Infection

Feeling discouraged by their inability to crack the case of Horatio Plumbottom’s murder, the party tried to find some semblance of a normal routine. Much of their time was spent selling off the items they’d accumulated over the last few weeks of adventuring, and securing new items for themselves. The rest was spent restlessly playing cards and rehashing the meager clues they’d found at the murder scene.

A few days later, there was a rap on the door. Jax answered to find a young boy standing there. For an instant he flashed on Lamm’s Lambs – was this one of them? But the lad was too well dressed, and well fed. “Mornin’ guv’ner – message for yer,” the boy said cheerfully, handing him a folded slip of paper. Jax tipped him a couple of silver pieces, drawing a wide grin from the messenger.

The note was on fine stationery. Unfolding it, Jax read the message, written in elegant calligraphy:

My friends, I hope this note finds you in good health in these dangerous times. In light of the recent unrest, I feel that I could provide some tips on self-defense to adventurers such as you, and would be most gratified to meet with you for these lessons, offered gratis, at Orisini Academy, 16 Hillcrest Street. I eagerly await your arrival.

                 Vencarlo Orisini

“Vencarlo – wasn’t that the guy who tipped Kroft to Lord Amprei’s plot, and his links to Eel’s End?” Tomas asked.

“Oh yes!” Erin confirmed. There was a dreamy tone to her voice.

Tomas gave her a hard look – what had gotten into her? “Well, I’ve heard of Orsini Academy,” he continued. “It’s supposed to be the finest school for fencing and swordplay in Korvosa. I certainly wouldn’t mind some free lessons.”

“I think I could learn some things, too,” Wren said eagerly. She was blushing, although Tomas couldn’t see what there was to be embarrassed about.

Everyone else agreed that there was nothing to lose by taking Vencarlo up on his offer, and within an hour they’d crossed the city into Old Korvosa. Orsini Academy was in the oldest part of the city, inside the walls of the old Fort Korvosa; this part of Endrin Isle wasn’t the slum that covered most of the rest of Old Korvosa. The mansion of the Arkona estate looked down from a nearby hilltop, enclosed in its own walls. The door to the Academy was shut, with a sign hanging on it reading “Classes Cancelled Today”. Nonetheless, they knocked, and were quickly rewarded when Vencarlo Orsini opened the door.

The Vencarlo they’d met a few weeks ago had been cheerful and charming, but today his look was serious. He poked his head out the door and looked both ways before ushering them inside, locking the door behind him. He led them down a hallway, past large open rooms filled with practice dummies and padded suits. He led them into a study, its windows tightly shuttered and curtained. “Thank you for responding to my cryptic note so quickly,” he said in a low voice. “I have an important task that requires your aid. Everything I have seen and heard of you tells me that you are Korvosan patriots – I hope I can trust you with what I am about to share with you.” He went to a side door in the study, and opened it a crack. “You can come out now, my dear,” he said. The door opened wider, and a young blonde woman came cautiously into the room. The party recognized her at once – after all, they had chased her through the Shingles and watched as she was almost beheaded. It was Trinia Sabor!

“You were all at the queen’s debacle, so I don’t doubt you recognize this charming young woman. I had only just reached my home the night of Her Majesty’s morbid gala when that troublemaker Blackjack and this startled woman arrived at my doorstep. The so-called ‘people’s hero’ and I have had some dealings in the past, but it’s been some years since I’ve seen the scoundrel. He was quick with his words and soon swooped off, doubtlessly to right some other festering wrong, but not before entrusting Miss Sabor to my protection and care. Although I don’t know Blackjack’s motives or politics, I trust his judgment and have seen much right done by his blade. He says Miss Sabor is innocent of the crime she’s been accused of, and I’m more disposed to trust a hero of the city than the tantrums of some bloody-minded child playing at queen.

“The matter is simple: Korvosa is no longer safe for Miss Sabor. I’ve arranged for friends in Harse to take in our beautiful renegade until this whole ‘assassination’ foolishness blows over. It’s the first leg of the journey where we find our problem, though. Ever since the queen’s put a price on her head, mercenaries, soldiers, and the queen’s new Gray Maidens have been searching for the young lady tirelessly. They’ve stopped by here three times so far, and each time I’ve only just barely been able to turn them away without inviting a search. My most reliable contacts have gone to ground in light of the recent uprisings, and Her Highness’s bounty for Trinia’s capture makes the use of new agents inadvisable. Thus, after some time to let her trail cool, I turned to you resourceful lot. What do you say - care to escort a lady to her new home?”

