D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch (4 page)

“We’re going to have to go to the Wizards’ Guild with this one,” Blossom said quietly.

Garett agreed. He’d have to make a full report to Korbian, of course, and the Directorate would have to approve any involvement by the Wizards’ Guild. Seeing Korbian meant staying up at least until early afternoon when the old fool usually showed up. Then he’d probably have to go straight over to the guildhall. It would cost a pretty coin to involve the Wizards’ Guild. Magicians placed a high value on their services, especially when the funds were coming from the city coffers. The new mayor wouldn’t like it at all.

There was nothing to be done about it, though. Politics be damned. Garett had worked enough of these kinds of cases to know he was helpless unless the guild could give him some kind of clue about how to proceed.

As they reached the end of the Street of Temples and stepped out onto the better lighted Processional, Burge touched Garett’s arm and stopped. A group of six men was approaching, coming up the Processional from the direction of Old Town, walking purposefully, and they carried their lanterns high. As they drew closer, Garett noted the cudgels that two of them carried and the blue tabards with embroidered crossed cudgels that the same pair wore. On their heads they wore light blue caps with long white feathers stuck in the bands.

“Ho, night watchmen! ” Garett called, stepping into the center of the street where he could plainly be seen.

The Guild of Night Watchmen was a group separate and distinct from the City Watch. For one thing, they were all volunteers. Each night, they walked the streets in teams of two or four. If trouble occurred, they tried quietly to calm the situation, or one would run for the City Watch while the other observed the situation. They could be hired as escorts for citizens who needed to be abroad after dark and wished the extra security, or they could be hired to guard warehouses, shops, or even estates in the High Quarter. They were scrupulously honest and maintained a good relationship with the City Watch, whose burden they helped

ease.

The man in the lead stopped suddenly and squinted. “Captain Starlen, is it?” he said with a trace of surprise. “Now there’s a bit of luck. We were just on our way to see you, sir. There’s been a murder in the Foreign Quarter.” “A murder?” Garett said. He looked past the night watch leader. Four of the men with him were not night watchmen at all. They were Attloi. By their brightly colored dress Garett recognized them. Gypsy people at heart, they knew no nation or homeland. There was always a contingent of Attloi, though, in the Foreign Quarter. Garett frowned. One murder a night was enough for him. But there was no way around this. It was his job. “Who was murdered?”

“Exebur,” one of the Attloi growled angrily. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Exebur the Seer,” the night watch leader explained calmly, deferentially. “Most unusual, it was, too. His throat was cut with one of his own tarot cards. Apparently while he was laying them out for a reading.”

“’You’re sure it was a card?” Blossom asked doubtfully. He was only a night watchman, after all, her tone of voice seemed to say. Not a true professional.

“A card,” the night watchman replied, unoffended. “It’s still in his neck, real deep, too, if you care to come and look, my lady.”

“If you’ll forgive a morbid curiosity,” Burge inquired, “which card?”

The angry Attloi man spoke up. “The Raptor,” he answered darkly. “It’s one of the major arcana. A card of great power. An evil omen.” Several of the other Attloi grumbled in agreement and made warding signs in the air, as if even speaking of the card was reason enough to protect them-

selves.

“Exebur was our greatest seer,” the Attloi leader went on bitterly. “He made us much money wherever we went. He had the true vision.”

Garett pursed his lips thoughtfully. This Attloi was more concerned about the loss of income to his tribe than about another man’s death. He looked the man up and down, studied him, and noted the garish quality of his clothing. He was wealthy by Attloi standards, perhaps a gypsy prince. His bearing conveyed the same impression.

There was more here, though. Something to take note of. It couldn’t be coincidence. Garett didn’t believe in coincidence , especially when murder was involved. He looked to Burge and turned his back to the others. In a voice too low for anyone else to hear, he said, “Kathenor was a seer.”

Burge raised an eyebrow. “Think there’s a connection, Cap’n?”

“I think we’re not going back to the Citadel yet,” Garett answered, his head bobbing up and down slowly, his mind racing. Here was a mystery. The high priest of the wealthiest temple in Greyhawk and an old gypsy fortune-teller, both murdered on the same night, apparently in the same hour. He put his hands together and began to rub circles on his left palm with his right thumb. It was a habit he had when confronted with a puzzle. “I want to see the body,” he announced.

