DoT: Aftermath, part five

"The gangs are touchy about their territories," Mother Lardner said idly, after she'd gotten herself settled into the padded booth. 

"Always," Vallista Greycloak agreed. She had no idea how much of Mother Lardner's frail old woman act was genuine, though she suspected the grey-haired woman was far more spry than she let on. It didn't matter too much, either way; Mother Lardner was dangerous for other reasons, and while the Greycloaks might be the stronger of the two gangs, the Beggars could do them a lot of damage if they really put their minds to it. That was part of the reason why Vallista hadn't sent any threats or demands their way; she wanted the people who had killed her father, not a pointless and wasteful gang war. 

"That's why I came up to see you." Mother Lardner turned her head and smiled genially up at the server. "Do you have a hot mulled wine, dearie?"

The server -- a young human woman, unaffiliated, with a professional smile on her face -- considered that for a brief moment. "Well... nothing prepared, but if you don't mind waiting a few minutes we could make it happen."

"That would be lovely," Mother Lardner said. "It eases my joints, you see, and at my age anything that helps is, well, something to be appreciated."

"Hot mulled wine," the young woman repeated, then focused on Vallista and frowned slightly, then swallowed. "And what can I get for you?"

"Cider," Vallista decided. "Whatever you have. And -- a bowl of those crisps you serve with meals."

"Cider and crisps, and hot mulled wine. It'll be a couple of minutes, but I'll get it out." She backed away from the table, turned smartly, and didn't quite run into another server as she headed for the back of the Copper Pot. 

"Territory," Vallista said idly, tapping her fingers on the table. "My father died in yours, in the midst of some kind of business deal with an upper-city merchant. Not one he told me about. Do you know anything about it?"

"I knew he was there," Mother Lardner said softly, leaning forward sympathetically. "My people told me. And then they told me he was dead, so I came to see what I could do."

"...Do?" asked Vallista, momentarily puzzled. 

"He was Anderlin Greycloak, and he died in my territory -- in one of the establishments where we don't touch the clientele. I tried to bring him back, but I don't think I got there fast enough. Then I tried to question his spirit, to learn who killed him, but that didn't work either."

"How did he die?" asked Vallista, half-numb. 

"Stabbed," Mother Lardner told her. "A dagger through the ribs and straight into the heart -- poisoned, too, I'm reasonably sure. A single blow, and if my hunter is to be believed then it took him by surprise. His bodyguard likely died a moment later, then the merchant and his bodyguard. Whatever exchange they were making, everything involved was gone. So was his swordbelt, or I'd see it returned to you. I tried to locate it -- magically -- but it's either hidden or out of range."

Vallista took a long moment to digest that. She'd learned of her father's death from Tavik, who'd been overseeing her father's bodyguard detail -- minimal, for a meeting like this, and apparently completely insufficient in the moment. He'd stood before her in his tattered clothing, explaining something about flying snakes and people bursting into the Overlook and then the unexpected discovery that everyone in the back room was dead. The intruders were gone by then, and somewhere in the chaos he'd apparently been set on fire; it was only later that he'd been healed and cleaned up by a passing bard. 

He'd offered his life as penance. Vallista had pretended to consider, but had of course refused. Tavik might have failed, but he was loyal.  

She shook her head. It was too much to take in all at once. "I'd like to see."

"I'm sure you would, poor dear." Mother Lardner hadn't quite broken character, but she was close. "May an old woman make another suggestion, though? To help keep the peace?"

Vallista tilted her head. "Go on." 

"It's your father," the old woman said simply, and not without some genuine sympathy. "Of course you want to come see. But you're in charge now, up here. Send one of your lieutenants, and... let's say a half-dozen of their people? They can come down, ask questions, look at everything we looked at. As long as they don't stab anybody, you have my word that the Beggars will leave them alone." She paused. "And if they do need to stab somebody, well, let us know and we'll arrange to cover it. When they're done, they can bring your father's body back up, and you can look at it for yourself." 

