The Answer Man
Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 7:11 pm
Shattrath is a dead place. The second plague killed her, and what’s left is a corpse as rotted and empty of life as any of the ghouls that choked her streets those years back. Only the poor who can’t afford to leave and the fanatics who won’t hear of it remain; there’s not many of ‘em, but enough that an infamous crime-lord and half-faced berserker can pass more or less unremarked on. Whatever weird shite these two are up to, it’s no weirder than anyone else still in Shattrath.
At least, Tarquin hopes that’s what people are thinking as they head into the World’s End. It’s just as sad and shitty as he expected; he threads his way between two blood elves in tattered Scryers red, drinking with the determination of men who can’t wait to be passed out, and steps over the bulk of an ogre who’s beaten them there. Or maybe he’s dead. Who knows, who cares? “Gods, an’ I thought the Crows wis a shite place ta drink,” he grouses to Illithias, who doesn’t bother to answer. Apart from the ogre, they all get out of his way. Or more like, they see Illithias behind him and get out of her way fast enough to be convenient for him.
They find who they’re looking for at one of the sheltered boxes in the back. A hollow-eyed draenei woman dancing on a raised platform, wearing rings around her tendrils and a few scraps of gossamer, calls out to them on their way over. Tarquin gives her his best regretful smile and tips his hat. Illithias doesn’t even look. Then they cross into the back, where she’s sitting at a table, a wizened little bundle of sticks stuffed into a shapeless dress with a greasy crown of hair sticking in every direction, a bandage around her eyes, and a bright orange sweater on the table in front of her.
He gives Illi one last look back, a dozen warnings he devoutly hopes he hasn’t wasted in it, and then straightens his coat and walks in smile-first. Corspilla looks up at him with that skin-creeping eyeless stare. She’s got a chicken rooting around on the floor near her feet. “Hi!” she chirps, and then as Illithias comes in after him, “Who’s she?”
“Jus’ who I wis lookin’ fir.” Tarquin plucks his hat off and gives her a sweeping bow, getting a giggle out of her. “This is me associate, Miss Ashbough.” Miss Ashbough has to duck to get into the room, and nearly catches a bit of her shoulder-plates on something. If she had both her axes, she’d have to walk sideways like a crab, but Illi’s dressed for her idea of subtlety. “Mind if I sit?”
“Sure!” He crams his spindly frame into a chair, but Corspilla is still watching Illi as the latter leans up against the way. “Ooooooh, she looms. Linedan does that.” Tarquin checks. Illithias is surely looming, maybe even deliberately a little, but it’s mostly just a state of being.
“Consider thit a compliment, Illi. Linedan bein’ who he is.” Corspilla nods in agreement, and Illi just makes that growl-grunt-breathe sort of noise that means that she either has something to say but knows better, or has no idea what to say. Hnhhh is better than Don’t compare me to a fucking cow, dead thing, so Tarquin relaxes a little.
“She doesn’t say much,” observes Corspilla. The chicken clucks, possibly in agreement.
Illithias stares flatly at the dead woman, two and a half feet shorter and probably half her weight at best. “I’m not here for talk.”
“Whereas I,” Tarquin puts in hastily, gliding into the space between breaths, “Am here ta talk, an’ plenty fir the both ay us. Did our friend tell yeh what I wis lookin’ fir?” He can probably just say her name, but a professional’s got standards. Let the rottie start using names first.
“Yup.” Corspilla’s sitting at a slight angle to him; at first he thinks it’s so she can keep an eye on Illi, but far as he can tell, she’s just looking at a piece of furniture, or the chicken, occasionally as far up as his shoulder. Not his face. “Davien said a lot of things.” That was fast. “Oh! I knitted Ghost a sweater.”
“...the dog.” Tarquin’s used to keeping up with quicker minds than his, but usually he has half an idea where they’re going so’s he can fake it till he catches up. No idea at all where Pill’s going, or where she’s been. She holds up the sweater, orange as a ripe pumpkin, lips peeling back from her rotting teeth in a happy grin, and sure enough it’s made for something four-legged to wear. “Right, uh, yeh want me ta take it ta him?”
“Okay!” Corspilla hands it over and he takes it and folds it over the back of his chair, careful like it’s a holy relic.
Illi lifts her remaining eyebrow and leans down slightly. “Hnhhh. She’s demonshit insane, isn’t she?” the elf says in her people’s tongue. Tarquin lifts an eyebrow right back and shrugs. Illi’s right, of course, but that hardly matters. Shaila’s taken, Beltar’s been taken a while now, so he’s got to find a way. Whatever it takes.
He turns back before Corspilla can say any more about sweaters. “Did she say I wis lookin’ fir Malkavet Blackheart?” Not much reaction out of her, but then, hard to tell with that face. Most of it’s in the eyes, and the only thing in Pill’s eyes is a black strap that, now he looks at it, has some odd little scratches around it.
“Yeah. That jerk.” That’s about the kindest thing anyone might ever say about him, but Pill says it with enough venom behind it for a whole host of curses. All those little scratches. Like someone was clawing–
Tarquin steps back from that pit. “Yeh use’ta do some work fir him, aye? Back in the auld days?”
