Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Seven — Moral Fiber
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Seven — Moral Fiber We gathered up all the clues we could find, as well as the contents of the baron’s safe, and spread them out on the dining room table.It wasn’t much, really. A few dozen papers, some forms, and a neat stack of gold coins, bank notes, and little ingots with numbers and seals stamped onto them.“So... we’re not going to steal the money,” I said.“Why not?” Calamity asked.“Because stealing is wrong,” I explained. He didn’t seem entirely convinced, but I felt like Caprica and Amaryllis, at least, were on my side. Willowbud too. Awen seemed a bit ambivalent about it, and Tharval was just as willing to pocket the gold as Calamity was.“Setting aside the gold for the moment,” Amaryllis said. “We need to consider the other things on the table here.” She stabbed a talon at one of the pages. “This is the order for weaponry that Awen found, and I for one think it’s rather concerning.”Tharval tugged the page out from under Amaryllis’ grip and squinted at it. “Hrm, I know this group. Bunch of money-grubbers with no artistic sense, but they know how to hire good folk and pay them what they’re worth. This is an order for four hundred automatic repeating crossbows. That’s enough to outfit an army.”“Or two battalions of an army,” Caprica said. “But those are the kinds of weapons you want to keep out of the hands of angry civilians. They’re easy to learn how to operate and are difficult to fight against. A strong enough soldier will brush off a bolt and someone like a Paladin wouldn’t be easy to hit in the first place, but still...”“I wouldn’t dismiss these things so easily, missy,” Tharval said. “These aren’t little sylph bolt throwers. These are proper dwarven bows. They’ll punch through rock and fly faster than a lightning bolt.”I hoped he was exaggerating a lot there.“Four hundred of those is concerning,” Awen muttered.We all nodded.“I dunno. If it was to equip hunters or the like it wouldn’t be that big a deal. It’s mostly concerning because of who’s getting them,” Calamity said. “Anything we can do about that contract?”Tharval squinted at it, then grinned. “Well, says here he’ll be needing to pay in instalments, and they’re not cheap. So if we take that there gold, he won’t be able to afford a single one, let alone four hundred.”“So what you’re saying is that it’s the morally correct thing to do to take his gold,” Calamity said while nodding to himself.“We’re not taking the gold. Stealing is wrong,” I repeated.“As wrong as breaking and entering, subduing that guard back on the couch and... well, we stole from his pantry already,” Calamity pointed out.I pouted. He was a little bit right, but I didn’t want to push things. Doing one bad thing didn’t give someone the right to do another, no matter how much someone might dance around the logic. “We’re not taking it, please,” I said.Tharval and Calamity rolled their eyes, proving that they were pretty alike in at least one way. “Alright, what else do we have?” Amaryllis changed the subject. She tapped a small pile of pages. “These are the docking forms for Vonowl’s ship. It’s in a private, exterior dock now, which might explain why we never spotted it within the tower.”“Private docks are fairly common, though they’re far more expensive than the tower docks. They’re the only option for larger ships and certain well-to-do persons like to keep their ships away from the common airship,” Willowbud said.“And some hobbyists rent out private spots to park their ships in,” Tharval added. “So that they can tinker with them in peace. It’s a common enough practice. There’s airship-racing and endurance runs and a number of sports that require a ship, usually a small one that can operate with a minimal crew or solo.”So like people who had boats on Earth. There were some people who had lots of money and who bought a yacht and then some people who just kept a little boat as a sort of very expensive hobby.Not the kind of hobby my family was into, or that we could afford. Our budget was more suited to gardening and long walks.“That doesn’t seem like very useful information, although maybe we can impound the vehicle before he makes another escape,” Caprica said.“That’s a good idea,” Amaryllis said. “But there’s more. See, he has two more ships that he’s paying the docking fees for. Their names are... a series of letters and numbers. They’re barges. I think Pyrowalkian?”