81: Frau Kenner

Hi, mum. Hope you’re not too upset hearing about Dreamy. I think I angered Willow (I wasn’t angry, I was just disappointed – Willow) for not being respectful of him, but it feels like everything is happening at once, and it hasn’t had a chance to sink in yet.

Willow hugged me which was nice of her, and so I offered her the half a sausage I still had in my pocket but she said she didn’t feel like eating at that time.

I did say that I needed to shoot the silver sword lady or she might have killed us all, and Blume agreed with me, but no one else said anything. Guido was praying over Dreamy’s body and then he wrapped him in his white cloak, picked him up, and carried him to the temple of Morr. And as he went past he gave me a pointed look, but he didn’t say anything.

Then Blume put her hand on Willow’s shoulder and led her upstairs, which was nice of her. Willow asked Reya if she was alright and she nodded, and Blume told Reya that she hoped she realised we had lost one of our team members in the basement.

Reya hugged Willow and said that we should go to her uncle’s house because he would know what to do as he was very important. And we found out that her uncle was Law Lord Reiner Ehrlich. Willow guessed they must have kidnapped Reya to get Ehrlich to vote for the taxes.

While Willow was comforting Reya, Blume and I went back down to the basement to see what was there. The silver sword lady had a coin purse, and I immediately thought about giving it to Dreamy to look after, because he was good at that, and then realised we wasn’t around any more. So I gave it to Blume. She loves money so I think she will make a good party treasurer now.

And the silver sword lady had a silver sword, and so I took that. I swooshed it around a bit and it felt very nice. She also had a couple of nice opals. And she had a head band which looked expensive and it had strange symbols on, so I gave that to Blume. Head bands will probably be in next season.

The other three didn’t have much, so we just took their money, and we took the zweihander woman’s medal, which we will probably need to melt down if we don’t want to get in trouble for it. And I think Blume took some of the armour which she could probably repair. And the wizard had some Ranny D, which I was going to give to Willow, but decided she had probably had enough.

Then we looked through the rest of the basement. Most of it was a mess and not very interesting except they had a lot of food stored so they may have been planning to hide out here for a long time. So I took a piece of cheese for Willow.

And there was the latrine. As a sewer jack, this is now my element, so I went down the latrine into the sewers. I spotted a big paw track in the sludge, which could have been a giant rat thing. I thought about following the tracks, but Boy wasn’t much help, and so I decided not to, but I got a good feel for where about in the sewer system this was, so I could find it again.

One of the rooms had some strange materials in it and some books that even Blume couldn’t read, and we took one of the books.

But when we got to the silver sword lady’s room we made quite a discovery. The room had lots of dresses and other clothes. Some for a wealthy lady and some for the lowliest peasant. And there was a selection of wigs, too. I found a blond wig and a blue hood and decided that this must be what Frau Kenner wore. And I bet myself that Charlotte’s outfit was in this room, too. So the silver sword lady was Frau Kenner!

I told Blume to go outside for a moment and when she came back I was wearing the blue hood and the blond wig, standing on a stool, and I spoke in a Nordlander accent (although I’m not very good at accents). So that when Blume came in she would think I was Frau Kenner. And then I put on a few more outfits just to get a feel for the range of characters ‘Frau Kenner’ could have posed as.

And also in Kenner’s room there was some pigeons and a pile of ashes. We later had the idea that someone was communicating by carrier pigeon and burning the messages. And there was a stash of love letters that Blume grabbed. I think they were from Ar-Ulric to Emmanuelle Schlagen. And there was a book which apparently just had a long list of random letters that didn’t make any sense. We took the book and the Kenner disguise.

Meanwhile, Guido had come back and Willow who was obviously still very sad said that she thought she could hear us laughing downstairs. This annoyed Guido who rushed down. And to be fair, when Guido saw me dressed as Frau Kenner and Blume poring over love letters it could have looked a bit disrespectful to Dreamy’s memory.

