103: The Torture Chamber

Hello, mum. Blume went to get the changes of clothes, in the end, and she fetched her nanny (the maid who works in her house, not a real nanny). And she also bumped into Guido, so she brought him back with her, as well. I think Guido wanted to come for the secret tunnel but Blume seemed to think he would be up for her birthday party, even though it wasn’t her birthday and she’d just made the party up.

When they got back to the Verdra room, everyone put on their messy clothes, except me. My best clothes and my messy clothes are the same ones, as that saves time changing and you don’t have to spend ages wondering what to wear like Blume does. And Blume told nanny to make lots of party noises so the staff at the Heaven’s Lament wouldn’t suspect we had disappeared down a secret tunnel.

The tunnel down was quite narrow for everyone so they got their clothes messed up pretty quickly. And once we got to the dwarf tunnels I gave Boy a sniff of Wallenstein’s letter and let him off his lead, and he ran into the darkness.

Fred put a chalk mark on the wall by the tunnel so we would find it again, and he marked all the walls we went past so we would be able to find our way back. But I think I would have been able to find the way back anyway, because I’m now a bit of an expert at stuff like that, and so is Boy. And Fred said we shouldn’t spend too long down here because he forgot to top up the oil in his lantern.

We hadn’t gone far when suddenly the air started to taste really bad. It was like one of those pockets of bad air you get in the sewers sometimes, but a bit different. So I told everyone to hold their breath, and we got through that area safely enough. And Fred drew a sign near it so we would remember it on the way back.

We went on for some way and it felt like we were going down quite sharply at times, and then Fred stepped on something and a cloud of green gas started to erupt from the ground. I had already gone past it, but everyone else had to hold their breath and run for it. And after the gas had dissipated I went back and had a look and it looked like the gas had been contained in a glass jar, or something, so I kept a piece of the glass as evidence.

And then it looked like the way widened a bit and turned into a proper chamber so I sneaked ahead and had a listen, and it sounded like moaning so I got Blume to have a good listen, because of her noble hearing, and she said it sounded like skittering and breathing, and things.

So we thought we would sneak up and surprise whatever was skittering and breathing. But in the dark, and underground, and everything, that was harder than we thought and we made a bit of a racket. And we soon heard the sound of claws or feet on stone and whoever had been there scarpered.

I did get a brief glimpse of the creatures as I got to the chamber, and I think they were probably rat creatures like the ones we had fought at the staging post. I did run after them for a bit (I hate them, mum), but they were too far away.

And in the chamber, we saw some sort of torture device, and Gotthard Wallenstein was tied to it, and he looked like he had been having a bit of a time of it at the paws of the rat men. Fred went to the far end of the chamber to look out for any returning rats and we had a look at Wallenstein.

I thought Blume would be angry with him still, for five timing her, but she untied him. It looked like he had lots of little cuts and bruises, whip-lashes, and bite marks. And at first, I think he had been so disoriented by the torture, he didn’t even think we were real. But unfortunately after Guido saw to his wounds and we gave him a few minutes, he started getting back to his normal self.

We asked him what had happened to him and he said that he had been ambushed by Herr Gelb and some rat men in the Verdra room, and they had tied him up and dragged him off and he had ended up here. He said that Gelb wasn’t a rat man but was clearly on their side.

And then we asked him what they had been torturing him for and he said they kept asking him about the magic stone from the castle, and he didn’t even know what castle, and about Dagmar Wittgenstein’s books, which he didn’t know about.

Blume told him we already knew he was a Wittgenstein, so he changed his story and admitted they must have been talking about Castle Wittgenstein and Dagmar, his ancestor. But he said he still had no interest in Dagmar’s stuff. He said he wasn’t a wizard and anyone interested in that sort of thing should ask his sister Margritte.

And Blume told him we knew all about him and Anike-Elise and he didn’t have the decency to look embarrassed about it. And then she told him about Castle Wittgenstein being destroyed and that seemed to cheer him up, as he realised that he might now have inherited his family’s titles.

And he offered us a hundred crowns each to get him back to the surface. We asked him about the green-dressed people who were after him, and he said they were just friends and colleagues, who he imagined might be a bit worried about him as he had gone missing.

Looking around the chamber we found an old rat skin that had been tattooed with a picture of the moon over a mountain, or something, with lightning and pieces of rock falling from the moon. It wasn’t a very good picture. And we found a map, which looked a lot like one of the maps Willow had found in the signal tower, but I think it had an extra location circled.

Guido wondered what we should do from here, and I don’t think he really had a plan so he asked each of us. I said I wanted to carry on going deeper in case we saw more rat men, and perhaps I could visit the upside-down world. Blume said she just wanted to get Wallenstein back to the surface to collect the reward. Fred said we couldn’t go on for much longer as there was not much oil left in his lamp, and he was still wounded.