She sinks in her chair and nods reluctantly. “He’s mean,” she pronounces, a judge declaring sentence. “He, and all them were mean. ‘Cept for Davien.”
He waves it off like a fly. “Ah, dinna feel bad that yeh did. We all had shite bosses.” He hears another Hnnhhh from Illithias behind him, decidedly amused, and figures she can have that one for free. “But Davien’s solid.” The dead woman nods enthusiastically again. “And she says might be yeh can point me the right direction ta find the Blackheart, an’ where he does his work.”
“Mmmmaybe.” She pulls something edible-ish out of her dress and tosses it to the chicken, who pecks away at it. “I’ve heard people sayin’ they’ve seen him...I figured Ebon would’ve stabbed him by now.”
Illi perks up at that.“That’s the Tauren wench,” she says, her raspy voice with just a bit of excitement in it. Kind she mostly only gets about a good fight.
“Ebon Thundermoon?” Tarquin asks. “They dinna get along, huh?”
Corspilla scoffs. “Nobody likes him! Not even Teevi. Ebon’s pretty grouchy, too.” You get used to her voice, after a while, that mix of broken-throated deader raspiness and a loud brassy fishwife. Almost pleasant, really.
“Wee bit, sure. But she seemed tight wi’ the Blackheart last night. Curious, d’yeh no’ think, Illi?”
“Very curious, boss.” Illithias is a fucking pain in his arse sometimes, but she knows a cue when she hears one. He leans back in his chair, eyeing the dead woman.
Corpsilla is watching her chicken again. “Only time Ebon was okay with Malk was when Thorgrun was around.” That name rings a very quiet bell; he files it away to check later. They’re getting far afield.
“So then. Davien wis tellin’ me she heard oan a place called Blackmage Hollow.” The response is immediate; Pill straightens up as best she can and practically spits her response.
“BAH! That place.”
“Yeh kennit, then. Ken where ‘tis?” He ought to tread carefully, like you do with a nutter, but he’s got a fishhook in his lip and he’s not getting loose till it reels him in.
“Ummmm.” The dead woman demurs, to his immense frustration, not that he lets it show. He hopes. “Kinda. I kinda know where it is. And I bet Malkavet has been around there, too!”
“We should hope so.” Illi, grunting, shifting her weight. Maybe she’s on the same line. Maybe she goes through life with a fishhook in her lip, reeling her from one disaster to the next.
“Now fir all the marbles.” Tarquin lounges further in his seat, trying to give no hint of his tension. Just three old friends having a drink, never mind that one of ‘em’s dead and another’s trying her best to get killed and the third’s, well, he’s just not a very nice bloke. “Can yeh take me there?”
The bottom drops out of his stomach when Pill shakes her head. “I know kinda where it is and that dirty mean cat eater has been near there.” Cat eater, huh? What a true villain. “But I ain’t going anywhere near Malkavet! Uh-uh. No way. I ain’t that crazy.”
Not going to wriggle off the line that easy, of course. He smiles like silk, tunes up the old brogue a little, and starts to find a way. “Now, Corpsilla, d’yeh think I’m fool eno’ ta gang thence all lonely?” He thumbs over his shoulder at Illithias. “Go’ Miss Ashbough, do I no’? Yeh’d be safe’s if yeh wis a bairn, swaddled in cradle, rocked ta sleep.”
Pill looks Illithias up and down; Illi, knowing her bit again, just stands there. Looms. Doesn’t look much like she’s ever rocked anyone to sleep in her life. “Just one elf? She is pretty scary, but one? You got lotsa scary people!”
As he advised Illi earlier, Tarquin takes that as a compliment. “Jus’ the yin that they see. We’ll come mob-handed, miss, see if we dinna.” Truth be told, he’d expected convincing her to betray her own in the first place to be the hard part. He ought to have known better. Courage is a fair sight harder to find than disloyalty.
“I’m more than a match for some Scourge and their pet Tauren.” Illithias leans forward again. For a moment, Tarquin’s afraid that the deader’ll ask what Illi means by Scourge and then they’ll be right down the road to another clusterfuck, but as usual, Pill’s mind is elsewhere.
“I can tell you where to look, and who to look for, but I’m not going.” She thinks about it for a second. “Less Davien says I have to. And Ghaar, too!” It comforts Tarquin a bit to know that his opposite number in Noxilite has the same sort of stupid fucking troubles that he does, but only a bit.
“Awright. Awright.” He drums on the table, trying to stay leaned back and casual, trying to stay calm and collected and cold. “What if I’d a mage – a scryer, likes, a guid one – an’ I brought her ta the right, yeh ken, the right gen’ral area–” Calm, you stupid fuck. “Could yeh shew her wha’ ta look fir?”
“It’s a who to look for!” Corspilla barks, almost looking at him as she does so. He clenches his left hand into a fist and lets it go.