He was really angry, though, and he grabbed my wig and threw it on the floor and then he grabbed me and demanded to know what we thought we were doing. And then he dropped me. And then he told Blume to get out of his sight. But, to be honest, mum, I wasn’t in the mood to get bullied by Guido again, so I put my wig back on.

He demanded I take it off, and I drew my sword, the new shiny silver one. Guido swore to Myrmidia that if I tried that he would kill me. We were both in a sorry state after the fight, and so it would have been an awful fight even if he did kill me, so I put my sword away and tried to explain that I was Frau Kenner but he wasn’t interested. He told me to go and talk to Willow, and I did, even though I didn’t want to and on my way I went to the larder and got some more cheese because Boy had eaten the other stuff.

When I had gone Blume showed Guido the book and he said it might be a code book for encoding and decoding the messages that were sent by pigeon.

I went up to see Willow dressed as Frau Kenner and asked her who I was, and she looked a bit bewildered and said she didn’t know who I was and I don’t know whether she meant she didn’t know who I was dressed up as, or she didn’t even know me. So I gave her some cheese. Boy had been at that bit of cheese, too, so it looked pretty grim but Reya was hungry enough to eat it all up.

 So we all got ready to leave the house. Willow had a look around the area to make sure she knew exactly where the house was because I think she plans to buy it and turn it into a clinic in memory of Dreamy. And then she saw to Blume’s wounds, but she didn’t bother with mine. And she offered to help Guido but he refused.

Reya led us back to her house and on the way she told us how she had been snatched away from her house by rats and taken through the sewers to a basement or underground chamber for a while and then taken to the basement where we had found her. She told us the names of the thugs who kept her and said the others were afraid of the one called Brunhilde, who we knew as Frau Kenner.

Soon we were knocking on Law Lord Ehrlich’s door and when he saw his daughter he burst into tears of joy. And he soon explained that Law Lord Hoflich was responsible for the kidnapping to get him to vote for the taxes. And Guido suggested they call for Schutzmann to get involved. Guido asked to borrow some decent clothes from Ehrlich as his had been wrecked in the fighting.

Reya offered Willow some food but she said she wasn’t hungry and Blume took Willow round Ehrlich’s garden to make her feel a bit better. Ehrlich kept a lot of animals and Willow met a Nordlander Bamse so that made her feel a bit better too. And when they got to a corner of the garden where no one could see, Blume gave Willow a big hug.

Guido visited the garden, too, to honour Ehrlich’s shrine to Ulric, and when he saw Blume and Willow together he told Blume off again, and told her not to say anything that might upset Willow. He’s a dick, isn’t he, mum. And there was a cat sleeping on Ulric’s shrine, which annoyed him even more.

Then Schutzmann arrived with a couple of his men. He mentioned the attack on the Templar’s Arms, and we asked him what they did with the giant rat things, which he called beastmen, and he said that they were all carried away by the sewer jacks to be disposed of before the watch had got there. I wondered which sewer jack team that was, and resolved to find out if I could.

Guido explained to him what we had been doing, and then Ehrlich explained his side of the blackmail plot, then Guido made plans with Schutzmann and Ehrlich. We were there, too, but I think they mostly ignored us and talked among themselves.

Willow thought about the code book and decided that she would be able to write a message, or decode one, and we thought about manning the coop so that we could intercept any messages that flew in. And then we thought about just letting Schutzmann’s men do that. Willow had the idea that we could send, ’Come to the house in Schwarzmauer weg asap. Emergency!’ and see who turned up.

Schutzmann said that we could have his two men, Mueller and Denkhfel, to help us out. And he said he knew that Hoflich would be at the Opera at midnight, and so that was a good opportunity to grab him, then. And it might be better to wait for them to reveal themselves.

Anyway, mum, it’s been a very long day and it’s only about lunch time. But I think things are coming to a head and the next few hours will be interesting. I’ll let you know what happens in my next letter.