Restoring Order
A week of paying for things (armor, doors, horses, bank accounts), and then a cave full of stolen goods that the party has to decide the purpose of, with Harad waiting on the answer
TL;DR
A week of settling up. Koa scrubbed the blood out of Gwenivere’s shop and paid to re-finish it, Aldo commissioned armor because he had watched Koa nearly die in it, and all three talked their way into Haudh-Gwenn’s bank and opened accounts. Riding out to the cave they found Captain Jack holding it, handed over the roster, and heard the rest of the chain confirmed from a lawman’s side of it. Then came the real decision, a cave of stolen goods worth a fortune at market. They gave it away: winter food and timber for the river towns, and travel money for the people they had freed.
First seen
- Luca Green: Harad’s tavern-keeper, who also runs its militia
- Harveen and Jaden: two Amultan soldiers among the freed, one a deserter and one sent to bring deserters back
- The Bank of Haudh-Gwenn: invite-only, built of the same veined stone as the town hall
What changed
- The seized goods were donated, not sold: food against the winter and building material for a shelter behind Luca’s tavern, with coin set aside to send the freed home.
- Harad has the roster and a plan for its docks: a proper dock-master, cargo screened, and hounds trained to do what the ring’s hounds did.
- A letter is riding to Veren in Luca Green’s own hands.
- The party banks in Haudh-Gwenn now, each holding a writ good in Bardh and Peredhel.
- Two Amultan soldiers travel with them, on the promise of a search.
Left open
- Two more Amultans, lost somewhere in the western mountains.
- Whether Ashtara hands over the rest of her papers before her week runs out.
- The names still at liberty in Forven and Veren, and Beltran Grayeras, who is not at liberty so much as above the question.
Synopsis
The days after cost money. Mikhail traded courtier’s cloth for a second set of court clothes. Aldo, who had watched Koa come within a breath of dying in the cage-hall, put nine gold down on masterwork studded leather in a dull forced green with gold at the edges, a nod to Galderia. Koa went back to Gwenivere Velmont’s shop to scrub out the stains Casper had left on her floor, talked a carpenter down from an inflated quote, and did the sanding himself. She told him old-method alchemy is not the sort of thing one carts across a country, that she wanted to see the burnt lab all the same, and that she could not leave the shop yet; she pressed two more dressings on him for his trouble.
The bank took some talking into. Haudh-Gwenn’s is invite-only and wants a sponsor’s name as surety, so they gave Elliot’s and were waved through by freed guards who recognized them. Inside it is a cathedral in Mól-veined stone, hobgoblin figures embossed along the walls holding up the ceiling, a half-orc at the door and two archers in the loft nobody is meant to notice. Each of them opened an account and took a transferable writ, good at banks in Bardh and Peredhel. The ledger dated the eighth of Orie, six hundred and seventy-one.
Ashtara Walnut was found mid-payoff at a blacksmith’s, and admitted the documents she had handed over were incomplete; she offered to deposit the remainder under Mikhail’s own account before she left, which was generous of a woman with that much gold stacked behind her. Koa bought a horse from a dealer trying to pass a conditioned gray nag off as Idiran blood, said so to his face, mentioned the slaver camp, and walked away with her for twelve silver and tack. Aldo named the mare Simon.
At the cave, Captain Jack’s crew had everything in hand: merchants and hired guards caged apart, the dead tipped down the chasm. Jack is an ageing soldier who took a small town’s guard because someone had to, and the roster hit him hard: Ashtara had been his friend and one of Harad’s more generous donors. He confirmed the shape of it from his own side: Forven’s captain of the guard paid to keep him looking the wrong way, Julius storing the cargo, Gleb Meadows away in Veren, all of them answering up to one wealthy backer of a family too powerful to accuse lightly. Luca Green, who keeps a Harad tavern and leads its militia and was something else before that, offered to carry the letter to Veren himself; the joviality went out of him while he said it. Edrick gave Aldo thirteen gold and a damaged Galderian solid-rod crossbow bearing a maker’s mark from home.
They argued the whole way back. The goods in that cave (grain, timber, silk, carpets, casks) were worth a fortune to anyone willing to sell them, and Aldo said plainly that gratitude does not fill a belly. Koa wanted them given away, on the grounds that a corrupt country gets better one deliberate act at a time; Mikhail sided with him. So the food went to the river towns against the winter, the building material to a shelter Luca will raise off the back of his tavern, and roughly a fifth of the recovered coin was set aside to send the freed home. Jack laid out the rest like a man who had waited years to be asked: spread the gold across the towns the ring had bled, put a proper dock-master in Harad, screen the cargo, and train hounds to find what the slavers’ hounds had been trained to confirm.
Two of the freed asked for a word before the party left. Harveen and Jaden had heard Galderia in Aldo’s accent and took the risk: Amultan soldiers, four of them, who had walked away from a war that is still running. Two never came out of the mountains: Raerin, of a lesser noble house and on business he would not explain, and Aldred, who followed him out of loyalty. Pressed, they admitted the arrangement was less tidy than it sounded; Harveen had deserted with Raerin, and Jaden had come to bring them back. Neither missing name appears in Ashtara’s papers or in the captain’s ledgers, which at least means the ring did not take them.
They went up-river with the freed, the two soldiers and Cleven Gemsmith, and carried Jack’s letters into Forven on the way.