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Chapter 23: Trask wakes up in his office
Tuesday, July 16, 2120
Marshall Henderson Trask woke up on the cold stone floor of his office with his body in agonizing pain and the faint sound of yelling coming from outside the building.
The angry crowd had left when the rain started but they must have come back again.
His muscles screamed from the unexpected amount of exercise the day before. He missed his featherbed and his bed warmer and the fire that Petronilla would light for him every night.
He rolled over, so that he was now looking at the wall of cabinets and shelves behind his desk. There was a framed sword hanging at the top of the wall, just below the ceiling, inherited from the room’s former occupant. So it hadn’t fallen on the floor, and he hadn’t been sleeping on it all night. It just felt like he’d been stabbed in the back repeatedly, though he hadn’t actually been.
At first, when he turned in the night before, he’d tried to push two chairs together into a makeshift bed. But when he turned slightly to relieve pressure on his hip the chairs slid apart and dumped him on the floor. He finally wound up making a nest for himself in a bed of paperwork, with only prisoner blankets for warmth and Osgar’s rolled-up spare cloak for a pillow.
Now what he needed was a hot bowl of porridge and a deep tissue massage.
Using first his chair, then his desk for support, Trask lumbered to his feet and stumbled to the water closet at the back of the building. Like all grid-built facilities, the chamber was connected to the Krim disposal system. In other words, the toilet was just a seat above an infinite drop to the epistemological darkness below Krim. This was not a toilet you’d want to drop your keys or glasses in. Not that any toilet was, Trask thought, splashing cold water on his face.
Speaking of keys…
By the time Trask had collected himself, discovered that Osgar wasn’t in yet, and made it back to the front of the building, Joe had arrived and seated himself on the uncomfortable couch in the entry. As a professional, he had found a way to get comfortable on it anyway and was leaning back, his legs stretched out in front of him, one arm slung against the backrest.
“Some crowd out there,” he said.
“Is the griefer back?”
“No, they want the reward,” said Joe. “But Osgar’s not here yet to make his official announcement.”
“Why don’t you pop around the corner and fetch a spare set of clothes from my rooms.” Trask reached for his keys but remembered once again he didn’t have them any more. Or a pocket. “Get Petronilla to let you in.”
Joe frowned. Petronilla was known to have a temper. Still, Trask expected his guards to have courage in the face of adversity. Well, he did have a second guard now, didn’t he?
“Tell her that if she doesn’t, you’ll come back with Matilda.”
“That’ll do it.” Joe rose fluidly to his feet, clearly not cramped up from a night sleeping on a stone floor.
“And pick up some hot porridge and a tisane on your way back,” Trask ordered.
“Should I tell them its for you, so I get a discount?” Joe asked.
“No!” Trask paused. “I mean, that wouldn’t be right. I’ll pay you back.”
“Sure. I’ll just see myself out through the back door.”
How bad was the crowd, that Joe would rather go through the alley? Trask opened the chamber’s front door and peered out.
A roar went up when someone in the crowd spotted the movement.
“I got the griefer!” yelled a mercenary, or maybe an adventurer, or maybe a cook big on self-defense. No, it was Gorehair. And he was holding up a severed head.
Trask closed his eyes and swallowed. The head’s eyes were still open. It had looked straight at him. How long did the brain continue to function after a head was cut off?
“No, I’ve got the real griefer!” someone else yelled.
“That’s not the griefer, that’s the guy you cheated at cards last night!”
“No, you cheated!”
Trask opened his eyes again. Two adventurers were swinging severed heads around by the hair, trying to hit each other.
Trask slammed the door, made sure it was bolted tight, and fled to his office. He had some emergency biscuits and a bottle of sack in a drawer, and his spirits needed reinforcement.
By the time Osgar arrived about an hour or so later, the crowd had swelled in size and, from the roar coming in through Trask’s un-insulated windows, in anger. Trask had already had his breakfast and gotten dressed, thanks to Joe’s efforts.
