Brandywine (part 14 of 14)

Writers: Yvonne
Date Posted: 19th September 2007

Characters: Larstad, Harrit, Thorril
Description: Who done it?
Location: Amber Hills Hold
Date: month 5, day 27 of Turn 4

"Where are Harrit's rooms?"

The drudge that Larstad found in the hall was more than happy to oblige him. She chattered aimlessly and witlessly as she led him from the Steward's office into the family wing, and from there to a nondescript door near the end of a hall. "Shall I knock for you, Journeyman?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.

"I think I'm capable," Larstad replied dryly. Women. They were all the same, when you got right down to it. She sighed in disappointment and left - but only after she made him promise that if he needed 'anything at all' he was to call her. He lied through his teeth and had already forgotten her name by the time she disappeared from view.

**So this is Harrit's rooms...** Larstad studied the door as if it could answer questions such as, 'why would the Steward steal brandy?' Out of all his possible suspects, Larstad thought that the Steward was the most likely culprit. He was going on a trip soon, he'd obviously gotten marks from somewhere (although perhaps that was just his wage), and he was a whining idiot whose voice made Larstad's skin crawl. But was being annoying really that much of an indicator of guilt? After a moment's consideration, he decided that it was and was about to knock on the door when another drudge turned down the hall with her arms full of sheets. The Smith felt a pang of disappointment, then turned and left the hall.

Who else was there? **Rilon, the Heir. I suppose. But he has no reason that I've been able to fathom for stealing the brandy.
Merton... well, maybe. It's got to be Harrit. But what about the key!?**

Larstad frowned. He'd been so absorbed in thought that he'd walked all the way to the front entrance without realizing it. The double doors were closed against the outside to keep its holders safe within. Almost imprisoned....

Larstad stopped. Imprisoned. In prison. Gavrin. **I didn't pass Gavrin's rooms, so if Harrit had truly overheard him talking to his wife last night he would have had to have gone far out of his way to do so. He's _lying_!** And if he'd lied about that, what else had he lied about? Thoughts fell like dominos - the key, the nephew, the _key_! There was no one around - Larstad looked frantically about until a drudge suddenly appeared at his elbow, coming through the Hold's front doors. "You!" "Me?" The drudge looked behind himself, then, wide-eyed, back at the Smith. "Can I help you?"

"Who has keys to the ageing rooms?" Larstad barked.

The drudge blinked. "Ah.. the Brandymaster. And the Holder has the back-up. I think...?"

"What about Harrit, the Steward?"

The drudge looked blank. "Umm.. I don't think so? You'd better ask him yourself."

With an oath the Smith turned and ran back down the way he'd come, leaving the drudge scratching his beard in puzzlement. He arrived at the Steward's door out of breath and didn't wait to catch his calm to knock.

No answer. **Perfect.** He tried the door and was surprised to find it unlocked. There was no one else in the hall, so with his heart pounding, Larstad slipped inside. The room was still. **And nicely furnished...** For a bachelor, Harrit had good taste. The couch and chair in the little main room were covered in a dark brown fabric and a wild feline pelt lay on the floor with its snarling mouth guarding a fireplace flecked with mica.
The plastered walls were left white and hung with blankets in subdued colours, and the chair legs and end tables were made of a dark wood.
A cup of klah lay abandoned on the floor next to the chair, and a book lay with its spine snapped beside it.

Larstad ignored it, and instead headed for a small roll-top desk in the corner. It was locked but didn't stand up long to his picks; the Smith rolled back the dark wood of the lid to reveal a small writing space and a bevy of cubbies that held writing paper, pens, and various correspondences. Personal correspondences. He flipped past a letter from Harrit's mother that rambled on about what a joy his sister's niece was, and how much she missed her nephew who was fostering at Barley Hills. There was a letter from a friend in Amber Hills Hold who complained about the influx of refugees from Amethyst Cliff, and from his brother who begged for marks to ease a gambling debt. He set all but the last aside and began to search the cubbies.
Pens, bottles of expensive ink, a fat pouch of half marks, a vial of some sort of powder, a broken wind-up toy, a small painted portrait of a lady with red lips and a sad expression. Three glass bottles, stolen from his room, containing a scrap of fiber, a dead beetle, and three bent nails. And a fish hook with three jagged prongs and a scrap of twine still through its eye. The Smith grinned.

"What are you _doing_?!"

Larstad jumped so high his head nearly hit the ceiling. His heart felt as though it had crawled up his throat as he whirled to see Harrit standing by the door wearing a white-lipped frown. "I- ah...
didn't see you come in."

