I don’t know where to begin, things have changed so completely. We’ve chased the Queen from her lair, I’ve been offered a new job, and Finarfin has had quite a change of heart.
But let’s begin at the beginning.
Poring over the maps of the castle we’d obtained from Sabina, PJ came up with the clever idea of using his wind walk spell to invade the castle’s sewers, rather than floating over its walls. You see, wind walk turns flesh into a cloud-like mist that can take to the sky, or in this case, pass through the plumbing.
Vimanda’s crew, we hoped, would create a diversion by drawing the Gray Maidens from the castle. Once the gate was open, Kroft’s and Sabina’s forces could complete a frontal assault on the castle, gaining entry and routing the Red Mantis who occupied the castle.
With this decided the group, running on nervous energy, started squabbling like hungry siblings and I took my leave to get some rest and write you, dear girl.
In the morning I was awoken before the others with word that a messenger had arrived for me from the Thieves' Guild. Figuring they wanted back dues I dressed in my most ragged gear, leaving all my most expensive bling well-hidden in the boneyard. As a point of honor I kept my Starknife. To my surprise the messenger was none other than underboss Boskus Rey, natty in his blue uniform. You probably remember him as one of those who claimed your cherry the summer you sold it so many times over.
He was quite unctuous, a man who had kicked me to the curb more than once when I was a youngster. Taking him to a quiet alcove I asked the attending acolyte to bring us coffee. While he was gone I inquired as to what Boskus wanted with me and to my absolute amazement he offered me the position of Guildmaster of the Cerulean Society! Apparently Guildemaster Boule has succumbed to Blood Veil and the factions in the thieves’ guild can not agree on whom to make their new master. So they decided to ask me, someone neutral, a hero, and one of their own. And if I'm a bit naive, all the better. Of course, Boskus didn’t say that last thing but he was thinking it.
I was still sitting in stunned silence when the boy returned with our coffee and I absently donated one gp to their donations box before dismissing him.
“I cannot refuse this honor,” I finally told Rey. “But I still have to finish what I’ve started here.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “We expected nothing else. Scragg and Frogleggy are watching over the organization right now.”
“And who’s watching over them?” I laughed and, thankfully, he joined me. “I suppose you wouldn’t be averse to keeping an eye out for my interests?”
“Of course, Guildmaster.” He bowed and would have kissed my ring if I hadn’t hidden it before coming down to meet him.
Quietly, he ran over a list of his most trusted mates and I suggested a few droogies of my own to help them out. We parted with some understanding of what must be done. Oh Sneffles, this is not exactly what I wanted for us but that a bastard son of Gaedrun Lamm could rise to be crime lord of all Korvosa is Desna’s plan for me—Desna’s plan for us—and we dare not refuse her.
Returning to our quarters I saw the boys were up and that another heroes' feast was being prepared before our assault on the castle. As we ate I thought about you, my love. Prayed that that fool you're married to has taken you from the city, or at least barred the door.
Once Vimanda’s diversion was set in motion we made it to the castle. PJ cast his spell and we dissolved into warm mist, a vague eerie feeling. Being somewhat claustrophobic, I kept my eyes closed as we bumped over the rank sewage and were eventually decanted into a room beside the grand staircase. Gathering our wits, and with some trepidation, we carefully inched upward. It was surprisingly quiet. With no one to deny us we marched (me invisible) straight into the throne room, its galleries—usually crowded with petitioners, sycophants, and lawyers—standing vacant.
There, on the awe-inspiring Crimson Throne, Queen Ileosa waited for us with a sneer on those beautiful lips and the Fangs of Kazovon resting comfortably on her head. Surrounding her was a small retinue of Crimson Maidens and three ferocious warhounds. She taunted us, but in a half-hearted way. If she hoped for rescue she had a long wait coming for I could hear the faint sounds of battle outside through the thick walls. “Kill them,” she breathed dispassionately, so quietly I could barely hear her words. “Kill them all.”
Then she disappeared. The throne was indeed crimson now as Driar’s spell of holy smite juiced the Queen like overly ripe fruit, pulp and all, leaving a pool of sticky, hot blood in its wake. “Whoa,” I thought as the hellhounds and Maidens rushed to attack. I ghosted behind one of them, slipping a blade between the joins in her armor. I heard her gasp and then sigh lifeless to the floor. Sweet girl, I hate this.
Looking about the room, I saw that our fracas was attracting every warrior in the joint as a murder of winged erinyes emerged into the room. They are beautiful, hellish creatures, landing gracefully around the room’s perimeter while unlimbering their flaming longbows. Closer, the warhounds stalked, coughing hot breath louder than Szechuan’s battle-farts.
“Balls nasty,” I thought, smiling like Little Alex before a caper.
