But we did it. We zapped into the building’s third-floor entrance only to come face-to-face with two of the village swordsman guards. They stood stoically, ignoring us as we proceeded deeper into the building.
“How did they get up here?” Donut asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Weird.”
Donut had protested, but I talked her into putting Mongo into his carrier for this excursion. We were headed into the legislative chamber of this town, and the last thing we needed was the murder chicken to go a’murdering when all we wanted to do was talk. “We’ll keep him in reserve,” I’d said. “Our secret weapon in case we have to fight our way out.”
That seemed to appease both of them.
Mordecai had said that every one of these towns had a different type of leadership structure. Before the cataclysm, the skyfowl were in charge of the whole Over City. Now, their settlements were scattered, but the remaining eagle-controlled villages such as this one still maintained a similar structure as before, but without the previous oversight.
As a result, this Magistrate Featherfall guy was the big boss man of this village. In the old days, he would have answered to a regional governor, who in turn would answer to the royal chancellor, who in turn would answer to some dude in some sprawling capital city that was on the ninth floor.
This third floor was actually a high-end shopping mall of sorts, catering only to skyfowl. The administrative building and home to the magistrate was directly above this floor, but anyone visiting had to first walk through this section. The shops reminded me of the type of stores one would find at the airport, filled with expensive crap, like silken robes and fancy hats and scrolls. And even though the sparse customers were all the eagle folk, the clerks and assistants were all non-eagles, most of them harried-looking young women human and elves, rushing about, being snapped at and verbally abused by the skyfowl shoppers.
We walked down a long, wide hallway, flanked by the shops. A red carpet stretched from the landing to a stairwell at the end of the hall. I was relieved to see it was stairs and not another vertical flyway. As I watched, a human carrying a blue folder filled with papers rushed up the stairs.
“They have to have stairs so the help can get up there,” I said.
“That still doesn’t explain how they get up here in the first place,” Donut said.
Paintings of eagles fighting elves and other oddities adorned the walls. This particular building was one of the largest in town, second only to the Desperado Club. From the outside, it was camouflaged well. The exterior walls of each section were shingled in a different manner, making it look like a group of medieval buildings pressed against one another. The higher-end, more opulent interior made the whole façade seem like something one would find at Disneyland.
We passed multiple guards, a couple of eagle shoppers who startled at our appearance, and a handful of other bird-like creatures called Chickadees, whom I’d originally mistaken for juvenile skyfowl. These guys only came up to my waist and were like dwarven versions of the larger birds.
We approached the stairs without being stopped or questioned. As we ascended, the human who’d rushed up earlier rushed back down, almost running directly into us.
“Pardon me,” she said. I looked at the name over her head. Burgundy. The woman had an odd look about her. She was young, dark-haired, and pretty. She had one pale blue eye and a brown one, like a Siberian husky.
“No worries,” I said.
She paused. “Are you lost? We don’t see too many of your kind up here.”
“We’re on our way to see the magistrate,” I said.
She snorted. “Good luck.” Then she continued back down the stairs.
We continued up and walked straight into a reception area.
A large desk sat in one corner, pressed against the far wall, which contained another door. On the desk were piles of papers, what appeared to be an oversized bento box filled with sushi, more papers—including the blue folder Burgundy had just dropped off, and a colorful line of small, stuffed animals, from bears to goblins to eagles to sharks. Behind the desk was a row of shelves containing more of the colorful collection. These things were the dungeon version of Beanie Babies, I realized. There had to be 300 of them lined up on the shelves. Most, if not all, of them still had tags. A few from the top shelf were protected by individual glass cases.
Behind the desk, instead of a chair, there was a perch. And upon that perch rested an elderly, female skyfowl. Her feathers were tinged gray, and her large beak was cracked and crazed like brittle, old pottery. She smelled like Icy Hot. She glared at the intrusion with a who-the-hell-are-you-and-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here look upon her sour face. I examined the NPC’s properties.
Miss Quill – Skyfowl. Level 30.
Assistant to the Magistrate.
Cerberus. Heimdall. Aniketos and Alexiares. Qin Shubao. Lev Yashin. Some of the greatest gate guardians of both history and mythology. But none of them, not a one, was as dedicated to their work as Miss Quill.
If she doesn’t want you to see the magistrate, you ain’t seeing the magistrate.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked Donut.
“We don’t,” Donut said. “But we have a matter of great importance to discuss regarding the safety of this town.”
“And what is that matter?” she asked.
Donut leaned in. “Murder. Murder most foul.”
Miss Quill did not appear impressed. “Was it a skyfowl?”
“The suspect?” Donut asked. “We don’t know yet, but…”
“No, not the suspect. Put that down!” I quickly placed the lemur Beanie Baby back on the desk. The little stuffed creature wore a bandolier of knives, just like the real version. “Were any skyfowl murdered?”
“No,” Donut said. “Not that we know of.”
“Then he’s not going to care,” Miss Quill said. “And if he’s not going to care, I’m not going to disturb him. Because he will care about being disturbed.”
Donut: MY CHARM ISN’T WORKING ON HER.
Mordecai: There’s probably an anti-charm spell working in the area.
Carclass="underline" Plan B it is.
“Is that how it is in this town, then?” I asked. “As long as the victims aren’t skyfowl, they can just go screw themselves?”
She looked at me as if I were something she’d just regurgitated. “Do you want the short answer or the long answer to that?”
“The long answer,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s how it is in this town. It was like this when my late husband was the Magistrate, and it’s like that now with Magistrate Featherfall.” She looked down at her bento box and sighed. “But please, feel free to leave a note describing the situation, and if it warrants further investigation, we’ll get back to you.”
“And what about the evidence we collected? Should we leave that here, too?” I asked.
“If you must.”
I pulled the dead hooker from my inventory and splatted her on the eagle’s desk. The corpse’s legs, still stiff with rigor, upset the line of Beanie Babies, tumbling them off the edge of the desk one by one, like a line of synchronized swimmers diving into the pool.
I’d been afraid the system wouldn’t let me pick up and store the corpse, as it wasn’t something we’d tried before. I’d been surprised to find it did let us. It had even helpfully labeled the body as Quest Clues in my inventory.
The eagle made a strangled noise, leaping from her perch. Her back hit the wall, and it upset the bottom two shelves, cascading more of the beanbag creatures to the floor. For a moment the only sound was the plop, plop, plop of the figures as they slid and tumbled.
“Guards,” Miss Quill croaked. “Guards!”
The two swordsmen at the base of the stairs clunked their way up toward us. They both unsheathed their swords as they emerged, rising up like metallic beasts. I remembered the announcement from a few days earlier, that their strength had been “slightly” increased. I really hoped this worked.