Echoes of Invasion: After Party | Scene 13

Two tired, soggy, and injured elves carefully make their way down the stairs of the rickety building atop which they fought the Rats. Boards occasionally give way underfoot, but they suffer no additional injuries. When they step out onto the street, Tric pulls his hood back up against the drizzle. He is in a dark mood, but Heppa feels quite proud of how they handled things. They saw a threat and they took care of it, protecting Alric, his feathered family, and his business. 

As she reflects on this, Tric crouches down alongside Lowrie’s body. He holds up a key ring. “Look at this. Some of these are quite fine. No rust at all. I bet these aren’t Lowrie’s.” Tric fingers through the set and settles on one key with a coat of arms stamped upon its head. “This must be to a room in the tower.” He pockets the keys and grabs one of the corpse’s arms. Heppa takes the other, and the two walk it the short distance to the alley behind the Parting Glass.

Tric steps inside, leaving Heppa alone with a human corpse to study. There are many small cuts from the grasses she wrapped around him and large gashes from Tric’s arrows. She notes that most of the arrows are as broken as the body’s bones, but not all. This suggests that Lowrie was shot both before and after he fell. Judging from all the blood around the broken arrows and where some of them are embedded, she determines that he was dead before he hit the ground. During her inspection of the body and its injuries, she finds a small vial containing a viscous liquid that matches what is on the edges of Lowrie’s throwing knives. She pockets the cuttlefish venom for later, but it is more likely to end up in an alchemical experiment than on her own blade.

The Parting Glass is quite busy when Tric enters. There is no performer tonight, Glammur having already moved on now that the festival is over, but many people have taken shelter inside from the weather. In the hubbub around him, Tric can hear that the fires around town are a prominent topic of conversation. Keeping his hood up, Tric makes his way over to Heledd and says meaningfully, “I have a gown I need to put away.

Heledd glares at Tric. “And this is a problem of mine, why?” She stands with one hand balancing a full tray at shoulder height and the other firmly planted on the opposite hip. At least she’s not punching me, Tric reflects.

“No, it’s not. Just… where’s a safe place I can store my gown?”

She clearly understands what Tric is trying to communicate, but she is unmoved. “You know there’s a river west of town, right?”

“I need to take my gown to the tailor tomorrow morning to return it. It needs to be properly stored.

Heledd breathes out an annoyed sigh. “I’m not really in the gown business,” she reminds him. She may steal things, and she will certainly defend herself, but she is no killer.

Tric leans in closer and drops his voice. “It’s Lowrie, former head of the Rats. So I understand this may change your second job a little bit.”

Heledd’s eyebrows go up, as does her opinion of Tric. “Wow. You travel in higher circles than I thought. Looks like your dance card is quite full.”

“I’m very good at dancing, yes. But if a gown gets enough tears, it gets ruined,” Tric says, giving his head a sharp nod to urge her to come with him. 

Heledd looks at something over his shoulder and shouts, “Haskel! See to those tables over there. I’ve got to… take this tray back to the kitchen.” Alric is sufficiently busy at the bar that he takes no note of Tric slipping through the kitchen curtains alongside Heledd.

They emerge into the alley and find Heppa crouched next to Lowrie’s body. Heledd joins her there. “Wow, Lowrie’s dead,” she says after confirming for herself Tric’s claim. “Business is going to get a little easier.”

“It’s probably going to get more complicated,” Tric disagrees.

“Why? I’m not going to have Rats in my way.”

“Every Rat lieutenant is going to be fighting for territory.”

“Let them chew on each other,” Heledd says dismissively. “What do I care?”

She is not seeing the larger picture here. Tric tries a new approach. “I don’t need to tell you the risk,” he says, although that is exactly what he is doing. “As bad as Lowrie may have been, he was controlling them, these uncontrollable people. Whatever his stature in the underworld, Lowrie probably wasn’t ambitious beyond what he was. But now all those lieutenants who have been held back are going to be striving for every scrap they can get. Any deals the Rats may have had with anyone, those are all off the table. Now it is just chaos. Did you have any agreements with any Rats to keep them off your back?”

