As the bells of the temple begin to ring, announcing the birth of the new year, Daryle begins searching the offices on the ground floor of the Citadel. She finds all the doors locked, so she feels confident Duke Mosley's men must have gone to the upper level to ensure the Lady Commander was dead. She moves up to the second floor.
Meanwhile, Gerald heals himself using a potion of healing he had smuggled inside. He winces a little at the smell, but quaffs it anyway. Feeling better, he also decides to head upstairs, and heads straight to the fourth floor.
Darelle, in the Lady Commander's room, sees the army outside the walls continues to move. Drovust asks Mordel what her next move should be, and he advises her that Duke Mosley has begun his final move, but it is not yet time to intervene.
Arriving on the landing, Gerald notices two Hellknights standing strangely still. He observes the situation for a few minutes but realizes that the Hellknights must be paralyzed. He climbs behind the nearest one and puts a blindfold on him. By doing so, however, Gerald breaks the spell. The Hellknight bites his finger and holds him hostage. Moving forward with a dagger pressed hard under Gerald's chin, the Hellknight pushes the sorcerer forward until he is in striking distance and he throws his knife at one of the two guardsmen by the Lady Commander's door. Gerald trips the man behinds him but ends up underneath him.
Hearing the commotion outside, Darelle removes her skirt and charges out of the Commander's room. A brief but bloody battle ensues, and the Coopers are triumphant. Daryle comes charging up the stairs but finds the situation under control. Mosley's assassins are quickly dispatched. The Coopers return downstairs, but Daryle ties the door to the 2nd floor.
Duke Mosley, having returned from the wall, is once again in the Receiving Hall surrounded by his men when the Coopers return to the ground floor. He tells the ladies to move along, but he takes Gerald with him to the bathroom to wash off some of the demon goo off the sorcerer. Coming out of the restroom, he invites Gerald to accompany him to the treasury to account for the gold that might be missing. He tells the sorcerer that he finds it odd that during a green storm and a battle someone would have been able to physically break through the defenses of the treasury, buried deep under the Citadel, and steal more than 600,000 crowns without being noticed. The Duke tells Gerald he believes it was a set-up from the inside, and he wants to confirm his opinion.
Daryle and Darelle are being pressed to leave the Citadel, but they grab a hold of a drunken Bolgur and decide to carry the stinking half-orc down to the prison floor to find Roscoe's new offices. Mosley's men let them take the drunkard downstairs. In their brother's office they discover the Book of Warrants, that include the warrants served on all the prisoners. They notice that the prison cells are all empty, and that Thorne has successfully escaped. Darelle takes Thorne's warrant and burns it. She then notices that there are no warrant, or even a prisoner file, on Dr. Mordel. It's as if there was no reason for him to be here in the first place.
Daryle decides they must rescue Gerald, or at least follow them to the treasury. Darelle wakens Bolgur, who leads them back to the first basement floor and to an intersection. Unsure of himself, he heads in one direction, while the Coopers head in the other. Fortunately for Daryle and Darelle, their keen ears hear the sounds of a wench coming from Bolgur's hallway, and they retrace their step. They find the sound coming from behind a locked door. They barricade the door from the outside and wait.
Inside the room Duke Mosley, Gerald and the Duke's men are heading down a large platform, more than a hundred feet below the sewers and the base of the Citadel. They arrive in a large antechamber with two large iron-plated doors guarding the way. The doors radiate magic and Gerald is quickly able to determine that several guarding spells have been placed to protect the treasury. The Duke politely asks Gerald to open the door, but the sorcerer declines, finding reason after reason to allow the Duke to do the deed himself. Unfortunately, this is a battle of wits that Gerald cannot win, and, in his last desperate gambit Gerald tells the Duke that only a ranking Hellknight could open the door without triggering the trap. The Duke commissions Gerald on the spot, offering him the grade of Signifier of the Hellknights. Unable to come up with another delay, Gerald comes up with what he thinks is a clever plan. He triggers one of the traps, a fireball spell, but at the same time he casts one of his own and sends both of them towards Mosley and the rest of the group, knowing that he will most likely suffer terribly. And indeed he does. But as he falls towards unconsciousness, he notices four of the Duke's seven men collapse to the ground, crisply burned. The remaining three appear grievously wounded. To his amazement, however, the Duke look as freshly pressed in his white uniform as he did when he first walked in the Receiving Hall.
