“That’s a great idea, except for the part where it’ll get you killed for necromancy,” Cagna told Chase.

Chase frowned, took another sip of tea, and reached for a fifth cookie. The cook of this estate had risen to the challenge of a halven appetite, and prepared a nice after-lunch service for the family’s guest.

“Séance isn’t necromancy,” Chase said, waving the thin wafer around to punctuate her argument. “It just calls up the memory of the departed to answer a few questions. It can’t be used to bind ghosts or anything like that, the skill description is very clear.”

The Doberman-headed woman scratched between her own ears. “See, that distinction won’t matter to the people whose departed you’re going to be calling up. And the law is pretty clear that any unauthorized messing about with the dead in any way is necromancy. We had quite enough of that sort of thing back during the guild wars. The doge is a fair man, but even he’s got his limits, and breaking the law like that would get his attention in a very bad way.”

“You work for a criminal, and you’re worried about such distinctions?”

Cagna’s mouth snapped shut. She glanced around, and leaned in. “Be careful what you say. You can do that inside these walls, while nobody’s around. Outside is another matter.”

Chase kept her gaze steady on Cagna’s almond-colored eyes. “I’m no fool. I wouldn’t have said that if anyone was around. But my point stands. Why can’t we break the law? What’s the point of being a criminal if you have to worry about such things? Bad laws aren’t worth keeping.”

Cagna sighed. “Look. I’m pretty sure Don Coltello called in a Necromancer for the deaths that happened in the outskirts. I’m also pretty sure nothing came of it. Na na na, hold on.” She held up a hand to forestall Chase as the halven girl started to protest. “He did that because that happened in his territory, and the guards that watch there are paid well to look away. He did that because he could get away with it and there would be no proof. Here? In the city? There are guards we can’t buy. What’s worse, two of the deaths involved noble houses, and one of them was a guild official. You do something they see as necromancy to one of their own, they won’t call in the guard. It’ll be an Assassin with a strangling cord and a midnight burial out in the lime pits.”

Chase closed her eyes. It didn’t seem fair… but then the world wasn’t fair. Still, it was a very good investigative skill, and this was just the sort of situation for it. There were victims, they might have seen something, and only some hurt feelings and bad laws were in the way of her using it.

She munched on the cookie she’d taken, finishing it off. With her energy full from her recent level choice, she couldn’t even get satisfaction from the food. But she ate anyway, because she was used to it. And while she ate, she thought.

“How many murders inside the city, total?” Chase finally asked.

“Four.”

“Two in noble houses. One from a guild. Who was the last?”

“The last one was the first killed, actually. A leatherworker’s daughter, in the quartiere carne.”

Chase ran the phrase through her knowledge of the old tongue. “The meat district?”

“I guess so.” Cagna shrugged. “More like the flesh district.”

“That’s kind of gruesome.”

“Not really. It’s… ah, why should I try and explain it? Better to show you. You’ll see.”

“I will?”

“Judging by your line of questioning, you’ll obviously want to talk to the victim’s father. He is in the quartiere carne. So your fuzzy little feet are going to end up walking those cobblestones, and mine will be right alongside yours.” She shrugged. “Honestly I wouldn’t mind. They have some good eats out that way, and the smells are divine. The place is fun, too. Got all sorts of shows and spectacles.”

“Shows and spectacles? In a meat market? What, do the butchers juggle knives or something?”

Cagna laughed, and leaned back in her chair, scratching under one arm without a care for the vulgarity of it. “Something like that. You’ll see, you’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” Chase nodded in agreement, then scooped up her pack. Renny’s head peeked out of the top of it, and he was completely still. This arrangement let him keep an eye on things, and if need be he could now silently activate his illusions and slip out to do whatever golemy stuff he needed to accomplish.

The trek across the city seemed easier now. With everyone at home or off to a taverna or ristorante for lunch, the streets were a little less crowded.

Less crowded by city standards was still an absurd amount of people by rural halven village standards though, and Chase found herself studying people as they passed. She was careful to keep from staring, and her much-enhanced charisma seemed helpful there. Her height was a bonus as well, and for the most part nobody seemed to take offense.

And what she noticed, after studying so many people, was a common thread.

They looked agitated.

They traveled in groups, their eyes picked out the dark places between buildings and they walked quickly, speaking little. There were few smiles, and the even rarer laughter that she heard now and again had a bit of an edge to it.

