The Silvermoon Embassy

In a fit of extremely justified pique, Liriel, unable to find a single loose pebble on the paved streets of Silvermoon, tore a still green apple from its branch and tossed it at the dark window before her, one of many in her former place of employment. Fortunately, the glass was thick, and all that its meeting with the fruit caused was a thump that disturbed the still night. A large golem, an arcane guardian, stirred from its resting place several houses down, shimmering arcane power lighting in what made it out for a head as it scanned the abandoned streets of early morning and found nothing and no one. Save a still-rolling apple. And, echoing, the sound of footsteps rapidly fading.

Liriel beat a hasty retreat away from the golem, finding her near empty bottle of imported arcwine where she had left it. In a corner, in a little crook, beneath a semi-circular arch across the street. Behind her, the dark and dead residence of Astrinoth, Blood Knight and minor noble launched into some prominence by the still too fresh decimation of the sin’dorei people, remained still. Every servant, every guard, everyone connected in any way to the house had been dismissed. Without family left behind, the news of the knight’s **** beneath the Isle of Dorn, fighting nerubian spiderpeople, had seen his estate pass into the emotionless and efficient hands of the city. Its executor had immediately cut expenses to nothing, and put the house and its contents up for sale.

What had been a relatively sedate job, at least while her master was away on various military assignments, had come to an abrupt end. Liriel swore as the mouth of the bottle touched her lips again, the curse disappearing, amiably bubbling, into the liquid within.

It wasn’t the knight she cursed, necessarily. It was the city itself. It was the faceless bureaucrat who oversaw the dismantling of several handfuls of lives, former employees. The trouble was, if she went near the Sunfury Spire, throwing an apple was liable to get her apprehended. It still had been, here, but a single golem proved too tied up in its mess of priorities – watching and protecting the neighborhood at once – to go and investigate a solitary sound.

She sighed, and downed what remained of the wine. Wanted to throw the bottle away, but thought better of it. Two white and gold facades up the street, another golem stood silent watch, and she had no suitable explanation to give to it, should the glass shatter and should it come after her. So, instead, she placed the empty bottle down in the middle of the street, the blue glass ready to catch the first rays of the morning sun. Once it rose far enough to pass the many spires and walls of Silvermoon, and deigned to touch its streets.

Another long and expensive night. Two whole bottles emptied, and, no longer employed, she could not afford the first, never mind the second. Certainly not the second for four nights in a row. Even so, Liriel could not bring herself to look for work, yet. The low level anxiety of impending doom was yet just a cold churning at the bottom of her stomach, an inevitability, but one she could still put off. It would rise, given time, to be paralyzing. And then to a roaring crescendo which overcame paralysis, and **** her to act. When she could no longer pay for the two adjoining rooms she rented on the edge of the shadier streets not far from the row.

No bottle left to absorb her curses, Liriel reached up to wipe her forehead, sweeping away the cold morning dew that made golden-blonde locks cling to her skin. And then let out an unabashed string of swears, stumbling back towards her home. With a little luck, she would make it back before the lady who oversaw the building woke, and thus, she might get to sleep without any comment on the lateness of the hour. Or the lack of someone on her arm, dragged home with her. Why did the woman care so much about the relationships of her tenants?

Liriel upped her pace at that thought.