“Terrible ships,” Tharval grumped. “No artistry, mass-produced chaff that’s as likely to fly as it is to fall apart around your ears. Cheap though.”Amaryllis huffed a ‘we’re better than that’ kind of huff. “Maybe the good baron is running out of funds. Or he just doesn’t care. In either case, he has two more ships he might use to escape with.”“Give me their names, please,” Willowbud said as he tugged out a little notebook from a pouch around the waist of his armour. “I have enough sway, I think, to have the vehicles interdicted before they can leave. Or at least have them be part of a surprise inspection before takeoff.”“Ah, I know a person or two that handles that kind of thing,” Tharval said. His smile was downright predatory. “We can make sure that the inspection is quite thorough. They’ll find something that’s not up to one of those damnable codes.”“You don’t like safety regulations?” Awen asked.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.“I like them when they stop others from being morons. I don’t like them when they get in the way of my genius,” Tharval said.I suppressed a giggle.“So, what do we do now? Are there any other hints we can work with?” I asked instead. Some of the papers hadn’t been touched.“Well, these are letters back to the Harpy Mountains. Some of them are correspondence that might hold a few secrets, I haven’t had time to read them all. The rest are letters to family. His mom is worried about him.” Amaryllis rolled her eyes, but I thought it was rather sweet.Even bad guys could have nice moms.“Maybe we ought to write her ourselves,” Calamity said with a grin. “Tell her what her boy’s been up to. I mean, sure, we’re gonna try to get him arrested and all, but there’s nothing like a disappointed parent to put your mood down. Trust me, I’m an expert at that.”“At disappointing your parents or feeling down?” Amaryllis asked.Calamity paused, then shrugged. “Both?”“As interesting as that idea is,” Caprica said. “It seems a little too infantile for my tastes. Perhaps we can come up with a plan to actually deal with Vonowl before we start think about adding insult to injury?”“Ah, he’s going to come back here, right?” Awen asked. “This is his room.”“Unless someone warns him,” Amaryllis pointed out. “He’s shown that he’s willing to run before, so we can assume that he might try to run again.”I nodded. “In that case, we’ll go and confront him.”“And where would we go for that, exactly?” Amaryllis asked. “I can think of several places he might be, and that’s not including the possibility that he’s in transit or that he has friends in the Storm Tower who can shelter him.”“I don’t know, I didn’t spend too much time with him, but he doesn’t seem like the type of person to have a lot of real friends,” I said.“Wow, that’s... painful coming from you,” Amaryllis said.I felt my cheeks warming up a little. That had been kind of a mean thing to say, hadn’t it? Maybe I was turning into a mean kind of person? Were my friends bad influences?No, that couldn’t be it.“A-anyway,” I said. “Maybe we could split up, go to all the most likely places to find him?”“And then what, have only one or two of us there to confront him?” Caprica asked. “I don’t doubt the combat prowess of anyone here, but the baron will likely have guards and he might be in a place that’s public where starting a fight could lead to some trouble with the locals that would be best handled as a group.”I reached up and tugged on my droopier ear as I thought, but before I could come up with anything, Calamity had an idea.“Let’s just stop that weapon shipment,” he said. “Even if we don’t get the baron we’ll have to stop it in any case, and we can tell the folk selling those crossbows to fetch the baron for us. Two birds with one arrow.”My friends and I glanced at each other, and when no one had a better idea, we decided to give it a go.We filed out of the hotel-after putting the money back, I checked. We made sure the guard on the sofa was okay. He had come to a while ago, and Calamity untied one of his arms and gave him the leftovers of what he’d made in the kitchen as a snack so he wouldn’t go hungry while untying himself.We happened to encounter the reception dwarf on the way down. “He wasn’t there,” I said with a shrug.“I... yes, I’m aware,” the dwarf said. “I heard some commotions above?”“Nothing much, we didn’t break anything, I don’t think.” I smiled to reassure him. “Don’t worry! If there’s any trouble, you can direct it to the Exploration Guild.”“Ah, yes, of course,” he said before squeezing himself out of the way.We continued on down the stairs for a bit, and Amaryllis piped up almost as soon as we were out of the receptionist’s hearing range. “Wow, Broccoli, that was almost devious.”