NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: Adventures of the Creeping Bam (BOOK 2: One Cold Trail)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: ART

"What d'you reckon then?" Kesla speaks in low, hushed tones, and I get where she's coming from, this is a hell of a moment. She's acting like she's working with a particularly skittish horse, and that's not too far off what this actually is, because we're dealing with the unknown. 'Least where Shay's coming from ...

She doesn't say anything, far as I can tell she never even heard her. She stays where she is on the top step, her shadow not spreading far over the beach below, not at this time ... but it's clear to me now that it ain't the sand she's looking at, probably not even the lapping breakers as high tide rolls in. No, I know what she's looking at right now. Her eyes are locked on that vast, endless, unbroken blue horizon.

It's a good day, not too warm by Untermer standards but given that it's significantly warmer than Hocknar this time o' year, the others have deferred to the heat, Shay included. Those who usually wear heavy coats have bundled 'em up in Yeslee's bag for safe keeping, but at least this far below the river nobody bats much of an eye at all the steel this has revealed to the elements. Shay in particular's shed a lot of layers, but while Kesla's lost her big duster and tunic now she kept her jack-of-plates on in deference to maintaining some armour, just in case shit were to go down again.

That said, it does look a little off with the rest of her gear. It's a garment that's really designed to be worn under other clothes, essentially a vest of layered, quilted linen with small pieces of steel plate woven in-between to stop stabby blades from ruining her day. It's also a striking cream colour, which doesn't at all match the dark buckskin of her loose britches, leather bracers and strappy fighter's boots ... although it does look very interesting indeed worn over her ubiquitous loose-fitting, poofy-sleeved white linen shirt. When she lost her coat and tunic to reveal it earlier I wasn't the only one of the group who had to work on stifling a near-overpowering urge to laugh my arse off, but I managed to cut short of giving her shit over it. Reckon the brief look of hot-eyed murder she cast my way in particular probably helped with that, anyway.

I still reckon she looks a little like she's on her way to a fencing match , mind. 'Specially with her sword still strapped at her hip, although the effect's somewhat spoiled by her handaxes and a few choice knives belted about her too. More than anything else she just looks like a walking threat right now, though I s'pose that ain't all the way a bad thing, 'specially given the ground we're covering today.

We slept well in the temple, which took me a little by surprise once I thought about it some. Deferring on the offer of actual rooms, we instead opted to camp out in the lounge, so by the time Kesla and the others who left to interrogate our prisoner returned more than one of our ever-growing group had fallen asleep on the couches. So we shoved together as much of the furniture as we could, bolstered by warm fur blankets provided by mindful attendants, and settled in for the night. Yeslee, being Yes, preferred to sleep on the floor, but then I never expected anything else from her, while the goblin, Brung, was happier curled up in front of the fireplace anyway. Reckon a bellyful of overlarge, thick warm roast beef sandwiches and some impressively strong ale helped us along, but then we were all proper tired by the time the lamps were turned down and most of the candles extinguished.

There was fresh bacon, eggs, sausages, fried tomatoes and piping hot baking powder biscuits ready for us when we started to stir in the morning, and I'll admit I stuffed my face 'til my guts were fit to burst seeing it all laid out like that. We finally discussed what the others had learned from the boy then, since everybody was awake again, and after some deliberation decided on what, given the slim lead we actually had, our next move should be. So once we were all ready to go, we headed for the docks.

We've spent the morning touring the tightly-packed, slightly salt air-rotted streets clustered around the city's massive crescent harbour, slipping between taverns and shops in search of every tattooist we can find. Given this is the territorial stomping ground of the many thousands of sailors, traders, merchants, smugglers and sellswords who frequent the port all-year-round there's a lot. They're a superstitious lot who like to have their litanies and mantras to various patron gods inked into their flesh so they don't have to waste precious breath praying in an emergency, it's one of the biggest growth industries in all of Untermer. Granted it's the real talented old pros who really do the biggest, briskest business, but even the hacks seem to scrape in plenty o' coin to get by every year. So there's dozens of the places to go through.