Wren went to Trinia and took her hands. “We’re so sorry for helping them catch you,” she apologized. “We trusted the wheels of justice to treat you fairly. We know now we were wrong. Can you forgive us?” Trinia’s eyes filled with tears, and all she could do was nod her head wordlessly. Wren turned back to Vencarlo. “And when this is over we intend to take you up on those free lessons.”

Vencarlo smiled, for the first time today. “Of course, my dear,” he said with a bow. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I reneged on a promise to a beautiful woman?” Wren blushed again, and Tomas started to see what was going on.

As Erin had listened to Vencarlo’s story, the wheels were turning over in her head. She had only seen Blackjack for a few moments, and in the midst of chaos. Could Blackjack possibly be … Vencarlo Orsini? They were of a similar height, but Blackjack had been cloaked and masked. And Vencarlo was … well, old. Almost 60 probably. Although he moved with a grace that belied his years. The rapier Blackjack had carried was not the same as the one hanging from Vencarlo’s hip, she was sure of that, although nothing said you couldn’t own more than one sword. Blackjack’s voice had been different, but then he had been delivering an oration to a public square with hundreds of people. In the end, she filed her questions away for consideration at a later time.

“So how should we get her out of here,” Nat asked, pulling Erin back to the task at hand. “Should we wait until after dark and try to smuggle her out?”

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Vencarlo responded. “The city is on high alert, and anything out of the ordinary will draw suspicion. I think the best course would simply be a slow walk through the city down to High Bridge, and then up the Dwarfwalk road, mingling with the afternoon’s merchants leaving the city.”

“How about a disguise?” Wren asked. Vencarlo smiled, and reached into a desk drawer, pulling out a wide-brimmed riding hat and curly red-haired wig. Trinia was already wearing simple traveling clothes, and the hat and wig helped, but she still looked … well, herself. “Let me help,” Jax suggested, and pulled out his Disguise Kit. He drew lines around her eyes and mouth to age her, and added some padding to change her body shape. “Don’t you think red hair is too noticeable?” asked Nat. He cast a quick spell, and the wig slowly darkened to a mousy brown. When they were finished, the young artist looked like a slightly pudgy middle-aged matron.

Bidding Vencarlo farewell, they set off. The walk would have been a perfectly ordinary stroll across Korvosa – if they hadn’t been terrified of being arrested for treason at every step. They passed any number of Korvosan Guards, all clad in their new crimson cloaks, but didn’t draw a second glance. At one point they turned a corner and all but bumped into a trio of Grey Maidens coming the opposite direction. Their hearts stopped as the armor-clad figures, faces hidden from view, strode towards them. They stepped off the curb, lowered their eyes, and let the Grey Maidens pass, then slowly resumed breathing as they turned the corner out of sight.

As Vencarlo had predicted, they reached High Bridge along with a stream of farmers, woodcutters, tanners, and others who had sold their goods during the day and were returning to their homes outside the city. As they headed north then west along Dwarfwalk Road, the city laid out before them on the far side of the river, they finally were able to start to relax.

They didn’t need to escort Trinia all the way to Harse, some 60 miles away. Instead, Vencarlo had arranged for them to be met at a roadside inn called Trots. They reached the inn as the sun was setting. As they sat down with mugs of ale, a smiling man approached them. “Are you folks from Korvosa?” Wary, they nodded. “Do you happen to know my old friend, Vencarlo Orsini?” Again they nodded, although Erin had her sword hilt in a firm grip. The man beamed. “Then you must be the folks escorting my cousin up from the city! Why yes, there she is! Hello cuz!” He was focused in on Trinia, despite her disguise “Thank you folks for being so kind to her – we’ll take her from here.” He extended a hand to Trinia, who took it without question, and led her outside. The group followed, and found two other men waiting with four horses. They all mounted, and with a friendly wave rode off into the sunset with Trinia.

