Arodus 16, 4712 (night, Kalsgard)

I pulled Lute aside this morning for the conversation that we’d all been somewhat dreading but knew would have to happen. The problem here was that we just didn’t know how he was going to react or what questions he would have about our involvement. We were able to more or less hide the fact that we spent much of the evening quite literally looting Kimandatsu’s treasury down below, a treasury filled with coins and bullion that had been embezzled from the Rimerunners Guild that he was still a representative of, but any reasonable person would certainly suspect that we were not being entirely forthcoming about why were here or what we were doing.

It was too late in the day to head back to Kalsgard, so we spent the night in the living quarters on the main level. The ninja’s former bunk rooms were nicely laid out, and even the others were comfortable if a little sparse. Not as inviting as home, but several steps up from the caravan and the coat closet.

The rooms all adjoined the main entry hall, and the latter was as good a place as anywhere for us to talk.

“You realize the guild is in trouble here, right?”

Luke practically laughed in my face. “Oh, the Guild is in more than just trouble. You have no idea. I’m taking this to the King.”

I nodded at this, and then asked, “And how about you? Are you going to be OK, financially, when the Guild collapses? I suppose you are technically owed a weregild, but I don’t see one coming out of this.”

“Oh, I’ll get by,” he said. “I have my own business. My finances were not completely tied up here.”

This was about what we wanted to hear. It meant Lute was not going to try and claim everything we found in Ravenscraeg as a Guild asset, or try and help them recover from this debacle. More importantly, it meant he probably didn’t care what we did so long as we were discreet about it. Discreet, we could manage.

Lute expected all the assets of the Guild to be seized by the Crown, including Ravenscraeg, just as I suspected. That seemed to satisfy Qatana. What she really wanted was to make sure the Guild got nothing out of this, ever (trying to claim the place as ours and then sell it was more of a secondary goal, I guess). In a lot of ways, leaving the copper down there worked to everyone’s advantage, as it left physical proof that Guild money was used to finance the Frozen Shadows.

Our motives for doing that were hardly altruistic, though. We counted five crates filled with copper trade bars, and the main reason we left them behind was because, logistically, it would have been a ridiculous amount of work to remove some two thousand pounds of metal that barely totaled a thousand gold in value. We could easily have spent half that just getting the damned things out of there—not to mention the time—and we’d still have to deal with the Guild marks after we were done.

“What do you need to help sell the story of what happened here?” I asked. The head of Kimandatsu was certainly shocking, but ultimately it proved nothing. We talked about this briefly, then Etayne blurted out, “What about the journals?”

I made a mental sigh right as Lute asked, “What journals?”

I was planning on turning them over, of course, but I wanted just a little more control over the narrative. But the cat was out of the bag now. “We have the Rimerunners Guild’s business ledgers and they show numerous transfers of large sums of money, all marked as ‘development expenses’ for Ravenscraeg.”

“Yes! That! That is exactly what I need!”

It turns out Lute is a pretty shrewd businessman, which I guess should come as a surprise to no one. I made it clear we weren’t going to tell the story of how we got it, and that in general we didn’t want our involvement in this to be widely known. He turned that thought on it’s ear. “Once I get back and show them what I’ve accomplished here, you won’t have to worry about that.”

And here we were concerned we might have to buy him off.

It was a brilliant idea, really. We quickly crafted a nice little story about his investigation into the Guild’s misdeeds and their ties to the Frozen Shadows. We were his anonymous agents, hired to help uncover the evidence so that he could bring them down from the inside, and he had set himself up as bait. I wish I had thought of it myself. None of us wanted or needed the glory, and Lute really did deserve to be a hero here. Despite threats and intimidation he had stood up to Silverskorr, and he did it without anyone to look out for him.

To complete the picture, and also keep him safe just in case, Radella and I escorted him to his home when we got back to Kalsgard. He had been gone for several weeks so it was quite a shock when he returned. Even more so that he was accompanied by two young, foreigner women, one of whom radiated an aura of do-not-fuck-with-us. This story will likely last him a lifetime.

The repercussions from this will apparently be huge. According to Lute, the Guild was closely tied to the Linnorm King of the Thanelands, Sveinn Blood-Eagle, and of course Silverskorr was well-connected in Kalsgard society in general. This won’t be a simple matter of just shutting down the Guild operations: it will be a scandal that is talked about for years to come. We’ll be here for at least a week as we prepare for the trip north, which means we’ll get to watch the start of it unfold.

Other changes are on the horizon for us, too.

Tonight, Etayne announced that she’ll be accompanying us as far as Turvik and then taking her leave. Apparently, she has been having troubling dreams for the past few days and is concerned about what they might be telling her. I know very little about witchcraft, and even less about interpreting dreams, but I do know Etayne: her journey with us began with dreams much like the ones she is having now, and that they are back is something to take seriously. Another change is coming for her life, one that will take her on a different path than ours.