"No shit." The Steward shut the door behind himself, locking them in.
He crossed his arms. "What were you doing?"

The Smith looked guiltily at the desk. There was no use lying, although this was not the way he'd hoped to confront the Steward.
"Investigating."

"The case is _closed_. You're through here." Harrit swallowed nervously. "What's that in your hand?"

"This?" Larstad held up the fish hook. "Your key."

Harrit's pudgy face when pasty white. "That's a fish hook, you dimglow. What do you mean, 'key'?!"

"It's your key to the ageing rooms, Harrit. I know what you did, and what's more, I know how you did it."

A kaleidoscope of expressions flickered across the Steward's face:
rage, fear, despair, injured pride. He made a small sound, much like a wounded flit, and suddenly grabbed the glow that sat unlit on the table by the door and threw it at the Smith. Larstad ducked but Harrit leapt across the room after the glow and landed a clumsy punch on his ear. The Smith staggered as his head clanged like a bell.

"Shard it! You don't understand!" Harrit's boot connected with Larstad's shin. "Why couldn't you just accept things the way they were!"

Larstad curled his hands into fists and lashed out at the Steward.
His knuckles found purchase in his pudgy middle and slammed into Harrit's nose. The Steward flew backward and landed on his bottom near the feline skin as Larstad roared out his indignation. His boot connected with Harrit's ribs and a small crack proceeded the whoosh of air out of his lungs. Larstad knelt and grabbed Harrit's collar as the Steward's head lolled on his neck and his nose gushed with blood.
He moaned and pawed ineffectively at Larstad's arms as Larstad drew back his fist and landed a solid punch, backed by turns at a forge and pumping bellows, on his temple. Harrit fell back onto the floor, unconscious. And Larstad realized that he'd closed his fist around the fish hook, and it was now embedded in his palm. "SHARDS!" he roared, and then for good measure he threw an end table against the wall before turning Harrit on his side so that he wouldn't drown in his own blood.

~*~

"Here's what I knew when I first came to the Hold," Larstad said.
"Thirteen casks of brandy were stolen from a locked room. After examining the ageing room it was fairly easy to see how it had been done - and it was clever, might I add! And that was when I encountered my first clue, although I didn't know it at the time:
Harrit's keys."

"Harrit's keys?" Thorril asked. His brow wrinkled in confusion and he rubbed his hands against his scarred face. "Because he doesn't have a key to that room?"

"Because he used a loose single key to open and close the doors, rather than a key off his ring. He must have borrowed it off someone, because he wouldn't have left an important key like that off his belt. They're easier to keep an eye on when they're always on your person. And, although I didn't know it at the time, he also lied to me when he told me that he had a key. There are only two keys to the ageing room - yours and Brandymaster Merton's."

"Well, yes." Thorril sighed again. "I can't believe that Harrit would do this to me..."

"Then there was the fact that Harrit was dressed rather well in comparison to some of your other holders - Merton, namely. I would have thought that your Brandymaster would have had enough marks to keep himself just as well as you." Larstad gave Thorril a hard look, and the Holder had the good grace to look ashamed of his greed. "He'd just bought a fine new coat and a new telescope - where had he gotten the marks?"

"I'd just assumed that he'd saved them up," Thorril said miserably.

"Then Gavrin was framed - and he _was_ framed, Thorril. He's an easy target as you already dislike him, and he's made his dislike of you very clear. Harrit was scared by my presence - I'm an unknown element. Earlier, when I examined the aging room, Harrit followed me acting as nervous as a feline about to birth a litter. I picked some things up-" from his pocket Larstad withdrew the jar with the fluff and the jar with the nails that he'd found in the Steward's rolltop desk and set them before Thorril. "I told him that I knew how the brandy had been stolen and he became frightened. He snuck into my room after he'd put me to sleep - get your Healer to look at that powder in his desk, will you?" He just had a thought - what if it was toxic? "Harrit has the keys to the Hold, including Gavrin's and my own's rooms, and what was the sacrifice of a headache and a single cask for peace of mind? He was hoping that I would believe that Gavrin drugged me and stole the casks and then leave before his duplicity was spotted."

The Holder looked ashamed again, and suddenly wore every single one of his turns openly on his scarred face. "Ah.. Gavrin. I fear that I have done him and his wife a great wrong, and I'm not sure how to correct it."

The Smith shook his head. "I'm not sure that you can. A public apology and exoneration would help, but there's nothing else to do but wait, and to hope that Gavrin is a more forgiving man than you."

"We already lost Ravelon... I'm not sure that Merton has enough time to train an apprentice if Gavrin leaves us."

