Miles to Go II
Koa refuses to let an innocent man hang for Aldo's burglary, and while the books are being put quietly back, something walks through Loshev setting fires with its hands
TL;DR
The morning’s errands turned into a reckoning: a cook the party had never met was in a cell for a burglary Aldo committed wearing his face. Koa would not have it (we can’t become the corruption we fight) and took an overnight guard shift at the warehouse himself so the books could be slipped back in and found rather than recovered. That same night something tall and fur-covered with a long dog’s face walked through Loshev lighting fires by hand. People died. In the ash the cook went free, and the company boarded a boat south with the wounded, a pack keeping pace along the far bank.
First seen
- Bugbear: a red-skinned hobgoblin of the free folk, and Koa’s old traveling companion
- The fire-raids: night arson by fur-clad figures who need no flame to start one
What changed
- The cook is cleared and released; the books turned up in a warehouse cupboard and the auction is postponed.
- Part of Loshev is burned, several are dead, and Yara has lost everything but her axe.
- Nathan Fox will weigh the Draazstone trade over winter, and admits he holds volumes of his own.
- The company is on the river, bound for Forven and Haudh-Gwenn with injured townsfolk aboard.
Left open
Synopsis
The books spent the night under a pried-up floorboard and the morning went on as though nothing had happened. Elliot, turned out into a full town in deep cold, had ended up crammed into a stranger’s rented room; extracting him took a brawl in a doorway, started by the man whose room it was over an insult he did not follow, and a loud snap of magic; on the way out Mikhail noticed a red-skinned hobgoblin asleep in the bed who looked half-familiar. Then Trinity Barnaby found them with the news: the auction house had been robbed and the dismissed cook was the suspect. Three of the lots the company had bid on were among the missing, which put their names on the ledger and their faces in front of the guard.
They did their errands anyway. At Nathan Fox’s estate Koa reported the mountains (the gnolls, the stolen eggs, and an eagle intelligent enough to astonish a councilman) and got a cold reading of the Draazstone trade in return: an unstable crown that passes between two families whose holders lose their wits, laws that change under a signed agreement, ore already going to war-torn Yovincia. The sums left little in it for Loshev, which has Vala mining ore closer to hand, so he would think on it over winter. He also owns several of Telvanius’s volumes and would not say which. At the Gemsmith house the councilman confirmed the lamb: he had forbidden it, a charming stranger had assured his cook otherwise, and the man was dismissed, then arrested in his own home, with the goods still missing and a heavy sentence coming. Gemsmith blamed his own temper, appraised Cleven’s sapphire at two dozen gold, and said, without saying more, that someone would soon come to Mikhail with an opportunity.
Back at the estate they sat Aldo down and took the truth out of him in a long circle: the lamb, the disguise, the guard’s cousin who nearly saw him. Koa did not hit him. He hugged him, and then held the line (the Valiant Few do not get to win by out-corrupting the corrupt), and Aldo, who has always preferred valiant to righteous, agreed to put it right. The plan needed a guard who would look the other way, so Mikhail asked Trinity for her overnight warehouse shift; she handed it over because Tariq owed her a favor and had a liking for Koa. Constable Tariq al-Mahir came in person to confirm the odd request, unimpressed and permitting, with a sap and an order to capture rather than kill. That night Koa froze alone at the door while Aldo let himself in, stacked four volumes in a junk cupboard, tapped the signal and went.
By morning the guard station was ash-streaked and Tariq’s arm was bandaged. Fires had swept the town in the night. The witnesses all described the same thing: something tall, covered in real fur, with a long dog’s face, that lit buildings with a gesture of its hand. The name going round was Orsugo, though whatever this was is no orc, and the company matched it instead to the gnolls of the valley and the ring of fire they had seen burning there. Yara’s lodging was among the buildings lost. She came out with a gash across her face and stayed to tend the wounded. The party hauled rubble, directed crowds on reputation, and lit the dark with what magic they had. The tracks melted with the snow. In the middle of it the books were found at the warehouse, the cook was released, Cleven was visibly unhappy about it, and the auction was postponed.
At the docks, prepping a boat to carry the worst-hurt to the hospital in Haudh-Gwenn, Koa ran into an old friend from the free folk, a red-skinned hobgoblin called Bugbear, long-armed and heeled and carrying a morning star, who had spent the night fighting fires and means to take Tariq’s winter coin. They talked about what it would take for the free folk to raise something like an army. Aldo told Elliot flatly that he had stolen the books and then had to give them back. Mikhail turned over the worse possibility aloud: that Orsugo is near enough a god to hand fire to gnolls, or that he is the seventh keep himself, walking, his curse burning wherever he stops.
Late that night, from the deck, Koa watched two-legged shapes moving south along the far bank: no bridge near Forven for them to cross by, and no sign of them slowing. The company decided to get off there and warn the town.