Sleepless Streets: Like Getting Underwear for Christmas (Not What You Want, Probably What You Need)

[aithne]

"You have got to be kidding me."

"No, I’m not," Gaetana said. "Here's a new list. Now, get out of here before I have to throw you out."

"But--"

"Go."

The reason that Gaetana was throwing us out of her office was about four feet tall, with black hair pulled up into a topknot and trousers that seemed to be made entirely of pockets. His name was Basil. Basil Tree-Walloper, Basil pronounced like a sheep sound, as he took pains to explain to us. He had joined the police a few days ago, and Gaetana, for some reason, thought that he should be assigned to us.

He was a kender. If you've never had the misfortune to meet a kender, you've probably heard of them. They're halflings, but taller and generally thinner than the usual run of halfling, and they have a very bad combination of complete immunity to fear and an intense curiosity about everything. Anyone who's ever parented a two-year-old knows exactly how dangerous, not to mention irritating, that combination is.

Also, they're pretty shaky on the concept of private property, and their little hands wander everywhere. They're not particularly popular residents of the city, what few we have. This one, we learned, had been a lumberjack before coming to Kaladreega and deciding to start hauling people who were hurting other people down to the local police station. There weren't any rules about kender joining the police force before he marched down to the station and signed up, but you can be damn sure that there are now. Unfortunately, Basil had been grandfathered in.

Needless to say, it didn't exactly put a smile on my face to have a kender more or less assigned to us. I supposed that it could have been worse, though. Basil seemed to be pretty easy-going, though he was initially confused about what exactly our charter was. He'd initially addressed himself to Poi, which though I growled at I was actually somewhat impressed by.

So now we were six. Rat, werewolf, necromancer, watchmaker, kender, and priest. We decided to go have a look at a place we'd found yesterday, a drow graveyard that had a big pile of freshly-killed elves in it. We hadn't had a chance to take a good look at the bodies, so this was what we were up to today.

The bodies ranged from being dead a few weeks to having been killed the day before, and all of the ones we looked at had no wounds on them. We also found a lot of partially-eaten apples rotting around. (The smell was horrific; rotting flesh, rotting apples. And that's coming from me.) There were also quite a few bottles of wine that had corks in them, enchanted to spring out and hit whoever they were pointed at between the eyes. It wouldn't be fatal, but it would certainly stun almost anyone short of a troll.

Basil did this...thing. It involved swinging up the side of the cavern, until he was hanging from the ceiling, looking at tree roots that were dangling down into it. He had a pair of bracers on that I suspected of making him able to swing up a wall that none of the rest of us would think of trying to climb. At least, I was pretty sure that kender do not actually fly unless they're thrown. Which they are, often.

"Weird stuff up here," Basil called down. "These tree roots have vials of something black in them. I'll bring some down." He did, and after a bit of investigation by Poi, it was revealed that the vials were filled with an elf-specific poison. Here's the odd thing--the apples that had evidently come down with the elves were poisonous, too--the same kind of poison.

I might not be the brightest person in the world (I leave that to Poi), but even I got what that meant. Somewhere above our heads was a tree filled with apples that would do the best fairy-tale wicked witch proud--if said wicked witch had a bee in her bonnet about elves.

A few questions occurred right about then, including why were elves eating these apples in the first place? Also, why wasn't anyone noticing that a bunch of elves were disappearing? You'd think that, given how touchy the elves are about their people going missing, that there would be a huge hue and cry.

I could think of answers to both questions, and I didn't like any of the answers at all. They mostly involved druids.

Off we went to look at the place above ground, which turned out to be just inside the druid district. It was a nice grove, with a large apple tree in the center that was producing bushels and bushels of golden-colored apples.

It also, as Argos discovered by bonking into it, had an invisible ladder leading upward. Of course, he grabbed onto it and started climbing. When he did so, he vanished, though he reported still being able to see us. Basil followed him.

Iola raised her nose to the breeze--thankfully, there was a breeze today--and sniffed. "Elf coming," she reported. We retreated to the far side of the grove, sitting down as if we were merely relaxing in the shade of the trees, and watched.

He was a male, with that blonde hair that seems to run in certain prominent families, and he was dressed like he was probably someone important. The elf walked straight up to the tree, picked and apple, and bit into it. He chewed, swallowed, and proceeded to silently fall over.

