[OOC: Hah! Guess we think alike in more ways than I thought, alhoon: not only are you correct that Crow'd ditched his 'Curwin' persona as soon as Draxton left his hotel room, but Serd's calling in the cops actually
beat him to the punch!
[Since this is the bard's 'sign-off' from this particular thread, it ran pretty long again. I hope you'll like it, even so.
]
Peering at the Riverview Rest through his spyglass, from the deck of the river-barge at anchor on the ruddy Vuchar, the bard didn't bother to restrain a chuckle of irony. Though he'd not had time to
completely divest himself of "Remington Curwin" -- his hair hadn't fully recovered its curl as yet, though he'd rinsed out much of the dye -- his disguise-spells ought to suffice in lieu of a proper masque, at least until the dusk's fog thickened and he could disembark unnoticed on his Phantom Steed.
Ironic, indeed, that
Draxton had opted to call in the Baron's guards on the smuggler. Had the merchant-mage not done so first, the VRS spy would've had to pen an anonymous missive to Redtree's law-wardens
himself! Shame how his maritime persona's activities on Graben Island had rendered that particular identity largely useless on the eastern sea -- this 'cameo appearance' was the first that he'd allotted to "Curwin" on
this coastline in two years -- but given how he'd needed some excuse for the 'smuggler' to vanish
anyway, he might as well take advantage of the reward the
Grabenites now offered other ports' law officers, for the nautical boor's extradition.
Crow wondered, in passing, if the Richemulouise would bother trying to track the source of the (outdated and useless)
shipping-documents he'd left behind, when he dimension-hopped from the hotel room to the secure supply shed in which he'd hidden his guitar-case and other telltale accoutrements. (Handy, that the
elves lived so much of their lives out-of-doors; buildings in Nevuchar Springs, as in other fey communities, were seldom occupied by anyone, serving primarily to keep stored goods out of the rain.) He wondered, too, if the man would notice that the mass of paperwork still in the room had been rendered
lighter than what the 'smuggler' had shoved into Serd's arms earlier ...
more reduced, even, than by the few pages he'd used to wrap up the remaining cheese and fruit, not caring to purloin the Riverview's serving-platter.
(
Buchvold might well be a pompous ass, but the illusionist offered more tolerable social company than
Draxton Serd, by far. And the Borcan fence's arcane
trinkets came in handy at times, also....)
The spy collapsed the spyglass, then packed it away in the saddlebags, alongside the thick sheaf of paper he
had brought back from the Riverview. Curious how wizards thought, with regards to the production of enchanted items: no doubt, the one who had manufactured the
copy-pen had considered it a mere scholastic convenience, to speed up dull transciptions, and scarcely more potent than a cantrip-wand as magical wares were reckoned. Too bad the pen's maker had been such a poor whistler -- no doubt, Buchvold had thought it amusing to stick "Mr. Crow" with an item that used painfully
off-key notes to activate its function, in lieu of a spoken command-word -- but even so,
any item that could duplicate a book's contents upon nearby blank parchments, without any outward sign it was doing so, was a resource to be prized.
Have to make a note to help dear Raphael forget I'm expected to give it back, the bard mused, and chuckled once again.
Bloody
Dwarven, of all things! First Zherisian, and now this! He really
would need to buff up his language-skills further, one of these days ... either that, or steal himself a new
translation-wand, to replace the one that living gargoyle had snapped in twain in Falkovnia last summer.
Ah well, yet another item for the 'to do' list. As if he didn't have
enough to do, between now and Souragne, even discounting his belated jaunt west to inform
Nathaniel Hawke that the Borcan's blood-contract had been revoked. And
Mortigny, of course:
mustn't forget Mortigny; he
needed the visit to the Sorrows even more than most years ... and he'd promised Tiahn.
Might as well see to this also, the spy reminded himself, as he drew the glass vial from his vest pocket and peered inside it. The two grape seeds it contained -- the only two he'd been able to find, even with the hand-lens and forceps from his lockpicking kit -- had still smelt faintly of ale, when he'd collected them from the outlet of the hotel kitchen's drain-sluice. (
Another convenient quirk of classical elven culture: a race less accommodating to Nature wouldn't have bothered to segregate the outflow of
soap-free waste liquid from washwater, nor to channel the former to sate the parched roots of vegetable gardens.) No guarantees that the seeds had retained any trace of the merchant-mage's
poison, of course -- the staff could have poured any number of other things down the sink, along with the drugged beer -- but if even a vestige of the drug lingered upon their surfaces, Crew knew of a Lamordian chemist, now residing in Mordent, who could surely isolate and identify it.
(No fear that he'd found the wrong seeds: solid wastes in
elven kitchens went to compost, not drains. And grapes in January really
were a rare treat, so it's unlikely anyone else at the hotel would have been eating them at mid-day.)
Intriguing, that the Richemulouise was so very self-absorbed, beneath his cunning. Near as Crow could tell, Draxton Serd lived
his life snugly in his own head, secure among his own familiar habits of thought! Such a man might, indeed, think himself so untouchable as to play with fire -- the necromantic text proved as much -- but would he really have the arrogance to traffic with the likes of
Van Rijn? The bard would keep the merchant-mage on his suspect list of possible FoS traitors, albeit not highly-placed ... unless, of course, the drug turned out to be more virulent, or the text (once translated) more vile, than he expected they would. If Serd was
that reckless, all bets were off.
Ironic, yet again, that Draxton had scoffed at druidic divinations; it didn't take world-shaking power to detect the presence of poison on someone, only the right spell. And even though Serd seemed willing to risk being caught red-handed with toxins on his person, the possibility that
Curwin might be carrying such wares -- like the chance the seaman might be armed -- never seemed to cross his mind.
Even if he hadn't feared for the elves' delicate constitutions, Crow
could not have allowed an innocent bystander to sample that ale. Had an investigation resulted, everyone at the table would have been examined ... and while Serd might've had some way to shield his person from detection-magics, the
bard's mundane possessions had not been screened in such a fashion, only his magic items.
(The VRS spy liked to believe he was
better than the villains whose networks he infiltrated, employing those unscrupulous skills he'd inherited from his pre-amnesiac self
solely in a worthy cause. Hard-pressed though that belief sometimes was, he still held out hope of
vindicating his dubious methods -- his countless lies and thefts and (admittedly) betrayals of others' trust -- by leaving the world just a little brighter, its innocents perhaps a little safer, in the course of his efforts. But the line between Crow and those he fought against could
appear very thin, indeed, unless and until
motives were taken into account.
(And it was motive,
not methodology, which had most distinguished Crow from Draxton Serd, this day. The merchant-mage had, in truth, been wasting his time, in speculating about turning 'Curwin' over to the Kargat. For the
bard, like Draxton, carried
poison upon his person at all times ... and while Serd's had likely been a mere soporific,
his was unquestionably lethal.
(What made Crow fundamentally different from Serd was that,
unlike the merchant's, the VRS
spy's poison wasn't intended for anyone
else....)
[OOC: See you guys in the Souragne thread, alhoon and VAN! It's been real.
]