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Dearest Readers, you have my deepest thanks for joining us in this wee journey :D
THE HIDDEN SWORD: A TALE OF BALDUR'S GATE
Book One: From the Earth | Chapter 21 : A Thousand Mountains
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It's them!
Irse leaned over the rails, the winds brisk against her face as the towers of Iriaebor emerged from the horizon.
White and gray without count, they rose from the top of a great hill facing the harbor, innumerable lighthouses shining upon a river of blue and on the sea of earth and stone. With pride they reached to the skies, the regal points of a marble diadem crowning the brown land.
"Welcome to Iriaebor. The City of…," the captain announced as they berthed at the port.
A Thousand Spires, Irse echoed in her mind.
"… a thousand white-washed dung heaps where nests the greedy black-souled, hole-hearted, money-worshipping vultures," the man finished and punctuated with a spat on the deck floor.
Master and apprentice glanced at each other. A fair warning, perhaps.
Beneath the shadow of the ridge and its towers, Iriaebor's port rivaled the busy harbors of Baldur's Gate and Berdusk. Its waters teemed with ships arriving and leaving port, watchtowers, berths, slipways on which boats newly built are launched. While on land, warehouses stood crammed and wall-to-wall amidst the swarm of activity.
The pair navigated the unpaved trails, dodging harried laborers and horse drawn carts bearing sealed crates or uncovered barrels of fish sloshing and spilling onto the muddied ground. Pack hugged close to her chest, Irse hopped over puddles and potholes, ducking in between anything moving and still, determined not to fall behind as she kept up with her Teacher's stride.
Evidently in a hurry to meet his acquaintance. But before breakfast? Irse's heart sank. Ah, well. The sooner this person was found, the sooner they could have their first bite of the day. But how many blocks have they passed now? Irse sighed. At least they might dare to be on time for brunch.
She steeled her jaw, tightened the grip on her pack and sucked in her stomach, hoping it would be enough to muffle the beginnings of a complaint. They stopped at a corner to get their bearings and for her Teacher to explain their course.
"City carriages await their passengers at the outskirts of the Docks. We must find one to take us to -"
A low rumble interrupted him. Okami looked at her.
"Must be a foghorn," Irse quibbled through an awkward grin, crushing the pack against her torso.
Her Teacher's eyes darted around at the clear air. "Forgive me. I had planned for us to break our fast upon meeting my acquaintance. But your stomach begs to disagree."
The elf glared at him. "How could you have possibly heard that?" she almost yelled over the shouting of harbor hands and traders, creaking of wagon wheels, and the braying of horses and mules.
Okami quirked his lips. "A dragon's whisper among the clucking of a multitude of hens is still the voice of a dragon nonetheless."
Irse pouted at his jibe, maintaining the scowl for an entire block until he led them to a rickety wooden house bearing a sign of a jug spilling its wine.
A tankard house, her stomach read in a happy croak as they went inside. They sat by an open window, the main floor raised above the muddy ground by thick wooden stilts, allowing them an elevated view of the harbor.
Breakfast consisted of tea, a basket of bread, and a crock of cheese, the last taking its time getting to the table. The crumbs on her lap grew to a tiny pile as she tore through the bun. A drop of tea joined the flour dust on her knee. So hungry. Couldn't even wait for the cheese.
And arrived it did in an earthen bowl. Finally, Irse grumbled. Are they serving elven cheese – something aged for three centuries, turned over on its other side for another two?
The waiter glanced at the empty wicker basket on the table. "More bread, my friends?" he offered.
"Yes, please," Irse mumbled through a loaf being devoured in progress.
"That will be an extra twenty coppers."
What. A loaf should only cost two coppers at most and there were no more than five in the basket.
She hesitated. Teacher had already paid for what had been set down before them while in his plate lay a half-eaten roll; his sole share in the meal so far. Guiltily, Irse reached into her pocket for the money. However, Okami demonstrated the same swiftness as with his blade, sliding the equivalent in two silvers towards the server who took the payment and promptly returned to the kitchens.