Before any of us could move, the ground beneath him writhed. Up came roots boiling out of the ground, wrapping around the elf, and taking him down into the earth. The ground settled down after he passed through it like water after a stone's been thrown into it, rippling and smoothing out.

Argos and Basil came down the ladder and became visible again. "The elf's name was Bob," Argos said. "There's a platform up there that overlooks the whole druid district, and there were a couple of druids up there who mentioned they could see him coming. And then--well, I guess you saw what happened."

"Yeah," I said. "Look, was there something else on the list we can deal with? We're close to that carpet one."

Basil stared at me, his mouth falling open. "What, you mean we're not going to report this?"

"Might mention it next time we report in. No need to get everyone all excited about it."

We'd started walking, and Basil was frowning. "You mean they get to get away with killing elves?"

"The elves are getting away with killing druids. Look, there's some sort of secret war going on between the elves and the druids. Really best not to get into the middle," I said. "I value my skin, and I wouldn't be wearing it long if I decided to interfere."

"So you know this is happening, and you're not doing anything? What kind of police squad are you guys, anyway?"

"We," I said, putting my best stern face on, "are the kind of police squad who more or less got drafted for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we don't really throw people into jail. We find out about things that are too weird for the real police to deal with, and then hand it over to them if there's someone to arrest. We don't wear uniforms, we don't generally flash badges, and we try like hell to avoid getting into fights. And this is our seventh day running working on stuff. Let's go find out about the carpets and call it a week, all right?"

Basil subsided, though I could see the wheels in his head turning. Children, I swear.

The carpet merchant, a guy named Omar, was located in a hastily-opened storefront just outside of Emrou Street, where he'd evidently relocated before reporting his problem to the police. I suspected that he'd been located on Emrou Street proper until then, and would go back when we had found and fixed his problem. He had flying carpets, all right, tethered to the ground like birds on strings. Nice carpets, most of them, but they bucked against their tethers, fighting them. I could see why he was having an issue selling them.

We introduced ourselves, and the proprietor burst out with, "Finally! What are you going to do about my carpets? I can't sell them! They can't be controlled! My business is ruined!"

"That's what we're here to find out. Did anything strange happen before the carpets started flying?"

Omar thought about it. "One woman, tall, the most enormous knockers you've ever seen. And when I say tall, I mean that if she'd breathed in deep, my nose would have been right into her business, if you know what I mean." Omar was a tall guy, maybe six feet or so. Miss Enormous Knockers would probably, as described, be about eight feet tall. "She was looking for a flying carpet, and when I said I didn't have any, she said that she wished they all would fly. She left after that, and then the carpets...well. Glad I got to the doors and windows in time. I had a few escape anyway. Anyway, she was the only weird thing that day."

"Can you tell us what she looked like, other than her, ah, assets?" I asked. He gave me a blank look.

Electra asked, "Did you get her name?"

"Oh! Oh, yeah, she gave me her card and told me to send her a note if I got flying carpets in." He dove behind the counter, and rummaged.

Behind me and above, I heard a whoop of happiness. I turned around, and saw that Basil was standing on one of the flying carpets, his arms spread, riding it as it tried to buck him off. "I tried all the regular commands!" he reported. "Nothing works. This is fun, though!" Having a thought, I tried to dispel the magic on another carpet, to be met with a wall of resistance and the sad popping feeling of a failed spell.

"Nobody wants flying carpets that can't be controlled," Argos said. "Except maybe Basil."

"BAAAAsil!" came the cry from above. "Think sheep! BAAAAAAsil!"

"Okay, Herb," I said, and ignored the indignant chuffing that came from above.

Omar had come up with a little piece of carved wood hat he handed to Electra. "Edna, Tentmaker to the World, 73 2/3rds Hutroth Street," Electra read. "She's over in the gnomish district."

"We should have a chat with her," I said.

"And what?" Omar said. "You aren't going to do something about the carpets?"

"We're going to find out more, and try a few things," I told him. "We'll be back." We left him grumbling as we walked to the gnome district, to the end that held more warehouses than anything else. 73 2/3rds Hutroth Street turned out to be in the back of a warehouse, up two flights of rickety stairs, and down a long hallway. There was a sign painted on the door identifying it as Edna's Tent Shop, Open Most Days, Evenings By Appointment (Please Knock Loudly!). We knocked on the door and it was opened by a woman who immediately matched Omar's description, tall enough that she had to stoop a little to not hit her head on the ceiling. I blinked. Funny, her face almost looked like she was an overgrown gnome. A pretty gnome, but a gnome nonetheless.