“Well, aye, but the Blackheart’s covered her eyes. But if yeh kin find a, a focus fir the Hollow, likes, or...I mean, fuck it, yeh ken the business better’n–” He’s interrupted by a long, long sigh, Corspilla putting in all the effort to collect breath she hardly needs just so she can push it out to tell him so he knows what an arse he is.
“No,” she says with what must be, to her, admirable patience, “Not Malkavet.”
He probably looks a little gobsmacked. “Then who?”
“The cat eater!” Corspilla explodes again, finger jabbing at the air, what would be her gaze coming dangerously close to actually looking him in the face. “Little craven bastard! Davien tried to help him and he tries to eat my cats instead.”
“Cat eater.” Tarquin repeats that numbly, and Illithias Hnnhhhs again, and he doesn’t need to guess at what that one means. The rottie is still ranting.
“I can find him! I’ve been watching him, in case he comes stealin’ back to Thunder Bluff with another sob story. Make Davien feel sorry for him again. Cat eater!” she practically shrieks. “Little liar! I’ll find him for you, I will.”
Tarquin looks over his shoulder at Illithias, who doesn’t actually need to say anything to ask the question Can I just split this crazy deader’s skull and let’s go home? He’s tempted – well, not really by the first bit, but he set out here to have a secret meeting with a Horde contact and now he’s listening to a crazy woman scream about cats.
But there he is, hook in his mouth, tugging it back up into his calmest, most soothing smile. “Yir a few steps aheid ay us, Corspilla. Goin’ ta need ta back up so’s we kin catch up. What’s yir, uh, cat eater ta do wi’ the Blackheart?”
“I just told you,” she hisses, no calmer. “Maggot. Maggot, dirty sneaking lying cat eater!”
“Maggot.” He repeats it to see if it makes any more sense in his mouth. It doesn’t. Corpsilla nods again, though, like he finally got it.
“A maggot?” Illithas asks, leaning closer. The clean side of her face is in the corner of his eye, sneering to match the ripped half. But she might just be a little curious.
“No, not a maggot!” Then Corspilla reaches into her dress and pulls out, well, of course it’s a maggot, because that’s the kind of night it is. Alive, apparently, probably just as healthy as you could ever hope for a maggot to be, fat and squirming in her palm. “This is a maggot! Very well-trained. Best of his bunch!”
The pride in her voice is the final mad capstone on it all. Tarquin couldn’t have stopped Illithias from punching the crazy deader, and wouldn’t have bothered, but the elf’s just as dazed by the whole thing as he is. “I, uh...of course.” She nods. Like it makes perfect sense.
The prize-winning maggot disappears back into Corspilla’s dress, with what other horrors he can’t imagine. This exchange seems to have calmed the dead woman some. “He’s Malk’s errand boy. Does whatever he says!”
There’s a moment, then, where his brain pinwheels wildly for purchase, going back and changing the meaning of everything he’s been hearing, and he catches up to the one-rottie-circus on display before him. Maybe Illithias is doing the same arithmetic, maybe she even gets there faster, but he’s the first one to talk. Like usual. “His...errand boy. Close ta him.”
Another nod, so enthusiastic he’s a little worried about her fragile neck. “And he eats cats!”
“Well.” He’s got his grin back on, the hook tugging him along and not hurting a bit, and he’s the king of all the fucking scheming bastards that there are, and he could kiss this dead thing. “I am masel’ fond ay cats. D’yeh like cats, Ashbough?”
Looking back, there’s a lopsided grin on Illithias’s face. If she didn’t get it before, she sure as fuck gets it now. “Fond of sabres, yes.”
“Big kitties!” chirps Pill. Illithias nods bemusedly, and the dead woman grins like they’re best friends. Tarquin sees a brightly colored hat in Illithias’s future.
“This Maggot seems like he’s needin’ a right bloody lesson, then!” He claps his hands together and slouches back, all indolence and ease, a white sickle of grin across his face. “Where is it yeh think we kin find ‘im?”
“He’s been in Silverpine and Hillsbrad, mostly. Sneakin’ around. Which is kinda odd really, cause it’s all...outdoorsy.” Corspilla’s face falls again. “But if he’s there, Malkavet has to be around there.”
“They stick close, huh?” She nods. It’s no matter. He’s not letting go of this one. You find a way. “Need a wey ta watch fir him, then. A scry, or a sentry-post – my people kin wait their chance.”
“Kinda dangerous for you, though.” Her concern’s almost touching. “Bitch prissy queen has her people all over there. Not a good place to be a live human.”
He shrugs. “Last night, I wis haverin’ oan at yir Thundermoon an’ Dukago ‘imself, weapons at hand, no’ five feet frae either. Sortay given up oan avoidin’ danger ay late.”
“Some of us never really bothered avoiding it in the first place,” offers Illithias. Corspilla frowns, as near as he can see, with the straps across her eyes and the general condition of her...of her.
“You’re one of those crazy ones, aren’t you?” Illithias lifts her eyebrow again. “I know people like you!” Pill snaps near on accusingly, and like that, there’s one way.
“Crazy? I’d say brave.” He shifts forward a little, smiles some more. “Like yir father.”
