat at the bar, hair disheveled, an overflowing tankard still clenched in his hand.
Nys and Fern managed to wake him. He insisted the party had only just begun and objected when they tried to help him stand. Then he took hold of one of the unconscious bugbears. Magic flashed between them. The Prophet straightened, abruptly sober, while the bugbear inherited the drink.
He summoned the party into his demiplane with enthusiasm. Surely the Duke had given them a private island for killing the Mincer. Perhaps they had also secured the key to the city and his pledge to support the rebellion.
They had not yet met with the Duke. Fern instead told him what he had learned: the Taimavar were in the Cove, and the Duke appeared willing to work with them.
The Prophet thought Fern should reveal himself as Corellon and order them to stand down. Fern doubted they would listen. Then kill them, the Prophet replied. Remove the Taimavar and make the Duke understand whom he ought to fear. Fern and Nys refused to turn the city into a slaughterhouse to gain its ruler’s cooperation.
Nys held up a hand. She had not come to ask the Prophet to sit quietly. She had spent the days since their last conversation considering what he had said, and she told him plainly that he had been right. While the party hunted dragons and a murderer, the Lord’s Alliance had kept making moves. They had stopped one in Azmar and Crackjaw. They could not expect to remain safe by delaying every confrontation until they found a bloodless way to win it.
She was ready to help him act. She was also a soldier, raised to understand a battlefield rather than court politics. If the rebellion needed a public figure who could gather support and give its cause legitimacy, they needed someone better suited to the role.
The Prophet knew just such a man. There was a young noble in the Cove, an aspiring adventurer with a powerful family and a future in the Counting House: Garrus Gelentara.
Nys told him Garrus was lying dead in the cathedral fountain.
The Prophet recovered quickly. Behzad had a title, a following, and a reason to oppose the Alliance. Whatever revelation had changed him, the Prophet wondered whether he could remove its effect. He had just moved his own drunkenness into another body. Perhaps Behzad’s madness could be transferred too. When the party questioned that, he proposed changing Behzad’s memory of what he had seen in the well. He could discover that his sovereign wanted him and his sister executed, rally others to his banner, and become the face of a revolution.
Nys did not trust Behzad to remain stable, especially if the magic wore off. The Prophet did not intend to leave him on the throne. If the rebellion needed a martyr before it found a lasting ruler, he could imagine a heroic death on the castle steps and a successor taking up Behzad’s final charge.
That was where Nys drew the line. She would not build a new government on a leader they planned to use and discard. Fern agreed they needed someone, and suggested rallying the people. The Prophet asked him whom they would rally behind. A crowd would need more than Fern’s promise that this was his favorite city in the Sapest.
Fern had another name available: Corellon. He still would not reveal himself to the Taimavar, and the Prophet could see no reason to assume the nobles would be easier to win than the soldiers who worshiped him.
Nys asked for a moment to finish explaining her idea. The Prophet’s patience had worn thin long before she entered the room. He had watched Behzad gain Wolford’s lordship and announce he would give its power back. He had watched the party gain leverage in Azmar without putting it to use. In Dunedrift, after Alliance soldiers tried to take him away, the party demanded that he pay to bring back the men he killed escaping them. Vulmer was dead. The Prophet had inherited the cost of the rebellion and none of the confidence that anyone still meant to fight it.
The gala was five days away. Every lord in the country would be gathered in one place, and he could already hear the answer: wait until they had a leader, wait until the public was ready, wait until the next emergency was over. Nys had gone after the man who killed her. Fable was learning what her scars meant and facing her grandfather. Fern was confronting the truth of Corellon. The Prophet had been asked to stand aside through all of it.
He feared that by the time they were ready, his cause would be the one story too small to matter.
Nys asked to speak. Killing Garrus had not made her feel whole. She had gone looking for justice and found herself angrier, with still more questions about why she had been returned to life. She wanted to make something of that anger. The Taimavar had to be opposed. Their violence against the Prophet’s people was not a distant policy dispute; it was happening now.
The Prophet asked how many of his siblings would die while they debated how to fight without staining their hands. It was a genocide.
Our people, Nys told him. She considered him her brother. She apologized for the time he had spent feeling alone in the cause.
