Toede leaned against the wall. Gildentongue was flashier than the highmaster had remembered him, and crueler as well. But just as short-tempered, it seems.
Toede looked over at his companion. Groag was paler than normal, almost a greenish shade, and his hands shook slightly as he brushed the hair out of his face.
"Any thoughts?" asked Toede.
"I think," said Groag in a wavering voice, "that this is not going to be as easy as you think."
"I think," said Toede with a scowl, "you may be right."
Chapter 5
By the time dusk claimed Flotsam fully, and the small lamp urchins scurried from light post to light post with their long-handled wicks, Toede and Groag had retreated to the common room of a rundown inn near the south wall.
The inn was called the Jetties and had seen better days, none of them, Toede wagered, during his lifetime. The exterior stairs and porch were rotting away, and the walls were dirty stone, the grit of the city only barely covering scrawled graffiti. The interior was little better, the lathe and plaster walls pitted from numerous brawls. The graffiti artists had moved inside as well, and switched from paint to knives, incising new designs on the dusty woodwork.
Still, the owner, a wide, battle-scarred gentleman, had not spit at them when they asked about rooms. That alone put this dive leagues ahead of the last three places they had stopped. Apparently Gildentongue had issued some decree that this was an acceptable mode of treating non-humans, at least when addressing anyone who looked like Toede.
it was abundantly clear that Gildentongue held the city in the grip of fear. If the protester at the parade was any indication, the choices were death or belief in Holy Hop-sloth, the Water Prophet.
The Water Prophet. Toede rolled the name around in his mouth as if it were a wafer made of hard salt. He had pieced together the entire story from a few people on the street-at least those who would talk to them.
There were three types of humans in Flotsam nowadays. First and foremost were those who would flee when Toede approached, as if he carried a blood-drenched dagger and wore nothing more than a lunatic grin. From these he got nothing. Several seemed to recognize him, and fled all the faster, clutching their small medallions as they scurried off.
The second group of humans were even more insulting. They treated both Toede and Groag as if the two had been recipients of a sudden spell of invisibility cast by a slightly demented wizard. Their eyes seemed to lock on something slightly to the right or left of the hobgoblins, and they breezed past, oblivious to their existence. Toede tried to commit their faces to memory for eventual revenge, but had to abandon this idea after the dozenth such incident. Not to mention, to a hobgoblin all humans look alike.
But there were a few in the city who would dare being seen talking to a hobgoblin. These were beggars, sailors, layabouts, and similar dredges, along with a handful of nonhuman servants who were working toting bales and sweeping streets. They would talk to anyone. Indeed, a few seemed to be talking to themselves when Toede joined their conversations.
A one-eyed goblin servant with a straw broom told him that the story of Lord Toede's death had swept through the city like a smoldering fire in dead, wet brush-slowly jumping from bard to bard, and from bar to bar, met with toasts and small smiles.
An ogre that was carrying rusted metal to the dock told him that at first the tale was disbelieved. People thought it part of some plot of the highmaster's to draw out dissent. When a week passed without Toede's reappearance, all assumed that, whatever the cause, Toede was gone.
A woman who looked half sea elf told him about the carnival that followed, a week-long celebration that ended in a series of bloody confrontations between the townies and the local detachment of the dragonarmy. It was then that Gildentongue, Toede's "faithful" liaison with the highlord armies, stepped forward to calm the troubled waters and announce his own revelations.
A street preacher said Gildentongue revealed that Hop-sloth, a unique and divine creature, had been sent by the True Gods to lead Flotsam to greatness. Toede had been Hopsloth's first student and minion but grew greedy, and sought to keep that power and wisdom for himself. Gildentongue, being sensitive to the true nature of Hop-sloth the Water Prophet, shared this revelation with all, and had proved to work wonders for the city in the few months of his reign.
Gildentongue had made good his promise, acting as the Second Minion (the late, unlamented Toede being the first) of the Holy Hopsloth. The city wall was rebuilt, said one beggar. The nonhuman trash of hobgoblins and kender that roamed the streets was exiled, said another. The green dragons and their riders were sent inland to a new base, and Gildentongue's Flotsam was granted a degree of autonomy, said another. About this time the medallions appeared. Holy Hopsloth had cured the sick. Holy Hopsloth drove the sharks from Flotsam Harbor. Holy Hopsloth was an agent of the were-insects from Nuitari.
Toede took it all in, discounting the bulk of it. Hopsloth was about as bright as a bag of lampreys and incapable of communicating any advanced theology beyond a desire for his next meal. The former highmaster originally thought he had been given the beast as a joke, a satire of the highlords' own elegant dragon mounts. For Hopsloth was no more a servant of the greater gods than Toede was king of the kender.
No, Toede thought, Gildentongue has proved himself as politically astute and slime-ridden as ever. Gildentongue would have had a hard time following Toede's illustrious (if apparently misunderstood) reign. So the draconian borrowed a page from before the war and set up his own church, of which he was the mere spokesman.
Give the people a few bones and musty miracles, and you're set for life.
The pair of hobgoblins had shuffled from inn to inn looking for quarters, or at least recognition, until they had reached the Jetties.
Now Toede surveyed the room. A drunken barbarian sprawled on a nearby bench, snoring softly. A trio of domino players lazily laid down their tiles with occasional clicks. An old man with a pipe was immersed in a musty tome. A few sailors chatted and lied over drinks. A hooded priest in a voluminous, ragged robe, worshiper of some abandoned god, was propped against a far wall. The serving girl had vanished soon after the hobgoblins' arrival, and had not reappeared since.
And lastly Toede and Groag, a pair of ragged, ratty-looking hobgoblins with no appearance of nobility, or even adequacy.
Toede sighed. The good news was that it was unlikely to get any worse. The bad news was it was at the moment unlikely to get any better.
The smaller hobgoblin had vanished fifteen minutes earlier, abandoning Toede to the cold stares of the other patrons and his own dark thoughts. Toede had wrapped himself up in his tattered cloak and sulked. If sulking had a sound, it could be said that he was sulking loudly, but as it was a (mostly) silent practice, the only noise being the crinkling of his forehead skin, that dry flesh crinkled more tightly. Groag brought a pair of ales to the table, smiling.
"Where did you get those?" said Toede sharply.
"Comes with the room," said Groag, clambering up onto the bench across from the former highmaster. Neither hobgoblin's legs touched the floor, but Groag swung his back and forth, while Toede's limbs hung motionless like pieces of dead meat.
"Ah, so we caught the tavernmaster on 'leave-your-brains-at-the-door day,' " sneered Toede, "or have you forgotten that we have no money?"