Chapter Text
It had been a cold late fall month, the city of TunFaire being unusually quiet. Despite the general unrest in the city over the end of the war, it was a fairly smooth transition, according to the Dead Man. Then again, anything short of outright war might be a calm transition to him, he didn't actually say how many wars ended in his time, at least human wars. When we do wars, we do it for the long haul. So when we actually finish them, we finish them with flair and panache.
Or not, as everything had just sort of fallen apart without much fanfare. Sure, there had been parades and celebrations, but the common folk (myself included) hadn't seen terribly much change, other than the difficulty of changing from a war economy to a peacetime one. I'm sure the problems were just starting for those who owned business that relied on the military. My own job didn't really care if there was a war going on. There'd always be people looking to find a missing loved one, or a lost cause needing someone to find that last relic that they just know will revitalize everything and rally people once more.
However, the fates themselves didn't see fit to allow me too much rest. I had been kept busy with some minor work, a case of a missing daughter (died, unfortunately, long before we found her, pinned it to her boyfriend) and some minor cases of theft among the more well to do merchants. The Dead Man had gone to sleep out of boredom, which was fine by me. Less trouble from him pushing me to take harder cases. Not that had there been any harder cases knocking on my door.
But one had to come to me anyway, in an incredibly familiar package.
When the front door to the house started to rattle then clicked open, I was fairly surprised. No one beside myself and Dean had the keys currently, and Dean should be gone to the market for another two hours or so. We had gotten dangerously low on food, so him and Singe had gone to get more, as well as a few other things we had been putting off buying.
All on my dime, of course, so I'm sure they'd be getting only the finest of items for our downright palatial estate. Although compared to where I used to live, it was pretty impressive, managing to house three people on and off, and a corpse.
Not that the corpse ate much in the way of mortal food. I'm pretty sure he dined off of the mental energy we all produced around him, like some kind of leech. He didn't respond to that, which let me know he was quite fast asleep.
Peaking out of the office holding one of the head thumpers I keep under the desk just in case, I saw the willowy form of a very particular dark elf just starting to slip inside the house.
Morley was a friend, a good friend, so good in fact he shouldn't be needing to pick the locks to my home to get inside. So why was he casually picking my lock in the middle of the day?
Strolling out in the hallway, I tapped the wall with the head thumper lightly.
“Any reason why you decided to pick the lock to my door instead of just knocking?” I said, bemused. Morley grinned at me as he slipped inside the house, shutting the door behind him quietly.
He was dressed to...well, not impress today. It was still impressive, of course, since he was the one wearing it. He could wear filthy rags and still look that elusive combination of daring and exotic the girls love. Not that it would stay dirty, dirt just sort of slipped off of him. He was wearing what one could almost call his working clothes. Not working clothes for the Palms, his restaurant store front, but more for his real job of cutting throats and breaking limbs. All black or dark coloured so stains weren't immediately visible, loose fitting enough to move in, but not enough to grab or tear if someone got feisty with him. I was worried about that. I doubted he'd be so brazen to take a contract on me then stroll over and just cut me up in my own home, but you never knew with him.
Someone had contracted him before and he had refused. At least once, I should add, others could have tried hiring him since then. I just kept hoping whatever they were paying wasn't enough for Morley to accept. I knew there'd be a price eventually he'd take, but I tried to not dwell on exactly how much our friendship cost.
Morley sort of shrugged, slipping his lockpicks away somewhere I couldn't see, long fingers too quick and nimble for me follow.
“Can't a guy come to visit his friend and practice his lockpicking at the same time?” he said, grinning. Something was wrong. Despite his carefree attitude, he seemed quite nervous about something as the two of us sat down in my office, him sitting down instead of sprawling like normal. He was like a cat in that regard. If he was comfortable, he was taking up all the space and preening. When he wasn't, it was like a small ball of barely contained nerves, sitting on the edge of his seat.
He wasn't quite there yet, just seated on the chair, not on the edge. So maybe we had some time to discuss the issues rather than just get up and take care of whatever it was that was bothering him.
I raised a single eyebrow at him, indicating he should stop bullshitting and actually answer the question.
He sighed, templing his fingers as he pursed his lips, dark elven features clouded and brooding. He wanted to answer, but wasn't sure how to word it, it seemed to me.
“What do you know of Carathca?” he said, throwing me off balance with the suddenness of the question.
