268 lines
9.0 KiB
HTML
268 lines
9.0 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="" xml:lang="">
|
||
<head>
|
||
<meta charset="utf-8" />
|
||
<meta name="generator" content="pandoc" />
|
||
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" />
|
||
<title>00007. Tall Man</title>
|
||
<style>
|
||
html {
|
||
line-height: 1.5;
|
||
font-family: Georgia, serif;
|
||
font-size: 20px;
|
||
color: #1a1a1a;
|
||
background-color: #fdfdfd;
|
||
}
|
||
body {
|
||
margin: 0 auto;
|
||
max-width: 36em;
|
||
padding-left: 50px;
|
||
padding-right: 50px;
|
||
padding-top: 50px;
|
||
padding-bottom: 50px;
|
||
hyphens: auto;
|
||
overflow-wrap: break-word;
|
||
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
|
||
font-kerning: normal;
|
||
}
|
||
@media (max-width: 600px) {
|
||
body {
|
||
font-size: 0.9em;
|
||
padding: 1em;
|
||
}
|
||
h1 {
|
||
font-size: 1.8em;
|
||
}
|
||
}
|
||
@media print {
|
||
body {
|
||
background-color: transparent;
|
||
color: black;
|
||
font-size: 12pt;
|
||
}
|
||
p, h2, h3 {
|
||
orphans: 3;
|
||
widows: 3;
|
||
}
|
||
h2, h3, h4 {
|
||
page-break-after: avoid;
|
||
}
|
||
}
|
||
p {
|
||
margin: 1em 0;
|
||
}
|
||
a {
|
||
color: #1a1a1a;
|
||
}
|
||
a:visited {
|
||
color: #1a1a1a;
|
||
}
|
||
img {
|
||
max-width: 100%;
|
||
}
|
||
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
|
||
margin-top: 1.4em;
|
||
}
|
||
h5, h6 {
|
||
font-size: 1em;
|
||
font-style: italic;
|
||
}
|
||
h6 {
|
||
font-weight: normal;
|
||
}
|
||
ol, ul {
|
||
padding-left: 1.7em;
|
||
margin-top: 1em;
|
||
}
|
||
li > ol, li > ul {
|
||
margin-top: 0;
|
||
}
|
||
blockquote {
|
||
margin: 1em 0 1em 1.7em;
|
||
padding-left: 1em;
|
||
border-left: 2px solid #e6e6e6;
|
||
color: #606060;
|
||
}
|
||
code {
|
||
font-family: Menlo, Monaco, 'Lucida Console', Consolas, monospace;
|
||
font-size: 85%;
|
||
margin: 0;
|
||
}
|
||
pre {
|
||
margin: 1em 0;
|
||
overflow: auto;
|
||
}
|
||
pre code {
|
||
padding: 0;
|
||
overflow: visible;
|
||
overflow-wrap: normal;
|
||
}
|
||
.sourceCode {
|
||
background-color: transparent;
|
||
overflow: visible;
|
||
}
|
||
hr {
|
||
background-color: #1a1a1a;
|
||
border: none;
|
||
height: 1px;
|
||
margin: 1em 0;
|
||
}
|
||
table {
|
||
margin: 1em 0;
|
||
border-collapse: collapse;
|
||
width: 100%;
|
||
overflow-x: auto;
|
||
display: block;
|
||
font-variant-numeric: lining-nums tabular-nums;
|
||
}
|
||
table caption {
|
||
margin-bottom: 0.75em;
|
||
}
|
||
tbody {
|
||
margin-top: 0.5em;
|
||
border-top: 1px solid #1a1a1a;
|
||
border-bottom: 1px solid #1a1a1a;
|
||
}
|
||
th {
|
||
border-top: 1px solid #1a1a1a;
|
||
padding: 0.25em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em;
|
||
}
|
||
td {
|
||
padding: 0.125em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em;
|
||
}
|
||
header {
|
||
margin-bottom: 4em;
|
||
text-align: center;
|
||
}
|
||
#TOC li {
|
||
list-style: none;
|
||
}
|
||
#TOC ul {
|
||
padding-left: 1.3em;
|
||
}
|
||
#TOC > ul {
|
||
padding-left: 0;
|
||
}
|
||
#TOC a:not(:hover) {
|
||
text-decoration: none;
|
||
}
|
||
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
|
||
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
|
||
div.columns{display: flex; gap: min(4vw, 1.5em);}
|
||
div.column{flex: auto; overflow-x: auto;}
|
||
div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;}
|
||
ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
|
||
ul.task-list li input[type="checkbox"] {
|
||
width: 0.8em;
|
||
margin: 0 0.8em 0.2em -1.6em;
|
||
vertical-align: middle;
|
||
}
|
||
.display.math{display: block; text-align: center; margin: 0.5rem auto;}
|
||
</style>
|
||
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="episodes" href="http://tilde.town/~dozens/clericthief/episodes.xml">
|
||
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="journal" href="http://tilde.town/~dozens/clericthief/journal.xml">
|
||
<style>
|
||
html {
|
||
background: #efefef;
|
||
}
|
||
</style>
|
||
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
|
||
<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/html5shiv/3.7.3/html5shiv-printshiv.min.js"></script>
|
||
<![endif]-->
|
||
</head>
|
||
<body>
|
||
Cleric + Thief
|
||
| <a href="index.html">Episodes</a>
|
||
| <a href="journal.html">Journal</a>
|
||
| <a href="about.html">About</a>
|
||
<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 didn’t expect it to still be
|
||
this hard. Being back here.”</p>
|
||
<p>“You don’t have to keep going down there,” she replies gently,
|
||
sitting down next to them. “Why don’t you come on back. There’s 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. “I’m
|
||
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 can’t 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 abbot’s remains have rested inside the
|
||
wall undisturbed until just very recently when he unexpectedly gained a
|
||
new cellmate, the Hand’s master assassin.</p>
|
||
<p>The Melior tunnels connect the abbey, nestled inside the city walls
|
||
in Scholar’s 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 farm’s 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 & Beak bookstore and
|
||
cafe.</p>
|
||
<p>“I think it’s 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 didn’t 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 there’d be somebody there waiting to take the shipment. I didn’t
|
||
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 I’m behind the
|
||
whole thing! I don’t 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>Blackguard’s 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>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html>
|