Daryle and Darelle wait a while by the door when they finally hear the winch start again. Soon, the sounds of people behind the door can be heard. There is a short struggle with the barricaded door, and then a hush. Suddenly, the wall next to the door begins dripping, and it turns into mud. A hand sticks out, then another, and soon there is a rough doorway. One of Mosley's badly burned man steps through. Daryle quickly dispatches him. Duke Mosley steps through next. Daryle shoots a few arrows at the Duke, two of which hits. But he then rubs his arm and a large fireball discharges, and both Coopers are hit. Mosley's remaining swordsmen charge the sisters, and a fight ensues. Mosley, meanwhile, hangs back, a few small blood stains slowly spreading on his otherwise immaculate uniform.
The Coopers manage to slay one of the swordsmen, but a stalemate is quickly reached, with neither the swordsman nor the sisters able to triumph over the others. Duke Mosley then proposes a truce. He tells the Coopers he is neither after the Hellknight treasury nor does he wish to become Fort Inevitable's master. How is it, he asks the Coopers, that he would know so much about the comings and goings in the area without a spy? He reveals that he has in fact two independent spies who are not aware of each other. He's willing to make a deal with the Coopers to end this stalemate. If they leave the Citadel now, the Duke will go about his business, and he guarantees their safety and that of Gerald and Roscoe. In fact, Roscoe will be appointed Commander of Fort Inevitable. When questioned about Thorne, he tells them there is nothing he can do for the thief. Daryle tells Mosley that she needs a token of good will, and Mosley agrees to reveal that one of his spies is Maralictor Wirt. Daryle realizes that she's the only one who had told them about the thief of the Hellknight treasure. Perhaps they had been set up after all.
After conferring with each other, the Coopers agree to Mosley's terms, but not before they retrieve Gerald from the treasury room. Soon thereafter, all of the Coopers exit the Citadel and retire to Shadowborn Manor.
Abadius 2, 4712
After a restless night, Gerald leaves Shadowborn Manor and heads back to Fort Inevitable to meet with Duke Mosley, who had previously invited him for breakfast. The Duke is enchanted to see him. He tells Gerald that the matter has been resolved, and that he will depart with his army in the afternoon, after the changing of the guard ceremony. Later in the afternoon, Audara Drovust will also depart Fort Inevitable, along with the usual contingent of Hellknights returning to Cheliax. Gerald realizes that the Lady Commander is about to depart with a very large treasure, and there is nothing they can do about it. He does request a letter certifying his commissioning as a Hellknight officer. Duke Mosley laughs and gives this letter to Gerald, certifying his appointment as a Signifier.
Hellknights present themselves to Shadowborn Manor and deliver invitations for the Coopers to attend the Changing of the Guard ceremony where they will be awarded the receive the Second Level of the Order of the Crow. The Coopers respectfully decline, citing ill health.
Over the next few days, Daryle spends some time hunting, while Darelle returns to visit Mother Holworth. She catches up on the news from Fort Inevitable. Mother Holworth tells her that things have relaxed a little in the area. Taxes were not due until the 2nd instead of the 1st of the quarter. Both Mosley and Drovust have departed, and the garrison is now down to about 1,000 men.
The Coopers head back to Fort Inevitable to pay their taxes and the interest on the late payment. Gerald attempts to convince the Tax Collector that, because of his filial relationship with Roscoe, the charges should be waived. The Tax Collector chuckles and refuses. The Coopers then withdraw money from the bank so they can pay Captain Rémi, when, in the next few days, he returns to Fort Inevitable to collect his fee for transporting them away from Razmiran.
With this first year now over with, the Coopers are faced with five remaining questions:
- Who is Karlyle the Butcher?
- What about Greenhide?
- What's Abernard up to?
- What is Mordel's role?
- What are the green storms and what causes them?
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