103 – Searching for Clothes and People

  Rox stopped at each dress shop that had a dummy in its window. Steven was surprised at all the plate glass windows with wooden multi-panel shutters he saw here. Veradale had an industry in stained and colored glass. The elves had smaller windows with glass block and a few glass pains in their mountain top city. Here in this city it seamed that glass was as plentiful and easy to acquire as at home, on Earth. As were the window washers. Rox marveled at the fabrics and gown designs. She soon was able to pick out the society ladies and gentlemen from the lowerclassmen by their dress. Pastels seamed to be the colors of the season. Where as the lower class was much more utilitarian, though still with their own style. It seamed that this city was on good economic standing, and wealthy enough to indulge in cloth.

  Rox decided to approach her gown design as she did a car. What did the customer want, and what available parts could be acquired and reconditioned as opposed to purchased new? She did not want to purchase a dress, but wondered about maybe trying an illusion. But she would need a convincing under lay to attach the illusion to. Her Elf gowns were mostly where she could not easily retrieve them, and she did not want to buy a new one. She had the elf skirt she was wearing, but its cut, fit and color would scream ‘I’m an outsider’ louder than if she tried to wear her jeans and t-shirt. She had one of the smocks from the palace in Veradale. It would be good for underwear for the illusion she was considering. She would need Caspian’s input.

  For his part, Steven also realized that nothing he had would be useful for looking formal. So he stopped a man who looked like a runner for someone, and asked where someone from outside the city might be able to borrow a suit.

  After spending the morning wandering through eight blocks of stores and shops, mostly rag-mongers, with a good assortment of tailors and seamstresses, they stopped at a corner café for lunch. Steven was mildly surprised that they had not been accosted by any street thieves, but then neither was wearing much of apparent value, that could be easily lifted. Also at Rox’s instigation, she and Caspian had put a few protective spells on their things. The elves had made the pouches secure in themselves. Steven wondered if the spells were actually spells or placebos.

  As they ate, Cyrril came and landed on their table, took a meat roll from the plate they were eating from, and left. Shortly after, Caspian came striding up, staff clicking on the cobbled walk, munching on the roll Cyrril had taken, and sat down to join them.

  “How has your morning been?” Caspian spoke to them in the language from up north, as he finished the roll.

  Roxanne had her mouth clear first. “Instructive. I have found plenty of ideas for a gown. But I want to talk more about that in private.”

  Steven took up the conversation as Roxanne dipped a meat roll into the dipping sauce and then took a bite.

  “I have found two places we could borrow suits. I will have to go back and be fitted immediately if that is going to happen, though. I thought you were going to try to see some of your fellow spell-casters. Did they have anything to say?”

  Another plate of meet rolls and a cup of water was put down for Caspian. Then the waiter went away. Caspian pulled a meat roll apart and dipped it in what Steven would call salsa, but it was too bland for his liking and tasted like cucumbers.

  “Well, yes and no. I found two magic users. One was an old man gone senile, cared for by his grandson’s family. The other was more help. She had more to say about the local situation and monarchs than about anything that really concerns us. Most of the local magic community has gone to ground over the last years, or is living in the outskirt towns as house retainers. She thinks this has led to the necromancers causing trouble by improperly influencing the local youth. The Queen is not well though of among the magic users, and it is to get clear of her that they have left. I got the impression that there is a larger story there, but no further idea what.”

  Rox impatiently turned the conversation to her concern. “What about the ball, why is it happening? Did she know?”

  Caspian finished his bit and answered. “I have heard several versions. The most common pieces are that a week ago there was some kind of military parade to and from the palace and this ball is in commemoration of it. The other pieces involve diplomatic and social happenings that don’t seem to agree in any two stories.”

  Steven nodded. “That agrees with what we have heard. On the parade and the others. The handbill did mention a vanquished enemy.”

  Roxanne finished eating, got up, and wandered away leaving Caspian and Steven to pay, and then go to a tailor and get fitted for borrowed suits. Caspian quietly groused about being fitted the whole time. Steven found Caspian’s discomfort amusing, considering how often he had been discomforted in this adventure.

  That evening, back in their rooms, Rox tried to do some illusions showing what she had seen earlier. Caspian saved her some time, by producing his glass marble and then touching it to the hem of her dress, he then cast a spell on and around it. Steven sat back to watch the show, remembering the last time he had seen that marble.

  Unlike that time, Caspian constrained the image, once it started, to a bit larger than a crate, and then either sped through it, or paused it as he and Rox talked. Soon they were understanding each other, and working to a common goal. They would have to create an illusory gown for Rox, as a borrowed one would take a week to fit, and a new one nearly as long.

  Journal of Steven Caplan: Day 135

  This is an interesting city. I understand it is a monarchy, and this is the capitol. Yet it seems as free and as restricted as many of the non USA cities I have been in. They evidently do not have printing presses, so graphic artists do a busy job of hand bills, yet they have books and scrolls of sufficient abundance that they can sell them to the public. They do a good business in window glass. Few people are armed, and most strangers evidently stop carrying shortly after arriving. The local guardsmen and constables appear to be in good favor.

