Of Knaves and Last Words

For a moment, John could have heard a pin drop on the living room carpet. To Charlotta’s credit, much of the indignation had drained from her face. Still, when she opened her mouth to respond to Qhila’s revelation, John felt a moment of panic that this was just a fleeting peace before all hell broke loose. But when Marisa put her hand on the gnome’s shoulder, she stood frozen for a moment, then closed her mouth.

“Losing your dad is fucking awful, and you deserve to be beyond pissed at whoever’s responsible.” There was a dark undertone to the frost mage’s sympathetic words that gave John a strong feeling that she wasn’t just empathizing in abstract. “If it’s someone from the Shield and you can tell me who it is or enough about what happened to figure it out, I’ll see if I can get them into trouble. Or stab ‘em in the ass when nobody’s looking.”

Even before she half-turned to look at him, John could see the emotions warring inside Qhila. The kobold looked back and forth between John and Marisa, evidently paralyzed by internal conflict, until a clear bell sound drew everyone’s eyes to the contraption Charlotta had made. Following the sound, the contraption folded up into a cube-like state again, presumably as a result of being left empty and idle for too long.

Qhila looked at the contraption for a long moment. Then she climbed into John’s lap. That was probably at least mildly confusing to Charlotta and Marisa, but glancing at their expressions they didn’t show it. Then again, even without knowing about the Cuddle Therapy Quests, kobold tendencies to rely on physical affection might be well known enough to give them a general idea about what was happening.

“I was gone with Father and some others into town for buy supplies.” She started with a tone of forced calm. “We see group of goblins talk to three knights of Golden Rose. They talk English too fast for understanding words, but goblins make tone of begging and knights make tone of not care. Knights make to leave, and front goblin try cling to knight for beg more. Knight shove goblin to ground, knights laugh and enter inn. Goblins try follow, but innkeeper throw them out.”

Though the majority of John’s focus was on Qhila, it didn’t escape him that Charlotta opened her mouth to say something when the kobold paused. Nor that the talkative pinkette had already caught herself when Marisa’s hand was back on her shoulder in a wordless signal to be patient.

“Others say not our business, but Father ask goblins what is happened. They tell goblin village ravaged by great black landshark. Knights pass through village hunting murderer who run away to Kingdom. Then they pass the other way, with murderer in chains. Knights say they catch murderer in mountains where landsharks known to live. Next day, after knights leave, landshark show up and start rampage. Goblins forced to flee with nothing or become killed. Now, not have place to stay or food to eat for winter.

“Some of goblins then follow knights for plead for help. They ask help fight off landshark long enough to get some of their things and money and food for winter. Knights say no, busy take murderer to prison. Then ask for knights to give murderer to landshark for calm it down. Knights say no. Then ask for knights bring goblins to work for Order for money to survive winter. Knights push goblin away and laugh.

“Father say, he go with goblins for try to get them things back from rampaging landshark.” While talking about the goblins’ plight, Qhila had managed to hold on to the forced calm. As she turned the focus of her recounting to her father, that facade started to crack, revealing a toneless hollowness that drove searing spikes of empathy through John’s chest and gut. “I ask him, how he help without become killed. He have not plan. I beg for him to not go, ask why he do when chance of make difference very little, but chance of not survive very big. He say maybe not good chance, but it is right thing to do. That was last time I see him. Goblins he go with also no return. Rest of goblins starve in winter, many is caught thief and have hand taken.” In a small mercy, the hollowness was replaced with bitter acidity as she added, “Was not right thing. Right thing was for knights to clean up mess they make.”

“So in summary, they riled up a demon-touched beast and shook it off their tail by leading it to a bunch of unrelated civilians. Then they refused to help mitigate the damage, and neglected to put the goblins into contact with the vassal guild that exists specifically for the purpose of helping innocents caught in the Order’s crossfire?” Marisa’s tone was razor sharp and frigid, like when she had first discovered that John had become Abyssal and mistook him for a hiding miscreant rather than a Late Bloomer. Meanwhile, Charlotta, whom the ice mage had somehow managed to beat to the punch of speaking, was now literally vibrating slightly with the effort of remaining silent.

Qhila simply nodded once by way of response, her words seemingly spent for the moment.

“Knaves! Blackguards! Stains upon the Order’s honor, if they’re even members at all and not imposters! We should bring the blade of justice upon them!” Charlotta’s outburst was accompanied by more brandishing of her screwdriver. It felt like there was a bit more of an angry edge to her enthusiasm for fighting evildoers this time than when slavers were mentioned earlier, but that might have just been due to the general mood in the room.

“I agree in principle, but that’s not much to go on, especially without access to Order assignment records. If we had that, just knowing the area or Kingdom, rough timeframe, and the branch they came from would probably be enough to find them, but as is…” Marisa was silent in thought for a moment before continuing, “Do you remember anything else about them? Names they mentioned, heraldry, or something? Even something as simple as whether their clothes had a preference for shield, sword, or spear images would suggest whether it’s a local asshole or someone outside our reach.”

