Letter Ten

Dear Sneffles,
I think I’m finally getting the hang of adventuring, although stabbing guys to death is still kinda gross. It’s even worse when they’re fungus creatures like we recently encountered. They smelled like the ripe, dead wino you and I found that time behind the arcade, the one whose eye you popped out with your stick.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Amin was the name of Master Orisini’s student who led us to his nearby hovel. It reminded me of the squats where we used to hide out with our little-kid gang—the Band of Gypsies. He told us that the same Red Mantis assassins who had been laying for us had also attacked the Master. The most amazing thing he said was that this part of town was being run by old limp-dick himself, Pilts Swastel! Piltsy styles himself the “King of Old Korvosa.” What a laugh. He’s more weasel than man, at least by habit.

Amin’s place was clean enough and as poorly furnished as you would expect of a student. He had only one moldering old couch that looked like it had been stuffed with rat fur, and a rickety stool made of bamboo that Szechuan immediately sat on and crushed. For his sin we let him sleep on the couch.

In the morning Amin served us groats on which he placed a spell to make them taste like the sweetest ambrosia—three-day-old ambrosia, but ambrosia nonetheless. Finarfin spiked his with zong oil. Anything to keep the little twerp happy, I say. I left munching an apple.

Scream was living in a dump in Laird’s Divide, below the swine pens. The boys decided to bust in the front while I watched the back door. It opened freely on its own, inviting me inside. Expecting to find punk kids or a tramp passed out, I stepped into the dark, musty room, which smelled papery, like a vampire’s armpit after a decade’s sleep. Paintings and drawings were crammed everywhere. I looked a few over trying to appraise their value. He’s a skilled artist for sure with subject so vile that’s it’s bound to be worth a fortune in the decadent circles you favor. I took a few small ones as keepsakes.

In the next room I found that I was not alone. An elf-wench lounged insouciantly against the table, a self-assured smirk on her pretty face. She held a very graceful, very sharp weapon in her hand. Lethal devices hung from her outfit like overripe fruit. Her henna-dyed hair was cut short as a boy’s, hard to get a hand on in a fight. Her tattoos shouted allegiance to Zon-Kuthon, god of pain, torture, and murder. God’s balls she was hot! I paused as she languidly regarded me from my toe to my temple, taking in my snakeskin Boots of Striding, the Starknife at my side, the Keen and Human-bane rapiers framing my package. Her eyes caressed me, gauging my size, my strength, my quickness; seeing past my foppish ways, lingering at my eyes, her knife ramrod straight, pointed towards my liver. All the while she was smiling an invitation and a warning. I dipped like a dowser’s wand, cautiously approaching her.

A loud noise from the front room interrupted our affair. Her smirk widened as the door broke open to reveal a sweating, swearing barbarian, meekly followed by two clerics and a halfling cynic.

Finarfin, of course, immediately started drooling on her ass. For her part she considered him frankly, her tongue flickering meditatively against the blade of her knife, as a butcher contemplates the boar she’s about to slaughter. Finarfin got the message clear enough, scuttling back to his side of the room with a “hidey-ho.” She winked at me as if to say, “I’ll let the minnow go.” Oh, Sneffles, let’s adopt her!

Her name is Laori Vaus. She has also been looking for Scream but has some deeper reasons (although I don’t buy her as an art lover). Finarfin quietly drew my attention to the torn rag of cloth bearing the seal of the Korvosan seneschal that she was carrying. “WTF?” I thought. Since our interests neatly coincided PJ invited her to accompany us on our visit to the new king of Old Korvosa and she readily agreed.

I lagged back as we were leaving to be nearer her and tried to steal a kiss but she was having none of it—although she didn’t seem to mind me trying. Your receiving this letter proves that fact.

I stealthily followed my companions and Laori did the same from her end. (I couldn’t make her out and I was looking for her.) As we approached the “Kastle” we encountered a small squadron of toughs and roustabouts. Szechuan quickly sent more than a few of them to hell while I plucked easy victims from around the edges. Laori proved to be an artist of mayhem, when not blasting huge swaths through our enemies she clearly enjoyed a little one-on-one, inserting her knife slowly, painfully, into her victim, laughing as she watched his reeking bowels falling into the mud. Her violence was unsullied by fear or pride or anger. It was purely a sexual need, although a bit extreme for my taste. We saved a couple of the poor (but lucky) bastards to question.

It soon became obvious that the two were mere patsies, probably signing with King Piltsy for a meal and dry place to sleep. That’s when more of the “king’s” emissaries arrived to palaver a truce and take us right to the heart of the keep, or barn, or whatever it is. (Which was a dumb thing for Piltsy to do but he’s always been a mark.)

The Castle turned out to be a weary little warehouse waiting for the proper time to fall down. King Pilts the first (and last) sat on his improvised throne towering above his gangbangers. A rusted guillotine sat in one corner where a worn-looking gnome was picking over what appeared to be a well-gnawed human forearm.

We let Szechuan handle the negotiations so, of course, things went quickly awry. I sneaked over behind the king’s throne and started climbing. I really wanted to see Piltsy’s face when his droogie from the old neighborhood came crawling over the transom with a razor-keen blade for his throat, but Laori and the boys dispatched the flunkies so quickly that by the time I arrived PJ was bitch-slapping Piltsy like a red-headed stepchild. Where do clerics learn to do such things?

Looking down on the piles of dead I felt sick to my stomach, although I’d certainly done my share of killing. Finarfin was rolling around in the gore like a dog rolls in carrion. I’ve never known anyone who lusted more—for women, for battle, for peeing on his conquered opponents. Where does he get that from?

Laori was trifling with one the few who was still alive, like a well-fed cat with some hapless chipmunk. If I ever make love to this woman it will have to be in an empty room with her clothes outside, after a full cavity search. Even then I’d have only half a chance of making it out alive.

Piltsy was rightly quivering in fear as PJ sat him down too-near a growling Sczechuan, still high with the blood-lust. His royal purple robes were stained shit-brown and smelled as sorry. It took us a few moments to calm him down enough to tell us where he’d stashed the artist, Salvatore Scream.

Scream was less than helpful until he saw Vaus regarding him coolly from the shadows. They know each other. He told us that Orisini had been seeking the seneschal, Neolandus (Squarehead), who had information against the Queen and had gone to the House of Arkona to find him. (Remembering the scrap of cloth she'd been carrying I wondered what Laori knew of his fate.)

The King of Spiders was mentioned but I admit I wasn’t paying much attention at this point for I saw that Laori was preparing to depart. She had what she wanted—Salvatore Scream. For once her voice grew reverent as she described his work as inspired representation of the transcendence found in giving—and taking—pain. Looking at one of his paintings is like seeing through the eyes of god, she said—the badass god, Zon-Kuthon!

We bid her adieu but I followed them out and tried again to steal her kiss. This time she wacked me with the knob-end of her mankiller, smiling the while. Stars whirled brightly through my vision as I felt the earth move. “I’ll see you in hell,” she promised sweetly as Scream leered at me until she brutally yanked his leash tight, pulling him whimpering along behind her.

I watching all the while.

Pray for me loved one,
Cordobles

Paintings from Paradise and Hell, Haywain by Hieronymus Bosch
Finarfin's Twelfth Report is next.