Her answer was a campaign on several fronts. They could confront the Taimavar and expose what they had done while denying the Empire the chance to present itself as the victim. They would need political allies as well as force. Nys knew the Cove and offered to spend the remaining days finding someone with the title and ability to help them carry out that plan.
The Prophet wanted a name. Most of the collaborators he and Vulmer had once relied upon were dead. He did not have a trustworthy noble hidden away who could be summoned at the last moment to save them. Nys could only promise to look.
He heard her out. Then, with little satisfaction, he told them to recruit their noble and speak with the Duke. He sent the party back to the Last Penny without returning alongside them.
The City’s Hero
Bells began to ring over the Cove. Windows opened. Shopkeepers who had learned to close before dusk raised their shutters, and families stepped back into streets they had spent a year surrendering to the Mincer.
Ledger Square filled around the statue of Ondor Sev. Flowers rested beneath the portraits of the dead, and a stage stood before the memorial. The Duke waited with the guard’s senior officers as reporters pushed toward the front of the crowd. A place had been left open beside him for Nys.
She had returned to the Cove uncertain whether the city still had a place for her. Now thousands of its people watched her climb onto the stage.
The Duke kissed her on both cheeks. He had known, he said, that with sufficient motivation she could finish the job.
Then he announced that the Mincer’s reign of terror had ended. The square broke into applause and cries of relief. He praised Captain Hreda, Archbishop Bustomi, the guard, the College of Ioun, Fern, Fable, and Nys for the trap at the cathedral fountain. The College would receive a scholarship in Lorin Merrow’s name, granting a Cove student a place there each year.
Headmaster Wregi received the credit for the Magic Circle. In the audience, Ned stared at the stage in disbelief. It was his spellwork that had made the trap possible.
The reporters wanted to know who had murdered the city’s neighbors. The Duke refused to tell them. Giving the Mincer a name, he said, would glorify him. It would invite imitators and let the desperate make a martyr of a killer. He would die unknown.
Instead, the Duke named the people the city should remember.
For surviving the Mincer twice and helping bring him down, Nys received the Fisherman’s Cross with distinction. It was the Cove’s highest honor, bestowed in that degree only twice before: upon Hreda and Ondor Sev. A great diamond-studded anchor was hung around her neck. With it came the rank of a Lord’s Alliance knight, an estate in Oars Rest, and the ten-thousand-gold bounty. Hreda received another Fisherman’s Cross for his service.
The commander opened a final box. Guardsman Garrus Gelentara, the Duke announced, had died in the confrontation with the Mincer. He awarded the young man a posthumous Purple Heart.
The crowd applauded the murderer a few feet from where he had died. Anna’s question at the fountain had already found its answer.
After the ceremony, the Duke pressed a key into Nys’s hand. It belonged to her new estate. He told her never to speak Garrus Gelentara’s name, nor allow her companions to do so.
A reporter approached Nys as she left the stage. She spoke of the lives the city had lost, the need to honor them, and the work of healing after a year of fear. She credited the College and guard for their help. When the reporter pressed for the Mincer’s final words and the weapon he had carried, Nys left him with the story of the victims rather than the details he wanted.
Ned had his own grievance. Wregi had taken the public credit while the man who had devised the crucial spell stood in the crowd with no mention at all. Nys thanked Ned herself. The party knew whose work had held Garrus in the fountain, even if the Duke did not intend to say it.
Ned turned to introduce the gold dragonborn beside him. The man wore a tailored College uniform and carried a bag overfilled with trinkets gathered around the Cove. He was Ned’s roommate, Fel’gram, the Governor of Moressley.
The Governor of Somewhere
Fel’gram asked them to set the title aside. He had spent so long away from Moressley that he briefly needed reminding of the territory he supposedly governed. Others handled its affairs while he remained at the College of Ioun, waiting to die of an illness that no cleric or wizard had managed to cure.
He covered the explanation with jokes, displayed his collection of little purchases from the city’s shops, and spoke quickly enough that the party struggled to tell when he was serious. His predicament beneath the performance was plain: if he died in a College room, The Alliance would finally be free to install a successor outside of the Altassi bloodline.
Fern wondered aloud what Fel’gram might do if he stopped waiting and exercised the authority his title gave him. Fel’gram considered the idea foolish and asked to hear it anyway. His remaining choices were to read books until he died or attempt something that might let him matter to Moressley while he lived.