“How do we know those were the right people?” Erin asked worriedly. The others turned to stare at her. “Isn’t it a little late to ask that now?” Shadow asked.

“No, seriously,” Erin protested. “This was too easy. You mark my words, we’re going to find out we handed her over to the Queen, and we’ll end up having to rescue her all over again! Just you wait!”

Erin continued worrying through dinner, several beers, and most of the walk back to Korvosa the next morning. As they approached North Bridge, they saw the structure lined with people looking and gesturing out at the muddy waters of the Jeggare River. They didn’t see anything that would attract such a crowd, but a merchant coming into town along the same road as them asked the question they all were wondering: “What’s all the fuss?”

Excited townsfolk practically fell all over each other to deliver the news. “Didn’t you hear? The Guard sank a pirate ship trying to sail into town last night! They tried to sneak in around midnight, but the Guard spotted them, and between the trebuchets on the walls and the Sable Company overhead, they sent them straight to the bottom!”

“Weren’t no pirates!” another citizen said ominously. “It was an invasion force from Magnimar! They was tryin’ to sneak into the harbor and set the docks on fire, as a distraction so’s the invaders could land on Endrin Isle!”

“You’re both crazy!” a bearded fellow interjected. “Was you here? No! But I was, and I seen the whole thing. Ship wasn’t trying to ‘sneak’ in – it had a bright yellow lantern tied to the figurehead. I think the skipper was just incompetent – was in a hurry to unload in the mornin’ and tried to navigate the river in the dark. The Guard was trigger-happy after all the recent trouble, and decided to shoot first and ask questions later.”

“A yellow light, you say?” asked an old salt. “That’s the sign of a plague ship under quarantine. The Guard probably sank it as a precaution.”

“It was a ghost ship!” an old woman screeched, causing many of the onlookers to make the sign of the evil eye. “Went down without a sound, and not a single soul swam away. No bodies washed ashore, neither.”

The argument continued, with a dozen different theories of what the ship was up to. But the dark waters of the river offered up no confirmation of any of them.

The party made their way back to Orsini Academy, to let Vencarlo know all had gone well. He confirmed that the man they had met was his friend, Jasan, but Erin still wasn’t convinced. “I’m going to lay low for awhile – you might want to do the same,” Vencarlo advised.

That’s what they did for the next couple of days, until another knock on Zellara’s door interrupted their waiting. This was more of an insistent pounding, and Jax opened it to find Grau Soldado, the Guard sergeant they’d helped during the riots. “Nat – it’s your friend,” he called, remembering that the young wizard knew Soldado from before.

Grau stepped into the house, looking worried. “Sorry to bother you folks, but I wasn’t sure where else to go. My niece is sick. I don’t know what she has and neither does anyone in Trail’s End. She’s broken out all over in red pox and can barely keep down food, or even the swill that good-for-nothing herbalist gave her. Her mother’s talking about going to the Bank of Abadar, but we can’t afford to pay the prices their clerics would demand. Then I remembered how you and your friends handled yourselves during the riots, and all the things you’ve done for Field Marshall Kroft, and I figured maybe you could help. A bunch of resourceful folk like you, I’d bet if you don’t already have a way to fix this, you must know who can. Surely you can’t just sit by while a child suffers, can you?” The grizzled veteran’s eyes were welling with tears, and no one wasted an instant before agreeing to do whatever they could.

Grau’s niece lived in Trails End, a small community just across North Bridge from Korvosa. It was a poor and seedy town, mostly inhabited by people of Varisian descent, along with a few renegade Shoanti, and the town had a dangerous reputation. As they walked, Grau explained that the girl’s mother was his brother’s wife; his brother had died some years ago and Grau did what he could to care for the family. Tayce Soldado (the mother) took in laundry from well-to-do Korvosans to support her family, and her two sons worked as apprentices for a wheelwright. Brienna, her youngest and only daughter, was the one who was sick.

The Soldado home was a squat, two-story wooden building in desperate need of repair. Overall, the building looked like the home of a family too busy living to bother with tedious chores. Inside, the house was remarkably clean and well kept, filled with worn furniture and decorated with the crafts and scribbling of children. Two boys played in the living room, and a set of stairs led up to a loft, and every few minutes a spasm of ragged coughing filled the house from the room above.