Like Joe, Osgar used the back door instead of the front.
“It’s a nightmare,” Osgar said, leaning against the door jamb. “Word went around that one of the griefers was dressed in a default assassin outfit, so they’re going after all the noobs. There are a lot of severed heads out there. They must have heard about the bounty.”
“Good thing we haven’t put up the posters yet, or we’d have ten times as many,” said Trask.
“I can’t even imagine what all those people are doing to my shrubbery.”
“Maybe the bounty wasn’t a good idea,” Trask said.
Osgar nodded. “You’re not the only one who thinks that. I just came from the Tuesday merchant breakfast and people were furious. Gully Labs sent a flunky to give us a quick update on the Thursday board meeting agenda, and I convinced him to rescind the bounty for the griefer’s head.”
“Are you going to go outside and tell them?” Trask gestured in the direction of the front entrance.
“God no, they’ll kill me,” said Osgar. “You do it.”
Trask paled.
“No, they’ll rip you apart limb to limb,” said Osgar. “Maybe Joe?”
“I can’t see him facing down that whole mob,” said Trask. “We should wait for…”
“Matilda,” said Osgar. “Perfect.”
They stood silently for a few seconds. Trask to ignore the sound of yelling coming in through his badly-insulated window. The crowd seemed to have started chanting something.
“So… about that merchant meeting,” Trask said.
“Yes, the meeting,” said Osgar “I was hoping you’d be there to give an update.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Trask said. And he was sorry. The King’s Arms always put out a nice spread in their private dining room. It was on the second floor, above the bar, overlooking the central plaza. Last week, they’d had smoked fish, toasted muffins with butter, quince marmalade, sweet tarts, and mince pies. “There was a fire at the newspaper building and I was here all night.”
“One of the other merchants mentioned the fire,” said Osgar. “We asked Willie for more fire prevention measures, better building materials, fire code enforcement. Fire codes. He said he’d pass it up along up the chain, but, well, you know…”
Trask knew. As a low-level grid employee, William Lockton was usually stuck with all the most unpleasant tasks, like explaining to merchants that their import-export license applications were rejected. He couldn’t be expected to convince the grid’s stubborn owner to allow changes in something as core to the grid’s look and feel as the architecture of its buildings. Wooden houses and thatched roofs and narrow streets weren’t just historical but also looked cool, and that was that. Had Gully never heard of the Great London Fire of 1666?
“We also asked him about the backlog of import and export requests,” Osgar added.
“Any updates? The merchants have been hounding me about that.”
Osgar shook his head. “They’re with the board, and you know what that means.”
Trask nodded. The board of directors of Krim’s parent company–Gully Labs–was a black hole of bureaucratic inefficiency.
“But we did get an update about the new investors,” Osgar continued. “I still don’t think it’s going to go anywhere–we’ve all heard the promises before–but Willie says they’ve got three solid options and the board is in fact going to vote to go with one of them on Thursday.”
“Are any of the options any good?” Trask asked.
Osgar shrugged. “Maybe the investment fund. The other two want to use Krim to help bring dead people back to life, which doesn’t make sense to any of us. Who’d want to bring their great-grandmother to Krim after she’s revived? What if she gets decapitated? There are so many nice historical reenactment grids out there. I’m not talking about the war reenactors but all those living history museum worlds.”
“Or they could just open their own grid,” said Trask. He looked out the window again. The crowd of headhunters had swollen over the past hour. They’d need to do something about that, but he wasn’t about to go out and face a bunch of angry people holding severed heads. “Maybe the griefer is just trying to drive Lifeworks away. All this violence against noncombatants has to be giving them second thoughts.”
“In that case, they’d be doing us a favor,” Osgar said. “Though I don’t see what burning down the newspaper building would get them. And if Krim goes out of business because all the merchants and creators leave…” He shook his head.
Trask stepped away from the window. “What about that investment fund?”
