7: Magnus Tower

So we tried again to get released from watch duty. Surely Pfeffer would feel she owed us, now. Surely after rescuing her aunt from accusations of witchcraft she would not be able to refuse us. Pfeffer always appears straight forward and reasonable, so I was feeling hopeful. And yes, when we visited her in her office at the watch station, and asked her again, she agreed we should be released. But, unfortunately, her hands were suddenly tied as we had received a summons from Black Rock. She handed us an important looking letter sealed with the mark of Emmanuelle Nacht.

As far as I understood it, Nacht was some sort of direct representative of the Emperor who had no official power in the city, but actually had all the power. She was here, on behalf of Altdorf to tell us all how to run our own city. I’m not keen on the local nobles, and especially the Jungfreuds but at least they are our own petty tyrants. That has to be better than getting petty tyrants in from the other side of the Reikland. Anyway, perhaps I was being unfair and I resolved to keep an open mind until I had met her.

We had no trouble getting into the inner sanctum of Black Rock castle as we waved our letter at every guard. I had never been in such well-appointed rooms as Nacht’s chambers and I could tell none of the others had either as we nervously filed in, painfully aware of our own scruffy attire and how hopelessly out of place we must have looked. The first thing that struck me about Nacht was that she was extremely beautiful so I immediately looked to Kurtis, fearing the worst, and sure enough he was already smitten.

I could tell by the way he was watching her we would get little sense out of him for some time. It may sound amusing, but it is not, and it is very clear to me that sooner or later attractive noble ladies will be the lad’s undoing. With his fantasy about his noble father he thinks he is a noble himself, and that could get extremely dangerous for him. Even if his story about his father were real, being the bastard son of a noble doesn’t make you a noble, it makes you a bastard. It is one thing to not know you place, but it is quite another to imagine you belong in a ridiculously higher place.

I, myself, immediately disliked the Nacht. I am not sure whether that was because of her assumed authority, or how confidently she seemed to wield it, or because she represented the interfering power of Altdorf, or merely because Kurtis was suddenly in awe of her, for absolutely no reason.

Nacht explained that there had been a mysterious death and she wished us to investigate it. I’m not sure why she chose us, but it might be that our exploits with Ilse Fassenwuetend had shown us to be able to get the job done, although Ilse was now dead. It seemed to me that Nacht must have a very efficient intelligence network to have come up with our names so soon after the incident.

The deceased was a watch corporal called Tyle Vielfras killed in his quarters in Magnus Tower, apparently burned through the heart with what could have been a magic spell. No one else was in the room at the time, and the door was locked. It was a complete mystery. Nacht told us we would be allowed to examine the body, but we should not enter Magnus Tower as this was a tricky political matter, as Vielfras was an Altdorfer soldier who was working with the Jungfreud dominated town watch. Nacht feared that the indecent might ignite a feud between the Altdorfer occupiers the more pro-Jungfreud stalwarts of the watch. If we could uncover the identity of the murderer then we would earn Nacht’s gratitude, and ten gold crowns.

There was another character with Nacht, an Altdorf regiment Sergeant. This was Orban Geldrecht, who we were not introduced to at the time, but who comes into the story, shortly. He was looking particularly distraught, presumably at the death of Tylo Vielfras.

The first thing we needed to do, we decided, was to examine the body. I had some medical experience, but I wasn’t holding out much hope of throwing some light on the case just by looking at a corpse. (There are some doctors who specialise in this sort of thing, I believe.) So, we travelled up to the Garden of Morr. Again. I had a quick look at the ground where Maurer’s execution had taken place and where Ilse’s body had fallen, in cold light of day. There seemed to be no sign at all of the disturbance that we had witnessed when the Sigmar-knows-what had snatched Maurer and carried him off to Sigmar-knows-where. Erhardt checked it out with his supposedly insightful wizard sensibilities, but seemed none the wiser, too.

The gloomy Priests of Morr let us into their sanctuary and we saw Tylo Vielfras’ body laid out on a stone table. And indeed there was a wound going right through his torso. It was like nothing I had ever seen. It was like a cannonball perhaps had gone straight through the flesh but had been so hot and so fast the wound was cauterized by the very act of its making.

Again, Erhardt trained his wizardly sight on the scene but didn’t say much. I was beginning to wonder whether he could actually see magic, or it was just a thing wizards pretended to do in order to keep everyone else in awe of them. We also looked through his possessions and this included a key, but we left it there.

Meanwhile in one of the ante chambers, Solvej had spotted her friend Heske Glazer and went to chat. Heske certainly kept turning up a lot in suspicious circumstances, and if what Kurtis had said about her and Solvej was correct you had to wonder what was going on between them. Solvej did mention this to Heske and Heske cryptically replied that she goes where the wind takes her! Solvej had arranged some sort of soiree with Heske a while ago and as it happened, that was to be this evening, although Solvej was (or rather, claimed to be) feeling a bit apprehensive about it now.

There were also a number of soldiers who had known Vielfras and had come to pay their respects. The man seemed like a particularly popular fellow and as usual Solvej was happy to talk to anyone. They told her how much they had been impressed with Vielfras and no one could think of a single reason why anyone would want him dead.

We wondered why Vielfras would be friends with the old guard of Jungfreud soldiers. Apparently Vielfras, despite being an Altdorfer who had come to the city to oust the old Jungfreud regime, had then joined the city watch. Clearly the man must have been quite the diplomat to keep on good terms with both factions.

While the mourners were talking among themselves, Erhardt was able to eavesdrop on their conversation. He managed to learn that despite living in Magnus Tower Vielfras had also taken a room at the Bridge House inn. And that he had argued with a Grey Wizard called Christoph Engel not long before his death. This was useful information and Erhardt claimed to have gleaned it through magical means, although, he could just have really good hearing. Also, it occurred to me that as Erhardt was also a Grey Wizard, perhaps he and Engels were in it together, and Erhardt was only here to spy on us. We asked him about it, but he claimed that he had never heard of this Christoph Engel. Very suspicious.

Despite Nacht’s warning we decided it would be necessary to visit Vilelfras’ quarters in Magnus Tower. We waved Nacht’s letter around to get access and met up with a friendly old watchman who was happy to show us round and tell what he knew. He seemed to think Vielfras was a great guy who no one would even want to hurt, but he had no love at all for the Altdorf soldiers. He told us that Vielfras’ room had been locked from the inside and the guards were sure no one else had entered it.

On examining the chamber, we could see quite clearly that the window was broken in that clean circular way that his body had been. There was not much else to see except that a decanter of wine was at one end of the room and its contents had been strangely boiled leaving a residue around the inside of the vessel. The watchman told us that Vielfras must have been drinking a glass of the stuff when he died as one glass was found on the floor next to his body, and the contents spilled upon the floor. On leaving the tower we were confronted with a group of Altdorfer soldiers and there was a bit of a standoff between them and the old watch of the tower.

We decided that we should go and search Vielfras’ room at the Bridge House. As we had earlier learned that Vielfras liked a drink, we supposed that he did a lot of drinking at the Bridge House. But when we asked the landlord about this he said he had never seen Vielfras drink, despite this being a pub. We asked the landlord to see Vielfras’ room but even though we were officers of the watch, he insisted that if we didn’t have the key he would not admit us unless we got an official warrant. We considered some convoluted plan to distract the landlord and send Erhardt, with his mysterious powers, up to the room and search it. Or we could have just gone to the Garden of Morr and got the key.