25: Shadows

Leaving Kurtis consoling Hannah, the rest of us went back down to the bar for last orders. Stefan was not pleased to see that we had been at the centre of a disturbance, yet again. But we soon heard strange noises coming from the Morrians’ room, again.

Erhardt went up to have a look and he snuck into the conveniently unoccupied room next door to theirs. I had expected him to simply eavesdrop on the mourners, a technique we had seen him perform a number of times and which he calls magic, but to my scientific mind could simply be put down to good hearing. But what actually happened, I have pieced together after the fact, after painstaking research and consulting learned mages, because there was no one to witness it.

The spell Erhardt decided to cast, I understand, was particularly difficult, requiring much magical power. Therefore, he somehow gathered this power up from the shadows within the room. This is a painstaking and complex process, apparently. I imagine him gathering wisps of grey magic into himself using complex gestures and subtle manipulations of the winds. But who knows what it really looks like?

And when he had gathered this power, Erhardt somehow put himself into his own shadow and walked the shadow out of that room and under the door of the mourners’ room undetected. This strikes me as a very mysterious and even frightening spectacle. Perhaps, what actually happened, was Erhardt simply stayed in the room next door and put his ear to the wall, to overhear what they were saying. That is a much more reasonable explanation than turning yourself into a shadow.

In any case the three mourners were in the room with a fourth person, who was wearing a Morrian robe. Th others were trying to wrestle him to the floor, and he was beaten and bruised. The mourners were trying to reason with him, but he appeared to be anxious and confused. After observing this, the Erhardt shadow slipped out of the room and back to the one next door.

Erhardt came back down and told me and Gulgad about it. He spoke in Khazalid because obviously just talking quietly wasn’t mysterious enough for him, he had to talk in a language no one else recognised, because there’s nothing suspicious about two humans and a Dwarf switching to a foreign language in the middle of a bar. In any case, even though I fancy myself as a bit of a linguist, and I can speak Bretonnian and Wastelander, I didn’t really understand much of what Erhardt had to say so he had to repeat it all in Reikspiel for me. And then when Otto came back from the stables he had to repeat it all in Reikspiel again (although in words of fewer syllables, of course). So much for being subtle.

While discussing what to do about this we invited Ursula Marband to join us. It seemed like having her with us would give us a bit of legitimacy and the mourners could well be doing something that required witch hunter intervention. I wasn’t sure about the remit of witch hunters but from what Ehrardt had described it seemed to me that the mourners might be indulging in necromancy. If they were, we had an obligation to intervene, although Erhardt said that the fourth man didn’t look dead.

Erhardt warned the landlord that we might make a bit of noise, and that he shoudln’t bother coming up, if we did. Otto and Solvej went outside the inn and waited under their window in case anyone should try to escape that way. The rest of us, went up to their room and knocked on the door. The mourners insisted they were in the middle of some important rituals and didn’t want to open the door but eventually they did. And sure enough we found the three mourners there with their coffin. Erhardt asked for the coffin to be opened which was quite sacrilegious, probably, but it seemed like a reasonable course in the circumstances and eventually the mourners agreed.

And the coffin was empty. They looked surprised, insisting that they must have taken the wrong coffin with them, which seemed an odd mistake to make, and strange that they didn’t notice it was too light. I decided to go back to the boat, as I felt like Erhardt was making a fool of himself.

Not to be outwitted by such a ruse, however, Erhardt looked under the bed, and sure enough there was the fourth man, a bump on his head, unconscious. The mourners made a load of excuses as to why they were carrying him, but their story wasn’t consistent and Erhardt decided to take the man into custody. Marband decided this wasn’t anything to do with witches, and things, so she made her excuses and left.

It was about now that Kurtis, who had been spending time consoling Hannah, or that’s what he said, eventually emerged. The unconscious man was brought to the boat where, after a prayer to Shallya, I was able to wake him.  He gave his name as Josef and explained that he had been on the run from a jealous husband and had asked these smugglers to smuggle him out in a coffin. This didn’t convince us, and eventually Josef admitted that he had fled Nuln in fear of his life after distributing pamphlets naming the Countess of Nuln as some sort of wanton, traitorous figure. I think it’s fair to say, in the light of our employment by the countess’ niece, and the promise of a certain parcel of land, that the von Liebwitzs are a benevolent family and a force for good in Nulner politics.

It was at about his point that Kurtis, for whatever reason, and it may have been something I unwittingly said, got it into his head that Genevieve might be up in her room playing Gregor’s instrument. As we had been banned, he climbed up the wall of the inn and through a window and burst into Genevieve’s room. Finding her all alone he told her that he had missed her so much he had to come up and wish her goodnight. Genevieve thought it inappropriate that they should be alone before their marriage, and so wished him goodnight. But at least Kurtis’ mind was at rest.

So, we had Josef on the boat, and we just needed to guard him all night. How hard could that be? For some reason no one asked me to join in the guarding, but Erhardt took first watch with Otto. Erhardt stood outside his door while Otto lay down on deck, so he could keep an eye on the porthole. Otto fell asleep almost straight away while Erhardt struggled to keep his eyes open.