Standing at the stove was a tall, dark-skinned man wearing the robes of a cleric of Abadar. When he saw him, Grau’s expression darkened. “Excuse me,” he muttered, and climbed up the stairs. A barely-whispered argument could be heard from the upstairs room. Grau was furious that his sister-in-law was running up a bill with an expensive healer when he had said he would handle things; Tayce was defending her actions, insisting that her daughter’s condition was too dire to waste time.

Everyone downstairs awkwardly shuffled their feet, trying to pretend they couldn’t hear the argument. The cleric was stirring a kettle on the stove, some concoction that smelled of cinnamon and anise. “My name is Ishani Dhatri,” he introduced himself in a sing-song voice. “I am here to do what I can for the sick child.”

“What does she have?” Wren asked.

Ishani frowned. “I do not know. That is what concerns me most. Her condition is very grave, of course, but I have never seen or heard of this combination of symptoms before. I will need to consult with by brethren at the Temple, but I fear this could be some unknown disease.”

“And you haven’t cured her?” Wren asked accusingly.

Ishani dropped his head. “Alas, if I had been sent for earlier, perhaps I could, but I’m afraid my duties at the Golden One’s Vault required me to entreat him for similar miracles already this day. Even if I could heal her, the tenets of my church force me to request a donation for Abadar’s power, which I suspect these simple folk could scarcely afford.”

“Always after almighty gold!” Jax huffed, glaring at the cleric in anger and frustration. But Erin could sense that Ishani was embarrassed and ashamed at having to ask for money for healing.

Grau came back downstairs, his face pale. “Please, can you help her?” he begged. “She’s even worse than she was this morning.

Wren and Erin exchanged looks. “Let’s see what we can do,” Erin said, and together they climbed the creaking stairs. They led into a bedroom loft above the main room of the Soldado home. A young girl lay in one of the beds, her slight frame dwarfed by the bed’s size and the pile of pillows, afghans, and quilts surrounding her. Splotches of an angry red rash covered her face and arms, appearing in irregular shapes and sizes and leaking thin streams of blood. Suddenly, her restlessness was interrupted by a violent fit of hacking coughs that jerked her entire frame, lifting her well off her pillows. The spasm passed after a moment, dropping her back to the bed, but seemingly having done little to ease her breathing. Her mother sat beside her, clutching her hand. “Can you help my baby?”

Both women examined the girl closely; the disease had taken a heavy toll and she was obviously fading fast. Wren wracked her brain for all she remembered from her studies of healing, but as Ishani had said, these symptoms didn’t match anything she had ever heard of. “Let me try something,” Erin said softly. She closed her eyes and laid her hands gently on the girl’s forehead, muttering a soft prayer to Iomedae. A warm light seemed to suffuse Brienna’s frame, but as it faded her breathing was no stronger, or easier.

Their choices were few. They could wait until tomorrow, and summon Ishani back to cast a Remove Disease spell – for a price. Or they could re-cross the river and go to the Temple of Abadar to purchase a potion to do the same – for the same price. Neither of those were acceptable to Wren. She reached into her pack and pulled out the wand they’d found just a few days before in the lair of the Derro necromancer – a Wand of Remove Disease. She waved the wand uncertainly, never having used one before, but was gratified to feel a pulse of holy power stream forth from its tip to envelope Brienna. The child jerked upright in the bed. She began to gasp for breath, her breathing ragged and gurgling at first, but gradually beginning to clear and ease. The red pox didn’t immediately disappear, but the bleeding stopped. She dropped back down onto the pillows and lay still for a long moment. Then she opened her eyes and turned to her mother. “Mommy – is supper ready yet?”

Tayce Soldado could do little but weep. She clutched her daughter’s hand with one hand and Wren’s with the other, thanking Wren over and over for saving her daughter. When she was able to compose herself, Wren moved to her next concern. “We need to figure out where she might have caught this, in case others were exposed.” She turned to Brienna. “Where were you before you got sick?” she asked. “Did you talk to anyone you didn’t know?”

The girl shook her head. “I was just helping Mommy with the laundry.”

Wren persisted. “Please think. Did you do anything unusual before you got sick, anything out of the ordinary.”