“It’s some group that specializes in identifying small virtual worlds on the brink of growth.”
Trask snorted.
“I’m just passing along what Willie told us. He says he ran a background check and they’re legit. They must see something in Krim that nobody else does.” Osgar paused. “Or they’re just placing a bunch of random bets in undervalued assets.”
Trask waved his hand towards the window. “I’d guess that we’re extremely undervalued right now.”
“Actually, you’d be surprised,” said Osgar. “Apparently, word has spread out in the real world about all the griefing and the beheadings and now everyone is headed over here out of morbid curiosity.” He walked around Trask and looked out the window himself. “Looks like we’ve got some protesters, too, with signs.”
“Humanists, again?”
Osgar shook his head. “I don’t see any white robes.”
Maybe they took them off, Trask thought, after realizing how hard they were to keep clean on Krim.
“Anyway, that’s all Willie said.” Osgar wandered over to Trask’s murder board.
“There was something else Lockton told me yesterday,” said Trask. “He said that Krim has a protected legal status. That it’s grandfathered in. What does that mean?”
“It means we’re the only grid left without a virtual interface,” said Osgar. “Haven’t you noticed that you haven’t been getting any real-world messages while here?”
“I noticed,” Trask said. It was one of the things that he liked most about being on Krim. It was peaceful inside his head. “I didn’t know Krim was the only one.” He vaguely remembered it being a common thing in virtual gaming worlds, but he wasn’t much of a gamer back when he was alive in the old biological way. And after his accident, he’d visited fewer than a dozen other worlds before settling on Krim.
“There used to be a lot of basic-bio grids,” said Osgar. “No interface at all. You go in-world and you might as well be completely off-line. But now all new grids have to have a modern communication option of some kind.”
“So what happened to the other grids?”
“Some simply upgraded their software, and the new upgrades had to comply with the new laws. Others just went out of business for whatever reason. And, of course, Olaf’s Own…” Osgar trailed off.
“I don’t like the way that everything is happening all at once,” Trask interrupted before Osgar could start reminiscing. “The attacks on the tourists. The fire. All the new investors. I’m getting the feeling that something is going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about.”
Osgar tapped on one of the pieces of paper on the murder board. “That’s a lot of potential suspects.” He squinted at the name of the top suspect, currently Vorgath Steelhand, Trask’s predecessor. Trask had no particular reason for putting him at the top of the list, since there was no evidence one way or the other, but the guy just creeped him out.
Trask nodded. Then the roar of the crowd picked up and both he and Osgar turned towards the window.
“They’re getting angrier,” Osgar said. “We’ll need to do something.” He looked at Trask.
Why was he looking at Trask?
Ah, right.
“As the director of security,” Trask began, but before he could think of something he could do, they heard the back door open and slam shut.
“Good morning, boys,” said Matilda, poking her head in from the hallway “It’s my first full official day, so I brought mulled wine and donuts.” She raised two paper sacks.
Trask refrained from pointing out that donuts were not historically accurate and edged behind his desk. Not that it would stop Matilda from killing him if she had the urge. But then she turned towards the employee break room and Osgar followed her, so Trask girded up his nerves and followed after.
Joe, with a keen sense for donuts, beat them both there.
Osgar waited until Matilda had a donut in each hand before he asked, “So, I guess you saw the mob outside?”
“Yup,” she said. “I didn’t have enough donuts for everyone, so I came back in through the back door. Nice crop of heads.”
“Yeah, about that,” Trask said, then edged behind Joe.
“The administration rescinded the bounty,” said Osgar. “And, in retrospect, it was a bad idea from the start.”
Matilda, mouth full of donut, mumbled something that could have been, “I could have told you that.”
“But I did tell you guys to spread the word that there would be a bounty,” he said. “So we owe them something.”
“But only if they caught the actual griefer,” said Trask.
“Right,” said Osgar. “We need proof. Like, they have to have caught them in the act.”