"That's..." Vallista swallowed. "That's very generous."

"I know a thing or two about losing parents," said Mother Lardner, and this time all pretense had dropped; she was off in her own memories for three full breaths. 

Then she said: "It's a bad business, all else aside. The Overlook brings the Beggars more money than most people realize. We make it look Lower City but keep it safe, the Upper City brats come slumming, Owin overcharges them ridiculously and pays us a decent cut. Everybody benefits. But it all depends on keeping that balance between making them feel like they're really slumming, and keeping them safe enough to come back."

"Yeah." Vallista drew a breath, then decided to forge ahead. "Almost as if somebody is trying to set us against each other."

"Ha!" Mother Lardner snorted, then looked up as the server returned. 

"You're in luck," said the young woman, who was now carefully avoiding meeting either of their eyes. "We got the heater going immediately, and here's your wine." She set the ceramic mug down, its contents steaming. "Your cider... and the crisps."

The server straightened. "Anything else for you?" 

"Not for now, Dearie," said Mother Lardner. "This is delightful."

The girl's grin turned momentarily genuine. "Good to hear it." She looked at Vallista. "Anything else for you?"

Vallista felt herself chuckle unexpectedly. "No, you're doing fine. We'll wave you over if we need anything else."

"As you will," the server said, picking up on that immediately. "I won't bother you unless you do."

"You've noticed that too," Mother Lardner said, once the young woman was gone. "It's mostly passed by us, until now." 

Vallista nodded. "Whereas we seem to be a target, of sorts."

"Huh," said Mother Lardner. "I hadn't looked at it that way."

"I'm having a hard time not looking at it that way."

Mother Lardner sighed. "I suppose technically we're rivals, but... you're new, and you're grieving, and you're stepping up just as thing seem to be changing. That's a lot to take on all at once. So I'm going to give you a piece of advice, one that's served me well over the years: don't assume it's personal."

"Somebody murdered my father," Vallista Greycloak said quietly. "That feels pretty personal."

"Yes," agreed Mother Lardner. "My dear, I'm not saying you shouldn't take it that way. I'm just saying that you shouldn't assume their reasons for doing it were personal. It would cloud your judgement and make them harder to find."

"Ah," said Vallista. "Yes. That makes sense." 

Music: The Bricklayer's Song

As performed by The Corries:

Writing, 2025

I'm taking a break from writing -- as much as I ever do or can, anyway -- while mind and body recover from the horror that was the month of May. (No, I still don't know why May is trying to kill me, but the evidence is incontrovertible.) It probably won't affect the blog much, but my current Horny Superteens project is at a spot where, if I try to go back to it now I won't have the perspective to figure out how to wrap up the current scene -- and that's a surefire recipe for writer's block. Phooey to that, I say!

I'm currently taking a fun little writing class on developing secondary characters, which I'm using to fill in ideas for an upcoming project involving a tween were-squirrel who gets sent into the Haunted Forest to protect his village, but that's low-key and low-stress (and also, as I mentioned, fun -- I get to see what a bunch of other people are working on and what their characters look like). 

So the blog may be seeing a bit more in the way of music, short bits, and dad jokes than usual, or I may be posting more of these "State of Me" bits of navel-gazing, but I'll still be posting. I may even have some more vignettes from the Horny Superteens project, as I build up to diving back in. Dunno; very much just going to play it as it comes. 

Also, as an update to yesterday's post: I... may have been a little optimistic. I took it easy at work, actually got a surprising amount done -- following up on and closing out some tickets, looking at some other issues, and taking care of some last-minute requests -- but man, I slowed down during the afternoon, and after I got back home I crashed. Hard. For about three and a half hours. So apparently I'm at the stage of recuperation where my body is just like, "Okay, buddy, you're going to listen me, and when I say you're going to sleep you're going to sleep. You got that?"

Recovery and Self-Care, 2025

Oh thank the dark and forgotten gods. 

