The Black Shingle Fiasco

[YossarianLives]

The Lieutenant laughs derisively. "And what will happen when the Pelorites go looking for their missing squad? Your lie won't hold up for long. And then..." He closes his mouth, takes a deep calming breath, then continues to speak in a measured tone. "Your knowledge of this situation is deeply flawed, Miss Santiago, yet you act like an expert. I'd hoped you're better than that. The Pelorites can get away with menacing civilians - but I'm convinced they're up to something that goes against the core tenants of the Temple. Something which could destroy them from the inside out! It's the only possible explanation for any of this." He takes a step forward. "But I see now that you're like all the other mercenaries. Selfish, willful, arrogant. The Guard has no space for that."

He gestures lazily to the letter. "I doubt I could provide a list of who access to the seal, likely well over a thousand people. It's used by just about every city employee."

As Avita pulls apart the book, she finds it full of strange, arcane runes written in red ink and not of a language known to her. Roughly half the pages are completely blank.

[Marlowe]

Avita's gaunt hand reaches out to touch the pages as though she wants to wring meaning from them by hand, but they remain just red scrawls. "Too much to ask..." she mutters. And then, not turning to face the Lieutenant, speaks louder; "then you get a scribe, or a bureaucrat, or someone who knows better than you and has more time than we and get them to make make that list. You look for matches. You put some frelling effort in. That's how things get DONE."

And now she does face him. "Not by sitting at a desk complaining that it's all too hard and yelling at your subordinates to work miracles. If it's going to be a big job. Then you get started. Don't you frelling tell you can't be bothered." Her jaw clicks. "And while I'm in the mood for this bulldykery; I live here. I'm a civilian auxiliary. Not a mercenary. A mercenary worth their name would have skipped town three days ago."

And she steps right into Kresh's face, under his shadow. "And you can watch how you say that word after yesterday. Mercenaries saved this town. Died for it. Died apparently so that you could lament your situation and blame others for not pulling miracles out of their pockets."

She closes the now coverless tome with a dull *whump* of pages. Then turns back to the party, ignoring Kresh,"Right, we need to talk to Thaddeus and ask about those keys. See if they are the set his housekeeper might have had. Then we ask about the housekeeper, see if SHE's a lead we can follow up. Then we might try finding someone to look at these runes. And we're careful about it because we've got a high-level spellcaster to try arresting tomorrow. And at some point, given I slept on a pile of blood-soaked Demon leathers last night, I would like to take a bath."

[Bartmanhomer]

'As much that I want to hear you two aruging over whatever it is that you two aruging about I believe that we're done here and we should move on for important things at hand."

[Marlowe]

Avita gives Coggy a hard look. "Like deciding your status? You're an associate of Thaddeus's.
That means you should probably be locked up and interrogated as a suspected traitor. Are there any good reasons why this shouldn't happen?"

[Bartmanhomer]

"If I would have known what my client real intentions are. I wouldn't have assisted him in the first place. But I guess that failed real quick."

[Marlowe]

Avita just keeps staring. "We bought you along, instead of throwing you in a cell, that you might prove yourself by assisting." Pause. "Am not so sure you've done that. Had to ask you twice to scan for magic and you only did so after everyone else was done." Pause. "Well, what happens to you isn't up to me."

Before the door, she turns to the Lieutenant and drops a final short bow. "Sir. I understand the Pelorites are an immediate threat. The problem is all we have is deductions about what they're doing. These letters, books-they'll only tell us what Thaddeus knew and thought. Maybe there'll be something in there that ties it all to the Pelorites--I'm very dubious about that, because Thaddeus honestly doesn't seem to know that much--but we'll need time and an honest person of learning to find out. So if you could find such a person; or tell us where one could be found, that is an urgency."

"I suspect, though, we might have better luck paying street-urchins a silver piece each to rummage through the refuse at the Pelorite temple to see if they somehow wrote their entire evil plan out in Common and then threw it out. No, that's only half a joke. It MIGHT be a better idea."

[YossarianLives]

New thread.