I recalled the name Volo-a best-selling hack writer. Perhaps Murph's client was a rival publisher. Still, it seemed a silly thing to risk life and limb over.
I was about to read the first page when I sensed I wasn't alone. I looked up.
Kitten had arrived as silently as her namesake.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she instructed. "You're being paid to get it, not read it."
I placed the manuscript in its folder, rebound it, and handed it over.
"Good," Kitten said, placing it firmly in the crook of her arm. "Follow me."
"Where?" I inquired.
'To the place where you will be paid," she said curtly.
I followed her outside, pausing for a moment to close the door. I couldn't help noticing three burly bodies lying in unmoving heaps by the roadside. I tried to recall if they had been there earlier, and decided they hadn't. Kitten seemed to be waiting for me.
I asked, "Friends of yours?"
"No," she replied, "of yours. They, too, desired the manuscript you so eloquently retrieved. It would appear I arrived in the nick of time."
I looked at her, and at them. Had this sweet young Kitten dispatched these rivals with her own bare hands?
"Don't worry about them," she replied. "The city watch is used to cleaning up detritus in this neighborhood."
I was dumbstruck.
Kitten couldn't help noticing. She giggled, and answered my unasked question. "I had a little help. Lothar decided not to stick around."
Kitten once again led me through the shadowed byways of the Dock Ward, darting from shadow to shadow, with occasional stops in doorways and alcoves, until we returned to an area I recognized. It was near my place of convalescence. She saw the look of recognition in my eye, and nodded.
"No place like home," she volunteered. "A new furnished room has been secured for you, one of a more permanent nature than last night's accommodations."
We entered a tavern, passed behind the bar, and up a staircase to a set of furnished rooms. Kitten put a key to one of the locks and opened the door to my new residence.
The furnishings were modest, but adequate-a comfortable bed with a warm quilt and firm pillows, a chest, a lantern, and a table with two chairs. Upon the table were two small purses and an envelope.
"I see our payment has already arrived," Kitten announced, hastening to the table to snatch the purses, the larger of which she pocketed, the smaller of which she tossed to me.
"Here," she volunteered, "your accounts of the past few days have been settled, Murph's cut deducted, and your rent paid for the next two weeks. That wasn't too hard now, was it?"
At this point I noticed her arms were empty. The package bearing the manuscript was nowhere to be seen.
"The package," I sputtered, "where did it go?"
"I delivered it along the way," she answered coyly. "Maybe you're not as observant as I thought you were." With a toss of the head, she danced past me to the doorway, pausing only briefly to kiss my cheek. "I have to go now," she said, "but I'll be in touch."
She saw the look of disappointment in my eyes, and added, "There's plenty more where that came from. You are no doubt a man of great potential."
"A man without a past," I reminded her.
"Whatever," she replied, then added, "I'll drop by later to show you around town. Our relationship doesn't always have to be just professional."
Before I could blink, she had left the room, and I was alone in my new home.
I felt the bag of coins and instinctively knew there was more than enough to fill my needs for a while-and provide a few amenities that were lacking. I could do some shopping later.
All that remained was the question of my identity, the shadows of my past. I remembered the envelope on the table before me. Perhaps an answer was within?
Picking up the missive, I saw that it was unad-dressed. I tore it open. Surprisingly, it was not a letter, but rather a page that had been extracted from some arcane volume. The paper was old and brittle, and featured text in several different languages or codes. My eyes were immediately drawn to an illustration that showed a circle of cowled figures around a prisoner in a set of stocks. The caption below it read:
In rare instances of mercy, the Lords ofWaterdeep would accept indenturement in exchange for clemency for someone accused of crimes against the lords or the City of Splendors. The accused would have his identity wiped clean, returning him to a state of innocence prior to his commission of said crimes. In exchange for various services provided to the lords, the accused would be granted clues to his past. These services always were of a sensitive nature, for which the lords desired plausible denia-bility, and often resulted in the death of the accused, upon which time the accused would be pardoned of all crimes and receive a proper burial. Such men are known as Lord's Men.
A different ink bore the message First Payment.
As I finished reading the page, it and the envelope burst into flames, leaving nary a whiff of smoke.
Strangely enough, I was not troubled by this recent revelation, as if I had already accepted this fate at some earlier time.
The mysterious Kitten, my protector, and nurse Lothar, and the silly business of retrieving a manuscript by some hack writer didn't seem as important as living from day to day, and paying off the terms of my inden-turement.
I was eager to accept my next assignment-to earn another clue to my identity.
Tertius And The Artifact
As I sat on the balcony of the Nauseous Otyugh in Scornubel, suspended between the hangover of the previous evening and the one that was yet to come, I meditated on the phrase "should have stayed in bed." Sound advice, probably postulated first by some spell-flinger after a particularly bad morning of fireballing and lightning bolting and whatnot.
Of course, it did me little good since I was in bed the night before when everything went south. Except me, of course.
Let me explain. It was a little before three bells, and Tertius Wands, yours truly, was blissfully asleep in my quarters at the Otyugh, third floor stateroom with an odorous view of the stables. The Otyugh is one of the new establishments that have popped up after the last Volo's Guide. As a result of Volo's work in popularizing certain locations to travelers, those locations have ceased to be popular to natives, necessitating new inns, dives, and hangouts for adventurers to hang out in. Ampi had at one time suggested that it would be advantageous to follow Volo around, opening new inns in his wake, as the ones he talks about are soon filled to the bursting with warriors and wizards carrying his dratted little tomes.
But I digress. I was setting the scene, dressing the stage, laying the groundwork. Three bells. Bedroom. Otyugh. Then the ceiling exploded.
Well, it did not exactly explode, but the thunderous boom from above was akin to a roof collapsing. I sat bolt upright, and noticed that the bed itself, a stout four-poster of ironwood, was shimmying and jumping like a nervous carrion crawler. Every loose article in the room, from the chamber pot to the steel mirror, joined in this vibrating dance of doom.
I did what any rational man would do-I hid beneath the covers and promised whatever gods would listen that I would never touch Dragon's Breath Beer and death cheese again.
'Tertius Wands!" thundered a frighteningly familiar voice from the direction of the ceiling.
I popped an eye over the edge of the blanket and saw Granduncle Maskar's fiery head. I did not doubt that his head was still attached to his body back in Water-deep, and he was sending an astral whatsit or a phantasmal thingamabob to address me. At the moment, I was too frightened to care.