Kit and Killian glanced at each other as they approached the swinging double doors to the tavern. The place was bustling, loud, and friendly, with a life-sized wooden goose, painted gold, gracing one side of the doorway on the roofed-over porch. A comfy chair was placed just next to the painted goose, and a young woman sitting in the chair with her arm around the golden goose was being sketched by an obviously quite talented artist as her date for the evening stood off to one side, admiring both the view and the art.
"The Gilded Goose", Kit chuckled lowly. "I wonder if the bartender lays golden eggs..." Her thoughtful look was cut short by a chuckle from her twin brother, older by a full seven minutes.
"We're here on a different sort of job, sister mine. And if we play our cards right, we may just end up with a way to see Ma and Da." Killian coughed out a huge cloud of smoke, knocking out his pipe's dottle before the pair ascended the three steps to the tavern's veranda. Passing by the giggling young lady and her beau as they surveyed the artist's work, Kit smiled ruefully.
Maybe one day she would have a chance at a real romance. Maybe. Until then, she was going to have fun robbing young-and-stupid noble lads.
"I know it, brother. Don't you worry that empty red head of yours; the men here are safe for tonight!" Kit grinned, a feral expression that reminded Killian just how fierce his twin sister really was. She was smiling to ease the sting of the 'empty head' comment; she may be a thief, but she was a kind one. The whole "empty head" thing was one of her go-to insults, probably in reference to how much more intelligent Killian was than she. Kit loved his intellect. She was proud of him for it, even though he could barely see it within himself. To him, everyone was just as smart, and he always found it surprising when someone had trouble with a concept or equation that he just took for granted as common knowledge.
Dressed in black leather, Kit cut quite the scene as she entered the Gilded Goose. Dressed in thigh-high sailing boots, with a cream colored blouse framed by her whale-bone-armored vest, her jauntily tilted tricorn hat was angled ever-so-slightly over her right ear and eye. The hat was piped in silver, as was her belt and coat, with matching scabbarded rapiers adorning each curvaceous hip. Her titian red hair stood out against the fashion backdrop of all black quite starkly, popping the deep green of her eyes and framing her sardonic smile with soft waves and relaxed curls. Her horns swept back at a graceful pitch that was reminiscent of a well-built ship; Kit was quite striking looking, and she knew it. Killian chuckled to himself, yet again. In any other place or time, they might be here to find a mark and alleviate him of his valuables. Today, however, they were quite deliberately seeking a different path. Killian ruffled his wings, and refolded them tightly against his back, coiling his tail politely as he passed over the threshold into the Gilded Goose.
A modest post and beam affair, the entire structure was, to the discerning eye, built as a single piece.
Much like a ship would be.
It was definitely decorated in a maritime aesthetic, with an immense ship's wheel mounted high on the wall behind the bar. Blocks and tackle a-plenty graced corners and rafters galore, with cargo nets artfully draped to break up the straight lines in the corners. The wood of the building and furniture was, in a word, "hefty". Thick timbers comprised the floor, which were pegged into the joists with wooden dowels, instead of metal. Timbers that seemed more suited to decking a deep-water vessel, than flooring a tavern, made up the walking surfaces inside the building, including the stairs. Latrines and lavatories were floored with glazed tiles that washed easily, and held no effluence, and which all washed down strategically placed grates and sewer channels. Indoor plumbing graced the kitchens and bathrooms, and the latrines had a clever flushing system designed by a Gnomish-engineer friend of the barman, Igle. The front section of the bar looked, to Killian's discerning eye, to be a part of the side of a ship, what he would have called a "bulwark", and was inserted into the mortised planks of the floor as a single piece, with glued and dowelled tenons. The beams of the rafters looked to have been mainmasts, with yard arms providing the bracing. Every joint was cut precisely, and joined with dowels and dovetails, becoming stronger and stronger as time goes by, rather than the opposite. It was roofed with planks, tying all the rafters together tightly, then sealed with tar-paper, which was then covered with overlapping, half-round, clay tiles. All of the chimneys were made with hand-picked river stones that had been kiln dried so they would not explode from any trapped water steaming up at the wrong moment, and they were mortared with self-repairing binder.
All in all, Killian had had to grudgingly admit he liked the place right away.
Kit and Killian had come to this tavern, this Gilded Goose, specifically to apply for a job; a thing neither of them had ever had to do before. It would put them on the right path toward their ultimate goal, however, so here they were, giving it a shot.
"What do I even say?" Asked Kit, who found herself uncharacteristically self-consious. "This would be a lot easier if we could just hold someone's toes to the fire," she muttered softly, more just a low grumble.
"Yes, dear sister, it would certainly be easier. But, let's stick to the plan for a little while at least. There are plenty of ports to burn down..." Killian rubbed his arm where Kit hit him, and grinned delightedly at her chagrined expression.