"Can I help you?" she asked. "Are you looking for a tent?" She bent down and squinted a bit, and the collection of scarves she was wearing as an outfit fluttered. "I'm sorry, I’m a bit nearsighted, do I know you?"

"Actually, we had a few questions for you, we're from the police," I said. "You're not in trouble," I added as I saw her eyes go wide. "A carpet merchant is having trouble, and we think you might be able to help us fix it."

"Well, come in," she said. "Tea's on. Do you like honey cakes? I have honey cakes."

We accepted tea and honey cakes, and it transpired that Edna was indeed a gnome, who until a few days ago had been the usual height for gnomes. She had been out on the street a few days ago when someone had made a crack about her height. She wished she was bigger, and she suddenly was. "And my clothes didn't get bigger along with me," she said, blushing. "Good thing I was close to home, and I have lots of fabric around."

"And this has never happened before?"

"Never. I did have a customer in the other day, though..." She trailed off, thoughtful. Then she launched into a story about a mage who had come in and wanted a large, elaborate tent made, and wanted to incorporate a bunch of sand that he'd brought in. When she'd asked about it, he'd said it was special sand from a place where a bunch of djinns live, down south.

Electra said, "You know, when djinns are killed, they leave wish dust behind. Which, I might point out, it looks like you have some of in your pocket, Edna." Good eye on her part.

"I do? Oh! I do! I put some in my pocket. So every time I've said--"

"Yes," Electra broke in. "And you probably shouldn't say it again."

"So the mage is coming back for his tent?" Argos asked. "Can we see it?"

"Sure, it's set up in back," Edna said. "His name was Jonah, and yes, he's coming back. Should be here a few hours from now."

The tent was indeed large and elaborate and permeated with wish dust. It was, more or less, a portable wishing chamber. I was pretty sure it was both illegal and a Very Bad Idea that this existed. Like I've mentioned before, whatever force it is that answers wishes like this has a savage sense of humor, especially when the wish is for personal gain. Also, the universe doesn't really like wish spells. Especially not the potential for so many of them in such a small place.

Djinn, as I recall, are somehow connected with that savage sense of humor that answers the wishes, and their intelligences are all about the bending of reality with a fine hand. They're good at what they do. Mortals are, unfortunately, not nearly as good with wishes.

Basil wished for a moat around the tent was rewarded with a groove in the floor filled with water. Edna wished to be a bit smaller, and was immediately reduced to about the size of a human woman. We sat and discussed for a bit, Basil went to wish the carpet merchant's carpets controllable, and we decided to wish the tent non-wishable, while still keeping a few vials of wish dust for ourselves. (Well, Electra kept them. I want nothing to do with them. I know better.)

We were sitting around, drinking tea, when Jonah came in. He saw us and immediately started acting shifty, especially when we reminded him that wish dust was illegal. He said that he was going to use the tent to wish djinns dead, as well as any number of other things. We attempted to take him down to the station for questioning, but he wished himself away, of course.

We got back at him, though.

After saying goodbye to Edna, we took a wander down to the gnomish police station, and used one of the three doses of wish dust we had left to wish Jonah into a cell, without any wish dust. There was a pause, and then twelve men appeared in the cell. Among them was the Jonah we wanted. We apologized to the others and sent them on their way.

That finished with, we decided that another item on our list sounded interesting enough to investigate. The gnomish district, at least the residential portion, has a lot of arbors outside the houses. Most of the well-to-do houses have front yards with arbors over them and seating under them, a neighborly place to have neighbors stop by and chat. Even poorer houses have an arbor attached to them somewhere.

Within the last few weeks, most of the arbors had start to have grape vines growing on them--even those that had previously had other kinds of vines on them, and those that had never had anything on them at all. The note we'd been given speculated that it might be a mad winemaker's fault.

So we took a stroll, looking at arbors and noticing that, yes, there were grapes all over. Terina was the gnome who had reported it, and we went to see her. She told us that she had noticed the grapes about three days ago, when she'd seen that her honeysuckle vines had been replaced with grapes. "They look like wine grapes, like the grapes that Zsofia grows. And they're already producing ripe grapes!"

"She's one of the winemakers in the south end?"

She nodded. "Zsofia and Ailisa run the two big vineyards south of here, they supply wine to the elves."

