29: Kemperbad

Hello, mum. I think we were all happy to leave the Poisoned Feast behind and continue towards Kemperbad. I had a good look at my charts, the ones that were already in the boat when we found it, and the ones Willow got from beneath the signal tower. As you know, I can’t read, but I do have good knowledge of the waterways of the Empire, and so I can see where the towns are marked on the map and I can usually guess which ones they are, even if I can’t read the name.

And now we are only a couple of inches away from Kemperbad. And I am guessing that if we make good progress today, we might get to Kemperbad before nightfall. It takes a whole day to travel those two inches because travelling across a map is a lot slower than travelling across the real countryside. It’s difficult to explain, mum, but it’s the sort of thing you can understand when you’re a ship’s captain.

We set off in good spirits despite a few green gills because of the awful beer at the Feast. Willow went to her coil of rope with the fishing rod and a book, but I told her to let Blume have a go at fishing instead, because she is really bad at it (I’m not that bad at it – Willow). As it happened, Blume caught enough fish for us all to have fish stew for dinner. And that was about the only eventful thing that happened all day, which is a good thing, mum.

We stopped a little bit before Kemperbad because we thought there wasn’t much point in paying for an extra day’s berthing fees when we could turn up first thing in the morning and have a whole day to sell our wood. I was pleased with this, too, as I didn’t really enjoy Altdorf, and although Kemperbad isn’t as big or as dirty as Altdorf, it’s still a big city, and not much fun to be in.

The trouble with tying up for the night in the middle of nowhere, like we did, is that you have to post watches, or you might be visited by trolls, or sirens, or octopus-men, or things like that in the middle of the night. I was on the first watch with Blume. And first watch is good because it means you can sleep all the way through till morning, and you usually get a good night’s sleep because you stayed up late, and there is plenty to be done on the boat at the end of the day, in any case.

Being on watch with Blume isn’t usually that fun because if she’s in a good mood she talks about dresses and things like that, but if she’s in a bad mood, she talks about her family, which is even worse. But this time, because we had that pistol, we had lots of fun because she taught be how to load it and fire it, and we had a firing competition. We didn’t have any bullets, but we painted a face on some sailcloth and fired at it, and you could see where the black powder hit the canvas. And I won. I don’t know if it was beginners’ luck, or I’m just naturally good at it, but I hit the little man right between the eyes.

And after our watch it was time to wake up Willow, but for some reason she was already awake. And the night was uneventful, too, which was lucky because the landlord of the Poisoned Feast had warned us there were bandits and mutants abroad.

The next morning, we sailed into Kemperbad, and it is a very strange city. We sailed through it on our way to Altdorf, so I told you a bit about then (probably). It is built on a very high clifftop above the confluence of the Reik and the Stir. And to get to it from the river you can either walk up the 1111 steps that have been carved into the cliffside, or you have to pay tuppence to be hoisted up in a precarious looking cage-lift thing. I decided to pay tuppence because 1111 steps is more like 2222 for halflings.

We paid eight shillings to stay for two days and Willow had a chat with the harbourmaster and gave him some of the leftover fish stew (I remembered to get the bowl back from him, because we are now a bit short on bowls because the nobs threw a lot of them in the river – Willow) and he was good enough to suggest we go straight to the carpenters’ guild to sell our wood to cut out the middle man.

So Willow, Dreamy, and Guido took a lift and brought a sample of wood up to the carpenters’ guild. Carpentry must be hot work because the carpenter there was walking around with very little on except his apron. And Willow showed him our wood. Willow is very good at selling things, but sometimes I think she overdoes it. She concentrated on the healing properties and the anti-septic nature of our cargo, which I don’t think is really true (It might be true – Willow). But the carpenter was happy enough to make her an offer of eighty crowns for the entire cargo, which meant a decent profit for us. I think the carpenters needed the wood for some work they were doing at the council house, but I’m not really sure, because I wasn’t there.

Dreamy said we should all take some of our profits to spend in Kemperbad, but I don’t think Guido thinks that any of the money should go to him. He travels with us, and helps us, and protects us, so he is no different to any of the other crew. We sort of inherited the business when he was with us, anyway. But I don’t think he thinks he is part of the business. Perhaps it is because he is religious, because lots of religious people don’t seem interested in money. But he did tell Willow she made another good deal and talked about how she should enrol at the temple of Myrmidia when we get to Nuln so she can become a medic.