“Don’t you bring him into this!” Pill is almost looking at him, but then goes back to looking at her bemused chicken, one scrawny hand plucking at her nest of hair. “That’s just not fair.”
“Dinna mean t’offend, lass.” Tarquin gives her a cheery smile. “Only I kent the man, an’ proud ta stand wi’ him. I dinna ken but he’d say the same ay me.” He really has no idea what Jest would say about him now if he was still alive. Tarren Mill seems a thousand years ago, and his young self a stranger. But it was true that this woman’s father’d had less fear in him than a stone.
Pill is muttering, almost to herself. “I’m Corpsilla, not Elena, and I don’t want to hear about him!” Sulky, almost. Maybe he misjudged, but no matter – find another way.
“‘Course, ‘course. Corspilla yeh are.”
She folds her arms. “Fine, then. You’re all brave and shiny.” Still looking a long way away. He straightens up entirely, spreads his hands, and turns his eyes on her, shining with sincerity like a couple lamps.
“Truly, miss, I’m sorry. Dinna mean ta go – diggin’ anythin’ up.” Unfortunate choice of words, that, but what’re you going to do? At least Illi doesn’t laugh. “Only meant ta shew me respect. That’s all.” She mutters something, still sulking, but at least she’s not ranting. Nothing for it but to keep going. “So, then. Yeh find us that cat-eatin’ bastard?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Sure.” Tarquin can’t stop himself grinning.
“Let’s do it tonight, then. Na sense in waitin’.” Silverpine, Hillsbrad...and Geny said Shai wis in Lordaeron somewhere. “Yeh ken that auld watchtower, up Hillsbrad Fields? The yin iv’ry punter use’ta fight o’er like it wis any use?”
“Sure!” You can’t really read a rottie proper, especially not a crazy one, but it seems like her enthusiasm for bringing Maggot the Craven Eater of Cats to justice is outweighing however he pissed her off talking about her father. “But I gotta tell Davien.” He nods amiably. Why not? “Otherwise she gets mad and just says...Now sweetling. I don’t like Davien to be mad.”
“A dreadful fate,” Tarquin says solemnly. “So, say...four hours, at the auld watchtower.” He gets to his feet, legs slightly stiff from hunching. Been here longer than it felt like.
“The old watchtower. And will you bring the loomin’ elf?”
Illi answers for herself. “Wouldn’t want to miss it.” She’s got her own sort of fishhook, to be sure, and now it’s right in her lip with this poor fucker Maggot, whoever and whatever he is, up at the end of the line, and when she reels in it will be an ugly thing to see.
He dons his hat again, and tips it politely. “Thank yeh virra much fir the help, Corspilla.” He retrieves the orange sweater with appropriate care.
Pill surprises him, maybe both of them, by finally turning to look at him directly. “Anything to make Malkavet sorry for making fun of me.” Her lips curl into a smile to match his, and apparently, that’s what it is. Not really much for his clever words, appealing to her father, anything else he’d said. Maybe all he’d really had to do was sit there and wait for the poor nutter to talk herself ‘round to it.
Doesn’t much matter. “Och aye,” he says, tilting his head. “We will see, yeh an’ I, jus’ how sorry we can make the Blackheart.” She nods again, till her head’s about to come off her neck. “See yeh t’night, then.”
“Bye, coatrack elfy!” she calls after them, as Illithias follows him back out into the main room of the World’s End, leaving Corpsilla there with her chicken. It’s still a pisshole, and he doesn’t much want to be here. He’s the fucking Oathbreaker, and he’s just found a way to get it done after all. The whole place brings him down. He tugs a small purse out from under his coat and slaps it on the bar as he passes. Hasn’t bought a drink or anything the whole time. His meaning is clear.
He produces lights a cigarette immediately when they’re out in Shattrath’s wide open spaces. Didn’t want to risk pissing off the deader; some people got sensitive. “Well. That coulday gone a great deal worse, huh?”
Illithias moves a bit in front of him, watching the city warily, staying out of his smoke. “Aye. Went smooth, for what it’s worth.” The half of her mouth that still works pushes out in a mock pout. “Didn’t even need to hit it.”
“Lucky, that.” He looks down at the horrific orange sweater draped over his arm. “Wonder who this use’ta be?” Probably didn’t need to say that, but what the hell, Illi had a right to know.
“...who?
“Corspilla ‘morphs folk. Paladins, mos’ly, I recall. Morphs thim an’ shears thim while there’s wool ta take.” He takes a long drag on Bricu’s good tobacco. “If she’s in a guid mood, she lets thim go after. Never did hear if thir naked, or missin’ hair, or anythin’ after...” Illithias’s lip curls in disgust, and this Hnnhhhh is again, easy to interpret. “Aye, Illi, I kennit.”
“Demonshit insane deaders.” She’s not wrong, really. He turns and takes another drag, blows it out his nostrils, into the sprawling reaches of the Lower City.
“S’the world we live in, Ashbough.” He watches the smoke dissipate beyond what his eyes can see, joining the air of another world. Odd how common that all seems now.
“Don’t have to be,” Illithias answers readily. “Sayin’.”