“I told you!” the night watch leader beamed suddenly, his face lighting up as he turned to the Attloi at his side. “If your friend had to get murdered, night’s the time for it. Captain Starlen there, he knows what’s what. We’ll have the killer now, that’s for sure, and soon!” He turned back to Garett, and flashed a proud smile. “Who do you think did it, Captain, sir?”

Garett put on his best patient expression. “Maybe I’d better see the body first,” he reminded.

“Right,” the night watchman agreed with a hint of embarrassment. “Right this way.” He parted the Attloi men

and beckoned, and they all started south on the Processional for the Foreign Quarter.

The gypsies dwelled in the poorest section of the Foreign Quarter. The stone and stucco tenements rose up ominously, shutting out the moonlight, as the party turned off Marsh Street and walked up Chokerat Road. Here there were no street lamps, and Garett was grateful for the night watchmen’s lanterns. The air in this part of the city smelled vaguely of the swamps that stretched just beyond Greyhawk’s wall. Whenever the wind blew, it brought the marshy odor.

As they turned another corner and started up Mouser’s Way, the heart of the Attloi community, they spied torches and a crowd of people all quietly packing wagons, hitching mules, and preparing to leave. No matter that it was the dead of night. Even as Garett and his companions drew nearer, a pair of carts separated from the rest and headed for the Marsh Gate, the closest exit from the city. A man and his son drove the mule. A woman and two small daughters walked alongside. No one was speaking.

The night watch leader brought the group inside Exe-bur’s apartment. The single room was filthy and littered with possessions, knickknacks, and things Garett guessed the old man had scavenged from the alleyways of Greyhawk. A pair of candles burned on the table in the center of the room, and a deck of fortune-telling cards lay scattered all about, as if a powerful wind had swept through the only window.

On the floor beside a chair that had turned over, Exebur’s body lay in a pool of its own blood. As the night watchman had assured him, the throat had been cut. A thin red line was plainly visible from one side of the neck to the other, and the edge of a single card was still deeply embedded under the left jaw.

“I’ve seen paper cuts,” Burge muttered, “but this is ridiculous.”

Garett took one of the candles and knelt by the body. He

bit his lip. Then, seizing a corner of the deadly card, he drew it out and held it up to better light. Blood streamed down one edge and dripped on the knee of the captain’s trousers until he stood up.

The card was saturated with Exebur’s life fluid, but it was still possible to see the huge black bird painted upon it, wings displayed, its red eyes burning, a naked man and woman grasped in each of its talons as it swept them into the air.

Garett shivered as he looked at the card. The Raptor, it was called by the Attloi. Or, sometimes, The Bird of Prey. He placed the card down on the table and backed a step without taking his eyes off it. It disturbed him strangely, lying there among the other cards, stained as it was.

He felt the others around him watching him, Burge and Blossom and Rudi, the two patrolmen, the night watchmen, and the four Attloi who had come seeking him. Even Exebur. No one had closed the old seer’s eyes yet. They were all watching him. Perhaps they, too, felt the same strange tension, like a fire in the air.

Let them think what they would. Garett couldn’t help himself. He picked the card up again and held it to the candle flame. At first, it only sputtered and smoked, too wet to take fire. But the flame found a dry spot near Garett’s fingers and began to eat its way into the card’s heart. Garett dropped it. Before it touched the floor, most of it was ash. What remained blackened and curled and folded and crumbled in on itself.

A tenuous smoke wafted unpleasantly through the room. Garett looked at his comrades as he took another step away from the table. The sole of his boot was sticky. When he looked down to see why, he discovered that the red pool around the old man had spread to the spot where he’d been standing.

       Three more seers were found dead before morning rose over Greyhawk. In the Garden Quarter, the seeress Katina was found drowned with no more than a scrying bowl full of water on the table above her body. In the River Quarter, Davin Timbriel was discovered by the late-night arrival of his lover, who had summoned the watch at once; his skull had been crushed, and his own crystal ball had been the weapon.