PJ took care of the devilish erinyes, though, sending most of them back to the netherworld before I had a chance to try my rapier on the nearest one.
Finarfin appeared to fighting the very air itself and I realized he must be jousting with an invisible foe, perhaps the Queen’s errant seneschal Togomor, who had so far been missing. Then a fat horned devil arrived and the party really started cooking as Red Mantis ran willy-nilly through the room with Sabina’s Maidens close behind, shrieking their terrifying war cries.
PJ and Szechuan—the latter, as always, fighting to his last breath—worked over the immense horned devil who finally succumbed to a combination of lethal “Butcher Blows” from the monk of Irori. It howled with disbelieve as its spirit returned to its Source.
Driar had also located the invisible Togomor, quite literally taking his life from him. Twisted like a rag doll, the bloat-mage fell to the floor with a loud, wet thud. In the silence afterward I could hear the drip of blood, the hiss of the dying, the cheers outside the castle, a faint slithering from the hall approaching. We stood in anticipation until finally the dimly lit head of a man poked shyly from the ruined jamb of the doorway.
“Ey Oh,” he said. “Y’all.” Rheumy, lush’s eyes surveyed the room distantly. “We got us a spot o’ trouble here,” he allowed to someone beside him.
A second head arose, as disreputable as the first, and then a third. They reminded me of that act at the street carnival. The one with the three halfling clowns—Larry, Moe, and Curly. Only these three clowns were attached at the shoulder and behind them lurked a fat slug-like body.
“We’re going to tear the cocks from your balls!” One of them promised, Larry I think.
“Yeah, and shove them up your ass through your mouth,” Moe added.
“Woo, woo, woo,” was all Curly could think to say.
Worse, at the other end of its enormous body was a monstrous asshole spouting scores of razor sharp teeth. It was a powerful creature known as a bdellavritra fiend. I only wished that Laori was here to see this. It must have been desperate because normally the creatures prefer to stay hidden in the background—kind of like us rogues.
To say that with all the build-up the dénouement was anticlimactic is to undervalue the enormous stink the creature left behind. I’ll never eat baked beans again.
We looked around at each other, silly grins on most faces, except for Driar and Szechuan, the latter upset because there was no one left to kill—being righteous has made him more ferocious, if anything—and the former because he'd figured out what had just happened. “I thought the Queen’s demise came a bit too easily,” he said, walking over to help Finarfin climb from the thing’s guts, which had pungently buried him.
“Could it be she was merely some kind of simulacrum?” he asked after he’d finished vomiting. “A device that Togomor meant to lure us into the room? That we have yet to actually face off against the Queen?”
“What’s a simulacrum?” I asked.
“A magical construct,” PJ answered. “A proxy of sorts made of blood or earth or whatnot—kind of like a fancy puppet.” Now he was speaking language that I could understand.
“It looks like our dead mage friend here,” Finarfin pointed to the body of Togomor, “made this one, and it came apart when Driar cast his spell.”
“Oh,” I said, still rather confused. “I thought it was the bdellavritra that specialized in 'possession using hosts.' I get it now, my bad.”
Just then Kroft, Neolandus, Orisini, and Sabina found us. “Is it over?” Sabina’s eyes darted to the Throne and the pool of blood beneath it.
“I think not,” Driar scowled. “The Queen has fled.”
“Damnation!” Kroft cursed. “Who knows what she’ll pull next?”
I was too busy looting to bother listening to the rest of their fretting. ‘My thoughts are with the gold vaults,’ as preacher Sam would say. So we set off to explore the rest of the castle. Poking around in one set of apartments we came across a glass case filled with sets of cards like the kinds the three-card-Monty sharks use on the waterfont, along with cheap harrow decks. But on closer look I saw a rarer breed of divination cards hidden there, some quite holy, some displaying demonic ensigns.
A secret panel led us into quiet chambers with a bed, a chair, and a small table with an antique redwood case inside which there was an ancient yellowed Harrow deck. As I reached to pick it up a mist formed protectively around it, warding us away. What then emerged was a restless tiefling ghost who had apparently been walled up nearby as punishment for some offense. “My bones,” it moaned. “My bones. My kingdom for my bones.” Then it faded away.
“All righty, then,” PJ said, turning to leave.
For the next hour we poked through hastily abandoned chambers without finding more than trinkets, then we uncovered a secret staircase (Don’t you love castles?) leading into the gloom below. In the passage at the bottom we found a place that was broken through, entering an ancient chamber, smooth stone walls covered with carved, ferocious, long-forgotten, gods and demons, like some drunken late night tattoo spiraling up your spine that you wake up with the next morning.
