Lorenzel and Ramanzel

[Sareth]

"That sounds like good thinking," Lillith nodded in reply. "These things are... I honestly don't know. But the elves respect them, and everyone else respects the elves," she said. Hate and fear are a form of respect, after all... She shook herself. "I'll definitely want some coffee later. We don't get much where I'm from." Something about being a small town of refugees in hiding made it hard to get luxury goods.

She then contemplated the peadagogosi. "Where did you find that... her..."

[Drannin]

Argus shook his head. "Ask Sasha. Apparently it... she... found Sasha in the first place." With a shrug Argus walked over and placed the cup of coffee next to the paedagogusi. Treat like royalty, indeed.

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose watched, amazed, as the tiny being pulled a short piece of wire off the birdcage, then waved a hand over one end. Where there had been a broken piece of wire, there was now what looked like a ladle or a large spoon -- "large" in proportion to the fairy, anyway. She dipped it into the coffee, took a sip. "Hmmm ... not bad. Could use a bit of cream, but..."

As the fairy sipped daintily at the coffee, Brother Miguel handed Argus the package that had been delivered a few minutes earlier. "I guess this is no crazier than anything else we've got here," he said. "Were you expecting it?" A few minutes' nervous Divination spellcasting (it couldn't really be a bomb ... could it?), and a few seconds of unwrapping, revealed within a bottle of wine. Very fine wine. As Argus lifted it to inspect the label (one that the finest restaurants of Tsuirakushiti would have been proud to serve, for a cost equal to the gross national product of one of the cities of the Northern Confederacy), a note fluttered to the floor. Rose stooped to pick it up.

Please accept this small present as a token of our appreciation for your removal of certain vermin from the waterfront at the last town you visited.

Regards to your lovely daughter.

There was no signature or address, but that absence wasn't the thing that caught Rose's attention. "'Daughter'?"

[Drannin]

Argus was so thrown by the wine that he barely noticed Rose's question. He blinked, and came back to himself. "Sorry?" Rose handed him the note.

Argus thought very nasty things at the bastard who wrote this. Probably Nikolai.

Seeing Rose's eyes on him, Argus sighed. "Remember how I said I was being blackmailed? My daughter Fayna came up during the conversation." Which was all true, strictly speaking, but leaving out some very important details.

Which Argus had been trying not to think about, and failing at utterly, given that she was right there. Weave...

Good Lord, the bottle was even glasteeled to protect the contents! The bottle alone was worth more than the entire inn! He fought down the temptation to just chug it all down. Something like this had to be saved for a special occasion...

Rose looked at him quizzically, apparently not convinced. Perceptive. She knows I'm hiding something. But will she press the subject...?

[Graybeard]

"Wow," Sister Rose said as she stared at the wine. "That label translates as 'Grapes of the Gods,' and from everything I've heard, it fits. I've never seen one of those before. May I?"

Accepting the bottle from Argus, she handled it almost reverentially, if with a particularly mixed complex of emotions. Wine had played more than a passing role in the Albigenish Incident, and the indoctrination that she and her people had received before heading north had included a familiarization with fine wine that she'd never expected to learn. It had caused certain unexpected tensions in the company she commanded; she and most of the other Reformed soldiers had no problems with wine (fine or otherwise) in moderation, but some of the ultra-Orthodox people in the company had been devout teetotalers, and she had to spend a great deal of time reassuring them (and, in some cases, giving unexpectedly salty orders) as to which side of the battle between Good and Evil they were fighting for...

Shaking her head gently, she started to hand the bottle back to its fortunate recipient, but then she paused for a moment. Something didn't seem quite right here ... nothing she could put her finger on immediately, but there was an incongruity, a wrongness that gnawed at her subconscious. "Hang on just a minute," she said. "I'd like to take another look at this thing." Puzzled, Argus complied.

A moment later, she knew what it was. "Look at this," she told Argus, holding the bottle upright with its neck exposed. "Right here." She pointed to the top.

In the sealing wax atop the cork, there was a very tiny, but very round and carefully drilled, hole.

[Sareth]

Lillith had been oblivious to all of this, having noticed neither the note, nor the conversation regarding it. Instead, she had been eyeing both the Peadagogosi and Sasha, her head rotating from one to the other and back. Clearly her distaste for Sasha was warring with her need to understand what so strong a spirit (one could presume that was how she viewed the moth with tits fairy creature to be) was doing there. Eventually, though, she shook her head and turned to leave the room, only to be confronted by the sight of the group at the door.

"What is..." She cocked her head to the side. "Isn't it a bit early for wine?"

[Templar771]

Cit was about to reply when he saw Harker fly over the fields and out of sight. There was a silence. Cit nodded slowly and then said "Now that's not something you see every day..."He clicked his fingers and Felix awoke with a jolt. "I need you to fly over there and find Argus's familiar and see if he needs any help." Cit now turned to the visitor "Now before I tell you anything let me get this straight: You can read dwavern, can take apart dwavern gadgets with magic and reassemble them and you have an understanding with doors yet you call yourself a musician. Interesting."

[Graybeard]

"Isn't it a bit early for wine?"

Sister Rose wasn't sure whether Lillith's innocence was touching, or just naive. After thinking for a moment, she decided on the former; Lillith didn't know about the background work that had been done at the Kiyokan mission before Argus was approached, after all. For Argus as he had been, no hour was too early for wine. Well, best not to linger on that; he'd obviously been working hard to mend his ways, and he'd been just about on the wagon for the entire trip, despite having plenty of reasons not to be -- one furry, lascivious, "handicrafts"-oriented reason, in particular.

A thought struck Rose. I feel enormous compassion for this man. Love, no, at least not beyond what Luminosita tells me to feel for all humanity ... but compassion. He's had more than enough pain in his life. I wish I could do more to make it better so that the pain is less, and the happiness isn't overwhelmed by it. But I don't know if I can; I don't know if anyone can... and that just makes the compassion all the greater. (Which, of course, was at least as much of an observation on Rose herself as on Argus.)

Back to the matter at hand. She squinted at the seal on the top of the bottle. The hole simply didn't look right. Taking the bottle over to the window for better light (not a sign of thunderclouds anywhere in the sky, she noticed), she rotated it this way and that, trying to decide whether the hole extended down to and through the cork. It was hard to be sure; there might have been some damage to the cork, there might not. By its very nature, cork tended to expand to fill little holes in its structure. Best, probably, to be on the safe side.

Handing the bottle back to Argus, Rose said, "I'm not absolutely certain, but I have a funny feeling that this bottle has been tampered with." She waited for reactions.

[Drannin]

Argus sighed. "Figures. They may be trying to cover their tracks. Maybe I can find an apothecary in town to test it." Chemistry wasn't one of his strong suits. Still, maybe it was for the best. The last thing he needed was to start drinking again.

Was he surprised that a group of smugglers might be trying to poison him? No, not really. It seemed to be par for the course, lately.

[Sareth]

"Covering their tracks?" Lillith asked. Confusion was writ large across her face, and then concern. "Are you telling me someone is trying to kill us?" Her eyes showed fear, and the dark gloom that she'd held since the chaos of rescuing the half-elves could be seen lurking, ready to take her again.