The King's Players RPG

[Mnemosyne]

Brinn heard a tap at the door--far too furtive to be Rollan, she thought with a sigh of relief. She still desperately needed to be alone.

But she heard Thiliel's voice on the other side of the door, and knew that it would be a shame to turn away a girl who had nothing to do with any of this mess, and meant no harm anyhow. And supper, too! Her stomach rumbled in spite of itself.

"Come in, Thiliel," she said, and if she did not sound cheery, at least she didn't sound maudlin.

Thiliel set the tray before her. "Thank you, dear," said Brinn, hoping it would suit as a dismissal. But Thiliel lingered, just long enough for Brinn to feel that there was something she wanted to say.

"Is there something the matter?" said Brinn, not unkindly.

[Dimturiel]

Of course, begging Asta not to do anything rash involved a battle Harrenon was sure he could not win. The entire business from start to finish was rash, anyway. Trying to get Asta to renounce another part of her absurdly daring plan would lead him nowhere. By the way Asta was looking at him after his weak attempt to dissuade her, Harrenon could guess that the only thing he had succeeded was to irritate her further. Of course, he had known from the start that by begging Asta not to do something he would only annoy her, but he could not help it if she was always intimidating him.

“I won’t be the only one doing something rash,” Asta told him ominously. “You’ll be doing exactly what I tell you to do!”

“Asta, you really can’t expect us to try and force our way in there without knowing what is going on! I mean, it would be almost as bad as trying to barge into the Citadel itself! Please, can’t we just…well, wait for Coldan a while longer? Let’s give him at least five more minutes.”

But of course Asta would have none of that and Harrenon was promptly informed of all the gruesome torments Coldan and Aldarion could be put to in the span of five minutes that Harrenon needed to “pluck up the courage he did not have in the first place”(Asta’s words, and Harrenon did not even bother to correct her, since he could not honestly tell her she was wrong at that point). He was then told that he had a faithless character and that he surely possessed no conscience at all if he could so heartlessly abandon his friends instead of doing everything that was in his power to rescue them. It was when Asta told him that if anything happened to Coldan and to Aldarion, he would be mostly to blame that Harrenon could not stand it any futher and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“All right, all right!” he said. “I’ll do whatever you ask. I’ll break down the door for you, if that’s what you want. Just tell me what to do and I’ll be right behind you.”

[the phantom]

So, Coldan overheard Sador, thought Aldarion, and says he speaks ill of both me and the company. If that's true, I can't imagine that his secret plans would result in anything but harm. But then why would he offer to place me back with the Swan Players? And how would he have the power to do such a thing anyway? That surely means that Amlach and Gloredhel's father was involved somehow.

A loud metal ringing filled the garden, and Aldarion knew their time was up.

"Go back to Harry and Asta, and tell them whatever you need to tell them to stop them bursting in," said Aldarion as the bell faded away. "We'll talk about this tomorrow before lunch. Right now I need to get inside and see if any pieces of this puzzle are revealed to me."

Aldarion turned and took a step, but stopped and added, "And don't worry about mounting a rescue tonight. Just get some sleep. My friend Amlach knows I'm here, as does Captain Bregolas of the Tower Guard and Lord Borondir. If Sador has half a brain he wouldn't consider for a moment kidnapping or anything similar."

[Galadriel55]

Thiliel placed the supper tray next to Celebrindal, thinking of how she should aproach her. Rollan asked her to bring the food, but there was more. "Let me know how she's doing," he asked. Not a difficult thing to do, if you know what happened. But Thiliel did not know, and she had to find out. Whatever it is, there is more than one downcast person tonight...

She heitated in a moment of indecision, whether she should leave, or talk of something - but what? Celebrindal noticed that and asked, "Is there something the matter?"

The true answer was that Thiliel needed to bring Rollan some news, but that would hardly do. "Not exactly," she began, thinking furitively of how to get the woman to speak a little more, "I wanted to apologize for..." aha! "...for running into yor wagon earlier today as if the inn was on fire, and causing you trouble. I didn't mean to do anything like that, but I wasn't thinking. 'Tis just something I had to say." The last bit was more for Thiliel's benefit than Celebrindal's. "Not all men are honest" was what Ingold said. She would be honest, when possible. And she did need to ask forgiveness.

[Anguirel]

The Lord Warden returned to his duties as if nothing had happened as soon as the King had departed; but something had happened, and the revolving of his thoughts, nay, the very twitching of his quill, was fevered and fretful.

The King had issued what would, in any lesser man, have been a threat - the prospect of Cirdacil being deprived of the Exchequer, the office that game him regular, grinding satisfaction. Yet somehow - such was the insubstantial grace of that strange, elven-wise, uncanny man, the King Elessar - he had contrived to make his speech sound loving, even generous.

What was unpleasantly clear was that the King would not allow him to treat this matter of the Players with the triviality he believed with every policy in his bones that it deserved. No, he had insisted on binding everything up in the round, so now the play appeared to bleed into the Exchequer, Cirdacil's clever son's plotting coalescing with his dull son's banqueting.

For there was some enormous drawback to come tonight, Cirdacil was beginning to feel sure. The Dol Amroth girl was in the city, and sometimes the Lord of Burlach faintly regretted that marriage which had yoked his children to that family. They were high-born, and they were rich, the family of Erchirion; and neither of those things seemed to matter to them. Each of them had other cares, quite separate to his own; quite separate sources of desire, and of pride. Had it been wise to knot them into his own practical blood?

