Tales of Tanlien: Rhiannon - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Portico, Harbor District

I was sitting in the back of the Twisted Piglet, nursing a vile brew and trying to keep the vermin away from my meal. For all I knew, my meal was vermin, but I wasn't eating it. I just could not decide what was more revolting--watching the rats eating it in front of me, or eating it myself.

And this place was considered a step above Plague Alley where Cutler found me last week.

Nice.

But this time I was not in a drunken stupor, nor was I trying to hide from anybody. I was looking for someone, actually. Destry had given me what she'd found out about Rhiannon, and I was not thrilled. That led me around town asking some questions, which brought me here to find a merc named Sanford. Goddess how I wished I was back at Rizzo's, wrapped around one of his tall dark stout beers, and a tall, dark brunette wrapped around me. But I had started myself down this path, and damned if I was not going to finish, come hell or apocalypse. Shit, if I knew then what I know now, I woulda turned tail and ran to the Tavern high speed. Plague Alley was kinder to me than what transpired in the weeks that followed.

But then, at that moment, I knew none of that. What I did know was that no one had ever heard of Tovar and his traveling troupe of troubadours. That goes for Tesserae and Decellos as well. Course, that did not mean much--new troupes formed all the time, and old ones changed leaders and names sometimes with the seasons. What was interesting, however, is that while Tovar the entertainer appeared to be an unknown quantity, Tovar the Slaver was not.

And his golden haired and husky voiced mistress was spoken of as well. At least by one drunken over-the-hill soldier by the name of Sanford who had seen the troupe enter Portico and had been overheard making plans to snatch and grab some pretty young girls he had seen and sell them to the slavers in town. His descriptions of Tovar's witchy lover were said to be quite flattering... if one was a strumpet and proud of it.

It also sounded like Rhi.

This is the info Destry got for me, and a wee bit more on Tovar as well: minor Kingdom merchant who suddenly struck it big about ten years ago. Traded heavily between the Free Territories and his home, Decellos. What he traded in was reported to be everything the Patriarchs in Decellos worked so hard to keep out of the Kingdom, including drugs, occult magic items, and slaves. Lots of slaves, as one source put it, and mostly of the exotic female variety. Of course, what was exotic in Decellos was common place everywhere else.

But that's what you get when as a culture you work so hard to keep your country pure and unmixed and keep all the non-humans out; people start getting a hankering for the forbidden. And many a rich and influential noble was apparently quite willing to spend big money to sample elven women, or concubines of any of the races of the Tesserae Empire, for that matter.

I also still had no idea why they had come to Portico, to my Tavern, or why she had sought me out, but seek me out she had: Destry and my own probing had confirmed that. Tovar's troupe had gone from tavern to tavern in Portico, and everywhere they went, they asked the same question, if a silver haired bard with a youth's face, named Tanilen, of course, played there or not. Once they found out Rizzo's Tavern of the Broken Axe was my preferred place, they signed there immediately. And Rhi had done all the questioning.

Well, she had found me. And now I needed to find her, to put an end to this and bury my ghosts. Or win her back? It was not enough that Destry was questioning my true motives in all this, but now I was second guessing myself too.

But I had to know.

So that's what brought me to this bottom rung watering trough, sitting in Sanford's favorite table when he and a buddy, a short and stocky breed of scrambled heritage, walked in.

Sanford himself was human. At one time he may have been a fine soldier, but now he was just another down and out freebooter scrabbling for just enough to get by. His hair was graying and his stained shirt was pulled tight across his beer belly.

He and the breed exchanged nonplussed looks when they saw me at their table, and Sanford scowled. Not waiting for their outburst, I kicked out the chair opposite of me and gestured for him to sit and poured two more glasses of ale from my pitcher.

"Sit, please. You are Sanford, no?"

"Who wants to know?" The graying merc was being stubborn and trying to play tough. He was trying to ignore the free ale and chair, but his stance was sabotaged when his buddy dove right in. Sanford sighed and plunked himself down in the chair sullenly and warily took the mug from me.

"I do." I responded coolly. "Sanford has some information I would like, and I am willing to buy it off him. So again I ask, are you Sanford?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. What info, an' how much money?" Ah, the magic word in this depressed section of Portico, money. I could see the greed in his eyes, but the man was still wary.

I hefted a small pouch hanging from my belt and it clanked prosperously. I pulled a gold coin from it and showed it to the men. It was a ten mark coin and their eyes bulged; it was certainly more money than they could both hope to earn in a week combined.

With a little slight of hand, I made the coin disappear, then caught it from thin air and made it dance across my knuckles. My audience was hooked. Alas, so were some of the other tavern patrons, but oh well.

"If you give me the info I need, this is yours. Its really very simple, and I already know you posses the information I seek. So, do we have a deal?"

Sanford wet his lips nervously. "Sure, guv'nor, sure. Blas an I, we've got lots of info, haven't we Blas?" Blas nodded his head enthusiastically, his eyes never leaving my coin. "What information is it you want?" Sanford asked as he hesitantly reached for the coin.

I snapped my fingers and the coin was gone. Both men started to rise from their seats, but I motioned them down. "First, the information. You've seen my money, you know I have it. Now you tell me about Tovar."

My question had an interesting effect as Sanford went pale and leaned back in his chair, as if trying to get away from me. Interesting. The merc was clearly afraid of the name, and I wondered if my sources so far had been wrong---could Tovar and Rhi still be in Portico? Is that why Sanford was afraid? Or did Sanford just think his reach was this long?

"I don't know what'yer talken' about."