I've been... not feeling well... for the last few days, mainly because I've been pushing way too hard with way too much stress for, I don't know, the last three weeks of May. I spent part of Monday just napping, took most of Tuesday off as an exhaustion/mental health day, and have just generally been feeling like I was right on the edge of making myself really, really sick (and I did have stomach/digestive issues, not to mention a truly horrible headache yesterday that may have been partly dehydration from the digestive issues). I've also been sleeping mostly in five-hour chunks, which isn't ideal. 

So yesterday I worked from home, but... cautiously, with breaks when I felt I needed them -- including napping for a bit of the afternoon and working to make it up in the evening -- and then went to bed with Beautiful Wife (also exhausted) at about 10:30. Didn't even pause to set up the CPAP, just climbed up and burrowed in. 

Finally -- finally -- had all the deeply weird, semi-narrative REM-sleep dreams that I've been missing. Woke up about 5:30, sweaty as anything, and just lay there thinking about random crap, the way I seldom have time to do anymore. Legit feels like I just shook off a fever, though I don't think I've actually been running one. 

The dreams were absolutely wild, too -- a three-part or three-element ceremony involving a circle of monsters (half feline, half canine -- so werewolves and were-panthers, maybe?) who had to move in and out and weave together in particular ways, a human at the center, and... something else that was important, but I can't remember it now. Probably wouldn't do me any good, since I don't seem to know any shapeshifters in real life and couldn't teach them the choreography anyway. Come to that, I don't actually remember what the ritual did, either, but  it was still pretty cool. 

I should put it in a piece of writing, somewhere. 

Next set of dreams started with younger-me and a whole bunch of other people in a fairly large house -- but there were a lot of us, so we were sleeping sort of wherever we could. (My parents showed up in this dream; my brother did not. I don't know if that means anything.) We were pulling together some sort of caravan, and there were a lot of decisions to make about what to bring and what to leave behind. Also, it was raining outside and the house had several significant leaks. 

Then we were actually in the caravan, and we were moving slowly because it was early morning and there were still traces of mist on the ground -- along with a lot of death and destructions -- fires, burned-down or smashed buildings, one truly spectacular corpse that was a badly-burned person(?) on a motorcycly, with the back half sunk into the ground. Looked like a war-zone, or the aftermath of a particularly bloody riot. Apparently the mist came out of the north, and it rises at night and anybody caught out in it dies -- or starts killing each other. 

Then we got to the place we were looking for, which was some kind of... factory? Power generation? Anyway, lots of cool ladders and bridges and big metal equipment. Also a couple of very friendly dogs, which turned out to be unfortunate because the dogs were helping to chase out some monsters that had gotten inside. The monsters were... weird. There was one like a two-legged balloon or egg. It did have a mouth, but it was awkward and not very dangerous, except that when it died it exploded into a small cloud of that death-mist, which did horrible things to the dogs until there was only one dog left. Unlike most of my dreams, I was both young (like, late teens maybe?) and unarmed, so I was avoiding the beasties by climbing ladders, jumping platforms, and like that. There were some other monsters too, at least one that stalked around like some sort of human-sized, featherless hunting bird, but at least those didn't explode into mist when they died. 

Anyway, I woke up before I had a chance to find out why we'd come there or what the workers were doing there, but it was intense and interesting and left me feeling more connected -- to my dreaming or myself, I'm not sure -- and just generally like I'd finally gotten a little bit of my breath back. 

Like I said, thank the dark and forgotten gods for that.  

Challenge: Cover Art

Prompt: Favorite Book Covers and Why

I'm going to have to go with David Mattingly, and particularly the art he did for a bunch of Barbara Hambly's books, notably including the Darwatch series. Why? Well, that's easy: they were on the front of some of my favorite books. Are they a bit dated these days? Well, yes, but they're still fun to look at. 

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)   

DoT: Aftermath, part four

"Mother Lardner," Vallista said politely, and offered an abbreviated bow. "You're a bit outside of your usual haunts."

The older woman smiled. "Your lack of threats and demands made it necessary, dearie. I'm grateful, even if it meant walking all the way up here."