"Wait for the bread," he charged his apprentice, evidently not needing to see the fingers creeping towards the cheese bowl.
Irse blinked and drew back her hand.
The blacksmith shot her a side glance. "It is a tactic of theirs – to serve your food and drink in protracted phases, rendering you unsatisfied with what you feel is an incomplete meal and compelling you to purchase more."
The elf scowled. Sneaky, she groused to herself. Two can play this game. Though the cheese, sitting white and fluffy in the bowl, cared not for contests of wills. Irse glared at it, grinding the tip of the knife handle on the table surface.
"Victory will not always reward the army that gathers the most men, but the army that stays its swords for the most hours," Okami reminded her.
The grinding progressed to restless tapping.
He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Have patience. The grass will become milk soon enough."
Irse paused, understanding the proverb. Though if applied to Dreppin's old cow Nessa, the sage who came up with the maxim would find himself strung up the nearest tree for spreading such a fanciful fib.
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They lingered no longer than necessary, with haste leaving the tankard house to board a wagon. The carriage, a plain uncovered horse-drawn cart, had slats nailed to the inner sides to serve as makeshift benches for passengers. Though far from the gilded private boxes of the nobility, still a welcome comfort and efficiency preferable to traversing the muddy wagon trails by foot.
Okami spoke with the carriage driver, reciting the directions from a piece of parchment he had fished out of his pack.
"May we request you to bring us to the Lower City, to the third door of the southernmost block in the Street of Hammers?"
"Yeah, yeah. It's in my route. We leave when the wagon's full," the driver muttered.
Having been first to seat themselves in the empty cart, the pair sat in quiet observation of the hubbub around them. After a while and unable to contain her curiosity, Irse tugged at her Teacher's sleeve.
"I'm guessing over there's not the Lower City," she supposed. Irse pointed to the mound where the towers rested, a rocky hill she figured could easily be more than a few hundred feet from its base, more or less a league-long and perhaps half across. From afar, her eyes could make out a single road sloping steeply from the foot of the knoll, winding gently midway in keeping with the contour of the rockface, before resuming a straight path to the gate.
"The Old City on the Tor. Home to the temples and the seat of Iriaebor's government, and the abode of the most powerful merchants."
"Huh, I thought only mages lived in towers," she chuckled. "I bet it takes them a whole day just to reach the bottom of the stairs."
"Or perhaps they never come down at all," Okami mused.
His finger traced the horizon, guiding her sight to what appeared in the distance as cobwebs strewn between the balconies.
"Do you see the bridges connecting the upper levels? Those are how they move from one spire to another unless the neighbor in the next tower is a competitor."
Irse laughed skeptically. "If you're a rich baker strolling out for morning air at your tower's bridge, you could run into your neighbor, an enemy pastry chef, and they could push you off to your death, just like that?"
"A clean and quiet way to dispose of a rival. An alternative to the prior years' open guild wars that, they say, used to soak the streets of this city in blood; thankfully put to an end by the current Lord and his council."
The elf winced, imagining the long plunge down. Apparently in Iriaebor, business is serious business.
But she dispelled the grim notion and let her eyes explore what her sight could afford of the stone turrets. Irse imagined herself sitting atop one of those towers, feet dangling over the eaves, wind whipping her hair, the world so small below, the horizon straight ahead and the sky above and infinite. Just as she had always done back at home, on the roof of her attic room of the battlement facing the Sea of Swords.
"The Old City stands between the Docks here and the Lower City housing the industries and dwellings of common folk. There, we are to seek an old acquaintance of mine who, not too long ago, offered a space for me to practice my trade."
He looked down at her and beamed indulgently. "And where your learning may continue."
At his words the young elf's eyes widened, eager and excited. She sprang from her seat and scrambled to the front. The driver sat waiting, head bobbing from a nap stolen in intermittent winks.
"Eh, Mister Horseman, could we go now? Do we have to wait for others to ride with us?" she buzzed, poking a finger at his shoulder.