"Come now, Sanford. Everyone knows you were talking about Tovar when you saw him ride into town. You were boasting what old friends you were and that things were going to be changing for the better for you." I watched the merc's face closely as I spoke, watching the fear give way to desperation and a little anger tempered by no little amount of self pity. "Tovar left town a few weeks ago, Sanford. Is this what you call 'better'?"

The way Sanford refused to look at me told me all I needed to know. "Tovar left and you never even got a chance to meet him, did you? Or you did, but he ignored you, right? All that talk and you didn't make any profit from it. Tell me, Sanford, that big loan you took out a few weeks ago, just after Tovar came to town... how do you plan on paying it back now that you lost it all betting on the fights?"

Got him! Sanford slumped in his chair, chin tucked into his chest as his fingernails dug into the scarred wood table. There was defeat in the merc's eyes as he looked up at me. The loan was a tidbit given to me by Cutler and his black market pals, but the rest was a guess based on the merc's reputation for being an addicted patron of the arena's fights.

"Here's your chance, Sanford my boy, to make some money off of Tovar. He did not help you, but I will if you share with me what I need to know." I opened my hand and the original ten mark coin was joined by three more. It was twice what he borrowed, and a life saver to him if the loan sharks sent their bruisers by.

"I used to work for Tovar, way back when, as a caravan guard..." Sanford's will and stubbornness crumbled like so much useless dust and he told me everything he knew. Blas contributed nothing, but he drank the entire pitcher of ale and two more to boot, and after an hour, I left the Twisted Piglet a little poorer, but not much else.

Oh, Sanford knew a lot about Tovar, or thought he did, but it was nothing I had not already found out or guessed. He had worked for the slaver for a few years, riding guard duty on the slave caravans within the kingdom until a bandit raid had left him too injured to be useful to his employer. The graying merc had hoped to strike a deal with Tovar on this trip and kidnap some runaway girls to sell to him as slaves.

Sanford never even got close enough to Tovar to make his pitch, and then Tovar and Rhi were gone inexplicably after only a few days.

The thing I was most interested in was where to find Tovar now, where his home base was. That was a secret even Destry and Baldur could not give to me, and neither it turned out, could Sanford. His runs with the caravans always ended in a town in the south of Decellos that had a slave market. He guessed that Tovar lived somewhere in the region, but did not know for sure. The best he could was point me to a brothel in that same town that Tovar often stayed at. Its owner was supposed to be an old friend of the slaver as well as a major customer of his wares.

As I stepped out of the Twisted Piglet I pulled up the hood of my cloak against the depressingly persistent drizzle and reflected on one of the last nuggets of info that Sanford had imparted. Tovar always chose his mistresses from the best and prettiest of his slave girls, and he went through them fast. And what's left, if they're still breathing, isn't even worth the poorest cat house in the meanest city.

What had happened to my little Rhiannon? And what was going to happen to her?

Wrapped as I was in my cloak and my thoughts and worries, I was not aware of my danger until I was suddenly flanked by two men, both larger than me and carrying cudgels. I recognized them both from inside the tavern and I cursed myself for being so careless letting the other patrons see the gold I had been flashing to Sanford and Blas. Dammit.

"Hang on a sec there, guv'nor," rumbled the larger of the two, and I could tell by the way the tusks jutting from his mouth altered his speech he was at a least half orc breed, if not full blood. "Tumm Tumm and me, we wanna talk to you."

"Yeah, you got something of ours and we want it!"

Not pausing to stop, I asked them in a forced cheerful voice. "And what, pray tell, oh gentle sirs, could I have that is yours?" My hands, hidden as they were inside the cloak, slid daggers free from their hiding places as I readied myself.

"That purse a' yours, guv'nor. I could swear I 'ad one just like it and I wants me money back."

Well, at least give the duo points for creativity. They could have just clubbed me from behind and taken my gold, but they wanted to finesse this one for some odd reason. Well, who was I to complain?

Taking advantage of their stupidity, I surprised them by stopping in place as they took a half step in front of me. I flung myself backwards as I threw open my cloak and hurled my daggers as I landed on the wet ground. It didn't go quite as I hoped, since I had not planned on bouncing my head off of the wet cobblestones, but goddess knows I had caught the two thugs off guard. They probably had expected me to be some soft noble or rich student. Too bad for them.

I scrambled to my feet as fast as my aching head would allow me, saber drawn and ready. The orc was ready and waiting for me, but his buddy was down and twitching.

Big and ugly's swing whistled as I ducked under it and it left him clumsily out of balance. My saber slashed a red line across his chest before he could bring his cudgel back into position for another massive swing. I danced out of its way and then ran him through.

As he slid off my saber and slumped to the cobblestone, I saw my dagger buried to the hilt in the back of his neck. Damn! I retrieved my hardware from both would-be muggers, then frisked them quickly before anyone could come by and ask uncomfortable questions. I may have friends in the Town Watch, but why explain two dead bodies if I did not have to?

A quick ten minute run saw me home and dressed in dry clothing. I sipped from my largest mug of steaming coffee as I fingered the silver coins I retrieved from big and ugly's corpse. What were two run-down thugs like them doing with a fortune in Decellon currency?

From her perch on the roof of the pawn shop across from the seedy in, she saw the entire show. The bard was a handsome one, as promised, and she loved the way the light from the mage lamps seemed to glimmer off of his hair, as if t'were really spun silver. A frission of delightful apprehension made her shiver as she watched the two thugs try and shake him down. A giggle was quickly stifled watching him land on his ass, but there and there! Both thugs had been dispatched quickly, and the hidden watcher nodded in satisfaction. She was finally beginning to understand the interest in this man, and perhaps the reason for her mission. Tanilen would do. He would most certainly do...

Continued in Chapter 3

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