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Cleric + Thief
| <a href="index.html">Episodes</a>
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<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">00007. Tall Man</h1>
</header>
<p>Iofi walks up the dirt path to the cottage with a basket of fresh
picked goosefingers from the abandoned orchard.</p>
<p>She stops before a blank wall on the side of the log house and waits,
her arms full of fruit basket, as an opening slowly appears. When it is
large enough, she steps inside and the portal closes behind her.</p>
<p>Inside, Meadowgloom is sitting, propped up in a chair near the
fireplace. He is pale and thin now. His hair is thinner, and white. His
large watery eyes dominate his sunken face and his meaty jowls hang on
an otherwise gaunt face.</p>
<p>It is traumatic coming back from the dead.</p>
<p>Blackguard and Maddox are sitting with him.</p>
<p>Iofi sets the basket down on the table and retrieves one of the long,
yellow, fuzzy pods. She peels it open revealing a bright green flesh
speckled with small dark seeds. She scoops out the flesh, plates it with
some bread, and brings it to Meadowgloom who accepts with a weak
smile.</p>
<p>Maddox shifts uncomfortably in their chair. Iofi looks at him
questioningly.</p>
<p>“Nothing,” they say. “I just. I just didnt expect it to still be
this hard. Being back here.”</p>
<p>“You dont have to keep going down there,” she replies gently,
sitting down next to them. “Why dont you come on back. Theres no
reason to torture yourself.”</p>
<p>Maddox looks away, closes their eyes, and nods slightly. Another
Maddox snaps into existence by the table with the fruit basket. “Im
recalling everybody,” this new Maddox says, the first Maddox popping out
of existence. “I need to have just one person in my head for a while.”
They leave the common room, going into one of the bedrooms and closes
the door behind them.</p>
<p>Iofi turns and looks at the fireplace. She and Blackguard watch in
silence as Meadowgloom pretends to eat.</p>
<center>
<pre>~ * ~</pre>
</center>
<p>Bridgers Farm is an abandoned orchard just outside the walls of
Kriteach. The goosefinger trees are growing untamed. More and more they
are becoming a small, wild forest. Goosefinger fruit lies rotting on the
ground in the summer. The birds and small critters cant eat it fast
enough.</p>
<p>The farm used to supply Melior Abbey with goosefinger to make wine
and brandy, which the monks sold to support the abbey. And the farm.</p>
<p>When the King Vulture died and the monks all went mad, the abbey was
abandoned. And then it was razed to the ground: what the people of
Kriteach started in retribution, the monks themselves finished in
penitence.</p>
<p>A lot of rubble and a few walls, an intact room here and there, are
all that remain of Melior above ground.</p>
<p>Below ground the tunnels remain. The cellars and the catacombs, and a
few sealed tombs. One such sealed tomb is rumored to still hold the
remains of the 12th abbot of Melior who, according to legend, was
entombed alive as punishment for heresy and for plotting against the
King Vulture. For centuries the abbots remains have rested inside the
wall undisturbed until just very recently when he unexpectedly gained a
new cellmate, the Hands master assassin.</p>
<p>The Melior tunnels connect the abbey, nestled inside the city walls
in Scholars Gate, to the orchard on the outside. A convenient way to
transport fruit, and one of the few ways to bypass the city walls.</p>
<p>The privacy and freedom of movement provided by the tunnels, in
addition to the farms remoteness and its taboo association with the mad
monks of the King Vulture, are why Iofi and Maddox moved their new base
of operations here from the compromised Bone &amp; Beak bookstore and
cafe.</p>
<p>“I think its time,” says Iofi and Blackguard tenses. “The Crown and
the Hand are both looking for you, Blackguard. Why?”</p>
<p>Blackguard seems to deflate. Meadowgloom is sleeping in a chair by
the fire.</p>
<p>“I didnt know,” Blackguard starts. “I was I was moving cargo. I
would get a shipment container number, and then my men would go down to
the dockyard and load up the crates and carry them out to Chicken Gate.
And thered be somebody there waiting to take the shipment. I didnt
know where it came from or where it went.”</p>
<p>Blackguard looks up at Iofi, wild-eyed. “You have to believe me.
Nobody believes me. I just move cargo. The Count thinks Im behind the
whole thing! I dont know how he found out. But suddenly I had royal
funding. The shipments started coming in more frequently, and I had to
step away from my other ventures and just … do whatever this is
fulltime. Of coure I knew the Hand would find out. They know about
everything that comes through the harbor. I knew that being in the
pocket of the royals would do me any favors with them. But for a while
it seemed I was untouchable. Until … until I found out what we were
moving.”</p>
<p>Blackguards voice drops to a whisper, he casts his eyes downward and
rings his hands. “It was people. People, I tell you.”</p>
<p>He looks up at Iofi, his eyes blazing. “It was Western people. It was
Givzi people.”</p>
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