Goodberry and Grave Matters
At the Honest Hem, Nys’s mother returned with glasses of sparkling Graggle Goodberry tonic. Fel’gram accepted one and fell quiet as he watched her move happily about the room. Nys noticed. Whatever else the party hoped to change in Rosenhall, this was what she wanted to protect: her family, their home, and the ordinary pleasures of a city no longer afraid to go outside after dark.
The Taimavar had already called her a blood traitor and threatened her children. They could not be allowed to establish themselves in the Cove. Fel’gram agreed that someone needed to speak with the Duke. Nys thought he had the manner for it, though he credited his charm and perfume rather than any political skill.
Fern still intended to see Saedor Argenwen’del. He did not want another meeting with the ambassador, but he owed him an answer. Nys refused to let him go alone. She had heard what happened when Fern accepted Saedor’s hospitality in Dunedrift: a caravan of elves murdered, their bodies buried beneath magically hardened ground, and Fern left alive to remember it. Behzad had marked the grave before they departed. Fern meant to return and expose it.
Fel’gram offered to accompany them. First, he needed equipment. The party crossed the street to the Traveling Imp.
The Cost of Staying Alive
Mezer Dread greeted Fern beneath the store’s floating displays of rings and enchanted objects. He tipped his wide-brimmed hat to the new customer. Felgram introduced himself as a bard joining an unusually dangerous group of adventurers; Mezer considered that the first mistake.
The governor’s traveling clothes were unlikely to help against the next monster. Mezer recommended a mithral breastplate, then found a pair of gauntlets for a man who admitted he could use more strength. Felgram bought both. An enchanted mandolin offered spells he could use to support the party, though its price exceeded what remained in his purse. Nys lent him the difference. He left better protected and with considerably more magic at hand.
Nys had an errand of her own. Across from the site of Councilman Westmere’s murder stood a tattoo parlor with blacked-out windows and painted walls. One artist, a white dragonborn, had colored his scales like stained glass. When light passed over him, the colors joined on the floor to form the image of Bahamut. The other, a drow, bore a dragon that wound along his arms and back before disappearing into his hairline.
Nys asked for a raven across her shoulder and chest, its beak reaching toward her heart. She wanted the design to hold Find Familiar. The drow could make a one-use spellwrought tattoo and refill it later, or create a living tattoo whose magic would endure. To demonstrate, he drew the dragon from his skin into his hands and breathed magic through its open mouths.
Nys chose the living work. She had survived the Mincer twice and intended to keep a raven at her side. There was one complication: the Duke had yet to pay the ten-thousand-gold bounty. The artists promised to be there when she returned with the money.
Afternoon Tea
The party found the Duke at Château Nightfeather, sharing tea, scones, and an enchanted smoking pipe with Saedor. An armored elven guardsman stood nearby. Nys recognized him immediately: her brother, Silas. He greeted his little sister with a smile. Saedor introduced him as a former investigator on the Mincer case whom he had recruited for other work.
The Duke welcomed the heroes who had succeeded where his guard could not. Saedor suggested that he fetch their well-earned bounty, and Nightfeather rose to do it. Watching him leave at the ambassador’s direction, Nys understood which man held the greater influence in the room.
Saedor offered Fern the pipe. Fern declined. Saedor smoked from it himself and asked whether Fern really believed he would try the same trick twice. Fern had come to talk, and he preferred to keep his mind clear.
Saedor praised Fern’s ability to understand shorter-lived peoples. Elves, he said, could look over a thousand years of history like a Rok circling high above the land. Those who lived beneath them had to scramble like rats, fighting for each meal. Fern had spent enough time among them to understand how they thought. Saedor considered that a gift.
Fern had considered Saedor’s offer. He would not take it. He intended to oppose the Taimavar and the slaughter they carried out in the name of elven survival.
Saedor was disappointed, but hardly surprised. A dead Emperor and a ruler installed overnight would not make a stable government, he argued. People who fought and died for a banner would give its eventual ruler a claim to their loyalty. Fern agreed that a swift victory alone would not settle what came afterward. Saedor asked what Fern intended to do after victory. An Emperor might fall, a crowd might cheer, and a new ruler might sit on the throne. What, then, would Fern actually want? Fern spoke of stopping the Taimavar and saving those they hunted. Saedor listened and gave him his own answer.
War was good for business.
Saedor claimed the Taimavar had supplied the intelligence that brought the party to Crackjaw and had placed Alyviel where she could influence what happened there. If Fern and the Prophet began a serious rebellion, the Crown would need more soldiers. It could nationalize the Taimavar’s defense contract, pay them for a long conflict, and give them room to take people amid the disorder. The money could carry their work far beyond Rosenhall.
Fern could defeat his men if he liked. Saedor would even let Fern hang him publicly when the war was over. He believed he would return in another life to an Eldamar made stronger by the profits and sacrifices of this one. He offered to leave Rosenhall alone afterward. Fern had no reason to mistake that promise for an end to the Taimavar’s cause elsewhere.
Fern said his group would give the Crown hell. Saedor hoped they would, but he had seen little evidence that the rebellion was ready. The Emperor had nearly moved against the party in Azmar, and Saedor claimed he had kept the Crown focused on the Prophet instead. He could only shield them for so long. Fern insisted their move was coming. Saedor compared the campaign to a chess game in which Fern had spent every turn castling.
Then Saedor named a move the party already possessed. Having the Duke award Garrus Gelentara a posthumous Purple Heart had been his idea. He knew the lie could be used against Nightfeather. He was willing to encourage the Duke to betray the party so they could expose him and turn the Cove against its ruler. Fern listened without committing to Saedor’s proposed arrangement.