“Aye.” He’s got nothing else. Still not wrong, for all her rage and hurt and shite bloody decisions; it doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t say it, because he doesn’t want her to actually go and try. But find a way is what he’s thinking, then, about the world they’re living in, maybe trying to make a little less shitty. Find a way.
At least, Tarquin hopes that’s what people are thinking as they head into the World’s End. It’s just as sad and shitty as he expected; he threads his way between two blood elves in tattered Scryers red, drinking with the determination of men who can’t wait to be passed out, and steps over the bulk of an ogre who’s beaten them there. Or maybe he’s dead. Who knows, who cares? “Gods, an’ I thought the Crows wis a shite place ta drink,” he grouses to Illithias, who doesn’t bother to answer. Apart from the ogre, they all get out of his way. Or more like, they see Illithias behind him and get out of her way fast enough to be convenient for him.
They find who they’re looking for at one of the sheltered boxes in the back. A hollow-eyed draenei woman dancing on a raised platform, wearing rings around her tendrils and a few scraps of gossamer, calls out to them on their way over. Tarquin gives her his best regretful smile and tips his hat. Illithias doesn’t even look. Then they cross into the back, where she’s sitting at a table, a wizened little bundle of sticks stuffed into a shapeless dress with a greasy crown of hair sticking in every direction, a bandage around her eyes, and a bright orange sweater on the table in front of her.
He gives Illi one last look back, a dozen warnings he devoutly hopes he hasn’t wasted in it, and then straightens his coat and walks in smile-first. Corspilla looks up at him with that skin-creeping eyeless stare. She’s got a chicken rooting around on the floor near her feet. “Hi!” she chirps, and then as Illithias comes in after him, “Who’s she?”
“Jus’ who I wis lookin’ fir.” Tarquin plucks his hat off and gives her a sweeping bow, getting a giggle out of her. “This is me associate, Miss Ashbough.” Miss Ashbough has to duck to get into the room, and nearly catches a bit of her shoulder-plates on something. If she had both her axes, she’d have to walk sideways like a crab, but Illi’s dressed for her idea of subtlety. “Mind if I sit?”
“Sure!” He crams his spindly frame into a chair, but Corspilla is still watching Illi as the latter leans up against the way. “Ooooooh, she looms. Linedan does that.” Tarquin checks. Illithias is surely looming, maybe even deliberately a little, but it’s mostly just a state of being.
“Consider thit a compliment, Illi. Linedan bein’ who he is.” Corspilla nods in agreement, and Illi just makes that growl-grunt-breathe sort of noise that means that she either has something to say but knows better, or has no idea what to say. Hnhhh is better than Don’t compare me to a fucking cow, dead thing, so Tarquin relaxes a little.
“She doesn’t say much,” observes Corspilla. The chicken clucks, possibly in agreement.
Illithias stares flatly at the dead woman, two and a half feet shorter and probably half her weight at best. “I’m not here for talk.”
“Whereas I,” Tarquin puts in hastily, gliding into the space between breaths, “Am here ta talk, an’ plenty fir the both ay us. Did our friend tell yeh what I wis lookin’ fir?” He can probably just say her name, but a professional’s got standards. Let the rottie start using names first.
“Yup.” Corspilla’s sitting at a slight angle to him; at first he thinks it’s so she can keep an eye on Illi, but far as he can tell, she’s just looking at a piece of furniture, or the chicken, occasionally as far up as his shoulder. Not his face. “Davien said a lot of things.” That was fast. “Oh! I knitted Ghost a sweater.”
“...the dog.” Tarquin’s used to keeping up with quicker minds than his, but usually he has half an idea where they’re going so’s he can fake it till he catches up. No idea at all where Pill’s going, or where she’s been. She holds up the sweater, orange as a ripe pumpkin, lips peeling back from her rotting teeth in a happy grin, and sure enough it’s made for something four-legged to wear. “Right, uh, yeh want me ta take it ta him?”
“Okay!” Corspilla hands it over and he takes it and folds it over the back of his chair, careful like it’s a holy relic.
Illi lifts her remaining eyebrow and leans down slightly. “Hnhhh. She’s demonshit insane, isn’t she?” the elf says in her people’s tongue. Tarquin lifts an eyebrow right back and shrugs. Illi’s right, of course, but that hardly matters. Shaila’s taken, Beltar’s been taken a while now, so he’s got to find a way. Whatever it takes.
He turns back before Corspilla can say any more about sweaters. “Did she say I wis lookin’ fir Malkavet Blackheart?” Not much reaction out of her, but then, hard to tell with that face. Most of it’s in the eyes, and the only thing in Pill’s eyes is a black strap that, now he looks at it, has some odd little scratches around it.
“Yeah. That jerk.” That’s about the kindest thing anyone might ever say about him, but Pill says it with enough venom behind it for a whole host of curses. All those little scratches. Like someone was clawing–
Tarquin steps back from that pit. “Yeh use’ta do some work fir him, aye? Back in the auld days?”
She sinks in her chair and nods reluctantly. “He’s mean,” she pronounces, a judge declaring sentence. “He, and all them were mean. ‘Cept for Davien.”