The man stirred from his half-snooze and snorted. "If you can cough up thirty coppers and a half for each passenger I should be carrying with a full wagon, plus twenty silvers for the rush. We can leave now and get there faster than a hired griffon."
"Really? Wait," Irse said. She turned around to estimate the number of people who could be sitting at the wagon now. Each bench could seat six at most, four sides in all, add ten more probably willing to sit on the floor if cramming them all in like fish in a bucket. Then, a quick mental sum of the money in her purse. Then a not so mental gasp at the exorbitant demand.
"That's ridiculous, Mister! We're only paying twenty coppers each. It should be cheaper if we got a boat and drove it on land all the way through the city!"
"You're just stalling. Now it's fifty coppers for each head plus seventy silvers. Time and prices a' ticking," the man drawled.
She glared at the carriage driver before returning to her seat. Well then, no choice but to sit and wait and stew under the morning sun now climbing to its zenith.
Irse hunched over her pack on her knees and huffed.
Welcome to Iriaebor.
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Their wagon trotted through the Lower City, a stifling labyrinth more packed than the streets of the other cities she had seen. Narrow cobbled lanes snaked through one other, flanked by tall houses of either rickety wood or grimy stone, built cheek-to-cheek. All have a shop at the street level, be it a merchandising store, a tannery, a slaughterhouse, or a stable. Most likely, common folk either lived in the basement or the higher floors, the theory confirmed by the lines of wash hanging on poles jutting from the upper windows, patched and faded flags waving their welcome at the people below.
"This be the spot as you said," the driver hollered at them, the carriage stopping in front of a shop.
Okami thanked the man as they alighted from the wagon. He looked up from his note, then both ways to count the number of doors from the end of the block, at the door sign, then at the window display in front of them.
And blushed a deep red.
"Your friend sells women's corsets and lace knickers?" Irse questioned a little too loudly. She approached the glass pane and peered closer at a mannequin wearing a pointier than usual conical brassiere.
Victor's Public Knowledge. An odd name for a lingerie shop.
"There must be a mistake, though the address is correct. Perhaps we could instead inquire with the other stores," he suggested hastily.
But attempts to ask the other stall owners in the same block about the previous occupant of the third door yielded the exact same number of answers as the shops they had approached. Ten, in all; and none matching the description of Okami's acquaintance.
No other choice but to brave the cave of feminine frills and lace. Okami breathed in deeply and made to march in, the picture of a soldier resigned to his fate, about to confront overwhelming armies. But Irse barred him with an outstretched arm.
"I'll do it," she volunteered, feeling a small pat of pride at the obvious relief on his face.
Okami handed her the slip of parchment. "Inquire with them if they know this person," he instructed.
Irse took the paper and gave it a once over. "All right. But you stay here and don't go anywhere without me," she insisted, wagging a finger at him and wondering why he returned an indignant glare. The elf scratched her ear and went in.
A sweet-countenanced aged dame manned the store by herself, smothered in velvet and pearls, hair done up in a fashionable beehive. Irse showed her the piece of parchment bearing the name and address. She surveyed the shop displays, waiting while the old woman peered into the paper through an oversized bifocal. Shapely mannequins filled the room, each one resembling too closely the female form of all sizes and races, draped in the finest flimsiest silk and lace, leaving nothing to the imagination.
The elf squinted at one bizarre dummy in a far corner. Spherical, as wide as a man prone, on its top protruded what looked like ten stuffed stockings with pompoms sewn at the tip. Draped all over the entire thing, the chemise had holes sewn to let the stalks through the silk and to reveal a single large opening in the middle of the body, if it could be called such.
She approached the strange mannequin, about to poke at it when the shopkeeper spoke up.
"Sorry, dearie. But I do not know this person nor their business," the elderly lady apologized. "We ourselves have only been in this location for less than a tenday."
"Only a few days?" A flash of idea hit her. "Auntie," Irse addressed the woman, recalling the way her Teacher referred to the aged. "What about the folks who were here before you? Maybe you could tell me who they are and where they went after they left?"