"That was only once!" Kit hissed at him. "Besides, I can't help it if the Mark falls in love with me. Well, I mean, I could help it, I suppose. I do seduce the poor bastards..."
Kit's protestations faded as a loud, over-dramatic roar interrupted her from over by the enormous fire place. From where the job interviews were being held.
The applicant being interviewed just before the twins slammed his tankard down on the table before him, sloshing perfectly innocent mead all over the thick planks, before loudly proclaiming that the small, surprised-looking woman who was doing the actual interviewing was a "whore begotten slattern". In a fit of rage, he reached over his shoulder and grasped the enormous hilt of his sword. In one fluid motion, the enraged barbarian drew a broadsword so large the diminutive woman could easily have used it as a bed.
True to form, Killian acted without really knowing why, drawing his pistol and aiming at the massive barbarian's backside. The devilkin could sense opportunity before he even registered it cognitively, and as his thoughts caught up to his reaction, he prepared to pepper the lout, right in the arse. To his everlasting surprise, however, the diminutive older woman slipped out of the way of the barbarian's massive steel sword at the last possible moment. However, rather than disengaging like a sane person, the lady took a step between the huge man's legs! With hands so fast Killian's eye could not follow them, she pulled a small knife from each of her sleeves in a quick, efficient motion. With nary an unnecessary motion, she sunk each of the silvered blades into one of the barbarian's two hamstrings, eliciting a howl of rage and pain that seemed animalistic from the toppling northman. In a blur of motion, the tiny woman hit him twice more as he fell. Quite precise blows, in fact, that have the giant human out cold, stunned and drooling, before the floorboards even shook with his bulk's massive impact. Two guards, who had been standing surreptitiously in the shadows behind behind their boss, retreived his hulking form, and dragged him off to the drunk tank to sleep off the tiny woman's thrashing.
Looking around, once he had been dragged off, the government official sighed deeply. The other applicants had been scared off by the display, and those that remained scooped up their jaws and suddenly remembered that they had other places that they needed to go. Turning to the twins, now the only applicants left in the building, she asked, undefeated,
"So. You folks want a job?"
The government official, who turned out to be named Cass, greeted the twins as if she dealt with ruffians nearly twice her size all the time. And, as good as Kit was at reading people, she had to admit she felt outclassed by this tiny, bespectacled secretary.
"Name's Cass Elliott, secretary for the High King's Seat. Please, have a seat. Would you like some borscht?"
Kit blinked, confused. "Borscht?" she asked. The diminutive woman smiled happily in response.
"Borscht! It's a cold soup that Igle makes. Igle owns the place, that's him over there," Cass motioned to the bartender, who was deep in conversation with an old tortle at one corner of the bar and did not notice. Before either of the twins could say yea or nay, a plain but high quality ceramic bowl was pushed along the boards in front of them, with enough napkins to curtain the High King's palace. A thick, divine smelling concoction was ladled into their bowls by a server with light brown hair and a contagious smile who introduced herself as "Avo". A good sized dollop of sour cream floated in the center of the bowls, sprinkled judiciously with chives and parsley, but Cass grabbed a neaby pepper pot and proceeded to douse her second bowl with a cloud of coarse-ground, spicy goodness. The twins watched her for a moment, bemused, as the older woman tucked into her soup with abandon. Figuring they would get nothing out of her until she finished, anyway, the twins decided simultaneously to try the suspicious looking red concoction.
With an identical shrug the twins tucked napkins into their shirts and dipped their own spoons into the cold, red liquid. They had had much worse, after all; lobscouse1 was, to sailors such as the twins, gourmet fare of the highest order. So to them, the idea of cold beet soup was not far fetched in the slightest. Of course, the explosion of flavors they experienced had them cleaning the bowls and looking around for more before they came up for enough air to introduce themselves. Politely wiping the corners of his mouth on his napkin, Killian grinned.
"I can honestly say that's the best borscht I've ever had." Killian's purple skin was a great foil for his sharp, white teeth; and stained a little red as they were, what with all the beet juice, he looked fierce and otherworldly. "It's a damn-sight better meal than hardtack and gruel!" He turned to motion for another bowl, but young Avo was already back with a tureen.
"Dad says to give this here tureen to all y'all, on the house. Well, the soup that's in the tureen; not the actual tureen itself," she glared at a nearby urchin, for some reason, who returned the look with the biggest grin Killian had ever seen that side of a tabaxi joke festival. Avo turned back to the table after she had chased away the urchin, took up their empty mugs and dirty plates, and manuevered away balancing everything precariously atop one another.
Kit was already halfway through her third bowl of borscht, making up her mind then and there to get beets onto her next ocean voyage.
