Setting out in search of what information he could find, Lothar discovered to his mild frustration that Ilsa Weisemann seemed to be a non-entity to the people of Delberz – as you might expect from someone of her social station. No-one outside her immediate neighbourhood was even aware she existed – those who lived closer could only point him back in the direction she lived. Apparently she was often out of town – she certainly seemed to have few friends in the city.
On the subject of Maria Samtzunge, however, there was more to be found.
“Lady Samtzunge? Aye, I know who you’re talkin’ about,” said the guard on the corner of Manor Road. “She’s a queer one, for sure, livin’ all alone in that big house o’ hers ever since her father kicked the bucket – and with only a couple of half-witted servants, too.”
He shrugged.
“Popular with the nobles, though. Every week, there’s always visitors.” He grinned wolfishly. “I’d be visitin’ too, if a looker like that was invitin’ me.”
~
“Sure, I know her,” said the innkeeper of the Tongs, leaning against the bar. “One of the young crowd that comes in here, always talking politics and such. Seems a bit higher-born than the rest of them – often footing their bill.”
He smiled wryly, his walrus-like moustache twitching over his lip.
“Half those lads are head-over-heels for her, if you ask me. Not that they’d stand a chance – I heard she’s got pots of money. Father made a fortune on the river and left everything to her.”
~
The Gilded Crown was apparently where the city’s servant class went in their spare time. Finding a few of them, Lothar repeated his questions.
“Ooh, yes!” said one, a credulous-looking young woman with plaited, dirty blonde hair. “That’s the pretty lady I seen up at the castle! She was there when I was serving at the Baron’s ball. So many people around her – almost as many as the Baroness.”
“I heard she was a
vampire,” said another maid, speaking in a hushed, excited tone. “I heard as she was actually a thousand years old, and she has to drink children’s blood to stay beautiful.”
“You
heard, did you?” said a third, older servant, sarcastically. He shook his grizzled head. “Morr’s breath, something that went in one of your ears actually stuck, Greta.”
The maid stuck out her tongue, to which the old servant rolled his eyes, raising his drink to his lips.
“You want to belay that talk around the masters – she and Master Marius was good friends, growin’ up. Maybe more’n friends, if she hadn’t gone away to Nuln and filled her head with fancy ideas. That’s why Marius’ father saddled him with the guard job – the boy was so cut up when she turned him down, he wanted to go ‘way and join the army.”
He chuckled.
“Ol’ von Brucker wasn’t having any of that, not from his only son an’ heir when Chaos was screamin’ down from the North. Flat-out told him he couldn’t go, an’ buried him in the City Guard by way of a consolation.”