On an impulse, Garett sent Rudi’s patrol back into the university section of the Halls to check on old Qester Redmorn, the most renowned seer in the city. The aging Redmorn lived alone and seldom ventured out. His ability to foretell events once had brought him renown throughout the entire Flanaess. Rudi found the old man with the thin gold chain of a pendulum twisted and knotted around his throat. The windowless room in which he died had been locked from the inside.

All the greatest seers in Greyhawk were dead, murdered in one night, possibly in the same hour, each by the instrument of his or her divinatory art.

“I want this kept quiet,” Korbian Arthuran insisted, thumping his hand down on the corner of his desk for emphasis. He glared at his night shift commander. “Do you understand? Warn your people they’re not to speak of it. The mayor’s investiture is just a few days away. We don’t want to frighten the citizenry before such an important occasion.”

Garett stood at ease in the center of the captain-general’s office, unable to hide the look of disdain on his face. It had been a long night and a longer morning. He rightfully should be home in bed now, but there’d been too much for him to attend to for him simply to leave at the end of his shift. Unfortunately, he’d been obligated to inform Korbian of events. Now his superior officer was trying to tell him how to run the show.

Korbian Arthuran, however, had not been able to keep the news to himself, and shortly after his arrival at the Citadel, the new mayor had walked in. For most of an hour, Ellon Thigpen had listened quietly, even intently, to Garett’s report. He had asked a few reasonably intelligent questions, then fallen silent again.

Suddenly, though, he stepped away from the shadowed corner where he’d been leaning. “And how do you propose to keep the murder of five notable citizens quiet, Korbian?”

Thigpen was all politeness and manners as he moved about the room. Yet, Garett wondered abruptly if there wasn’t just a hint of acid in the mayor’s tone of voice as he spoke to the captain-general.

“Particularly these five,” Thigpen continued. “Except for the priest, Kathenor, and old Qester, the others have clients, some of whom are probably showing up for appointments even as we stand here.” He rubbed his chin with one hand and inclined his bald head thoughtfully as he paced back and forth between Garett and Korbian. “No, no. There’s no way we can keep their deaths secret. What we must do, however, is play down this magical angle. Convince the people these are common murders.”

Garett gave a sigh as he listened to Ellon Thigpen. He once had held the man in some regard, considering him one of the few honest individuals to hold a seat on the Directorate. But even in the short time since the announcement that Thigpen would become mayor, Garett thought he noted changes. There was his dress, for one thing. As a wealthy merchant, Thigpen had always been well groomed and fitted. But of late he had taken to wearing robes from cloth-of-gold and blouses of the finest silks. Where before he had worn none at all, now his body fairly dripped with jewelry. Fat chains of gold and silver hung from his neck, and brilliant gems in elaborate settings ringed his fingers. “I’m making you responsible for this matter, Garett.”

It took Garett a moment to realize that Korbian Arthuran had addressed him.

“I’m much too busy with the details of the coming investiture ceremonies to personally handle this matter,” Korbian went on as he circled around his desk and moved past Garett to his office door. “Security measures for all the attending officials and the logistics of crowd control have to take precedence.” He put his hand on the door handle, but hesitated. He fixed Garett with a hard eye. “I know you can take care of this quietly.” He opened the door and tilted his head to indicate Garett’s next course of action.

Garett paused long enough to glance at Ellon Thigpen. The mayor folded his arms across his chest as he leaned back on Korbian’s desk. His expression was cool and unreadable. He lifted his nose ever so slightly, though, as he realized Garett was observing him.

“That’s all for now, Captain,” Korbian said pointedly to speed Garett on his way.

Garett executed a half-hearted salute and exited his superior’s office. The wooden door closed behind him with a sharp thud, and for just a moment, the voice of Ellon Thigpen followed Garett down the empty hall. Garett smiled to himself, not bothering to hide the pleasure he felt as the lord mayor tore into Korbian Arthuran. For just an instant, he entertained the notion of creeping back to the door and setting his ear against it to overhear the tongue-lashing.

Then he admitted to himself that, frankly, he didn’t care what the two men said to each other. The matter had been dropped into his lap, whether he liked it or not, as most such matters usually were. It didn’t surprise him. He’d been prepared for it. He only hoped that with the coming celebration to occupy them, Ellon and Korbian would stay out of his way and let him run a proper investigation.