He waves it off like a fly. “Ah, dinna feel bad that yeh did. We all had shite bosses.” He hears another Hnnhhh from Illithias behind him, decidedly amused, and figures she can have that one for free. “But Davien’s solid.” The dead woman nods enthusiastically again. “And she says might be yeh can point me the right direction ta find the Blackheart, an’ where he does his work.”
“Mmmmaybe.” She pulls something edible-ish out of her dress and tosses it to the chicken, who pecks away at it. “I’ve heard people sayin’ they’ve seen him...I figured Ebon would’ve stabbed him by now.”
Illi perks up at that.“That’s the Tauren wench,” she says, her raspy voice with just a bit of excitement in it. Kind she mostly only gets about a good fight.
“Ebon Thundermoon?” Tarquin asks. “They dinna get along, huh?”
Corspilla scoffs. “Nobody likes him! Not even Teevi. Ebon’s pretty grouchy, too.” You get used to her voice, after a while, that mix of broken-throated deader raspiness and a loud brassy fishwife. Almost pleasant, really.
“Wee bit, sure. But she seemed tight wi’ the Blackheart last night. Curious, d’yeh no’ think, Illi?”
“Very curious, boss.” Illithias is a fucking pain in his arse sometimes, but she knows a cue when she hears one. He leans back in his chair, eyeing the dead woman.
Corpsilla is watching her chicken again. “Only time Ebon was okay with Malk was when Thorgrun was around.” That name rings a very quiet bell; he files it away to check later. They’re getting far afield.
“So then. Davien wis tellin’ me she heard oan a place called Blackmage Hollow.” The response is immediate; Pill straightens up as best she can and practically spits her response.
“BAH! That place.”
“Yeh kennit, then. Ken where ‘tis?” He ought to tread carefully, like you do with a nutter, but he’s got a fishhook in his lip and he’s not getting loose till it reels him in.
“Ummmm.” The dead woman demurs, to his immense frustration, not that he lets it show. He hopes. “Kinda. I kinda know where it is. And I bet Malkavet has been around there, too!”
“We should hope so.” Illi, grunting, shifting her weight. Maybe she’s on the same line. Maybe she goes through life with a fishhook in her lip, reeling her from one disaster to the next.
“Now fir all the marbles.” Tarquin lounges further in his seat, trying to give no hint of his tension. Just three old friends having a drink, never mind that one of ‘em’s dead and another’s trying her best to get killed and the third’s, well, he’s just not a very nice bloke. “Can yeh take me there?”
The bottom drops out of his stomach when Pill shakes her head. “I know kinda where it is and that dirty mean cat eater has been near there.” Cat eater, huh? What a true villain. “But I ain’t going anywhere near Malkavet! Uh-uh. No way. I ain’t that crazy.”
Not going to wriggle off the line that easy, of course. He smiles like silk, tunes up the old brogue a little, and starts to find a way. “Now, Corpsilla, d’yeh think I’m fool eno’ ta gang thence all lonely?” He thumbs over his shoulder at Illithias. “Go’ Miss Ashbough, do I no’? Yeh’d be safe’s if yeh wis a bairn, swaddled in cradle, rocked ta sleep.”
Pill looks Illithias up and down; Illi, knowing her bit again, just stands there. Looms. Doesn’t look much like she’s ever rocked anyone to sleep in her life. “Just one elf? She is pretty scary, but one? You got lotsa scary people!”
As he advised Illi earlier, Tarquin takes that as a compliment. “Jus’ the yin that they see. We’ll come mob-handed, miss, see if we dinna.” Truth be told, he’d expected convincing her to betray her own in the first place to be the hard part. He ought to have known better. Courage is a fair sight harder to find than disloyalty.
“I’m more than a match for some Scourge and their pet Tauren.” Illithias leans forward again. For a moment, Tarquin’s afraid that the deader’ll ask what Illi means by Scourge and then they’ll be right down the road to another clusterfuck, but as usual, Pill’s mind is elsewhere.
“I can tell you where to look, and who to look for, but I’m not going.” She thinks about it for a second. “Less Davien says I have to. And Ghaar, too!” It comforts Tarquin a bit to know that his opposite number in Noxilite has the same sort of stupid fucking troubles that he does, but only a bit.
“Awright. Awright.” He drums on the table, trying to stay leaned back and casual, trying to stay calm and collected and cold. “What if I’d a mage – a scryer, likes, a guid one – an’ I brought her ta the right, yeh ken, the right gen’ral area–” Calm, you stupid fuck. “Could yeh shew her wha’ ta look fir?”
“It’s a who to look for!” Corspilla barks, almost looking at him as she does so. He clenches his left hand into a fist and lets it go.
“Well, aye, but the Blackheart’s covered her eyes. But if yeh kin find a, a focus fir the Hollow, likes, or...I mean, fuck it, yeh ken the business better’n–” He’s interrupted by a long, long sigh, Corspilla putting in all the effort to collect breath she hardly needs just so she can push it out to tell him so he knows what an arse he is.
“No,” she says with what must be, to her, admirable patience, “Not Malkavet.”