"I'm not particularly good with people, Thorril. That's as good advice as I can offer."

Thorril smiled slightly, then. "You know... that's just the sort of question that I would ask Harrit. What will I do without him?"

Larstad thought of Cyrek, sitting alone in his office and working as hard as he could for a Hold that didn't much want him. "You'll do what you must."

"I'll do what I must." The Holder's face hardened until it was as still as granite. "We have laws, and they will not be bent. Harrit will be punished at noon tomorrow."

The Smith sighed. "I'm sorry to hear that. I think I'll leave before then."

"Harrit was leaving, too. On a trip to Opal Cove Hold... he suggested it, and now that I think of it, the main reason was probably to sell that brandy, hmm?" Thorril's expression grew dark. "I wonder if the Lord knew. Perhaps it was him that suggested it." "Maybe. Maybe not. Opal Cove is a port Holding, and there are many people who travel in and out of there. Harrit could have hoped to hawk it on the docks."

"He won't tell me where it is, you know."

"The brandy?" Larstad arched an eyebrow. His other hand plucked absently at the bandage over his lacerated palm, where a bemused healer had removed the fishhook. "Check his office - there's an old set of blueprints in there. The Hold has closed some rooms since the Plague, haven't they?"

"And you think that the casks are hidden somewhere in a closed room?"

The Smith nodded. "I do. Probably a room closer to either the ageing rooms, or to Harrit's rooms."

"And you won't stay to help us look?"

"No." To hear the screams as Harrit's back was flayed by a singing whip - there was no way that he would stay for that. The Holder sighed. "Very well. I do owe you a great debt, Journeyman.
I promised you that you would be richly rewarded, and you will be.
Will a bag of marks, two rubies and a cask of our finest brandy be all right with you?"

"That would be... wonderful." And unexpected - the marks and brandy he'd thought of, but gems? Already the Smith was thinking of ways to incorporate them into his latest project. "Just one more thing, Journeyman... how did Harrit get into the ageing rooms?"

Larstad smiled. "That, my dear Holder, is the most ingenious thing of all. If you'll follow me..." He rose from his seat, and with a bemused Thorril trailing after him, walked through the ragged, now familiar halls of Barley Hill to the ageing rooms. "If you please?"

Thorril obliged by unlocking the door, and the two men went inside together. Immediately they were enveloped by the sticky sweet smell of alcohol and a stir of dust. The oaken casks rested neatly in their places, even if twelve casks were still missing. Larstad withdrew a bit of string from his pocket. "Harrit's got a small nephew, am I right?"

"The lad's only six, yes."

"Well, last time new brandy was added to the ageing rooms, Harrit had nailed his nephew into a cask which was brought inside with the rest of the barrels. Once the room was empty and the door locked, the lad pushed his way out. You'll have to ask Harrit exactly what happened next, but I assume that he let the Steward in immediately, and while Harrit waited until evening the boy did- whatever boys that age do."
Larstad hesitated, suddenly nervous. "You won't whip the boy too, will you?"

Thorril shook his head, much to Larstad's relief. "No. A child that young is easily tricked. I wouldn't have harmed Gavrin's son, either, but I was so angry... things were said that ought to be taken back."

"Good. Well. Harrit waited until nightfall, and since he is acquainted with the guard's schedule, he unlocked the door again from the inside--" Larstad demonstrated turning the knob on the lock so that it was vertical-- "and moved the casks to a nearby location."

"But when he relocked the door?"

"That's the easy bit." The Smith grinned and pulled the fishhook from his other pocket, then attached the end of the twine to the hook. He unlocked the door again, pulled it open, and ushered Thorril outside.
The fishhook he tucked so that it's claws were behind one of the knob's arms, and then he fed the string beneath the door and closed it. The end he handed to Thorril. "Give it a tug."

Thorril tugged. The string grew taut, then snapped as the fishhook tumbled down off its perch on the knob on the inside of the door and fell to the floor. The Smith tried the latch - it was locked. "It's as easy as that," he said. "Open the door again, if you please?"

Thorril fished his key from his pocket and unlocked the door again.
Larstad swung it open, and there, on the knob, were two fresh new scratches in the shiny metal that mirrored the scratches that Larstad had found just days earlier. Thorril sighed. "It appears that I need a new lock... Journeyman, do you make them?"

The Smith smiled wolfishly. "Have an Understeward, or someone, contact me about commissions. I make a very nice lock, and one that cannot be fished!"

Last updated on the September 23rd 2007

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Brandywine (part 14 of 14)