We decided to take a walk down to the southern edge of the gnome district where there were a number of large vineyards. These used to be separate from the city, but the city had grown to surround them in the last few decades. Zsofia happened to be closer, so we stopped by to see her first.

It was a nice day, if hot, insects droning in the fields. Her workforce seemed to be made up of mostly halflings, from what we could tell from the people out picking. Zsofia happened to be around, and when she found out that we were looking at the grapes growing in the gnomish section, said, "I'd like to find out who's growing them! I've talked to Ailisa, and she doesn't know, either. It's not like it's a real threat to our business--the soil here is special, and wine made from the same grapes grown elsewhere won't taste the same. Besides the grapes aren't exactly the same, either. But it's a little irritating."

We asked for a tour of the place, and Zsofia was glad to show us around. She walked briskly--impressive for someone so short!--around the vineyard and then the winery buildings. Zsofia was a gnome wearing serviceable and stained shirt, trousers, and apron; her only ornamentation was a grape leaf in glass hanging on a chain around her neck. A good-luck charm, it looked like.

Touring the buildings, I had a magic detection spell up, and noticed a vaguely door-shaped patch of magic on one wall, with more magic behind it. Basil stayed behind to check it out while the rest of us went to look at the cellar full of aging barrels.

Turned out that the door-shaped magical place was an actual door, and behind it was a large supply of those attacking corks we'd found before in the bottles that the dead elves were carrying. I assumed those were put in the shipments she sent directly to the elves.

Afterwards, we got a sample of grapes from the vineyard, and gave Poi those along with the samples we'd gotten of the other grapes, and walked to a local park while he took a look at them. There was much commotion coming from Poi's pouch, and then a small explosion and a puff of smoke. I opened the pouch and looked down. "You all right in there?"

Poi was scorched, but looked enthusiastic. He dove for his amulet and tapped away at it, and it produced a slip of paper that read, Grapes from the vineyard carry the organism that makes the birth-control worms. Grapes from the arbors counteract that to the point that one grape in a vat of the others will make the wine not have the worm in it. Another slip of paper added, And eating one should get rid of the elven birth control in anyone.

Well, interesting. I decided to give it a try, and popped one of the grapes from the arbors into my mouth. Tasted pretty good. What followed was not particularly pleasant, though. There were things moving in a place where, really nothing ought to be wiggling. Pissing, shortly after that, felt a lot like that time when I was fifteen and caught a little something during a rowdy night out with my friends that involved visiting three or four brothels. I was almost too embarrassed to fess up to the family healer. She rolled her eyes, gave me some stuff to fix me up, and gave me a stern lecture about either keeping my pants on or spending the money for more expensive whores. Fortunately, I got married two years later, which put an end to my carousing days for good.

Anyway. Painful. We discussed it and decided that if anyone might know more about this, it was probably Sasha. Since we knew where we could find her, we headed over to Emrou street. On the way, we explained as best we could to Basil who Sasha was and how we knew her.

Things on Emrou Street felt a little bit disturbed, probably due to the recent death of the head of the Thieves Guild, but we did find Sasha in the house she'd told us about when we first met her. "I wish I'd thought of that, but I didn't," she said after we told her about the gapes. "Has to be someone else. A druid, yes, but there are a lot of us out there."

She didn't have any really helpful suggestions, so we headed out to do our investigating the old-fashioned way. The sun was going down and people were returning home, and as we got to the south end of the gnome district we saw a group of halflings walking away from the vineyards, chattering amongst themselves. "Let me go talk to them," Basil said, and rushed off.

When he came back, he said, "I talked to one Rilla Purplefoot. Nice woman. She sort of admitted that the halflings are introducing those grapes into the vats as well as planting them all over, and said that a halfling named Hal was the one who'd grown the plants in the first place. We should go look for him."

A meal sounded like a good idea anyway, and so we headed over to the halfling district with the intention of finding and talking to this Hal and then having dinner. A bunch of people knew guys named Hal in the halfling district, we found out pretty quickly when we got there, and we were asked if we wanted Hal the mage, Hal the cleric, or Hal the gardener.

After clarifying that we wanted Hal the gardener, we were pointed to a shop on the very edge of the halfling district, right next to the border they share with the druids. I'm not much of one for plants, and I’d never seen so many potted plants all in one place at one time. Hal must keep the local clay-workers busy.