Nys offered them somewhere private to talk: the Honest Hem.
They found Taurion repairing the wall Fable had kicked through while rushing to defend Nys. Her mother supervised and promptly offered the guests her salmon and corn stew. Fern volunteered to help with the repairs, took one bite of the stew, and praised its delicate flavors. Taurion escaped to the couch as soon as Fern took the hammer from him.
Fel’gram was familiar to Nys’s mother. She had been making his clothes since he came to the College and expected to have his hunting jacket finished before the end of the week. In her home, his shoulders fell and his voice quieted. The brisk, smiling governor from the square had been another outfit he put on to meet strangers. The stew, unfortunately, required a performance of its own.
Nys told Taurion that Archbishop Novakri had arranged a ceremony for them on Ledger Day. He had expected another announcement that she would soon be leaving. Hearing that she wanted to stand beside him again left him momentarily speechless. Their children would return from Oars Rest that night, and he began imagining a family life in the estate she had just been given.
Being with her was all he had wanted. Nys held him close, though his certainty left her quiet. They had found their way back to each other, and she still had a stolen year to understand, an angel to confront, and a scabbard of knowledge resting at her side.
Taurion asked Fern to be his best man. Fern accepted before Taurion could finish the question, then began arranging a night out now that the Cove’s taverns could stay open after dark. For the first time since Nys came home, the household could make ordinary plans without first accounting for the Mincer.
Nys drew Fel’gram aside.
A Serpent’s Tongue
Away from her mother, Felgram’s jokes thinned. He had been sick since childhood, then kept from Moressley’s affairs while his condition worsened. He knew why the party wanted a governor. He wanted to know what they intended to do with him, and whether joining them might let him serve the people who bore his title.
Nys told him about Behzad. The party had parted ways with him after a disagreement over methods, and without his companions nearby she worried about what he might do. His sister Nasrin was already striking at targets around the Cove from her refuge in the Temple of Tiamat. Fel’gram understood the anger that drove her, but attacks without coordination could injure the very people the rebellion claimed to defend. Nys wanted to meet her.
Fern gave Fel’gram the larger purpose without ceremony. They intended to challenge the Alliance and the Taimavar. They needed a political face, allies with standing, and a way to use the influence they had gathered in the Sapest. Fel’gram listened, intrigued but unwilling to sign himself over to a plan he had not heard.
Nys explained how far the Taimavar had already reached. The Duke had admitted them to the Cove, and their presence had made Behzad’s sister a target. If the gala was where the realm’s rulers gathered, the party had little time to discover what arrangement the Duke had made with them.
They also knew something about the Duke that he could not afford to have printed.
Garrus Gelentara was the Mincer.
Fel’gram recalled the ceremony: the Duke had concealed the killer’s identity, then awarded that same man a Purple Heart before the people he had terrorized. The lie belonged to the Duke now. Nys, newly decorated as the city’s hero, had watched him tell it. Hreda, Bustomi, the College, and the party could speak to the events at the fountain.
Fel’gram advised them to keep the secret for the moment. Published in the Dissonant Whispers, it would wound the Duke once. Held in reserve, it might make him vote, command, and negotiate as the party required. The man who whipped votes in parliament could become the rebellion’s first powerful ally, however unwilling.
Nys saw the use in it. She had no love for threatening people, but the Duke had already shown what he would do with the truth when left to write it himself.
Fern saw the danger. The Duke had welcomed the Taimavar into the city. He might turn to them the moment the party made its demand. Fel’gram argued that the heroes who had just ended the Mincer’s reign were also dangerous people to cross. The Duke would have to judge which threat was closest and what his reputation was worth. If they exposed him before asking for anything, that choice would no longer be theirs to offer.
Nys looked beyond a single vote. The Cove held the money, institutions, and public attention of the Sapest. If the party could make it a place from which to reach the other cities, all the influence they had gathered might finally have a direction. Fel’gram offered the political skill to approach its ruler. Fern knew how much of their path through Azmar, Wolford, and Dunedrift had led to this point.
They had not settled what they would demand of the Duke. They had found a secret he feared, a governor willing to discuss their cause, and a city ready to believe in its heroes.
They had five days to execute their plan.