Brienna seemed to pull back. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said in a soft voice.

“No, sweetie, I know you didn’t. This isn’t your fault. We’re just trying to find out how you might have gotten sick. Can you remember where you were or what you were doing right before you got sick?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” she repeated, and began to cry. Tayce tried to coax her daughter to answer their questions, but no matter what any of them did, she only grew more upset, and kept insisting that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Shadow poked his head into the room. “Mind if I have a chat with our new friend?” he said. He nodded with his head for the others to leave, and they filed out of the room, leaving him alone with Brienna. Nat stayed outside the room, at the top of the stairs, but cast Detect Thoughts to see if he could learn anything.

Shadow spent a good ten minutes just chatting, trying to put Brienna at ease. He soon had the girl laughing at his silly voices and faces (especially when he imitated her Uncle Grau). At last he changed the subject. “Can you think of anything that might have made you get sick?”

Brienna looked down, and a tear ran slowly down her cheek. “I think Desna is punishing me,” she said in a whisper.

“Why would she want to do that?” Shadow prodded softly.

“Because I didn’t share. Mommy says our family has to share everything, but I didn’t.”

“What didn’t you share?”

“The money. I found a bag, full of coins, and I didn’t share it with my brothers or my Mommy. I bought some sweets from Mr. Ortega’s store, and cinnamon buns from the bakery, and I kept them all for myself.” She was crying. “I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.”

They were able to learn little else. Brienna had found the pouch of copper pieces lying beside a building nearby. They tried to pin down exactly when she’d found the coins (especially trying to determine if it was before or after the mysterious ship was sunk), but she was fuzzy on timelines. They shared what they’d learned with Ishani. “I will confer with my brothers, to see if they have heard of any other cases,” he promised. “I will let you know if we hear of any other outbreaks.”

The group was concerned that something in either the sweets or the baked goods might have transmitted the disease. As they walked to the corner store to talk to the owner, Jax took in the run-down houses and knots of toughs loitering on street corners. “This isn’t exactly the sort of neighborhood where you’d expect to find bags of money lying around.”

The door of the store was locked, with a CLOSED sign hanging in the window. “In the middle of the day?” Tomas said, stating the obvious. Grau questioned some of the local hoods, and quickly came back with the owner’s address, just around the corner. They knocked on the door, and a harried-looking woman answered. “What do you want?” she asked. From somewhere in the house behind her they could hear ragged, hacking coughing.

Worried, they apologized for bothering the woman, and hurried on to the bakery. It, too was closed in the middle of the day. The owner apparently lived above the shop, because from an open upstairs window they could hear the now-familiar coughing. “Maybe it wasn’t the food,” Wren said. “Maybe it was the coins.”

Tomas frowned. “I’ve never heard of people getting sick from pieces of metal. But there has to be some connection between these people. We should let Ishani know what we’ve found.”

They hurried back across the bridge and made their way to the Temple of Abadar. Towering over the surrounding buildings, the Grand Vault of Abadar offered a radiant vision of divine luxuriance amid a sea of mortal troubles. Its gray-veined white marble reflected the midday sun, leaving little question that this place was the house of a god. Inside was a vast room of white marble and gleaming bronze friezes. Lines of people stood at rows of barred windows, waiting to transact financial business, while to one side were a row of curtained alcoves, apparently for those requiring healing. They asked someone for Ishani Dhatri, and he hurried to fetch the cleric.

They began to tell Ishani what they had learned, but he cut them off, then led them to the privacy of one of the alcoves. There, they recounted what they’d found at Trails End. “We think the coins might have been tainted somehow,” Wren concluded.

“This is very concerning,” Ishani agreed. “When I returned from the Soldano’s, I discovered that three of my fellow clerics had come down sick with the same symptoms, just since this morning. If your speculation is true, that it was something with the coins, well …” he swept his arm to indicate their opulent surroundings, “if there’s one thing we do here, it’s handle lots of money.

“I must speak to the Archbanker at once!” He gulped. “Although I have never spoken to him before. But he must be made aware. He will be able to determine the correct response. Thank you for your help – I will keep you informed.”