Guido didn’t bother asking Vinny for advice, and when Vinny complained about that, Guido finally asked him what he thought we should do, and he said he didn’t mind. Guido asked Wallenstein if he would testify that the rat men were real and he readily agreed, though I think he was just saying that so we would help him.

So in the end I think we didn’t have much choice but to head back to the Heaven’s Lament. And once we set off Wallenstein started ordering us around like we were his servants. And even though we knew the route back he started telling us which way to go, even though it was wrong. He was being a bit of a pain, mum.

At one point he wandered off into one of those mouldy areas with the dangerous fungi and it looked like he would started disturbing them. And I was happy to just watch, hoping he might kill himself, but Guido grabbed him and guided him away.

And then he upped his offer for rescuing him to a hundred and fifty crowns each, and that sounded even more unlikely than the hundred crowns, but I think Blume still believed he would pay up.

And he kept wandering off the wrong way and insisted he knew the right way, and then he his head on a rock, and complained about that. Then he walked though the bad gas area that we had already marked, and started puking everywhere.

Vinny told Wallenstein that he had thought he was a right legend when he had heard about him from Blume, but he had turned out to be a dick. And in response he just puked on Vinny’s boots. In the end we found Fred’s mark by the tunnel and we scrambled back up to the Verdra room.

Wallenstein was happy to be out of the depths, but we insisted on taking him to Schutzmann. On the way to the watch house I was a bit worried that the green people might turn up again and ambush us, so Fred and I stayed on the flanks keeping a look out, but there was no sign of them.

When we got to the watch house we asked Wallenstein whether he needed anything from his house, and he said he didn’t as he thought he’d be going back to it soon, anyway. But I didn’t think he would be. And Vinny kept telling Schutzmann that he thought Wallenstein was a flight risk.

But then after thinking about it, I wondered what it was that Wallenstein had actually done that was against the law, and perhaps he hadn’t done anything wrong. And that, and being a nob, might explain why he was being so arrogant.

We briefed Schutzmann, and he ordered Wallenstein to be locked up, but Wallenstein seemed to think this would only be temporary. And we showed Schutzmann the rat skin and the map. They also suggested I show him the strange silver symbol I had found at Wallenstein’s but for some reason, not sure why, mum, I told them I had lost it.

And I wondered about the rat men torturing Wallenstein to find out about the magical rock. As far as we knew, the rats had already liberated it from Castle Wittgenstein. Fred suggested that just like in our world, perhaps the rat world was comprised of different rat lands and rat nations who were rivals just as much as, say, the Empire and Bretonnia.

Fred also suggested that we see if we could get old dwarf maps of the under city to help us explore it. We wondered whether we should tell Schutzmann about the letter that Wallenstein had written to his sister where he talks about Anike-Elise, and we decided that we would hold off on that for a while.

Schutzmann told us that we should continue to concentrate on the Purple Hand which was our original mission, and that Wallenstein had nothing to do with them so he was going to let him go. And he said, if Wallenstein was actually a noble from the Reikland, there was probably not much Schutzmann could do against him in Middenheim, in any case.

I thought that Wallenstein was a bit of a dick, and he obviously had some not very nice friends, but I supposed that Schutzmann was right that we didn’t know anything nefarious about him. Although, to be honest, mum, with his family, and his friends, and mixing with rat men, and five timing Blume, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be properly nefarious.

After our meeting with Schutzmann, Vinny decided he needed to find Josef and so he went to talk to Alfric again. He also wanted to talk to Gouda about Wyndhund, and so he needed Alfric to get him a meeting. I think Vinny got his meetings but he had to pay Alfric a few shillings.

And we were left to study that map. We had a long chat about it, but we didn’t really understand what it meant. We recalled Willow saying that she thought the triangle represented the course of Morrslieb over the Empire (although everyone knows Mannslieb goes in a circular route not a triangular one). And we thought perhaps one of the circles meant that one of the moon rocks fell in the Barren Hills (which it did), and perhaps another one fell in the Middle Mountains or Wolfenburg, as indicated on the map, while, therefore, there must be a third one fallen on Nordland, or somewhere. But the map was in such a large scale and so vaguely detailed that it would be impossible to find anything solely by following the map.

So, anyway, mum. It looks like Wallenstein will be allowed to go home, which doesn’t sound very fair, but I guess that means we could rightfully demand our reward money. And we have to go back to concentrating on the Purple Hand, which is our main job at KITUM. Also, there is that rattus homunculus autopsy tomorrow which we plan to go to. So I will let you know in my next letter what happens with all those things.