He probably looks a little gobsmacked. “Then who?”
“The cat eater!” Corspilla explodes again, finger jabbing at the air, what would be her gaze coming dangerously close to actually looking him in the face. “Little craven bastard! Davien tried to help him and he tries to eat my cats instead.”
“Cat eater.” Tarquin repeats that numbly, and Illithias Hnnhhhs again, and he doesn’t need to guess at what that one means. The rottie is still ranting.
“I can find him! I’ve been watching him, in case he comes stealin’ back to Thunder Bluff with another sob story. Make Davien feel sorry for him again. Cat eater!” she practically shrieks. “Little liar! I’ll find him for you, I will.”
Tarquin looks over his shoulder at Illithias, who doesn’t actually need to say anything to ask the question Can I just split this crazy deader’s skull and let’s go home? He’s tempted – well, not really by the first bit, but he set out here to have a secret meeting with a Horde contact and now he’s listening to a crazy woman scream about cats.
But there he is, hook in his mouth, tugging it back up into his calmest, most soothing smile. “Yir a few steps aheid ay us, Corspilla. Goin’ ta need ta back up so’s we kin catch up. What’s yir, uh, cat eater ta do wi’ the Blackheart?”
“I just told you,” she hisses, no calmer. “Maggot. Maggot, dirty sneaking lying cat eater!”
“Maggot.” He repeats it to see if it makes any more sense in his mouth. It doesn’t. Corpsilla nods again, though, like he finally got it.
“A maggot?” Illithas asks, leaning closer. The clean side of her face is in the corner of his eye, sneering to match the ripped half. But she might just be a little curious.
“No, not a maggot!” Then Corspilla reaches into her dress and pulls out, well, of course it’s a maggot, because that’s the kind of night it is. Alive, apparently, probably just as healthy as you could ever hope for a maggot to be, fat and squirming in her palm. “This is a maggot! Very well-trained. Best of his bunch!”
The pride in her voice is the final mad capstone on it all. Tarquin couldn’t have stopped Illithias from punching the crazy deader, and wouldn’t have bothered, but the elf’s just as dazed by the whole thing as he is. “I, uh...of course.” She nods. Like it makes perfect sense.
The prize-winning maggot disappears back into Corspilla’s dress, with what other horrors he can’t imagine. This exchange seems to have calmed the dead woman some. “He’s Malk’s errand boy. Does whatever he says!”
There’s a moment, then, where his brain pinwheels wildly for purchase, going back and changing the meaning of everything he’s been hearing, and he catches up to the one-rottie-circus on display before him. Maybe Illithias is doing the same arithmetic, maybe she even gets there faster, but he’s the first one to talk. Like usual. “His...errand boy. Close ta him.”
Another nod, so enthusiastic he’s a little worried about her fragile neck. “And he eats cats!”
“Well.” He’s got his grin back on, the hook tugging him along and not hurting a bit, and he’s the king of all the fucking scheming bastards that there are, and he could kiss this dead thing. “I am masel’ fond ay cats. D’yeh like cats, Ashbough?”
Looking back, there’s a lopsided grin on Illithias’s face. If she didn’t get it before, she sure as fuck gets it now. “Fond of sabres, yes.”
“Big kitties!” chirps Pill. Illithias nods bemusedly, and the dead woman grins like they’re best friends. Tarquin sees a brightly colored hat in Illithias’s future.
“This Maggot seems like he’s needin’ a right bloody lesson, then!” He claps his hands together and slouches back, all indolence and ease, a white sickle of grin across his face. “Where is it yeh think we kin find ‘im?”
“He’s been in Silverpine and Hillsbrad, mostly. Sneakin’ around. Which is kinda odd really, cause it’s all...outdoorsy.” Corspilla’s face falls again. “But if he’s there, Malkavet has to be around there.”
“They stick close, huh?” She nods. It’s no matter. He’s not letting go of this one. You find a way. “Need a wey ta watch fir him, then. A scry, or a sentry-post – my people kin wait their chance.”
“Kinda dangerous for you, though.” Her concern’s almost touching. “Bitch prissy queen has her people all over there. Not a good place to be a live human.”
He shrugs. “Last night, I wis haverin’ oan at yir Thundermoon an’ Dukago ‘imself, weapons at hand, no’ five feet frae either. Sortay given up oan avoidin’ danger ay late.”
“Some of us never really bothered avoiding it in the first place,” offers Illithias. Corspilla frowns, as near as he can see, with the straps across her eyes and the general condition of her...of her.
“You’re one of those crazy ones, aren’t you?” Illithias lifts her eyebrow again. “I know people like you!” Pill snaps near on accusingly, and like that, there’s one way.
“Crazy? I’d say brave.” He shifts forward a little, smiles some more. “Like yir father.”
“Don’t you bring him into this!” Pill is almost looking at him, but then goes back to looking at her bemused chicken, one scrawny hand plucking at her nest of hair. “That’s just not fair.”