“And have witnesses,” added Trask.
Matilda swallowed, said, “Got it,” and took another bite of her donut.
“And no more new heads,” said Osgar.
“Or other body parts,” Trask added.
“Or entire bodies.”
Osgar and Trask looked at her, and she looked back, slowly chewing.
Osgar took a step back towards the door. “Anyway, we were hoping that, with the angry mob and all…”
“You need security,” Matilda said, mouth still full of donut.
“Yes, if you could hold them off long enough for us to make the announcement,” Osgar said. “We don’t expect you to do battle with the whole mob by yourself.”
“Why not?” Matilda dropped the other donut and wiped crumbs from her face. “It sounds like fun.” She glanced at Joe and grinned. “This is exactly the kind of thing I signed up for!”
Chapter 34: Too many heads
Finally dressed in fresh clothes, fed, and with a slight buzz from the mulled wine, Trask stood slightly to the right of Osgar on the steps of the chamber. He adjusted his badge, making sure it was clearly visible to the crowd, while Joe and Matilda pushed everyone back a few feet. Most were holding sacks, presumably filled with freshly severed human heads. A few had the heads mounted on pikes and were holding them high up. Some of the dead eyes were open, staring into the distance, or, worse yet, looking down on everyone with reproach. One of the fighters near the front of the crowd was holding a head by its hair and it slipped out of his grasp and rolled across the cobblestones. Trask edged back a few inches.
Behind the mob of murderers stood three lonely protesters. They didn’t look like Humanists. If Trask had to guess, they were starving artists, judging by their gaunt faces and splatters of paint on their clothes. They were also holding a hand-painted sign above their heads, which said “Justice for Thomasin.”
Trask briefly wondered what happened to Thomasin, but decided he would deal with that later, if the mob didn’t tear him limb from limb. He grasped his badge tightly.
Osgar raised his arms to get the crow’s attention. “Yes, there was a hundred gold bounty for the griefers’ heads,” he said.
The crowd cheered.
“But the grid administration just rescinded the bounty.”
The crowd roared and Osgar held up one hand.
“But we will honor the offer, for those who are already here.”
The crowd cheered again.
“But these heads can’t all belong to the griefers.”
The crowd hissed, and the fighters holding the pikes banged them against the cobblestones, making the heads bob in the air above them.
Trask flinched but Osgar continued on as if nothing was amiss. The man was completely unflappable in the face of Krim’s insanity.
“Before you can receive the bounty, we need proof that you do, in fact, get the griefer. We will need a statement from you about the circumstances in which you found them,” said Osgar. “Were they involved in any griefing activities at the time you found them? And do you have any witnesses to corroborate this? We will be cross-referencing your statements with other reports we have received, so please be as complete and accurate as possible. We will also be confirming that you properly disposed of the rest of the body. If not, you will incur a fine for littering.”
The crowd mumbled unpleasantly. Trask heard one fighter say, “I told you the game was rigged.”
“So now I’d like you all to line up in an orderly fashion,” Osgar said. “We don’t want to be blocking traffic and impeding city commerce. When it’s your turn, you will provide your name and address, your statement, and the names and addresses of your witnesses. We will contact you if, and only if, we are able to confirm your account of events.”
With a roar of frustration, one of the fighters swung the severed head he was holding and launched it into the air. It hit the wall of the chamber, bounced off the top of a window shutter, and fell on the sidewalk between two other fighters, who stepped back just in time to avoid it.
“I saw that, Tiny Timmy,” said Osgar. “If you don’t pick up your head and dispose of it properly, you will be fined.”
Tiny Timmy grumbled but pushed his way through the crowd and picked up the head, now battered and unrecognizable. It could have belonged to a default assassin avatar seventeen, Trask thought. Or it could just as well have been five or nine or even one of the many non-assassin default avatars available to noobs.