We passed four lifelike statues of servants awaiting the lash. They seemed to be watching us, eager to step out of their stone and get at us, but there was nary a movement. We then entered a modest room where, on a low alabaster plinth, sat the empty coffer that had once housed the dread Fangs of Kazavon. “Just the ornament for a vain young queen,” Driar grimaced.
“I think it’s time to roll up some zong,” Finarfin muttered in reply, proceeding to do just that, its cloying fragrance quickly filling the small room. “Loosen up man,” he offered me a drag but I declined.
“There’s got to be more to it than this,” I said, poking around the room.
“Oh, sure,” Finarfin replied. “Why don’t you just start knocking holes in the wall?”
“Good idea, wee laddie,” Needing no encouragement Szechuan immediately swung his earthbreaker, joyously battering a rent in the wall that improbably revealed a dusty corpse hidden there, a desperate look upon its face, fingernails shredded and torn in his desperate attempt to breech his tomb’s wall. On his forehead were tiefling’s horns.
“Bingo,” Finarfin grunted with satisfaction, relighting his spliff.
So we hauled the thing back upstairs, being greeted by the rest of our crew, who had the castle, and the city, well in hand. Back in the tiefling’s cozy apartment we discovered the apparition already awaiting us, joyful over our recovery of his bones.
“I was Venster Arabasti,” he shambled around the room as he talked, stopping to look each of us in the eye. “The late king’s half-brother.” The rumors are true, then. Because of his savage lust for Ileosa he had murdered his own brother.
Well, he wasn’t asking our forgiveness. He thought the gods had dealt rightly with him. His punishment when his contemptuous lover had sealed him away to die slowly, starving, lonely. With the dead’s placid acceptance of their fate—as if nothing on this plane matters any more, even injustice—he said, “If you living knew what we, the dead, know, you would thank your murderers and move on as quickly as possible. The reason I linger,” he went on, “is to give you fair warning. Ileosa is planning to use the magic given to her by Kazavon, the Blue Dragon, to steal the lifeblood of all Korvosa.”
“The priests of Asmodeus!” Vencarlo interjected savagely.
“Yes,” the wraith quietly agreed. “They collected the blood samples from all over the city for her. Now she just has to complete the ceremony and poof!” Arabasti fluttered his hands like a puff of black smoke. “The souls of the innocent become her soul and half the city dies.”
“Crap,” Orisini groaned. “Where did she go?”
“The Sunken Queen,” he said unhelpfully. The spirit smiled, faded for a moment, and then returned. “Take this ring to Mother’s tower.”
He handed it to Finarfin, who took it hesitatingly, staring as it rested in the palm of his hand. “Precious,” he whispered.
“Now give me the Harrow deck you carry, little one,” Arabasti quietly asked him. Quickly pulling the cards given him by Zellara so long ago from the pocket of his soiled breeches Finarfin gave them to the almost-solid wraith standing before him.
“Zellara, my pet, come forth and join me,” he called in a sing-song voice. “Together, we will give these heroes a boon . . . or a curse.”
“Or maybe a little of both!” she cackled, spirit joining his.
To call it a love act is like comparing a touch to a kiss; or a glance to a commitment. Joy filled the room as the two spirits commingled, pulsing rainbow light dazzling, carrying us along in something not unlike orgasm. It was hard to meet the others’ eyes afterward.
Bardar was the first to gather his wits. “What have we here?” he asked looking down at the table with its stack of cards.
“It’s a game,” I said, remembering my years helping Dame Jakkkus with her street scams. “A simple game of chance. You see, you tell the dealer how many cards you wish to draw. Some are good, some are bad. You can discard one but you must redraw and you’re stuck with the rest.”
“Bring it on!” said PJ, with the bravado of an ex-junkie.
“Let me warn you,” I smiled. “The mark never wins.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Finarfin replied testily. “Give me three.”
PJ went first and his luck held true (I guess) as one card caused him to grow to giant proportion. He strode around importantly until banging his head on a hanging lamp and sitting with a thud. Szechuan eyed him enviously.
Finarfin was next and his first card was very good because it changed him into a woman! We all stared in amazement at the transformation. At first he seemed indifferent to the change but then his face became redder and redder as the implications of what had just transpired hit him/her. Caught on the horns of a dilemma, Finarfin could not re-draw a card because something worse might come next. He took it like a woman, though, and drew twice more. Now he can walk a little faster and pick locks a little quicker, while pleasing the stray eye in the meantime.
I wasn’t as lucky as Finarfin but still obtained two Formian bodyguards (who will be very useful when we start reorganizing the Guild) and a holy sword worth 80,000 gp! (I was set to sell it to Driar at a discount when he got one of his very own!) Hallalujah!