As they left the Vault, the party split up. Shadow headed south to let Cressida Kroft know there was a potential crisis brewing, while the others headed back to Trails End. There, Wren managed to enlist some of the local gang members to enforce a quarantine of the two (known) infected houses (although their definition of ‘quarantine’ seemed to be to beat the crap out of anyone entering or leaving the houses). On the way back, Jax split off, and when he returned to Zellara’s he was laden down with bags of food. “No telling how long we might be cooped up here,” he explained.

Their self-imposed quarantine lasted two days. On that morning, Jax’s ragged coughing woke everyone at dawn. He was weak, and red pox marks were already appearing on his face. Wren said a silent prayer of thanks to Pharasma; after their experience with the Soldado girl, she had been studying Pharasma’s holy works, determined not to be caught helpless like that again. As a result, she had just learned how to summon Pharasma’s power to cure diseases, and she practiced her power for the first time on Jax. His pox began to clear, but he spent the rest of the day in bed to try to regain his strength.

He wasn’t yet back to his old self the next morning when an urgent pounding on the door awoke him. Another messenger stood there: “Brother Dhatri needs to see you urgently at the Grand Vault!” Everyone geared up, and set out for the Temple again.

The building was just as impressive as ever, but the scene around it was chaotic. Dozens of citizens — mostly of the working class, although the silks of a few merchants showed through the crowd — thronged the steep stairs leading to the Temple’s entry, scarcely held back by a group of gold-armored Abadaran guards. All seemed intent on gaining entry to the temple, but the clerics turned away nearly all comers. The clerics’ reasoning became clear as one desperate believer turned back towards the party, his pitiful countenance mottled with violent red sores.

Erin strode forward confidently, trying to strong-arm her way through the mob, but found herself unable to move the mass of humanity. The others hung back, reluctant to risk exposure to the disease. Wren quietly tucked her holy symbol inside her armor; if this crowd saw that she was a cleric, she would be overrun by desperate people seeking healing.

“Where’s Shadow?” Tomas asked suddenly. Everyone looked around, but the sorcerer had vanished.

“There he is!” Wren exclaimed pointing at the front door of the Grand Vault. Shadow had appeared – quite literally appeared out of thin air – beside one of the guards. Shocked, the guard nearly shot him with his crossbow. They saw Shadow have a quiet word with the guard, then he nodded and let Shadow slip inside. “Well there’s no sense the rest of us trying to get in,” Wren said, slipping farther back away from the mob. “Let’s just wait for him to come out.”

Inside, Shadow quickly tracked down Ishani Dhatri. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I assume you already suspect my reasons for calling, having seen the crowd outside.” He shook his head sadly. “Poor lot. You recognize the symptoms too, I’m sure. The problem is even bigger than I had feared. I told you that three of my brothers had come down with the same symptoms when I returned from the Soldado’s. I spoke to each, and aside from their usual duties in the temple, none had any dealings with any who were ill. Later in the day, more of my fellow priests — acolytes, guards, vaultkeepers — developed symptoms, and folk from throughout the city began arriving in search of healing. It’s been more than a little bit frightening. They’re calling the sickness ‘Blood Veil’—an apt enough name, I suppose.

“Most of the patients we’re treating have come from North Point and Old Korvosa. The disease seems to spread fastest through the lower classes. Although we here at the temple can heal some of the ill, I dread that the transmission of the disease will soon outpace our resources. We’ve heard reports that people have already started to die from the illness, but we haven’t been able to confirm them. The only way to stem the growing infection is to involve the entire city. We need to organize. We need to call upon the faiths of Sarenrae, Pharasma, and even Asmodeus to face this attack. Archbanker Tuttle and several of his assistants are out pursuing alliances with these other faiths, but even that won’t be enough. We need to involve the Korvosan Guard and the queen’s new agents, the Gray Maidens, at the very least. That’s where you come in. With the number of desperate souls growing, it’s not particularly safe for a priest to walk the streets of Korvosa. I hear you have a good relationship with Field Marshal Cressida Kroft. Perhaps you would be willing to escort me to Citadel Volshyenek for an introduction?”

The PCs earned 1,267 XP, putting them at 10,527 and Level 5 (luckily in time for Wren to save Jax). You need 15,000 XP for Level 6.