But it was the way they looked at Cagna, keeping eyes on her like she’d go mad and start cutting throats at any moment, was the final hint that Chase needed. “They’ve got this whole town on edge, don’t they? The wer-” she cut off her words as a group passed near. “The, uh, killers, I mean.”

“Oh yeah,” Cagna said, locking her face straight ahead, keeping her hands in sight at all times. “Normally we don’t get hostility here. Dog beastkin, I mean. But this is… bad for business. Scared people start suspecting anything that looks canine. It doesn’t help that I’ve only been in town a few months. I’m a stranger, and that’s dangerous now.”

“You’re not local?”

“No. I get around. Me and Lachina, we both came here looking for work, and found it.”

“Has it been good?”

“Mostly.” Cagna tilted her head, thinking. She scratched behind one ear as she did so, and Chase stifled a chuckle. She was glad she’d done so, as the dog-woman looked back at her. “Just so you know, I’ve got a code I have to follow. There’s things I can’t do or it weakens me. So you don’t command me to do something, and you don’t ask it without running it by me first.”

“Is your code the reason you helped me, back when I was telling the don’s fortune?”

Cagna considered that, then shook her head and looked away. “Yep. You guessed it.”

But Chase looked at the way she set her shoulders, and heard the faintness of her voice. Cagna was lying.

Then they reached the end of the last street, and her concern over that fell away.

The plaza before them was a riot of color, and crowded with cheering onlookers. In the middle among some large statues, a group of barely-clad acrobats flipped and swung from ropes attached to the weathered stone structures. They perched on outstretched hands, dove between the legs of stone horses, and flipped over the empty space between standing stone warriors, making the crowd gasp as they dared a three or four story drop.

“Oh!” Chase gasped, slowing to watch the show.

“Come on,” Cagna said, after a minute. “I forgot we had a troupe through. This works in our favor, actually, the leatherworker’s shop won’t be as crowded.

“Do performances happen often, here?” Chase asked as she followed Cagna, trying not to shove her way through the forest of legs that made up the gawking onlookers.

“If they’re naked enough.”

“Wait, what?”

“This is the quartiere carne, the district of flesh. It’s where meat, skin, and hides are displayed and traded, and the guild that runs this part of the city made some really loosely worded laws that people have been taking advantage of. So any business here pays lower taxes if they’re putting flesh on display and able to make the case that it’s involved with their business. Really it’s meant for butchers and the like, but once the bordellos started getting in on the action, well…” Cagna gestured up, and the crowd parted just long enough for Chase to see a high-balconied villa, with some very pretty, very underdressed women calling down to the passers-by below. As Chase watched with shocked eyes, someone called back up, and the woman put her hands to her bodice and started to tug it down.

But then the crowd closed back up again, and Chase, her face feeling like it was on fire, hurried to catch up with her guide. Cagna hadn’t even broken her stride.

It took quite a long time to pass through the crowd, and the halven girl focused on navigation, sneaking glances at the performers as she went. To her surprise, once they were around some of the larger statues, she saw circus wagons at their base. Gaudy and golden and green, they seemed to match the city’s colors. A sign on the side proclaimed them to be the “FABULUS FLYING ACROCATS!”

Fascinated, Chase tried to drift over that way without losing sight of Cagna. For her troubles she got a glimpse of a pair of performers walking into one of the wagons, and one of them did indeed have catlike ears and a tail… and six small breasts, hidden by a triple bikini. Her companion was human though, and he laughed as he gestured up at the rigging they’d just descended from.

“Hey!” Cagna literally barked.

The performers whipped around and the catgirl’s hair literally puffed up like an angry cat’s fur.

“Sorry, sorry,” Chase apologized, knowing her words were lost in the noise of the crowd, and ran back to the irritated enforcer.

“You will be, if you don’t stick close to me,” Cagna growled. “These bordellos, and the other places? They don’t always have willing people working in them. Plenty of sickos who’d pay good money to do horrible things to a little woman who looks like a kid if her ears get trimmed back.”

Chase’s ears flicked in shock, and she cupped them protectively.

Cagna’s scowl turned into a chuckle. “Relax. You’re with me, and all you’d have to do is mention the don’s name. That would probably make them hesitate until it got resolved.”

“Oh. Does he, uh, does he run the… those houses, then?”

“No. That’s another family. But they’re on pretty good terms. Your ‘Nonno’ finds them stolen or desperate women in the outskirts when they need new stock. You remember that the next time you sit at his table.”

The crowd thinned at that point. They’d come to the far edge of the plaza, where it broke off into twisty little streets and alleys. Cagna picked one of the dirtier-looking ways, and strode downhill.