"Of course, sweetie. They make explosive potions; the kind adventurers love. They said they're moving to a stall in the Street of Porcelains, but I forgot which door exactly."
Irse gently divested her of the note and patted the gnarled hand. "It's fine, ma'am. We'll ask around ourselves." She bowed in farewell and headed for the door.
"Thank you for understanding, dearie," the old shopkeeper chirped. She pointed at the window.
"Oh and tell your friend over there - she can come in anytime to have herself fitted. A pretty one she is but no need to be shy about her bosom. Why, over the years I've helped hundreds like her with chests plainer than the flatlands beyond the city wall to gain busts the size of the Tor… with the towers too!"
Irse squirmed, uttered a quick thanks and dashed outside. To her relief, Okami stood there still, though a bit more to the front of the next store.
She shared with him what she had gotten from the old shopkeeper. Except for the invitation. The elf hoped her Teacher didn't notice the awkward reflexive peek at his chest, the awkward cough and the awkward stare elsewhere.
Fortunately, it didn't prove too difficult to find the explosive potions store the brassiere seller had mentioned. A patrolling city watch helpfully pointed them to the Street of Porcelains followed by a simple matter of searching the entire block until they found a wooden sign half-charred and hanging precariously above a door with scorch marks.
The owners turned out to be an ancient gnomish couple in soot-stained tunics, ash-powdered leather aprons, and dust-streaked goggles doing business behind a singed counter piled high with glass globes filled with golden viscous liquid.
The pair stared unsettled at the old and trembling hands as the gnomes stood on rickety stools and stacked the delicate flasks on a desk behind the counter. Broken crockery propped up two of the table's uneven legs.
"Very much correct, young fella'. We held shop at the Hammers for a few days," the old man confirmed as he set down an explosive potion on the fifth level of the pile. His fingertip twitched as it pushed the bottle inwards. With the container designed to have a near perfect rounded bottom, the potion tipped to one side, swiveling a few times more before it stilled on its own.
Elf and blacksmith both resumed breathing again.
"Uncle, Auntie, would you happen to remember the business occupying the place before you moved in?" Okami asked.
Irse silently thanked Tethrin for her Teacher's unearthly focus. Not a small feat, talking while keeping watch on the hands, the bottles, ears pricking at the slightest tinkle of glass lest it be followed by a boom and roar of fire.
The old woman gnome replied, "I think it used to be a leathers shop?"
"Was it? Ah, yes, yes. A leathers shop run by a shy and timid lady. Isn't she, my spiced turnip pie?" the old man answered, tilting his head and winking at the wife.
"Yes, she is. And she makes such pretty leathers too," the old woman agreed, beaming at her husband and waving a quivering hand clutching a full potion bottle.
Irse noticed her Teacher tensing, visibly readying to leap over the counter and catch the bottle should it fall from her hands. But the old gnome set it ever so slowly at the bottom of another pile on the ground. However, the potion she had laid down dislodged three more. Across the floor the bottles rolled in a merry race, the grinding of glass against stone echoing in the small room.
Clearly by instinct, Okami stepped forward to shield his apprentice.
Clearly by an interest to watch anything exploding, Irse peeked from behind her Teacher.
Clearly by Tethrin's mercy, the bottles bumped into a discarded charred mattress leaning upright against the wall. Their momentum halted, the potions rocked side-to-side before spinning to a stop.
"Dear, you keep saying you'll throw out that dirty thing every time we move out," the old woman complained, pointing at the mattress.
Her husband raised a bushy eyebrow. "Well, now you remind me. I'll have one of the lads come and pick it up."
Irse grimaced. Hopefully, he also meant to collect the potions from the floor which the couple seemed to have forgotten almost immediately.
"I've heard the leathers woman set up her store at the Lane of Silks. Go outside, leftwards till you reach the end of the block, it's the street crossing this one. Take to your right, you'll come across her eventually. You better go there now or you might miss her," the old man added.
"She closes before noon?" Irse asked.