Vallista shrugged, and offered a smile. "I had no reason to suspect you of involvement," she said, them gestured towards The Copper Pot. "May I invite you inside for a meal?"

"I make it a rule never to refuse food and drink, my dear," said Mother Lardner. "I've seen too many times when they were far too precious to spare."

"Just so," Vallista said. "Would you prefer for me to enter first?"

Mother Lardner's expression remained serene. "So courteous; an unmistakable tribute to your father's training. I'll be happy to precede you."

That was a deliberate show of trust; Mother Lardner was offering her back. Vallista nodded. "Then please do allow me to treat you -- and treat with you."

Mother Lardner nodded, then turned to Derlina. The half-orc looked surprised, but composed herself immediately. 

"It was a great pleasure meeting you, my dear. I do so appreciate your company, and your willingness to help an old woman along difficult streets."

Derlina didn't quite glance at Vallista. Instead she simply smiled and nodded. "It was a pleasure for me as well. It seems you're well taken-care of now, though, so I'll leave you to your business."

Mother Lardner stretched out a hand, touched the half-elf's forearm. "Bless you, dearie." Given what Mother Lardner was, that blessing might have carried real, magical weight; Vallista couldn't tell. But this was conversation that needed to happen; the head of the Beggars might have set it up that way, but in truth she couldn't argue. Mother Lardner turned back to her, nodded, and then went into the Copper Pot. 

Vallista nodded to Derlina, and offered a brusque "Well handled" before she followed the older woman inside. 

DoT: Aftermath, part three

Mother Lardner was walking beside Derlina, and while there were other Greycloaks on the street they all seemed to be going about ordinary business: strolling down the street, or pausing in a doorway to look at goods, or stopping at one of the local carts. There were more on the rooftops; Vallista was peripherally aware of them and had no doubt that Mother Lardner was too. Still, that was a message in itself: her people were showing admirable restraint around the leader of the gang who controlled the territory where her father's murder had taken place. Their presence and behavior warned their fellows off. 

Talmos was watching from one rooftop; he nodded when he knew he was in her peripheral vision, and disappeared again. That was good; he was the oldest of her father's lieutenants, and a restraining influence on the rest; his skill with a dagger in the dark was legendary. He also had a well-established reputation for having no patience whatsoever with anyone causing unnecessary trouble. 

Diggs was the next one to show himself, but he was following Talmos' lead and disappeared almost immediately. The message was clear: I have my people here and we're ready to help, but Derlina has taken the lead and I won't try to cut in. It was a solid play, within the politics of the gang: showing loyalty and solidarity. Likely Diggs was grinding his teeth at the missed opportunity, but he was using it to the best advantage that he could. 

Vallista Greycloak paused at the corner, judging timing. Mother Lardner and Derlina were talking, casual and relaxed, and if there were any of the Beggars in the area they were keeping an extremely low profile. Likely there weren't; Mother Lardner might have pulled some independent security, but she wouldn't have brought any of her own people if she had any sense at all... and if there was one thing she was known for, it was good sense. The Beggars were, above all other things, practical. 

There. Vallista started out from beside the building, stepping onto the street and angling towards Derlina and Mother Lardner. If everyone kept to the same pace, they'd meet each other just outside The Copper Pot, where Vallista could invite her inside for a meal that would actually be a meeting. The food in The Copper Pot was basic but filling; the beer was decent, and the wines and brandies excellent. They also had a surprisingly tasty tea, a black tea blended with a touch of hemleaf.

Mother Lardner smiled when she caught sight of Vallista, and said something to Derlina that made her chuckle as well. The whole exchange looked cautiously friendly, though Derlina was very obviously keeping an eye on her people even as they walked along in apparent companionship. 

They came to a stop as Vallista reached them, and Derlina offered discreet bow of her head. I brought her here and sent for you, it said. I hope that's good enough. 

Yes, Derlina definitely had potential. Vallista Greycloak filed that away; now was the time to deal with Mother Lardner.