Regardless of the reason, this was hard to hear. We’ve only been together for a few months, but it has been an intensely personal experience. I have told my friends here things about me that I never thought I would tell anyone, and the abruptness of this feels like a physical piece of me is being cut away.

And in another of life’s strange twists, though we are losing a friend we seem to be gaining a winter wolf.

I was not happy about this and I don’t know how it happened. When I left to check on Lute, the others were working on a plan to safely deal with what was behind that door—the aforementioned winter wolf—and when I came down they had gone from giving it a clear escape route and negotiating a truce to practically inviting it to come with us. They are out of their damned minds.

OK, I am lying. I know how this happened. Skygin hated Kimandatsu. And I do mean hated. She captured him and was trying to train him as a pet, apparently, because I guess she was an idiot. I mean, can you imagine? And, how humiliating would that be to be treated as just some simple animal? When he learned that we had killed her the whole tone of the conversation shifted. Then Qatana starts chatting with him as if doing that was somehow normal and the next thing I knew he was all, “It may amuse me to travel with you for a while.”

My stomach sank. Skygni is scary. A wolf the size of a damned bear, snow-white with what looks like a layer of frost around his muzzle. I get that feeling he could kill any one of us and not give it a second thought. It’s not that I don’t see the value in having him allied with us for a while—there are certainly advantages to that considering where we are headed—but he isn’t going to place the same value on life that we do. You also don’t just show up in someone’s fishing village with a giant, man-eating carnivore as part of your greeting party, particularly one of the variety that likely terrorizes them in the first place. What kind of reception are we going to get when we stop to resupply?

And besides, this meant traveling with a gruff, arrogant wisenheimer, insulting us and pointing out all the flaws, faults, and weaknesses of humanity. Doesn’t Suishen already have that job?

Helgarvel had more immediate objections. This sort of arrangement was in direct conflict with his very nature. Qatana and Olmas countered that Skygni would be unwittingly serving a higher purpose while traveling with us. And they did have a point, one which Helgarvel seemed to accept at least for the time being. But I can’t help but see this argument as a thin veneer.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come around.

Or maybe I’m just in a mood. Here’s the thing: the last few days have been hard. We certainly have a great deal to celebrate here, and I don’t want to take away from that, but there have been all these crappy moments. Watching Shelyn’s temple reduced to rubble. Seeing Runecaster just sort of…slump over and die, alone. Weighing down bodies in the freezing darkness and then dumping them in the river, one by one. Etayne, telling us she’s leaving. Asvig choking on blood in front of his wife. Finding Ameiko’s samisen in that trunk.

This morning we ran into a pair of spider eaters as we descended the rickety stairs from the front entrance of Ravenscraeg. Lute was more than a little frightened so I took him on the express to the ground while the others dealt with them. When they finally came down I could immediately tell something was wrong. Radella and Qatana looked positively grim.

“What happened?” I asked.

For a while no one said anything, but eventually I got the story. Spider eaters, you see, lay their eggs inside of living hosts, kept paralyzed by their venom. When the eggs hatch, the young eat their way out. The two we fought had created a nest out of a fissure in the cliff face. The elf that Qatana found inside was technically still alive.

We get front row seats to all of this.

On the return trip Olmas and Ameiko had what I would consider an argument. At issue was Ameiko’s status as the heir to the kingdom of Minkai, and to our knowledge, the only surviving member of the original royal families. The Seal may have granted eight of us the divine right to inherit that position, but that is quite obviously Plan B (and I am pretty sure that none of us want that job, anyway). Coming to terms with this has not been easy—how could it be?—but also largely irrelevant.

Her literally unique position is by nature a fragile one. The commitment we made to take her to her homeland is also a commitment to get her there safely and do everything in our power to retake her kingdom from the oni that have usurped it. To accomplish the latter we must first do the former. That was the point Olmas was trying to make.

Ameiko is my friend, though, and this put me in an uncomfortable position. This all started because Ameiko had been growing restless in Sandpoint, looking for some excuse—any excuse, really—to adventure, explore, test her wits and skills, and hone them both. She still thirsts for that. And I get it. But the thing is, Olmas is right. I just couldn’t say it, because my role is to support my friend, not gang up on her.

There’s also counter point to be made, and it’s this: we can’t lock her away from the world (that’s what my grandmother wanted to do with me, and thank the gods mom and dad had more sense than that). As a corollary, we can’t permit her to grow soft, either. Everything she and I have learned about Minkai suggests there is growing unrest among the people there, and the regent that currently occupies the throne is deeply unpopular. Given what we know now about the Five Storms, that illegitimate government is a puppet of their making. When Ameiko gets there, she will have to be equal parts princess, leader, and warrior to take her rightful position as ruler. And I think that is the point she was trying to make, just not in those words.

In the end, they agreed that she would not take needless risks with her life. I think that’s fair.

I actually don’t envy Olmas’s position here, as he has to both answer to Suishen (who is acerbic at the best of times) and take all manner of shit from Ameiko. She can be merciless.