“Dinna mean t’offend, lass.” Tarquin gives her a cheery smile. “Only I kent the man, an’ proud ta stand wi’ him. I dinna ken but he’d say the same ay me.” He really has no idea what Jest would say about him now if he was still alive. Tarren Mill seems a thousand years ago, and his young self a stranger. But it was true that this woman’s father’d had less fear in him than a stone.
Pill is muttering, almost to herself. “I’m Corpsilla, not Elena, and I don’t want to hear about him!” Sulky, almost. Maybe he misjudged, but no matter – find another way.
“‘Course, ‘course. Corspilla yeh are.”
She folds her arms. “Fine, then. You’re all brave and shiny.” Still looking a long way away. He straightens up entirely, spreads his hands, and turns his eyes on her, shining with sincerity like a couple lamps.
“Truly, miss, I’m sorry. Dinna mean ta go – diggin’ anythin’ up.” Unfortunate choice of words, that, but what’re you going to do? At least Illi doesn’t laugh. “Only meant ta shew me respect. That’s all.” She mutters something, still sulking, but at least she’s not ranting. Nothing for it but to keep going. “So, then. Yeh find us that cat-eatin’ bastard?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Sure.” Tarquin can’t stop himself grinning.
“Let’s do it tonight, then. Na sense in waitin’.” Silverpine, Hillsbrad...and Geny said Shai wis in Lordaeron somewhere. “Yeh ken that auld watchtower, up Hillsbrad Fields? The yin iv’ry punter use’ta fight o’er like it wis any use?”
“Sure!” You can’t really read a rottie proper, especially not a crazy one, but it seems like her enthusiasm for bringing Maggot the Craven Eater of Cats to justice is outweighing however he pissed her off talking about her father. “But I gotta tell Davien.” He nods amiably. Why not? “Otherwise she gets mad and just says...Now sweetling. I don’t like Davien to be mad.”
“A dreadful fate,” Tarquin says solemnly. “So, say...four hours, at the auld watchtower.” He gets to his feet, legs slightly stiff from hunching. Been here longer than it felt like.
“The old watchtower. And will you bring the loomin’ elf?”
Illi answers for herself. “Wouldn’t want to miss it.” She’s got her own sort of fishhook, to be sure, and now it’s right in her lip with this poor fucker Maggot, whoever and whatever he is, up at the end of the line, and when she reels in it will be an ugly thing to see.
He dons his hat again, and tips it politely. “Thank yeh virra much fir the help, Corspilla.” He retrieves the orange sweater with appropriate care.
Pill surprises him, maybe both of them, by finally turning to look at him directly. “Anything to make Malkavet sorry for making fun of me.” Her lips curl into a smile to match his, and apparently, that’s what it is. Not really much for his clever words, appealing to her father, anything else he’d said. Maybe all he’d really had to do was sit there and wait for the poor nutter to talk herself ‘round to it.
Doesn’t much matter. “Och aye,” he says, tilting his head. “We will see, yeh an’ I, jus’ how sorry we can make the Blackheart.” She nods again, till her head’s about to come off her neck. “See yeh t’night, then.”
“Bye, coatrack elfy!” she calls after them, as Illithias follows him back out into the main room of the World’s End, leaving Corpsilla there with her chicken. It’s still a pisshole, and he doesn’t much want to be here. He’s the fucking Oathbreaker, and he’s just found a way to get it done after all. The whole place brings him down. He tugs a small purse out from under his coat and slaps it on the bar as he passes. Hasn’t bought a drink or anything the whole time. His meaning is clear.
He produces lights a cigarette immediately when they’re out in Shattrath’s wide open spaces. Didn’t want to risk pissing off the deader; some people got sensitive. “Well. That coulday gone a great deal worse, huh?”
Illithias moves a bit in front of him, watching the city warily, staying out of his smoke. “Aye. Went smooth, for what it’s worth.” The half of her mouth that still works pushes out in a mock pout. “Didn’t even need to hit it.”
“Lucky, that.” He looks down at the horrific orange sweater draped over his arm. “Wonder who this use’ta be?” Probably didn’t need to say that, but what the hell, Illi had a right to know.
“...who?
“Corspilla ‘morphs folk. Paladins, mos’ly, I recall. Morphs thim an’ shears thim while there’s wool ta take.” He takes a long drag on Bricu’s good tobacco. “If she’s in a guid mood, she lets thim go after. Never did hear if thir naked, or missin’ hair, or anythin’ after...” Illithias’s lip curls in disgust, and this Hnnhhhh is again, easy to interpret. “Aye, Illi, I kennit.”
“Demonshit insane deaders.” She’s not wrong, really. He turns and takes another drag, blows it out his nostrils, into the sprawling reaches of the Lower City.
“S’the world we live in, Ashbough.” He watches the smoke dissipate beyond what his eyes can see, joining the air of another world. Odd how common that all seems now.
“Don’t have to be,” Illithias answers readily. “Sayin’.”
“Aye.” He’s got nothing else. Still not wrong, for all her rage and hurt and shite bloody decisions; it doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t say it, because he doesn’t want her to actually go and try. But find a way is what he’s thinking, then, about the world they’re living in, maybe trying to make a little less shitty. Find a way.