Hal himself was a curly-headed halfling with altogether too much energy, who pulled us into his large store--a fenced lot with curving paths and shady places--and showed us around before we even got a chance to ask him about grapes. Once we did, he ushered us over to a sunny corner. "These are really popular, and they're fast-growing. Perfect for near-instant arbor covering, and the grapes are tasty, too!"

"How fast-growing?" I asked.

"Watch!" He produced a seed from a pocket and put it into the soil of a nearby, untenanted pot. Within seconds, a green curl burst from the soil, and within minutes it was several feet long. "It'll be fruiting in a couple of days."

"Nice. Druid work?" I asked.

"Yeah, I have Silas come around with stuff for me, pretty regularly. I grow stuff for him, he brings me things, it works out."

Basil said, "You know, a friend of mine ate one of these grapes, and he got...the pains. You know? The pains?"

Hal laughed. "Side effect of the magic. Only happens once."

"What are these?" Electra was looking at a different kind of grape vine, this one with only two large grapes per stem in a formation that looked rather suggestive. "They look kind of like...um..."

"Monkey balls," Hal answered. "Yep. Those are new, Silas just dropped them off last night. They're going to be hot, let me tell you. The fruit, well, it's got these interesting properties. Puts people in the mood, both men and women. I’m propagating a bunch of them in back, but if you want one, I can sell you a plant or two."

Basil picked a couple of the grapes off the vine and ate them. "Hey, these are good. I think I'll go find that Rilla again. Hal, do you know where the Purplefoots live?"

"Five blocks west, three south," Hal said. "Anyone else want some?"

I passed. I don't really need any help in that area, and my having-kids days are far behind me at this point. Besides, sharing a place with Iola is difficult enough at times without adding anything else into the mix.

We wandered around and chatted to Hal, and in the process I learned more about the gardening trade than I ever really needed to know. Just before we were about to take off and go have dinner, Silas showed up.

He was his usual charming self, but he did tell us that he was the one who'd developed both kinds of grapes. I was impressed; first, remove the birth control, and then introduce an aphrodisiac that will guarantee that there's going to be a rash of babies less than a year from now. It had a strange sort of genius to it.

Not that I told Silas that. Evidently, he'd found out that I'd been calling him Biff to myself, and corrected me on that point. I didn't point out to him that not introducing himself in the first place was why I'd given him a nickname. We finally wandered off and let Silas talk to Hal in peace.

"I think," I said carefully, "that there isn't much to report here. Nobody's doing anything illegal. It's just a craze for grapes, is all."

Everyone else agreed with me, and I promised to make a very abbreviated report about it tomorrow. The sun was going down, so we went for dinner, and decided that we were done for the week. Time to take a couple of days off.

I haven't had weekend off for most of two decades, and I'm looking forward to the novelty of it. Besides, the red ooze has been busy carving a tunnel up into the room that Dada was trapped in for so long. I’m going to need to build a door to set into it, and there are a few things I'd like to bring down that I haven't had a chance to so far.

Maybe I'll finally manage to get over to Remy's place, pick up those amulets so I can talk to Poi, and see if she'll let me take her out to dinner. Would be nice. Iola mentioned that she wants to go see some of her friends at the club she was dancing at when we met her, and I'm not sure but I think that she means to take me along.

Should be interesting. I have to admit as we go along that this is rather fun, and a nice change from poling barges up and down the river. I'll go back to the river some day, but for the moment it seems to have loosened its grip on me, and I’m getting to see corners of Kaladreega that I've never had a chance to before.

Oh, yes, and watching a secret war between two immensely powerful groups of people heat up. There's that, too, though I wouldn't exactly qualify that as fun.

But there's nothing I can do but watch that, and the life of the city goes on despite it. And us, along with it.


Quotes:

"Think sheep, not pesto."
--Basil

"If it were a roof, there would be rafters, but it's not so they aren't."
--Graham

"I'm worried, I think there's a serial grapeist on the loose."
--Basil

Comments

[zaratyst.livejournal.com]

It was kind of you to leave out some of the... search warrant-free activity I engaged in. We were just saving the magistrate's valuable time. Especially since we didn't find out anything "worth reporting".

[silenceleigh.livejournal.com]

I figured that the search warrant-free activity was just one of those kender hobbies.

[zaratyst.livejournal.com]

It's not a hobby. It's a Calling!