Meanwhile Blume gave a passing messenger boy a letter that she had written to her father. I’m not sure whether she looked hopeful or sad when she handed it over, and despite the messenger boy’s cocky assurances, I don’t think he had heard of the Spice Islands, and I don’t think he had any intention of getting it delivered.

Dreamy had given me six crowns to buy more supplies for the boat. What with the nobles throwing stuff around and the dwarfs’ large appetites the ship’s stores were pretty low. So Blume came with me up in the lifts, even though she was reluctant to part with her two pennies, and we managed to find a shop where we could buy everything we needed. And after we agreed a price, I managed to get the shopkeeper to throw in a load of fried pigskin and dried apple mix for free (I think it’s called fripidrap – Willow). It wasn’t exactly Willow’s bartering powers, but I think I did quite well to save us a bit of money. And after getting the full week’s supplies we still had two crowns left over.

And then it was time to go to the gun shop. We were both very excited and held hands and skipped down the street on our way. It’s funny how Blume only really seems happy when she’s shopping. The gun shop was a bit intimidating, and I was a bit worried that if we tried to sell Uwe’s pistol the shopkeeper might recognise the gun or not believe it was ours. Blume did the talking, except for the bit where I assured the shopkeeper that I hadn’t stolen it, and said that she had won it in a card game.

The shopkeeper was extremely impressed with the pistol. He said it was very fine and immediately offered us twenty crowns for it. That had been much more than I was hoping for, and we said yes straight away, though I suspect if we had played it a bit cooler we could have got even more for it. And the shopkeeper agreed to give us a couple of standard pistols and throw in twenty rounds of shot and powder as a straight swap.

It was fortunate that Uwe’s pistol was so valuable. Blume and I both had all our savings with us, which we didn’t have to dig into to buy our pistols. But if we did, and we also had to spend Dreamy’s provisions money to get our pistols, I’m not sure whether I would have done it. But luckily we didn’t have to make that decision.

Meanwhile, after selling our cargo of wood, Willow, Dreamy, and Guido went to find our new one. We had agreed that buying brandy, which Kemperbad is famous for, had to be a good idea. Nuln is a wealthy town and I’m sure they must like the sort of fine brandy that is made in Kemperbad.

They found a wine merchant and sampled his wares. He said that he was selling the finest brandy you could get, which is just what we were after, and it cost twelve crowns a cask. Dreamy had a taste though, and he didn’t agree. He went on about all the fine brandy he had tasted in his time as a Fighting Cock, and he agreed this was good stuff, but not the very finest. I think the merchant was impressed that Dreamy knew his stuff and had to agree that his brandy wasn’t quite top notch and agreed to sell it for six crowns a cask. And so we bought ten of them. Considering all the space the wood took up, it was funny that the same value of cargo could be got with just ten small barrels.

Then Blume said she wanted to sell Uwe’s nameday plaque. She had tried to scratch the name off but hadn’t made a great job of it. I told her to just throw it in the Reik but she said it was worth a couple of shillings. I told her I had to go back to the boat to get the prow repaired so I couldn’t go with her. This was true, but I also wanted to leave because the plaque was so incriminating. I told Blume that if she wasn’t back at Das Moot by the next day, we would just leave without her, because that meant she would be in jail. Or married.

The silversmith immediately suspected the item was stolen, of course, and Blume tried to bluff it, but in the end she lost her nerve and said the smith could have it for free and she fled. But on her way back to the boat, she felt a hard tug on her hair. She screamed and looked round to see a flash of purple as someone disappeared around a street corner. She felt her hair and noticed that a lock of it had been cut off.

I think Blume was particularly proud of her hair because this upset her very much, and on the way back down to the boat she told the lift operator all about it. I think she lost it a bit and got  hysterical, and the lift operator was forced to listen to her ranting about it all the way down. I think he should have probably charged more than tuppence for that. But when she got back to Das Moot Willow helped her put it up in a way that hid most of the damage.