Chase followed, but hesitated when the smell hit her. “Oh, oh that’s foul.”

“We’re in the tanner’s row now. The components they use aren’t pleasant. Did you know that one of the lower level skills you get from that profession protects your nose against unpleasant smells?”

“No, no I didn’t-”

“Kff!”

The noise came from behind her. Chase turned, staring. She saw no one. There were people back up the street at the main plaza, yes, but no one on this mostly-empty block.

“Kff, Kff!” It was behind her again and now her pack was shaking, straps pulling on her back, and Chase realized what it was.

Renny was sneezing.

“What the hell?” Cagna barked.

Chase cupped her face, and went “Kff!” as best she could. “Kff kff!” she said louder, trying to mimic Renny’s tones.

Cagna sounded confused. “Um.”

Chase heard Cagna’s feet on the cobblestones, and whirled around to put herself between the curious enforcer. She found Cagna squatting down on her haunches, stretching out a hand. “Are… you okay?”

Chase sniffled, and rubbed her face, licking her hand across her palm so that her spit might be mistaken for snot. “Sorry. Give me a minute, please.”

“I could loan you a scarf if you want. It smells like me, but it might cut the chemicals.”

Chase felt her pack shake silently a few times. Renny had done something to kill the sound, but he was still sneezing. Cagna’s eyes drifted over Chase’s shoulder, and the halven girl hurriedly faked another sneezing fit. “Yes, please,” she finally wheezed, once the pack stopped shaking.

Wordlessly, Cagna handed her a bright red scarf. It was more of a bandanna, really, square and with crease-marks where it had been repeatedly folded into a triangle. Thankfully, at some point while she was winding it around her face, Renny stopped sneezing.

The scarf did help cut the stink a little. Chase looked up at Cagna once her nose was covered, thinking to thank her, but found the dog-woman gazing past her, eyes narrowed.

“Do you see something?”

“Someone, maybe. Perhaps nothing. Come on, the sooner we get this done, the better.”

A sudden worry crossed Chase’s mind. “If there are werewolves here, could you smell them?”

“Not over the chemicals,” Cagna said, standing and resuming her walk. “My nose isn’t that good.”

Nervous and feeling a target on her back, Chase took a filtered breath and followed.

Her unease waned a bit as they traveled. The twisty street opened up at various points, showing more of the district, and that helped as well. There were plenty of people in smaller plazas, enjoying different shows. None of them were as grand as the statue-traversing acrobats… acrocats? But they seemed entertaining in their own way. One plaza had a makeshift stage, with a commedia in full swing. Another held firespinners, doing tricks with a bunch of fiery, ball-like things with eyes that Chase assumed were elementals. Circus wagons of all shapes, sizes, and colors were always nearby.

But as they went, the further they got from the main plaza, the more the odor grew, and the sketchier the performers looked. The quality of the act seemed to dictate one’s proximity to the best stages.

And the neighborhood got seedier and seedier as they went. It never quite matched up to the outskirts, but by the time Cagna finally held up a hand to stop Chase, they were at a nearly-deserted plaza, ringed by shops that had bars over their windows, instead of glass. Across the plaza a lone wagon stood, faded red and blue and gold next to a roped off area. The biggest and most well-muscled human Chase had ever seen lay in the middle of the ring, curled around a bottle and snoring. He was wearing a loincloth, and off to the side, a blue conical hat sat emblazoned with gold stars. His wagon sign proclaimed him to be the MUSCLE WIZAARD. It also offered a purse of silver to anyone who could pin him in the ring. Chase wondered if that offer applied if he was drunk and unconscious at the time, but decided probably not.

Something about the wagon drew her eye, but before she could say anything Cagna grabbed her shoulder. “Focus, please. We’re here.”

Chase let herself be led over to a well-worn door, under a pair of wooden gloves hanging from a sign. They creaked in the faint wind, and Chase coughed under her bandanna. Her throat was dry, and she was down quite a lot of stamina from the walk. She’d replaced her emergency rolls with tea cookies, but she didn’t want to eat them here. The tannery stink would ruin the taste.

Regardless of her companion’s exhaustion, Cagna pounded on the door until it opened.

A sallow, swarthy man about twice Cagna’s weight stared back at her. His clothes were worn and dirty, and his face unshaven.

“We’re closed,” he said, blinking in the light… then freezing, as his eyes focused on Cagna’s muzzle. “What! What is this!” he roared, and hauled out a long, thin knife.