  Yet I sense that there is some underlying malevolence. From what the elves drilled into us about the monarchs here, I wonder what it would take to instigate a revolution, whether by coup or uncivil uprising.

  The next two days found Steven with little to do beyond wander around. So he did, learning as much of the city as he could, tending to their horses in their rented stable, and generally staying out of Caspian and Roxanne’s way. For their part, Roxanne was doing her best to learn how to control the illusion spell that Caspian was doing his best to teach her. They based it on one Master Iver had briefly had Rox attempt. In this case, to maintain the spell, they needed two objects: one to carry the spell and one to be its focus, like a light source and a lens. Her drape that she had worn in Veradale was to carry the spell, and a cheep silver amulet that Caspian had picked up was to act as the focus. In the end she had an illusory gown that looked like it came from one of the local tailors, with a bit of elfin cut to it. The colors drew from the layers of the drape she wore, a light blue outer layering with white under. For some reason that she could not define, Rox felt to tie a length of cord to her short staff as a lanyard and keep it at hand, as a swagger stick.

  Caspian helped her invest her short staff with a few spells. She had several times demonstrated that it magically extended and broke apart, and on investigating, Caspian determined that it would not take or use any spells while it was in components. He figured that it was actually still one stick, but a small gate of some specific kind allowed the stick to be used as two pieces, and turned all other spells inactive when this one was. It also had the intrinsic property of the energized ends canceling out any spell they both came in contact with. During a quick impromptu drill Caspian put up a variety of static spells and Rox passed the energized staff ends through, and found that combat spells it defused or discharged. The domestic ones, it left alone.

  For investing the staff with spells, Rox kept to spells and ideas she was familiar with. Rox thought of one as a machine gun; basically a magic supply of darts. Another she thought of as a flashlight; this shone a beam inline with the staff from the end she had come to use as the top. At this point, Rox hoped she would not need any others, and that she could brute force her way out of any situation that these could not handle.

  Over the last days and nights Karen had been trawling through the markets looking for any adult half-elves in at least occasional company of magic users. She started near the district where she lived. Karen figured they most likely would come from the sea so she started with all the ports on the northwest river front of the Krogg River working north. Then she went south on the east side of the river front to where the rivers merged, and southeast up the north side of the Garmad River, then backtracked on the south side, past the Palace Island. By the time she finished with the west end of the south side of the Krogg River, where it left the city and ran down hill to the coast, she had not found anything. That had taken her two nights of hopping roof tops and scanning with her senses.

  Next she began working her way across the city in a right handed turn, starting in a northerly direction across the west markets on the north side of the west riverfront, she eventually turned east across the north districts, and around to the east highway markets.

  Karen had found a few half-elves, but only two who were not local. The locals who were half-elf most often were the children of rape from when a war-quest from the cave-dwelling Urnvtai elf communities near by got a burr under their saddle and went on a rampage. That had not happened in several years, but about a dozen years prior there had been a spate of that. These half-elves were all juveniles, so Karen dismissed them.

  Next she had found one older half-elf with a mage scouring the markets for musical instruments. They had been instructed to head a few days travel east into the mountains and the city there that specialized in musical instruments. They left Skarg, and had disappeared. Karen dismissed them.

  Then she had crossed back over the Krogg River and entered the northeast districts and started through their markets. This was where the main highway left Skarg and went north. Most of the markets here were of goods going or coming to the city, before the loads were broken down and distributed. She paid careful attention to the two caravans of traders in their grounds, but found nothing. Then she found a trace of a sleeping half-elf. Returning the next morning she found what she guessed was her targets; a tall half-elf female, not of the local short Urnvtai stock, traveling with a very large man, and a mage.

  After discretely following the half elf and her mate around, Karen learned that this was indeed her target. The magic user had a dragon as a familiar. Not completely unheard of, but dragons were not native to Tywacomb, so it meant that there was some off-planet going’s on somewhere in the background. Also that she could not just follow him around as the familiar would spot her easily.

  As she followed the half-elf and mate, Karen learned of their need for information, and that they were planning on going to the ball at the palace. This cemented Karen’s need to go to the ball. So she had to decide what to wear. Karen followed from a distance as the half-elf window shopped the local dress shops. Karen felt her own bit of aristocratic class bubble up, as she would not even consider having her drapes for her taverns done by these seamstresses and tailors.

  The next day Karen followed the large man around, as he seamed to wander aimlessly. She noticed that he walked like a predator on open ground, and appeared to be minimally armed. He had put his sword aside after wearing it for the first day, evidently after seeing that most of the city was orderly. She brushed past him as he stopped to look at a silver smith’s wears, and touched him, to psionically remember his ‘flavor’ and be more able to find him in the future. She had not been able to get this close to the half-elf, but figured that he was the father of the two kids, and the half-elf the mother. As she touched him, Karen learned she had guessed right, about ‘Steven.’

  Karen then left off and went home to deal with her own gown for the ball. She still had a day and a half, but that would barely be enough to get her chosen gown worked over.