Cass finished hers up first, pushing the bowl away after a heroic culinary effort. Kit had her figured for prehaps five feet tall, maybe a little south of that, even, and no more than eight stone, tops. Her shorn hair hung to her collarbone in short curtains, her bangs kept out of her eyes by a pair of circular glasses that accentuated how round the woman's face was. She was smiling, but her eyes did not miss a beat, noticed Killian. She began;
"The High King's Seat, if you haven't heard of us, is the legislative body of the government. It is the administrative behemoth that ultimately runs the country, interperating the High King's will into codified law. Essentially, the High King's Seat is the colloquial term for all of the various agencies, bureaus, divisions and committees that run the government on a day-to-day basis. We are, ostensibly, the administrative division of the Kingdoms, and are surpisingly involved in everybody's business."
Cass took a sip of the merlot that Avo had brought for her just a moment before, at the same time serving Kit and Killian their favorite grog without them even asking.
Kit paid with a gold piece, indicating Avo should keep whatever change there was with a smile and a polite wave. 'See, she can be polite when she wants to be...' Killian mused to himself with a chuckle. Cass continued;
"Well, this job is simple, if a little peculiar. We have gotten reports of what the locals have been calling 'Dragon Shrines', from out in the western frontier of the country. We just need you to go to Hammingburg, out by Stilton-Head on the western coast, and investigate one of these dragon shrines."
Kit sipped her grog, frowned a little, then gulped a little more grog. "So, why hire someone to do this? Don't you already have people for this sort of thing?"
Cass nodded, smiling at the insightful question. "In the interests of complete candor, it's because we want to keep it quiet from the public. The Kobold Wars may be over, but many of us still remember them well, and our best guess is that this is some sort of holdover from the war. It's probably abandoned."
'She's older than she looks...' Kit thought to herself, at the same time as a fleeting 'old biddy's pretty sexy for her age!' went through Killian's mind.
"Are you saying we're going to need to board a ship?" Kit seemed surprised. Cass nodded solemnly.
"Yes," Cass replied. "For more than two weeks; and a river barge after that, but for a much shorter time. Is...that a problem?" Kit and Killian were so obviously coming off of the deck of a ship it was almost embarrassingly stereotypical. Neither of them had gotten their land legs yet, even.
The twins burst out laughing, Killian asking incredulously if they were expected to be passengers aboard a vessel. "You mean we'll be loungin' in staterooms whilst some other schlubs holystone the deck? Sign me up for this job immediately, ma'am!" He stuck his right hand out, shaking Cass' profferred hand in return. "I'm your man." Kit was still laughing.
"Well, I'll be dipped in a barrel of bilge water! Where do I sign up for this?" Kit shook Cass' hand as well, and the twins signed on the dotted lines, still chuckling at their good fortune. "I don't suppose you know the name of the ship?" Kit asked the tiny woman, as she rolled up the signed and sealed document. Cass' far-too-shrewd eyes analyzed both of them for a moment before she answered.
"It's called The Endeavor," Cass said, guaging their reaction. The Endeavor was a famous ship, a ketch, out of Marketoon in the southeast. She was renowned for having the craftiest captain and crew on the high seas, with a long and storied reputation for besting pirates and other challenges with relative ease. The Endeavor and her crew was, simply put, a maritime legend.
Killian was the first to close his mouth after this bombshell, elbowing his sister into doing the same before a fly flew into hers. The Endeavor was a prize every pirate on any sea both dreaded and drooled over. It was said her hold cradled the secrets to eternal wealth and luxury, and that her crew was as fierce as a tiger shark with a toothache. What she was absolutely famous for, however, was outmaneuvering two of the Royal Navy's precious warships, making them crash into each other and causing extensive damage to each, while The Endeavor sailed away without a scratch. It was, supposedly, the best ship ever built, by the best boatwrights, at the best shipyard in the world; the Headship Nautical Construction Company.
"Well, ma'am," Kit said, raising her newly replenished tin cup of spiced grog, "here's to prosperity!" Kit downed the entire cup in a single gulp, mostly to see what the smaller woman would do. Cass got a crooked smile on her face that made her seem much younger than she actually was, and downed her mug of ale like a barbarian quaffing mead.
"Skol!" shouted Cass in reply, wiping the froth from her mouth with her sleeve, and slamming the mug down on the table. Kit could not help but notice the hilt of a dagger protruding from a sheath on her forearm.
The rest of the bar was shouting and drinking, now, in response, and as the night got rowdier, the good folks at the Gilded Goose got merrier and merrier. Songs sung, and jigs danced the night away, until the twins rented a couple of rooms from Igle, the barkeep, and stumbled up to bed with their partners for the evening.
Each of the twins would call this day a rare win.