“Huh?”“Shoving all the blame onto the guild like that,” she said. “I was worried when you started talking that you’d just admit to ruining Vonowl’s rooms.”“But we didn’t ruin them,” I said.“I left a mess in the kitchen,” Calamity said.“I cut up the mattress to see if there was anything hidden in it,” Caprica said. “What, I read about it in a novel.”“Ah, we kind of... broke the wall around the safe,” Awen admitted.“And the safe too!” Tharval added.I pressed my hands over my face. “I’m a liar. A liar and a manipulator.”Amaryllis patted me on the back. “It’s okay, as long as you’re not lying to or manipulating me.”“I wouldn’t!” I said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”We left the hotel without any of my friends commenting on my realisation that I was slowly turning into a terrible person. Fortunately, we soon started to talk, and I was able to put that out of my mind for the moment. Maybe I was just being a bit silly and overdramatic. A bit of breaking and entering and theft wasn’t that big a deal, was it?With Thrarval and Willowbud leading our group, we descended another staircase, boarded a trolley filled with so many people that some were hanging off the side, and continued on deeper into the Storm Tower on a circuitous route towards the weapons company.When we arrived at our destination, we paused and took in the front of the shop.It was a grand thing, with a massive ballista on a platform to one side and several oversized swords and spears behind glass on the other.Above, in hard iron letters, was the name Thorade’s Munitions.
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Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Eight — Pay for It
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Eight — Pay for It We walked into Thorade’s Munitions’ and discovered the front lobby was empty.Or at least, empty of people. There were lots of things to poke at and see. The walls had racks and racks of different tools of war. Most of these were crossbows and the like, with one wall displaying individual bolts with a variety of mean-looking heads.There was a counter to one side laden with teeny-tiny miniature ships that had teenier-tinier ballista on them, clearly as the focal point of the models, as if to show prospective ship captains the kinds of armaments they could buy here for their own ships.“Oh,” Awen said. She pointed to something and I followed her finger to a wall with diagrams.“What is it?” I asked.“That kind of repeating crossbow mechanism? That’s what’s at the front of the Redemption,” she said. “It must have been made here.”“Hrm,” Tharval said. “That’s the little skiff tied up in your airship? Then that’s possible. Thorade’s Munitions make cheaper gear, but the quality isn't terrible. Plenty of smaller ships carry a couple of their emplacements.”That made some sense, I figured. “Do you know anything else about them?”Tharval stroked his beard, then shook his head. “Not much. Respectable mid-level crafters. Good at mass-producing things. Not the most ingenious bunch, but they’ve made a decent thing or two.”Right, that made sense. The dwarves especially seemed really fond of mechanical workings.Just then, a dwarf stepped into the room from the back. They looked a bit frazzled, with tufts of beard sticking out this way and that. They paused on seeing us, scanned over our entire group, then locked their attention onto Amaryllis.Then, they let out the kind of sigh that only someone working in customer service could before muttering, “another one,” under their breath.“Hello!” I said, summoning up as much good cheer as I could. “You look a bit busy, but, ah, we had a question or two.”“Hello, and welcome to Thorade’s Munitions. We’re a little busy at the moment,” they said, trailing off leadingly.“We’re looking for a Baron Vonowl,” I said.They winced.“To arrest him.”That cheered them right up. “Oh, really?” they asked. “Well, I can’t imagine what the good baron has done, but I can lead you right to him.”I blinked. "Wait, he's here? Now?""Yes indeed!" The dwarf seemed unable to contain his grin. "Please, follow me!"He began striding toward a door labelled EMPLOYEES ONLY.I traded glances with my friends. Awen and Caprica looked surprised, while Amaryllis was grinning viciously and Tharval rubbed his hands together."Well, let's not keep the poor kid waiting," he said. "We came here to stop Vonowl from buying weapons, and the easiest way to do that is to deal with him before he can buy them, isn't it?"That got us moving.As soon as we crossed the doorway, the nice veneer of the storefront disappeared. Pretty stone