Saedor turned his attention to Nys. He congratulated her on ending the Mincer’s killings and spoke of the family she had protected. She remembered their earlier argument about what she had become for love. Saedor believed she had surrendered too much to save people whose souls, in his view, would have returned. Nys saw lives he was willing to discard.
She asked why someone would trade a castle for a small stone. Saedor chose the stone. A castle’s strength lasted only as long as those who held it; a stone thrown into a lake sent ripples across the water long after its thrower was gone.
Before they left, Nys noticed a chessboard set for a new game. Saedor asked whether she played. She had before, she said, and intended to again.
Fern reached the door with one final warning from the ambassador: when the Emperor arrived for the gala, he would name the Prophet public enemy number one.
The Duke returned carrying the bounty. He gave Nys the ten thousand gold and asked whether she had visited her new estate. He hoped she would enjoy a happy, quiet retirement there. The party thanked him and departed. Five days remained before the gala.
A Raven in Gold
Outside the château, the party divided the bounty. Felgram received his share after accounting for the money Nys had lent him. Fern set off with him for the Congregation of Elves, while Nys returned to the tattoo parlor.
The artists marked the outline of her raven in golden Faerie Fire. An animated sewing machine sprang across the design, following the light while the dragonborn breathed frost over her shoulder. By the time the magic settled, golden ink traced the bird from shoulder to heart. The work was permanent, and to Nys’s surprise it had scarcely hurt.
She thanked them, paid for the living tattoo, and crossed the street to return the flame-tongued shortsword Peg Leg George had lent her for the hunt. He was disappointed that she had not needed to carve another mark into its handle. With the Mincer dead, he could finally keep his business open after sunset. Nys promised to remember his trouble obtaining a wine license now that she had some influence with the Duke.
Walking away, she touched the new raven and wished for a friend she could trust. A bird appeared on her shoulder, answered her with a squawk, and rose into the air above the street. Nys watched it circle before continuing on her way.
The Congregation of Elves
White roses had begun to bloom around the Congregation of Elves for the coming festival. Inside, lanterns hung among the branches of a great tree above a clear spring. One side of the cathedral belonged largely to nature and Corellon’s shrine; the other held Sehanine’s observatory and a more orderly altar. Fern looked over the growth around Corellon’s place and made a note to clean it when he found the time.
A displacer beast dropped from the tree and wound itself around his legs. Fern abandoned all composure to scratch and praise it. Archbishop Novakri rose from its shadow to welcome him back, pleased to find him in better condition than when he had last lain upon her altar.
Fern asked to speak privately. Nova opened a confessional in the trunk of the tree and climbed into the adjoining booth. He asked what she knew of the Taimavar.
The Cove’s elven congregations had opposed them for decades. Reports of disappearances followed their caravans elsewhere in the Sapest, and the city’s guard had long denied them entry. Fern told Nova that Saedor Argenwen’del was here, inside the city, and that he had spoken with him that very afternoon.
Nova was alarmed. She would alert the guard, find where the Taimavar were staying, and see them expelled. She recalled that two Dukes had previously favored removing the Taimavar from Rosenhall, only for the Duke of Rosenhall to block the vote. A renewed effort in parliament could challenge their place throughout the realm. Fern thought parliament would take too long. Their presence was part of something larger, and he wanted the people most at risk protected before a confrontation began.
Fern then told her Duke Nightfeather had admitted the Taimavar despite the city’s opposition. Nova was horrified. She had twenty thousand elves in her city and could not gather them in one safe place while a handful of adventurers investigated. This was a matter for the Counting House and the guard. She could call upon the other archbishops and council members. In an emergency, the Counting House could suspend the Duke’s authority. A referendum could order the Taimavar out and empower the guard to remove them if they refused.
Fern warned that the Emperor was coming. He hoped to build a coalition strong enough to oppose him at the gala and beyond it. Nova heard him more clearly then. He had not come solely as a concerned citizen reporting a threat to her congregation. He was organizing against the Crown and asking her to consider the timing of that struggle before acting on the danger in her own city.
She said she would see what could be done in the Counting House. Fern told her he would also contact Titus, the Pontiff of Elves, whom he described as involved in the coalition. Nova had not expected to hear that. Fern left the confessional; she remained inside for a moment longer.
Two Directions
Nys arrived at the cathedral and asked to speak with Nova herself. She had carried anger from their earlier conversation about her rebirth. Did the archbishop see her shadar-kai nature as an affliction? Was she a monstrosity to her own people?
Nova rejected that word, but her church taught that bargaining with an extraplanar power had altered the body Corellon intended for Nys. Nys had called out to him as she died, she said. He had not answered. She had made her choice for love and for the people she feared leaving behind.
Nova told her that love mattered. Nys was not damned. She could still seek Corellon’s forgiveness. Nys wanted more than reassurance. She needed to understand the ancient divines and asked where she might find their histories. The College of Ioun, Nova suggested, would have the books and scholars to help her.
Nys noticed the strain in her voice. Nova said the confession before hers had been a heavy one.
There was another reason Nys had come. She asked Nova to officiate when she and Taurion renewed their vows. Nova would. Nys then asked whether Taurion truly loved her. No one waited so long for a person to return without love, the archbishop said.
Nys knew that. Taurion wanted her home, and part of her wanted to stay. Yet she still had work beyond the Cove and questions she could not abandon. Had Nova ever felt pulled in two directions?
Nova felt that way right now.
Fern knocked on the confessional and called for dinner. Nys came out with more on her mind than when she had entered. Above the cathedral, her new raven circled in the evening light. The Taimavar were in the city, the Emperor was on his way, and Novakri now had choices of her own to make.