For a long moment, everyone was quiet, while Charlotta expended her excess energy by waving the screwdriver around some more. By the looks of it, she was mentally in the process of chopping the heartless knights’ heads off. If she hadn’t done so silently, John wouldn’t have been able to hear it when Qhila answered, in a voice so quiet a whisper would have been easier to catch. “[A bar grid with square-like crosses on a shield.]”

John relayed that, causing Charlotta to immediately point the screwdriver combatively at his face. Or, more likely, his words. With a tone of utter contempt, she exclaimed, “Berkilvy!”

Hearing that, Marisa displayed a disgusted frown like she had just stepped in something nasty. “Yeah, that’d track. 2 seconds.” She proceeded to fiddle with her phone for a moment before handing it to John showing an image of heraldry featuring a grey portcullis alternating empty red squares and white squares with a cross pattée on a golden shield. “Is this it?”

Qhila raised her head slightly to look, then nodded weakly. Reclaiming her phone, Marisa sardonicly remarked, “The bad news is, I don’t have a sword long enough to stab someone across the Atlantic. The good news is, if any Berkilvys show up in Springfield, they might well get stabbed by someone higher up the Shield Branch totem pole before I even know they’re here.”

“As the traitorous curs richly deserve!” Charlotta added fiercely. “House Berkilvy is old British nobility. They used to be second only to the houses of the Wardens in influence in the Order. 15 years ago, while the Lord Warden was rooting out a Scion in Ireland, an elven commune in northern England suffered disappearances. Fearing for their missing kin, they sent for aid from the Order but Lord Berkilvy twisted procedures to stall the response until the Lady Protector left her charge to raise the future Warden in the manor’s care to aid the elves on her own.

“The kidnapper turned out to be a Hellflame Cultist of rare might, and the Lady Protector was slain. When the Lord Warden returned, he crushed the cultist and put Lord Berkilvy on trial for dereliction of duty and treason for not sending backup with his wife. Berkilvy’s odious kin plied their house connections until it was clear that putting the false knight in a well earned noose would plunge all of Abyssal Britain into civil war. So he settled for besting the fiend in a duel, before casting out the snakes from the Shield and bringing those who had proven their dedication to justice over politics to Springfield. This is why I came here to apply as a squire, instead of Europe or India.”

“The version of events I’ve heard through the grapevine has a few corrections,” Marisa remarked. “Casting out the snakes is a bit of an exaggeration. The people who stayed behind were transferred to the Sword branch, and a bunch of them just had families that weren't easy to uproot and move to the US. On the other hand, ‘bested in a duel’ may be the understatement of the year. William curbstomped Berkilvy within an inch of his life, cut off his right hand and eye, and put both injuries under Litany of Reproach.”

“Litany of Reproach?” It sounded to John like some sort of religious thing. But it also sounded like a spell. Maybe both.

Marisa made a gesture at her injured leg. “It’s basically a wound curse on steroids with religious implications and a conditional way to make it lift itself. As long as it’s in place, his hand and eye won’t even heal naturally or respond to mundane medicine, unless they put it under continuous observation by a bunch of mundanes. But if he can get unanimous agreement from the Wardens or get Moira and the elven elder’s forgiveness, the curse goes away on its own. Gonna be a real cold day in all the hells at the same time before that happens though.”

Charlotta nodded vigorously. “And forcibly lifting a Litany from a Warden is rank heresy. Even the people he managed to sway back then would be forced to see his perfidious nature for what it is.”

“Eh, there’ll probably be a few diehards still.” Marisa shrugged. “But paying to have it lifted by an Apothecary or something would be effectively securing a dishonorable discharge from the Order for himself and anyone supporting him, which should erode support enough that he can be finished off without catching a pile of innocents in the crossfire.”

Qhila did not respond to any of that. If not for the tightness with which she still held onto John, she could have passed for sleeping as she sat there, face buried in his chest. After a short while, John realized that an answer wasn’t coming, and it was easy to figure out why.

Recalling the time when he lost his own father was deeply draining to him even now. For Qhila, this might be the first time she recounted the story to anyone. On top of which, John could scarcely imagine how much deeper the mental scars of her loss ran compared to his given that she had not had a loving and supporting family, a therapist, or even a place she felt safe enough to try to process things on her own.

“I think she’s worn through,” John addressed Charlotta and Marisa while giving the kobold a slight squeeze. “But thank you for your words of support. I think they meant a lot even if it doesn’t really show right now.”

“Honor and justice is its own reward.”

“Not exactly how I’d have put it, Bouncy,” Marisa added, “but yeah. No need to thank us for being decent.”

With that, John coaxed a sip of humanis elixir into the exhausted girl in his lap and carried her back to his house. A small part of him noted that it was fortunate that none of the neighbours were outside to see it, as even with her non-human features concealed by the elixir this would be a pretty odd sight on a Wednesday afternoon.

Explaining it to his mom was much easier. Simply saying that they had stumbled into a bad trip down memory lane was all it took for Brenda to shift into maximum caretaker mode. Which in this case meant bringing them dinner in the living room so Qhila could stay cuddled up to him while they ate. Near bedtime, John got a system notification. He paid attention to it for all of the fraction of a second it took to read that it was about the Cuddle Therapy Quest advancing.