We would leave in the morning. The package would be retrieved from storage and taken to Herrick in his hidden cabin. For the rest of the day we would prepare; see to our needs at the bazaar and have a bit of fun before our journey. Cherry had mentioned at one point that the bandit that had cut the girl, Esmerelda, free in the cave had been seen here in town. As long as he minds his own business, live and let live, right?
Wrong. On this particular evening in this particular bar, I happened to come in from getting some fresh air (and watching the moon) to find Esmerelda dancing with said bandit. My friends were having a drink at the opposite end of the bar, so I sent a whisper to their corner to call attention to the girl. Iceborn nodded approval in regard to some large-breasted wench, but Kriv was quick to spot Esmerelda. Casually, we converged toward the front of the room and determined we had ought to try to catch them apart. A little too late, for the two of them were starting to head out a back door. The guys went out front to avoid the heavy crowd inside the bar and head them off in the alley, while Cherry and I bolted through legs to tail them.
The back door opened up onto another street that was currently hosting the bazaar. Somehow in all this mess of tourists, the girl was able to spot the two of us and pull her new boyfriend away into the crowd. Cherry signaled to the guys to catch them and it wasn’t long before Kriv caught up to them. Terrified, the bandit stepped back and Esmerelda stood between us to defend him. She claimed that HE was the one who set her free and kept her fed while she was in captivity. He had been kind to her when no one else had and that she was alone and bored in this town while her dad was nailing some whore back at the inn.
“Whatever my dad is paying you to keep tabs on me, I’ll double it to get you to back off!”
I looked at Iceborn, we nodded to each other. “200 gold each,” he said.
“I know you’re just messing with me, my father doesn’t have that kind of money.” She offered 200 gold total to the party, everything she had on her. It was terribly more money than she ought to have paid us, but dirty bastards we are, we couldn’t turn down some good cash. We agreed to leave her alone. Well, most of us. Cherry decided to follow the couple, while the rest of us resumed our evening affairs as usual.
Quite some time had elapsed and finally Cherry returned. She explained to us that she had followed the couple to another inn and that the young Esmerelda had been whispering suggestively to her new boyfriend before luring him up the stairs. She also mentioned another old acquaintance, Heddro. The scout that had evaded us before was stalking the couple also. Cherry tailed them up the stairs, but was seen and explained that there was a small fight, but that Heddro got away.
“Did you see where he went?” Iceborn asked.
“No, but you can just follow the trail of blood,” Cherry said chuckling to herself and mentioned a dagger to the groin. Kriv’s jaw dropped. “He was there on business” she continued, having suspicion that he had been hired to kill Esmerelda.
“We need to find him before he goes back to finish the job,” Iceborn said determined and we all prepared to track Heddro down.
Before we could get out the door, Trueflame and some guards stopped us. They had come to arrest the party, because they had reports that a female halfling had been involved in a murder at the inn and a missing person.
“I didn’t kill him. He was there to kill somebody,” she argued.
Trueflame leaned in, “I came to get you myself, because I know you have some business that needs tending, so you should probably come with me.”
We turned ourselves over and were taken in for questioning. A body was brought out, it was not Heddro. It was the bandit that Esmerelda had been toying with all night. Esmerelda was reported missing.
“That bastard! He went back! Damn it!” Cherry grunted.
“Who did?” Trueflame asked.
“Heddro!”
“Heddro? He’s just a local bully. I doubt he would have done this.”
“He was at the inn on a job tonight”
“Well, I’m fairly certain he didn’t kill this man or take Esmerelda.”
“Oh yeah, why?”
Trueflame took us into another room where priests were tending to some rather nasty wounds on the young rogue, explaining he had been here for quite some time. To his embarrassment, the party gathered around his cot to find out what his business at the inn was that night.
“I was there to kill someone, but it wasn’t either of them.”
“ARGH!” I belted out, and the group turned to me, “She did it! She freakin’ killed the guy and now she’s gone!”
“Are you sure?” Iceborn asked.
“Entirely sure, I don’t trust that girl.”
We made our case to Trueflame and were released. We would need to leave first thing in the morning, lest our package be discovered by anyone else.