flooring was replaced by metal grating and the walls lacked any decorations other than posters of scantily clad dwarves using their beards to cover themselves up and gazing at the viewer in ways that made me blush and look away.The main factory floor of Thorade's Munitions was a busy, loud space, with dozens of dwarves and a few elves working big, complex machines. It smelled nice though. A lot of the ballistae they made had wooden frames, and a whole section of the shop floor was dedicated to woodworking, so despite the dusty air, the scent of freshly sawn wood was pleasent.We passed a machine that seemed entirely built to raise up an anvil-sized hammer and sent it down onto a car-sized anvil, and another which consisted of a whirling mess of interlocking gears and spokes just asking for someone to stick their fingers in.I imagined that they didn’t have much by way of safety regulations in the Storm Towers. Or if they did, they weren’t being applied here.We found the baron, as well as a pair of harpy guards and a small gaggle of unhappy dwarves standing at the back of the shop.Vonowl was kicking up a fuss, wings flapping as he hurled a lot of not-very-nice words at a shorter dwarf, one with a long dark beard densely woven with beads. The dwarf's stern face and twitching eye told me they didn't appreciate the Baron's spittle-heavy style of debate.“Thorade!” the dwarf guiding us said. “We have more guests.” They were clearly working hard to mask some of the glee in their voice.Thorade, who seemed to be the one Vonowl was lecturing, looked over our group with brows knit and mouth set in a frown. Then they spotted Tharval and Willowbud and their eyebrows rose up.“I’m quite busy at the moment,” the baron said. “I’m sorry, but your business with Thorade will have to wait.” He looked me right in the eye, then turned back to the dwarf he was talking to.Did he not recognize me?I was a little upset, actually. I thought I was a pretty memorable kind of person. Oh well, that was okay. Maybe not being recognized just then was for the best?“I’m sorry, Mister Thorade,” I said. “We didn’t mean to intrude or anything.”Vonowl snapped around and glared at me.Oh! He recognized my voice!"You moron!" Vonowl spit out, "Can't you see that this is a lady?"Or maybe he didn’t. I was having a lot of highs and lows at the moment. “Um... actually, I’m really bad at telling dwarves’ genders apart.”He sniffed, then pointed to Miss Thorade’s shoulders. “The hips and shoulders on a female are wider. They’re very slightly shorter as well. And, of course, the hair of a female dwarf’s beard is curly, whereas that of a male tends to be straighter. How can you not know this?”“That’s... actually really helpful, thank you,” I said.“As thanks you can leave me to my business,” he said offhandedly before turning back towards Miss Thorade."Um, actually, our business is with you," I said. “See, uh, we want to arrest you? Please?”The baron paused, then turned to give me a stare. “You what?”“You really don’t recognize me?” I asked. “Last we saw each other was at that big tower with all the pirates working with you. You’d kidnapped a bunch of nobles and stole a few ships, and I was there with my friends and the sylph army? This was only like, a few days ago.”You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.Vonowl narrowed his eyes at me, his feathers ruffling up. Thorade threw some sharp glances between us, and my friends all spread out behind me.Miss Thorade gave the baron a very hard stare. “Pardon me, baron, but when you mentioned that you wanted my equipment for the purposes of pirate defence, did you mean defending against piracy, or were you planning on using our bows to defend the pirates?”"Are you accusing me of lying?" he snapped at her. "Don't listen to these fools. The noble house of Vonowl would never stoop to piracy." He turned back to me. "And you! What is this slander? Arrest me? I've done nothing wrong.""Well," I began, "You did kidn-""Stop lying!" he cut me off. "You whiny little rabbit-eared child! I strive only for the betterment of harpykind, and I won't let you stand in the way of that! If you're talking about arrest, then I ought to have you imprisoned for defaming my good name!"