The old gnomish woman wagged both hands. "Oh, no. He means she might have packed shop and gone off to a new spot."
Master and apprentice looked at each other in alarm, thanked the couple, bowed, and swiftly left.
"What's with these stores never staying in one place," the elf grumbled as they half-strolled, half-sprinted.
"It is typical for merchants in this city to either change locations or enterprise frequently. They pursue coin whither soever it flows, according to the gathering of crowds or the fleeting whims of the purse. The council cares not for licenses, only that taxes be paid on the sale itself."
They were already at the end of the block, pausing to read the street sign nailed on a torch post, and heading to their right. Slowly they walked past the shops, checking each signage until they found a piece of hide hanging by the door. They quickened their pace and dashed into the store.
"Good morning! Can I help you folks?" a half-orc woman greeted pleasantly, stepping out from behind the counter to meet them.
Irse cheerfully waved at her but froze as the lady came into full view. The half-orc towered over them both, clad from neck to toe in black-dyed rawhide with silver pointy rivets running across the chest and at the sides of her trousers. The woman licked her pierced tusk and assessed them with a measuring eye.
Okami coughed and held out the note. "Pardon us, Madam. But we are seeking an old acquaintance of mine who occupied the third stall in the Street of Hammers. Would you happen to know if this is the person who leased the space before you did?
The woman leaned down to squint at the writing, then straightened herself with a disgusted grunt. "Oh, that man? Yes, he'd been renting the spot back then. Had the bad luck of chancing upon him as they were packing up. Nasty fellow."
"But we need to find him. Would you happen to know where he moved to after he left?" Irse pleaded.
The half-orc crossed her arms. "Ah, yes I would know because he wouldn't stop yammering about how his company's been bleeding gold from every holed pocket. And yet he got to stay in business while at the Hammers for a good half-year while affording to buy some abandoned coster waybase at the docks nearest to the western gate. He's probably still there, if disgruntled customers and workers haven't rioted and burned down that barn already."
Master and apprentice traded relieved glances before bowing and thanking the shopkeeper.
"Oh, does this mean you're leaving so soon? Come now, you can try on some of my merchandise. A bit too loose and I can tighten them up just for you," she suggested with a sly wink.
Okami paled for a moment but smiled nervously. "We appreciate the offer but as you have said, we must hasten to reach him lest a frustrated customer, or more likely, a discontented employee decides to set the waybase on fire."
The half-orc chuckled and wriggled her gloved fingers in fond farewell. "I've taken a fancy to this nook myself, so I'm sure to be staying here for a good while. You two know how to find me anytime," she teased after them as they stepped out of the door.
"She seems like a nice lady, but her business might not be around for long," Irse whispered with pity when they have walked a good distance.
"Why do you think is that?"
The elf furrowed her brows, baffled as she remembered the woman's wares on display.
"For one thing, all of her stuff is in black and looks too stiff to move with. What kind of folks would want to wear black all the time?"
Okami's eyes darted up in search of an answer. "Perhaps, people who shun the light of the sun and prefer the cold of the night?"
"Some of the leather armor on the mannequins are nothing more than straps and buckles, hardly covering anything. Who would go to a fight showing a lot of skin on their torso? Isn't the point of body armor to protect yourself?"
"Perhaps, people who do not fear the blows but rather, revel in pain?"
Irse wrung her hands. "And strangest of all - the leather trousers have no crotches and bottoms on them! What kind of pants are those with the bum out in the sunshine?"
Okami opened his mouth to reply but paused as if unsure of his answer. He cleared his throat. "Perhaps they are unfinished. As she had said herself, the merchandise is customized to the wearer, in itself commanding a higher price."
Irse's eyes glazed over as she imagined the strange leather pantaloons completed with iron or gold-plated behinds, embossed with a family crest or even short chivalrous poetry on each cheek. She pulled at the straps of her pack as they continued to weave their way through the narrow streets, acceding to the mystery of people's preferences for fanciful frocks and frippery.
"It is weird, but I guess some people are just fussy about their bottoms."
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