“It fell something like three hundred years ago? Abandoned now, an old evil Loghyr turned it into a death cult, which us humans didn't like, destroyed it?” I said. All common knowledge, really. Common knowledge for those of us who had dealt with the evil Logyr first hand, at least. He nodded slightly, accepting the answer. He remembered the event also. It was sort of hard to forget when giant multi limbed monstrosities suddenly just materialize from the sky, intent on drinking your blood. Or eating organs. Or whatever it is that they do, we hadn't stuck around long enough to find out any of the times they had appeared.
He sighed, leaning back in the chair, looking thoughtful. “The royalty of Carathca is still alive, and has made some futile attempts to rebuild, as you likely also know.”
I did, although I hadn't given it much thought. There was no way for them to rebuild, not within a lifetime, not even an elven life time. The early kings of Karentine had made damn sure it was quite razed...well, as razed as an underground city fortress can be. They wanted to be quite sure the cult wouldn't have a place to hide when they burned it out. They had just moved into TunFaire instead and killed the King themselves before being killed for the time being.
He shifted in the chair, looking uneasily. “All dark elves can be called upon to do a single service to the king or queen, as the case may be. This almost never comes up, at least not for a long time.”
“So it's come up now, and they're calling on you.” This wasn't something I knew about, but I had heard of various similar services among other cultures. I suspected the current Karentine King could do the same, if he stopped partying and looked into the ancient laws and bylaws that still existed in some form or another. I had suspected the Prince could also, but if he had that power, I was surprised he hadn't used it against me, forced me to be some kind of royal investigator for the crown. Whatever reasons he had for not press ganging me into that situation, I was quite happy for it. I liked my freedoms to choose what cases I worked on, damn it.
Morley nodded, confirming my beliefs. I wasn't always dense, sometimes I was even perceptive! I could almost hear the Dead Man laughing at me, but I was quite sure he was still asleep. A gentle mental chuckle, shared between the two of us, perhaps.
“Yes. I got a message from the Queen. Quite legit, so it's not some sort of prank from some whelp who thinks it would be funny to start calling in favours from people,” he said as he removed a letter from his breast pocket, sliding it over to me across the desk.
I opened it up, perusing it briefly. It was written in high elvish, which caused me to frown at him. He grinned back. He had to throw the joke in there, knowing I could read, but only in common Karentine. The only thing I could make out was that the handwriting was quite impeccable, as well as the paper itself seemed quite fancy. It might also be entirely misspelled, I had no way of knowing.
“It basically says that they are calling upon my expertise to find a royal relic called the Cobalt Cage. Or hmmm....no, cage works the best. It's an old relic, used by the royalty to do...something. They were vague about it, other than it should be made of cobalt. Unsure if they mean unrefined cobalt or the colour.” They were two rather different looking things. It was almost magical how dyers could take such weird items and turn them into vibrant colours.
He leaned forward, frowning, sounding almost desperate.
“This is not my expertise, as you know. I go get things, once they're found. And deal with them. I can't find them, I almost always get very explicit directions beforehand. Which is why I'm here, asking for your help. I can't offer much, business has been slow, but they will pay for the relic, they must according our laws. I just ask that you find it, so that I can go and get it from wherever it's wound up. The entire payment will be yours.”
I leaned back in my chair, pushing the letter back to him, pondering it. We had been both fairly even, even if I did rag on him for the whole vampire thing. He had saved my sorry ass enough times, as well as did enough work for me, one could say we were more than just even.
You could say I owed him, maybe. Just the smallest bit of owing, of course.
I frowned hard enough to give myself some new wrinkles, I'm sure of it. Everything about this seemed terrible. Dark elves, ancient cursed relics, and Morley? Find the relic itself should be easy enough though, right? The rest we'd just have to deal with as we went along.
I nodded, noting the relief on his face. I was relieved that he was relieved. Seeing him look so concerned had made me also concerned. Something made me think that maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought it would be. Nothing ever was.
I should listen to these feelings, according to the Dead Man. But I couldn't just leave Morley in the lurch, given how long we'd been friends. Especially if not doing this for the dark elves would be as deadly as it looked like it could be for him. If he died, I wouldn't be able to make fun of him any more, and that was just downright terrible.
I should also have been wary because Morley is as beautiful as any ten women and ten times as deadly also. Perhaps the gods themselves decided that Morley was added to the clause to fuck over little old me with pretty things, just to make my life more interesting. Also maybe because most of the prettier ladies had decided to take a break from me for the time being. Smart on their end, maybe. Terribly dull on my end.