“It will take us a few minutes to get set up, so I suggest that you form an orderly line in that direction.” Osgar pointed south along Banking Street, away from the city center. When the crowd began shuffling around, he turned and led the way back into the building.
“Matilda, you can take notes,” Osgar said, then glanced at Matilda, paused briefly, and corrected himself. “Joe, you take notes. Matilda, you can stand guard and make sure everyone behaves themselves. There’s a spare card table in the back you guys can use.”
“What do we do with the heads?” Joe asked.
“Write down a description and sign and date the attestation,” Osgar said. “Then ask the fighter to properly dispose of the object in the nearest hygienic disposal facility. That would be the trash chute out back.”
“There were what, twelve, fifteen heads out there?” Trask shook his head. “That’s a lot of dead noobs.”
“I counted twenty-three,” said Matilda.
“Lockton’s going to be all over us,” said Trask.
“Never mind Lockton,” said Osgar. “I bet Binkie — no, Gully — is going to throw a fit.”
“Why would the grid’s owner care?” Matilda asked.
“The board’s been talking to potential investors,” said Trask. “The vote is two days from now, and decapitating noobs is going to drag down the size of the investment. Or even scare off the investors altogether.”
“Why does Krim need more investors?” asked Matilda.
Osgar waved his hand. “Oh, the usual. A little more money will let the grid run marketing campaigns, attract new users, bring in more content creators. Maybe they’ll expand the land area. There’s talk of adding a new continent.”
“One that has coffee, tobacco, and potatoes,” said Trask.
“You mean, like north and south America?” Matilda asked.
“Well, a version, at least.” Osgar said. “Once word got out that Krim had a new continent somewhere, we’d probably see a lot of interest from people in finding it. The ship building industry alone would boom. They’re already talking about putting in a bigger commercial gate at the harbor, one big enough for an entire ship to pass through.”
“So this is important for the grid,” Joe said. “Really important.” He paused. “I’ll get the table.” He marched off, resolute.
Matilda shrugged. She was on Krim for reasons of her own, Trask thought. Reasons that he didn’t quite understand, but they had to do with killing people. Little details like the lack of coffee didn’t seem to bother her much.
Osgar grabbed one of the donuts, gestured at Trask to follow him and went back to Trask’s office.
“Why have Joe take notes?” Trask asked, closing the door behind him. “His handwriting is atrocious. We won’t be able to tell who to pay the bounties out to… ah, never mind.”
“So. Show me what you’ve got,” Osgar said, gesturing at the murder board with the donut. “I heard a lot of rumors on the way over this morning.”
“Three possibilities.” Trask tapped on a piece of paper with an unreadable scribble on it. “First, a lot of folks think that Clem Brana is behind the whole thing, but that was a misunderstanding of what I said that exploded out of control. It’s possible, but not likely.”
“No, I don’t think it would be,” said Osgar. “If they start going after our noob, we go after theirs, and it’s mutually assured destruction. I don’t think anyone wants that. But, just in case, I’ll go have a chat with my counterpart in Clem City. Also, it would be a good idea to prepare them in case any of our more… hot-headed… elements try to take things into their own hands.”
“The next two options are actually connected.”
“Go on.”
“Sidney thinks the Baron de Mowbray is out for revenge because of some stories the newspaper published.”
“That would explain last night’s fire,” Osgar said. “But what about the griefers?”
“Well, Sidney was one of the targets,” said Trask. “She was nearly hit by an arrow right in front of the Barley Mow.”
“Nearly hit?” Osgar stressed the “nearly.”
“I know, that doesn’t sound like the Baron,” said Trask. “None of his archers would have missed. Sidney thinks it might be someone trying to prove themselves in order to get into his guild.”
“One of those ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’ situations?” Osgar asked.
Trask automatically glanced off to the side, to see an explanation from his AI assistant but, of course, there wasn’t one. “Shakespeare?” he guessed. A lot of people on Krim went around quoting Shakespeare because of the time period. “King Lear? Hamlet?” What else did the guy write? Romeo and Juliet? Was there a priest in that one?