Everyone came out ahead except Cressida, who was sex-bound to a genie, which isn’t all that bad in some ways but means that she has to end things with Bardar. From the look on his face I’d say that if a holy man ever needed a drink, it’s this one. Worse, it means Kroft is no longer qualified to be regent. Since the rest of us are bandits, that leaves Neolandus to shoulder the burden. Secretly, I’m delighted. He’ll be much more open to the needs of the Cerulean Society than Kroft would ever be. Vencarlo is as incorruptible as ever, of course, but I feel certain that his vanity will lead him astray eventually.
That only left us to search the Queen Mother’s high tower. The room at the top was empty but Arabasti’s ring quickly opened a secret portal into the comfortable study hidden there. It reminded me of Shyster John’s office (the Old Korvosa lawyer who made his bundle keeping the likes of Gaedrun Lamm, OJ Boule, and countless others out of prison and away from the gallows). It even smelled of expensive peach tobacco.
On the desk lay a leather-bound volume—Truths of the Sihedron—about the ancient Runelords. Like the stories they used to tell us as kids to scare us straight. We opened it with trepidation, reeking of some infernal source. One chapter had been dogeared and written upon, as if by a madman in a library.
We listened as Bardar read aloud from the tome about the power of the Everdawn Pool, which lingered in the place known as the Sunken Queen. Ileosa believes she can harness this force to anneal the life force of thousands of innocent Korvosans making her immortal.
A chill ran through me as I wondered if yours was one of those blood samples. My god!
“Ah,” said Driar, holding up a parchment he had found. “Here’s the proof—a contract binding Ileosa to Sermignatto—the Lord of Bloody Quicksands (ew!). It promises him control of Korvosa in exchange for helping her attain immortality.”
“Fuck me!” Szechuan exclaimed.
We left the mopping up to Merrin and her crew but were not done for the night, taking our loot to far-off Kar Maga, where I bought an overgarment of spell resistance and that dancing starknife I’ve always wanted. Afterward we sat in a pub, The Lasting Weasel where, with a little maneuvering and a soupçon of treachery, I managed to be seated next to Finarfin—Findis she’s calling herself—and offered my services to help her ease himself into the ways of womanhood. Like all of my suggestions it met with instant rebuke and an offer to “fry your pimp ass!”
In fact, Findis is a cute little number who can turn quite a bit of gold if she ever decides to go that route. And who would be better to break her in than me? As the song goes, “None of my women have tears in their eyes, you can ask them about me, I swear.”* I know, I’ve retired from all that, but I’m doing this as a favor to a friend.
Seriously, though, Finarfin—Findis—has always known how to dish it out but not how to take it. I mean, as a man he loved women, and this is his/her opportunity to discover what it feels like to get it the other way around. Who wouldn’t want to try that? And who would be a more caring, gentle lover than yours truly to help her cross that threshold? Of course, if she prefers it done up rough I can always find out if old “Cherrypopper” Magdalore is still alive.
After we returned to Korvosa—keeping PJ between Findis and myself—all I wanted to do was sleep but still had to meet with Vimanda in a neutral spot in North Point to hash out our differences. Needless to say, she wasn’t happy.
“This was not our deal,” she rumbled as a frightened looking proprietor brought us ale.
“Yes, that’s exactly right,” I agreed equitably. “But we forgot to include the Cerulean Society in the deal and they won't be played.” I let her simmer for a minute. “Look,” I wheedled like Solemn Jimmie getting a free cinnamon bun out of the baker’s apprentice, “there is going to be plenty to go around once we split up the loot from Queenie’s stash and those of her allies—those fuckers will be lucky to get out with their lives. And with her gone, commerce will be renewed, people will visit again—and they have their needs. Korvosa will be rebuilt bigger, stronger, richer, and this time we’ll get a piece of the action. You can make a lot more legitimate, and the overhead is lower!”
It was her turn to contemplate me.
“Vimanda, for now let the old agreements stand and we’ll go on with business as usual. Once I get my bearings we’ll meet to discuss the future of our . . . collaboration.”
“Cordobles, I don’t know how you did it,” she coldly replied. “I would swear you don’t have a brain in your head but, as you’re spokesman for the Guild, I have to listen.”
Standing, she took her leave but stopped at the doorway for one last word. “I’m holding you responsible,” she stated evenly and was gone.
Boskus Rey smiled, shaking his head. “We’re going to have to watch that one.”
“She’ll calm down and if I’m right she’ll soon be too rich to care.”
The boys laughed, but that’s what I pay them for.
Dear Sneffles, I know you like the life you've been given and considering the hardships you've known, who can blame you? But please remember what we were to each other when all this began. You promised then that you would return to me and I intend to hold you to it.
Sadly, lovingly,
Your Cordobles
"The Dudes Inside" painted by Salvatore Scream
* Lyrics from Nowadays a Woman's Gotta Hit a Man by Don van Vliet
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Good stuff...
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