@moonwitchery Killing the Clown

[tiveragh]

The crowd is, understandably, quick to disperse after the abrupt battle with Dribbles the not-actually-a-clown. The pools of blood on the pavement are still wet, but unless the redcaps mop them up in the next hour or so, they'll be drawing flies soon. About half of the performers are, like Popper, taking the situation in stride. Clown man dead, big whoof.

Not all of them feel that way, though, and Lucretious is in the midst of a heated conversation with a woman in motley and green who was selling sweets earlier (peanuts! popcorn! fairy floss with threads of magic glinting in the cloud of spun sugar...).

"What kind of necromancer are you if you can't even speak with the dead?" This is no way to speak to your employer, technically, but not only is the girl in green uncowed, but Lucretious seems to be taking her temper in stride.

"My conversations with the dead are usually very one-sided, sweetheart," she says. "I say jump, they don't actually need to ask me how high."

"So that's it then? All you're doing is hoping to get his bits back and make him work again?"

"What if I put the doppelganger's corpse to work mucking out Crimson's stall? Will that make you feel better?"

There's a pause, because evidently yes, that idea does help a little bit. The girl deflates a little, folding her arms across her chest, but her expression goes from outraged to murderously sullen. "I want to know who sent it. This is not their hunting ground."

"...it's hardly the first loss we've seen."

"Guests are different. This was one of our own. We have to retaliate."

"Tieve, if we were going to hunt someone down I'd hire a sellsword, not a candy-maker. Come on, you need to let this go."

The look on Tieve's face screams that she is not, in fact, going to let this go. But before she says something she'll regret, she catches a glimpse of the unfortunate hero of the hour out of the corner of her eye, and breaks off the conversation with Lucretious unceremoniously, to make a beeline for her.

Comments

[moonwitchery]

Probably, somewhere in the circus, someone might uncharitably think something like: speaking of sellswords. Adventurers have always occupied an interesting place in the Faerûn zeitgeist: the heroic stars of centuries of tales of derring-do, averting various apocalypses, fishing children and kittens out of trees and/or the grasp of wood woads they unwarily wandered too close by. Then again, hurricane people sweeping into and out of lives that they violently alter, taking with them coin and dignity, eyes following the gleam of gold and hands, well.

The less said the better.

For the time being, Athénaïs is indeed feted as the hero of the hour, so most of the circus is at least giving her party their elbow room to clean themselves up, wiping blood from weapons and rifling through the belongings of the imposter that had certainly done away with the unfortunate clown. (Astarion seems a little disappointed they didn't actually kill a clown, but she's prepared to make a case later that it counts because the assassin did perform most of the show and had without a doubt had to do several uninterrupted before they obligingly showed up to kick his fucking head in.)

There is a lot of blood, but there aren't any dead children. A small mercy. The aforementioned elbow-room she's had to appraise that in means that Tieve's purposeful stride draws her attention immediately, and she tilts her head, taking her in.

“You don't look like you're about to tell me to have a treato.”

[tiveragh]

Adventurers are the most unreliable people to rely upon. Undeniably essential to keep the lives of ordinary folk running smoothly, they're nevertheless can't be fully trusted. They won't be staying, won't rebuild the community after whatever crisis they avert, no matter how well-meaning they are. Tieve understands this as well as the next person, but she also understands that there's no help to be found among her actual coworkers and purported friends.

(Crimson might be willing, but when he's not ravenous, he does find the idea of killing quite unseemly. It would be unkind to ask him.)

When addressed, Tieve draws up short and looks a little uncertain, as if she was so caught up in what needed to be done she hadn't considered how to actually do it. She presses the backs of her knuckles against her lips for a moment, gathering her thoughts, nodding. Then shaking her head. "No, I...I need your help, I think."

"It's not on, you know, to take a clown's face like that. They register their makeup with a guild and everything. It's just adding insult to injury, killing him and then pretending to be him." She frowns. "Not to mention the others."

"Do you have any idea who sent them? Why they would target this of all places? And why drop the charade today, for you. I heard what he said. They could have killed a lot more people without you being here, if that was all they wanted."

"I've never seen mirrorkin here before. I want to know why now."