“No, the historical King Henry the Second, talking about Thomas Becket,” said Osgar. “Allegedly.”
“Ahh,” said Trask. He wasn’t much of a history reader. Or any kind of reader — he liked the kinds of hobbies where he could do something with his hands.
“So, what’s the last option?” Osgar asked, pointing his donut back at the murder board.
“A process server. Jordan Rex Crewe.”
“Connected to the Baron?”
“Kind of. They’re currently a prisoner in the Baron’s dungeon.”
“Ahh,” said Osgar.
“We don’t think they were personally carrying out the attacks,” Trask added. “I’m thinking that they hired some thugs to do the dirty work for them.”
“The reason being…?”
“To flush out their targets so they could serve papers.”
“It seems like a lot of effort to go through.”
“Crewe had a lot of subpoenas with them,” Trask said. “I showed them to you yesterday, at City Hall.”
“If the Baron has Crewe, does that mean he also has the briefcase?”
Trask swallowed. The thought of the Baron having that much blackmail material on Krim residents was not pleasant.
He cast his mind back to Crewe’s capture. Was the process server carrying anything? Had they already collected the briefcase from City Hall? When Crewe showed up, Trask had been sitting at his usual table in the dining room, looking out the window. He’d ordered the stew, which he never did get. Sidney stood on the sidewalk outside, then Crewe handed the newspaperman an envelope… Was the process server holding anything else? No. No, they weren’t, Trask was sure of it. And Trask didn’t remember seeing a briefcase anywhere on the sidewalk, and Crewe wasn’t holding one when they were dragged into the inn.
“No, I don’t think the Baron has it,” said Trask.
“Small favors,” said Osgar.
“It’s probably still at City Hall,” said Trask.
“I hate it when the real world intrudes,” said Osgar. “Krim is supposed to be a refuge from all the hassles of modern life.”
A severed head smacked against the window and left a bloody trail down the glass.
“I agree,” said Trask. “People come here to have fun, to live in a simpler time. They don’t need to be chased down by paper-pushers making a living off of others’ misery.”
Another head slammed against the window, shaking it in its frame.
Osgar put the donut down on Trask’s desk, walked to the window, and looked outside.
“They’ve figured out which window is yours,” he said. “I should get… never mind, there she is.”
Trask heard a blood-curdling scream, then agonized begging, then another bloodcurdling scream. Matilda must be on the job. It was comforting to have her on their side. And she’d brought pastries. Trask was willing to admit when he was wrong, and he’d completely misjudged her before. But beneath that tough exterior, and all the knives, there was a warm, gooey bag of donuts.
“Well, now there’s four severed heads under your window instead of two,” Osgar said, turning back toward the murder board.
Trask made a mental note to have Joe go out and dispose of Matilda’s victims’ bodies if she hadn’t done so herself.
“What’s that last bit about?” Osgar pointed to the bottom right corner of the murder board.
“The process server claimed to have recognized the first griefer — the one who got his throat slit — at City Hall. After the griefer had been killed.”
“So he made a mistake,” Osgar said.
“Or lied because he wanted to distract us from the fact that he did it. Maybe he doesn’t know about the two-week suspension policy.”
“Looks like we have a plan of action, then,” Osgar said. “I’ll go off-world and chat with my friend on Clem Brana. And you can go and see the Baron and find out whether it’s him or Crewe who’s behind the griefing.”
“They’re both up at his castle,” Trask said. “I heard the Baron is mustering an army for a campaign up north.” The castle was outside his jurisdiction. Far outside.
There was a knock on his office door and Trask caught a glimpse of Joe’s face in the opening before Matilda pushed him aside and walked in.
“We’re done,” she said, pulled out a small knife, and then leaned against the wall and started cleaning her fingernails.
Joe walked in after her. “We’ve got the table and all our other materials set up,” he said. “We’re ready to take statements.”