So many unsettling things had happened today, and Lord Cirdacil laid down his pen now, or dropped it more precisely, not caring where it fell. He could toil no longer today in this grim, beloved, safe land of honest work - a land that might be debarred from him, quite soon, for reasons beyond his ken.

The King wanted him to show a wisdom he was not certain he possessed. All he knew, for his part, was that this strangest of days had brought an outweighing positive. He felt an overwhelming urge for the counsel, witting or not, of the elder brother's blood. Let the accounts stew as they did on every lazier public servant's watch! He would find his nephew, and reunite his family, and then, perhaps, matters would stand clearer in general.

So foreign was his abandonment of his diurnal work to his habits that not one clerk suspected him of leaving. He was mounted, on a placid, slow-tiring brown palfrey, before anyone marked it; headed first to the Office of Naval Ordinance, to find if he would where the ship's crew was berthed that counted amongst it Vëandur, son of Falastur, of the Fleets...

[Inziladun]

The last light had faded from the sky as Vëandur walked back to his quarters. He had taken a light meal, a loaf of bread, with cheese and dried meat at the Water Horse, an inn he'd chosen because his shipmates routinely shunned it as being full of "city rats". He didn't feel like talking to any of them tonight. It was a shame they felt that way, really. The mead there was quite good, he'd found.
As he walked he felt the breeze stirring his hair. A South wind. Vëandur smiled, thinking of the places it had recently been. He saw clouds born upon it, slowly covering the high starts. Storm clouds, he thought.

He walked up to the iron fence that marked the entrance to Ship's Row, the place set aside for those of the Fleets in the City on business. There was a heavy gate, but it was always left open in these times of peace. A man sat on a stool there. A guard he was in name, but really he was nothing more than a glorified nanny, there to keep watch on the reprobate sailors for the safety of the City. That caused Vëandur to smile wryly. The man saw him coming and stood. There was no need to give his name, for the same man had been there when Vëandur had set out. The guard saluted, and Vëandur returned it absently.

He walked through the gate and arrived at his "house", which, from the gate, was the third on the left of a row of long, low spartan buildings. The others surely weren't here. He walked inside. They were not. Good.
Vëandur walked to his bed and opened a trunk at its foot. He pulled out various items, then removed his best cloak, reserved for formal occasions. It was colored a very dark blue, the shade of the sky in the heat of a clear Summer day. He took off the dun-colored "duty" cloak he'd been wearing, and put in in the trunk, along with everything he'd taken out. Before he put on the other cloak, he went to a long wooden locker standing against the wall beside his bed. All the beds had similar lockers by them, for the stowing of valuable possessions. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked it. His sword-belt was there, his sheathed sword on it. Since he was attending a function at the invitation of a City official, he thought he should wear it. He girt himself, then put on the cloak. He wished he had a glass to view himself, but the one in the house was broken. He turned to sit down on his bed and consider again the night before him. Before he could do so, there was a soft knock at the door.

[Nerwen]

Asta was not about to walk blindly into a trap as Aldarion and Coldan had done, and she had led Harrenon down a side-alley and into the lane that ran past the back of the mansion. As she had hoped, there was a gate in the wall here, fastened only with the kind of simple padlock that had been her father's stock-in-trade when the toy-business was slow. Asta, choosing a curiously-shaped pick, went swiftly to work. Out of practice though she was, it was still only a short time before the lock sprang open with a snap– which was immediately followed by a resounding metallic clang from somewhere within the grounds.

"Asta, do you suppose they've– they've seen us?" Harrenon's face had taken on a greenish hue, and the whites of his eyes glittered. Asta could see he was going to freeze on her at any second.

"Hurry!" She tugged at Harrenon's sleeve, and he came to life again and followed after her as she darted inside, though as the echoes died away she became aware of an odd chattering sound that she presently realised was being made by the actor's teeth.

There was no sign of Coldan in the narrow passage in which they found themselves– she had hardly dared to expect there would be– but instead there was a rather promising-looking door. This one had a complex lock that resisted her initial efforts, but Asta was not dismayed in the least. She had been longing for a chance to try out Coldan's scheme.

"What are you doing?" Harrenon whispered, watching Asta as she tipped out the pungently-scented powders on the doorstep and stirred them together, biting her lip with concentration. She was using vastly greater quantities than she normally did, and could only guess if she had the amount and proportions right.

"What does it look like?" said Asta. "Now quiet! This has to be exact!" From a small phial, she poured out a few drops of the final ingredient, a liquid that set the mixture to fizzing and bubbling.

"What now?" asked Harry in what was almost a squeak.

"Run!" Asta told him.

Harrenon needed no encouragement.

They had barely time to take cover behind the gate when the mixture went up in a fountain of multicoloured fire and a boom like a thousand dragons roaring at once. Even with her fingers jammed into her ears, Asta was half-deafened for a moment, but she got unsteadily to her feet in time to see, through the drifting clouds of smoke, the shattered door swaying back and forth before it fell outwards with a crash.

Asta could not stop her face from breaking into a rapturous grin. It had been everything she had hoped for, and more!