“No, I just avoided their territory when I could,” Heledd says, looking up at Tric from the body. He can see in her eyes that she is considering his words.

“Right. Now what is their territory? They’re all going to be out trying to prove something.”

Heledd straightens back up. “What were you doing shooting Lowrie full of arrows, anyway?”

“He was the one starting all the fires,” Tric says, waving vaguely around. Although it is a rainy night, there is still a faint glow reflected from the clouds, indicating that the fires have not all been put out. Tric pulls out the keyring he found on Lowrie. “Do you recognize any of these?”

Heledd only needs a mere glance to see that these are keys to rooms in the South Tower itself. She takes them from Tric and looks more closely at a bauble attached to the ring. “This looks really familiar, but I can’t place it. I’ve seen it before.” Given what Tric knows of her activities, that could mean it belongs to Lady Sabine, Rhaessa, or even the Engineer, who is an occasional customer at the Parting Glass.

Tric takes the keys back. “Lowrie was carrying this,” he tells Heledd.

She looks pensively down at the body. “So, you want to keep this for some reason?” she asks, nudging Lowrie’s corpse with her boot.

“Just for a day.” Tric puts a hand to his side as he coughs painfully. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been beat up quite a bit.” Heledd glances over at Heppa, taking note of the small cuts and blood stains in the other elf’s leathers, as well. “I’d like to sleep it off and haul this carcass up to the town guard tomorrow morning,” Tric tells her.

“Ugh. Well, that’s your prerogative, if you want to deal with them,” Heledd says. Clearly she does not.

“I just want them to know that this problem is dealt with and now they have the same new problem that you have,” Tric explains.

Heledd shakes her head in disapproval. “They’re going to ask questions. They don’t care what happens underground if it stays underground, but if you flaunt right to their face that you killed somebody…”

“Look, I’m Tric Manu. That’s what I do.”

Heledd barks out a laugh. “Murder or flaunt?”

“Flaunt!”

“That’s right, you did wine and dine the captain of the guard that one time,” Heledd recalls, unaware that Mhaev is Tric’s mother. “You must’ve hit it off better with her than I thought.”

Heppa finally looks up from the corpse she has been studying. “They were going to burn down the Parting Glass,” she announces, seemingly out of nowhere. 

Heledd looks over at her, startled. “What did they find out?”

“They were aiming for Alric!” Heppa cries.

“Wait… Lowrie?”

“Yes, he was out to get Alric,” Heppa confirms.

“So that’s why Lowrie’s dead,” Tric states. Heledd gives a solid kick to the corpse’s ribs. “The other side’s still fresh,” Tric says grimly. “I already kicked that side. And I hit him with about a dozen arrows. And he fell off a roof.”

“So what else were they planning?” Heledd asks.

“As far as we know, that’s what they wanted to do, burn down the Parting Glass,” Tric says. “And he was willing to set fire to half the town in the process. I don’t know if they wanted to murder Alric or just terrorize him.”

“Send a message, that’s what Lowrie said,” Heppa supplies. “Lowrie wanted Alric to know that they did this. They weren’t really going for the whole town; they were just trying to get the aim right.”

There is still the matter of what to do with the body. Tric does not want to store it at the Parting Glass. That seems like it would invite bad luck. Heppa suggests the ruined manor that Tric decreed to be the elvish consulate. 

Heledd perks up at that idea. “Yeah, sure! I can help you take it there.”

“Oh, you don’t need to—” Tric starts, but she cuts him off.

“Do you know how to get there directly underground? You don’t want to be wandering the streets with this”—Heledd kicks Lowrie again—“in your condition.” Shockingly, she asks no payment for her guide services this time. It is nice to see Heledd in a good mood, Heppa reflects. She must be really happy the leader of the Rats is dead.