In the middle of his watch Erhardt spotted a shadowy figure coming towards him and challenged them. It was Ursula Geldkopf. She looked a bit sheepish, but then asked where Solvej was? Solvej had taken advantage of the changing sleeping arrangements to get Kurtis’ private quarters to herself, and Erhardt was good enough not to tell Geldkopf this, and so she left.

After finishing his watch, Erhardt woke Gulgad and Kurtis. Gulgad went to guard the door while Kurtis took over from Otto. He found Otto asleep and Josef’s body sticking out of the porthole, minus its head. I’m not saying this was Erhardt’s fault, but it is extraordinary the number of times in the past few weeks that someone has been able to sneak straight past him during his watch.

Otto was adamant that he had been on watch the whole time and couldn’t explain how it had happened. Kurtis got really angry with Otto for his dereliction of duty and after they squared off and traded insults. Kurtis then kicked Otto’s taxidermy rat-Kurtis into the river. This upset Otto so much he punched Kurtis. And so a fierce fistfight began. And I say fierce, but I don’t know if either of their hearts were in it, or they were just bad fighters, but the brawl soon fizzled out. Gulgad, ever practical, went down to Josef’s room and simply pushed the body through the porthole into the water, for it never to be seen again.

Kurtis stormed off still angry, and then found Solvej sleeping in his room, so stormed off again and managed to find a spare bed in the dorm, while Otto went to sleep in the stables with his intellectual peers.

We were called to breakfast rather early. I just had time to visit the scene of the crime, and found no blood in the cabin and the porthole lockable from the inside and decided that Josef must have been making his own escape through the porthole, helpless, when he was decapitated by someone lying in wait for him outside. I also found a few screwed up pamphlets in the room, full of all sorts of seditious and scurrilous observations on Emmanuelle von Liebwitz. I was tempted to just dump these in the river, but I was curious about the details and decided to stuff them in my pocket and have a good read after breakfast.

On the way to breakfast we also noticed that Kopfgeld’s horse was gone from the stables, and she was nowhere to be seen. At breakfast the gravin’s entourage was keen to get everyone in the inn present for an announcement. Gustav told us that some items had been stolen, including his own diaries and some of the gravin’s jewellery and that everyone was to be searched. The gravin sent Kurtis up to get everyone in the inn down to the bar to be searched. She also introduced Frederick to us, the man we had rescued from a whipping the night before. She called him Baron Frederick von Rottmar.

I quickly offered to help Kurtis with the task, and we went upstairs. I could see that he had caught Baron Frederick’s name and was convinced this was a noble relation of his. I have to say that I had doubted his noble blood story all along, but now I thought there must be something to it. I thought he had made up the entire noble family, but they certainly existed. And this Frederick bloke was exactly the sort of womanising dick that might be related to Kurtis.

I was concerned that he might blurt something out to Baron Frederick and get himself in some more trouble, so I was very clear to him that he should keep quiet about the whole thing until he had time to consider it a bit more. Posing as a noble can get you killed and not many nobles want to be introduced to their bastard brothers without warning. I could see Kurtis wasn’t paying much attention to me, and his mind was working overtime thinking about how he was going to be the next Baron Rottmar, but I did my best.

Back in the bar they went through and searched all the gravin’s servants one by one, and then Seedling, then they searched the Morrians who were cleared, and then they asked to search me. This was a bit worrying as I had the pamphlets about the gravin’s aunt on me. To their credit, the rest of my party (friends would be too strong a word) tried to cover for me making a fuss and being generally distracting during the process, but it didn’t work and they eventually they got round to me again and I had to empty my pockets. I revealed the three poisoned darts that I had got from Solvej at the judicial fight and had been meaning to examine once we got to Nuln. I expressed my shame and embarrassment at having such deadly weapons on my possession, a monk of Shallya, after all. Luckily this went down well enough, and no one thought to search me further once I had revealed those, though Gustav did take the darts off me.

Then it was time to search Genevieve, and to our great shock she was hiding a string of the gravin’s pearls. She was bundled away before we had a chance to talk to her. Gulgad suggested searching her room, and although we couldn’t find anything incriminating there, it didn’t do anything for her case in the gravin’s eyes. It did all feel a bit fishy, and we were all sure there was more to this story than there appeared at this point.

The gravin expressed her disappointment and wondered what she would do for entertainment on the way to Nuln. Gregor, Kurtis’ rival lute player volunteered to take Genevieve’s place, and was accepted. But Kurtis insisted he should be the entertainer. He obviously didn’t want Gregor around Genevieve, but to be fair, while she was incarcerated for stealing, no one would be around her. The gravin gave Kurtis the choice of staying as her champion, at least until we got too Nuln, or becoming her court musician. As much as he wanted Gregor out the way, he wanted the status of being a champion even more and so opted for that. I think he made the right decision. In any case, wouldn’t he look a bit of a pleb to Baron von Rottmar if he had to play music for him?

Once everyone else had gone, I showed the party the leaflets about the countess, and then I threw them in the fire, careful that they were all destroyed.

So, we were heading to Nuln with Kurtis upset that Genevieve was now suspected of stealing the gravin’s jewels. But, as we were careful to point out to him, she had been talking a lot of shopping for jewellery in Nuln, and Kurtis had been bigging up his position as a society Altdorf noble, and he did propose to her in the heat of the moment without properly presenting her with an engagement gift. I’m not saying it was all Kurtis’ fault, but it might be.