“I delegated a couple of folks to straightening out the line and organizing everyone by how much supporting evidence they’ve got,” Matilda said. Trask had no doubt that her orders were being carried out to the letter.
“How long do you think it will take?” Osgar asked.
“Half-hour, at most,” said Matilda.
“Make it an hour,” Joe said. “I’m a slow writer.”
“Really?” Trask asked. “That’s all? I would have thought there’d be more people.”
“Turns out, most of them collected their heads in bars,” said Matilda. “Mostly from passed-out noobs.”
“At least they weren’t awake to feel it,” said Osgar.
“Oh, I bet they woke up quick enough,” said Matilda.
Trask winced and reminded himself to try to repress the morning’s memories as much as he could.
“After you’re done with the statements, the three of you are heading out of the town,” Osgar said.
Trask looked at his boss. “You want me to leave the city?” People die outside the city, he thought. They stepped on a sharp rock and died slowly and painfully of gangrene, far from any gate, with nobody around to finish them off or, at least, knock them unconscious for the worst of it.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to lose his job.
“If all three of us are out of town, it would leave the chamber completely undefended.” Trask gestured at the window. “You’ve seen what those people can do.”
“We’ll be okay,” Osgar said. “I don’t think the griefers will be back anytime soon. They’re either dead or keeping their heads low for a while.”
Matilda snickered.
“I’ll borrow Wanda, just in case,” Osgar added. “And I’ll call in the Armforge Guild for help if things start going sour.”
“I can’t ride a horse,” said Trask.
“I’ll authorize a carriage rental,” said Osgar.
“I’ll drive,” said Joe. “It will save us some money, and I need the practice. I’m working on my hundred-hour commercial license certification.”
“Krim’s only been around for twelve years,” said Matilda. “How has it accumulated so much bureaucracy already? I mean, why would anyone want to go to a gaming grid and role-play as a paper-pusher?”
Osgar cleared his throat. “Krim’s a multi-purpose social grid, not a gaming grid,” he said. “But anyway, do you know the way to the Baron’s castle?”
“No,” Trask said, relieved. “It’s a closely guarded secret. We’ll have to wait until the Baron is back in town.”
“I’ll find the way,” said Matilda. “I know just who to stab.”
“You won’t need to,” said Joe. “I’ve been there before. I served in one of the Baron’s campaigns once.”
“Oh? How did it go?”
“It was a while ago, and he hadn’t gotten the logistics organized yet,” said Joe. “I had to eat my own leg.”
Trask looked down at Joe’s bottom half. Both of Joe’s legs looked perfectly intact and long and shapely, with well-defined muscles almost bursting through his tight leather breeches.
“I got better,” Joe said.
There was a pause.
Osgar cleared his throat again. “Anyway. Marshall, try to be tactful. The Baron is a major contributor to the chamber coffers, one of the largest land owners on Krim, and one of the biggest customers for many of our merchant members. And a personal friend of the grid owner. If he’s behind the griefing, politely ask him to stop. If you find out the process server was behind the griefing, you can be a little less polite about it.”
Matilda grinned and twirled her nail-trimming knife around her fingers.
“I’m sure you can be tactful,” Osgar added. “And if anything goes wrong, you’ll have Joe and Matilda to back you up.”
“Well, it’s not like they can take on the Baron’s entire army,” Trask said.
“We might not have to,” said Joe, and Matilda looked disappointed. “The mustering spot is a field about half an hour away. Even if they send a messenger the minute we get there, we could be done and gone by the time they get back.”
Mustering made Trask think of mustard and the pretzels and hot dogs it was often found on, and his stomach grumbled.
“You want this?” Osgar pushed the donut and the napkin it was sitting on towards Trask.
“I’m not really hungry.” Trask said, and saw Joe lean in the direction of the pastry. “But we might want it for the road,” he said, and grabbed the donut before anyone else could, anachronisms be damned.