When Guido got back to the boat he grabbed Blume’s blunderbuss from the barrel he had hid it in, and took it up to a gun shop. He managed to get a crown for it, and then he went to the temple of Shallya, because there isn’t a temple of Myrmidia in Kemperbad. In some accounts, Shallya is Myrmidia’s sister, and so he went there. And he donated the gold crown to the temple, which they were very pleased about. I think he was enamoured of the calm and cleanliness that you get at some Shallyan temples, and asked if he could spend the night there, which, of course, after a donation of a whole crown, they couldn’t refuse.

He told the sister that he was heading for Nuln and asked her whether there was anything she needed along the way. She said that if he was stopping at Grissenwald then he might be able to do something, as they had heard terrible things about a feud between the townsfolk and some dwarfs. Guido promised to look into it and said he would send word back to the temple about it. Then Guido sent a familiar looking messenger boy down to Das Moot to tell us that he would be spending the night at the temple, so we wouldn’t worry.

Meanwhile, I was arranging to get the boat repaired. As good as Blume’s makeshift repair job was, the shipwrights had to tear it all out and start from scratch. It took them a whole day and cost ten crowns. This seemed like a lot of money but I guess it was worth it to make sure we didn’t sink and when they had finished das Moot was looking at her most beautiful again. Dreamy had set aside enough money to pay for the repairs and he also gave us three crowns each as profits from our business.

The next morning, we were all ready to go but had to wait for the shipwrights to finish. Guido came down from his night at the temple. After hearing we had sold the pistol, he told us that quality for it’s own sake was a worthwhile thing and that we should aspire to own better quality items, especially weapons, instead of the cheap stuff. And one quality item is better than a lot of standard items. But we had to remind him about farmer Cabbage’s prize heifer that got ill and died, and while half his neighbour’s herd had died too, he still had half his herd left, while all farmer Cabbage had was a dead heifer, and dead heifers don’t win many prizes. He had been looking relaxed and refreshed on his return from the temple, which was good to see, but after a few minutes back on the boat he started looking a bit more uptight again. Not sure why that should be.

Blume found that one of her pockets was full of worms (I did it to help her with her fishing – Willow). This seemed to upset her a bit, for some reason. Willow explained that lots of halfling children are given worms when they’re young as it teaches them to look after creatures and is good practice for becoming a farmer. And Blume had to eventually admit that it was a very thoughtful gift.

Blume said she needed a brandy after everything that had happened to her, and Dreamy warned her away from drinking our profits. To be honest, the way Blume is with free drinks, I wouldn’t be surprised if we reach Nuln with no cargo left at all. And I think both Dreamy and I will be keeping a close eye on the barrels.

And when the repairs were done, shortly before midday, we were able to leave Kemperbad and head for Nuln. I don’t usually like big cities, but Kemperbad wasn’t too bad, especially because when you were on the docks it didn’t feel like a city, because you were surrounded by cliffs. And we got in, did some good business, and got out again in only a couple of days, so it didn’t feel like we were trapped.

On the way to Nuln Guido mentioned about stopping in at Grissenwald, and we agreed that was a good idea, as Etelka Herzen’s address was in Grissenwald, too. Her letter actually said Black Peaks, and we wondered what Black Peaks might be. It might be some hills outside the town, or it might be the name of an inn or something like that. Anyway, I’m sure when we get there, we will be able to find out.

We also talked about visiting the Barren Hills because Willow had found that strange chart which had the moon moving in triangular directions and landing on the Barren Hills. But we decided that would have to wait as heading for Nuln we were now moving away from the Barren Hills. In any case, I do not believe the moon moves in a triangular way.

So, that’s that for this letter mum. I expect in the next letter I will be able to tell you more about our journey, and perhaps we will get to Grissenwald and see if anything nefarious happens.

Say hello to the girls for me. I know you are getting Mrs. Bilbury’s aunt to read this to you so you can tell them all about my travels, and I am telling it to Willow so she can write it so Mrs. Bilbury’s aunt can read it. I know it’s complicated, but I’m sure it’s working. If it’s not working and you haven’t heard any of these letters then I would apologise for that, but you wouldn’t hear it anyway, so I won’t, Harry.