“Oh, shut up,” Amaryllis said. “Your name’s good for nothing.”He squinted at her. “Who are you?”That got Amaryllis to bristle quite prettily. “Me? I’m Amaryllis Albatross, you feather-brained incompetent.”I had never been happier in my life to hear Amaryllis drag someone into a bickering contest. Very deliberately, I refocused on Miss Thorade. “Sorry, you don’t mind if we arrest him, do you?”The dwarven lady tugged at her beard, but then shook her head. “No. My Business Sense was hinting that I wouldn’t be paid by this man, in any case. Though you are distracting my workers.”That was true, I noticed a number of heads poking up from around and above the various machines in the shop. It seemed that even dwarves were keen on being busybodies when there was good gossip about.“We’re sorry for the likely loss of this contract,” Willowbud said. “Is there anything we can do to help?”“You’re Willowbud, aren’t you?” she asked. “And that makes the irritable grump next to you the infamous Tharval.”“Infamous is still famous, whelp,” he grumbled at her.She sniffed. “I heard that you’re insane, with the occasional flash of genius only a madman would dare to have.”“Hear that, Bud, I’m a genius.”“Yes, that was the part of the statement that really caught my ear,” Willowbud replied. “In any case. We should take the baron somewhere a little more discreet, I think.”“Where?” I asked. “We don’t exactly have cells on the Beaver.”“Bah, we have cells at the Exploration guild,” Tharval said with a dismissive shrug.There was a pause."Um, why?" Awen asked. It seemed like a very sensible question to ask.“Because some of us aren’t good with our drinks,” he said. And that seemed enough explanation for the rest of my friends. Except for Amaryllis, of course, who had devolved her argument from a catty back and forth to a tirade of insults which was gaining in loudness with every mention of someone’s hatching and the quality of their plumage and ancestry.I patted her on the back. “Hey, it’s okay, we’re going to arrest him now.”“Arrest implies a certain amount of legal authority,” Caprica said. “This is more of a... citizen’s detention.”“But we’re not citizens here,” Awen said.“A... non-citizen detention. You know what, I’m just going to work hard to not think of things in legal terms for a while. I feel like doing that might be bad for my mental health.”“That’s the spirit, princess,” Calamity said.Seeing as how we were more or less all in agreement, I turned to the next potential source of problems. The baron’s guards. “Hi,” I said to the two. “I know that you’re basically being paid to take care of the baron here, but we kinda need to take him away for a while. And we’d much rather not have to fight.”The two bodyguards looked to each other, then to our group. I imagined that even though we were mostly a friendly bunch, we might have been a teensy bit intimidating, under the right light.“Also, your boss is broke,” Calamity added. “Unless nya got paid in advance? No? Oh, that stings. Well, live and learn, huh?”I walked up to the baron, and then patted him on the shoulder. He flinched back. “Don’t touch me,” he said.“Oh. Well, okay. But only if you agree to walk ahead of us and not kick up a fuss. You’ve done some very mean things and I think we should do something about that.”“If you want, my boys can whip up a pair of cuffs or fetch some ropes real quick,” Thorade said.“You’d betray me, Thorade? After I brought you so much business?” Baron Vonowl asked.“You haven’t paid me yet either,” she said.I made an itty-bitty mental note to make sure I paid people in the future, because it seemed like not doing so led to people being rather unhelpful.The baron protested quite a bit as we tied his wings up against his sides (Amaryllis suggested against tying them to his back, harpy shoulders not being the same as human ones, apparently). We wondered about gagging him for a while, mostly because he was being extremely vocal about... well, everything, but that felt a little rude, especially when the only thing we could gag him with were the socks that Calamity volunteered with rather more glee than appropriate.With the baron all tied up, we pushed him along ahead of us. Willowbud apologised to Miss Thorade, who charged us a token sum for the ropes, and then we were off.Crossing the Storm Tower with a rather unwilling, tied-up baron in our midst, one who constantly shouted about how we were scoundrels, kidnappers, and other more vile things, was a little tricky.We tried to stick to less popular routes, but that only helped so much.What helped a lot more was the strange amount of authority Willowbud could exude whenever he wanted. I had to wonder if it was a skill when we ran into some guards and he persuaded them that this was all Exploration Guild business and that they should keep on doing their jobs... but elsewhere.“Once we have you in a cell,” Amaryllis said. “We’re going to have all sorts of questions for you.”
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