Across the plaza, the drunken “Wizaard’s” snores paused.

“Stand Down,” Cagna told him, and the large man froze. He returned the knife to its sheath, then looked down at it in shock, as if his hand had moved on its own.

Perhaps it had, Chase thought. That was a skill Cagna had used, there.

“Go away,” the man said, and his voice wavered, hoarse and on the edge. “What do I have now? I have nothing. Go away. Leave me alone.”

Cagna opened her mouth to say something, and Chase punched her leg. This would take a gentle touch. “Silent Activation, Silver Tongue,” Chase said beneath her scarf.

Your Silent Activation skill is now level 8!

Then she pulled the garment down, and spoke. “Signore? Signore, I am very sorry for your loss. I… I too have felt this loss. May we speak with you? I know it is painful, but I will lose more if we do not. I will lose someone very dear to me, and I do not want the monsters who did this to claim another because I failed.”

Your Silver Tongue skill is now level 7!

The man blinked, and he looked down, noticing her for the first time. His face was almost comical in its amazement. “I… who are you?”

“My name is Chase. This is Cagna. May we come in? I promise we mean you no harm, and we will leave when you ask us to.”

The man grunted, and fished around in a pocket. Then he offered a single coin, that glinted silver in the midday sun. “Touch this, first.” His other hand hovered near where he’d stowed the knife.

Chase did so, and Cagna flicked it with one finger. When neither of them seemed hurt by that, the man nodded, returned the coin to its pouch, and pointed at Cagna. “She stays outside.” His finger traced down to Chase. “You can come in.”

Cagna’s ears flattened. Chase punched her leg again. “It’s fine. I’ve got this. Please?”

“It’s your hide.” Cagna shrugged, and walked toward an old stone bench, then sat on the least-stained part of it. “Scream if you need me.”

But Chase wasn’t watching her. She kept her gaze on the man, watched him ease as the beastkin retreated. Once she was sitting, he gave Chase an almost-apologetic nod, and stepped back from the doorway.

Steeling herself for the next part, Chase pushed down her unease and followed him back into the reeking darkness of his shop.

CHASE'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Chase Berrymore

Age: 15 Years

Jobs:

Halven level 9, Cook level 4, Archer level 5, Grifter level 6, Medium level 1, Oracle level 8, Painter level 2, Teacher level 2

Attributes / Pools / Defenses

Strength: 55 Constitution: 33 / Hit Points: 88 / Armor: 0

Intelligence: 55 Wisdom: 90 / Sanity: 145 / Mental Fortitude:45

Dexterity: 99 Agility: 58 / Stamina: 157 / Endurance: 0

Charisma: 128 Willpower: 46 / Moxie: 174 / Cool: 51

Perception: 66 Luck: 134 / Fortune: 200 / Fate: 32

Generic Skills

Archery – Level 1

Brawling – Level 7

Climb – Level 15

Dagger – Level 2

Dodge – Level 12

Fishing – Level 14

Ride – Level 10

Stealth – Level 14

Swim – Level 7

Throwing – Level 24

Halven Skills

Fate's Friend – Level N/A

Small in a Good Way – Level N/A

Cook Skills

Cooking - Level 15

Freshen - Level 10

Archer Skills

Aim – Level 6

Demoralizing Shot – Level 1

Far Shot – Level 1

Missile Mastery – Level N/A

Quickdraw – Level N/A

Rapid Fire – Level N/A

Razor Arrow – Level 1

Ricochet Shot – Level 10

Grifter Skills

Fools Gold – Level 1

Forgery – Level 1

Master of Disguise – Level 3

Pickpocket – Level 1

Silent Activation – Level 8

Silver Tongue – Level 7

Size Up – Level 2

Unflappable – Level N/A

Medium Skills

Bad Fortune – Level 1

Crystal Ball – Level 1

Good Fortune – Level 1

Séance – Level N/A

Stack Deck – Level N/A

Oracle Skills

Absorb Condition – Level N/A

Afflict Self – Level 1

Diagnose – Level N/A

Divine Pawn – Level N/A

Foresight – Level 22

Lesser Healing – Level 29

Omens and Portents – Level N/A

Transfer Condition – Level 3

Painter Skills

Fast Dry – Level N/A

Painting – Level 5

Teacher Skills

Lecture – Level 4

Smarty Pants – Level N/A

Unlocked Jobs

Farmer, Herbalist

Gear

The Charlatan's Chapeau