Chapter Text
19 Kythorn, DR 1477
Tavryn Jakob Jennson had not been back in Baldur’s Gate for a week, before there was another murder. Here he’d thought he’d be starting his private investigator business stalking cheating husbands and missing pets. A murder though? That would be much more lucrative. Or so he liked to imagine. In reality no one was banging on his door (with a freshly hand-painted “Private Eye” sign) for an 18 year old detective, who was freshly flunked out of the Academy, and with zero cases under his belt.
There wasn’t any harm in taking a look though. The dock was only a quick detour from his new favourite breakfast spot. In fact it was there, where Tav was preparing for a long day of nailing up advertisements (also, hand-painted), where he first heard the news. It started as a general stirring of the morning crowds as the city’s whisper network of night workers returning from home met day workers heading the other way and passed on their news of night happenings. As word spread, more and more of the crowd shifted, changed direction, to go see whatever this new exciting thing was. Tav’s attention was caught by the repeating mantra of ‘murder’ on the lips of people rushing by. Curious, but (he told himself to distinguish himself from all the other gawkers) also with a professional interest, Tav knew he had to see for himself.
Leaving some copper on the table for his eggs (and an ad, just in case), he gathered up his bundle of posters and followed the crowd south. The murder site was near the docks, at a square dominated by a large multi-tiered fountain known as Sailor’s Crossing. By the time Tav arrived a crowd had already gathered, which the Flaming Fists were valiantly, and occasionally roughly, holding back. Not for the first time Tav was grateful for the growth spurt that had sent him shooting up head and shoulders above the average person. Even at the back of the crowd he had a decent view of the scene.
It took a few moments for Tav to make sense of what he was seeing. The Fists, in their fire-red uniforms, and holding polearms, maintained a circle around the fountain, keeping pedestrians back. At first, Tav thought a part of the fountain, or maybe a building had collapsed, crushing some unfortunate. Confused, he pushed forward, against the crowd. Once again his size proved advantageous, and the crowd parted around him like water. As he got closer the scene started to make more sense...and even less. It wasn’t a piece of scaffolding he was looking at, it was an anchor. A ship’s anchor had been driven through the torso of an elf, pinning the poor person (under all the blood, Tav couldn’t say what gender they were for sure), to the fountain. Beside them, an untouched coin purse lay in the spreading pool of blood.
It wasn’t the how of the murder, a city like Baldur’s Gate had no end of magic stores and alchemists who sold potions of giant strength, it was the why. There was hundreds of simpler ways to kill someone, ways that would leave far less evidence. And why kill someone and just leave their money behind?
“Hey, step back!” A Fist yelled, startling Tav. He’d been so engrossed by by the scene he hadn’t noticed himself moving closer to that thin line of angry guards.
“Sorry!” With a nervous wave, Tav stepped back into the crowd. It didn’t do to get on the local guard’s bad side so early in his career. Well, he’d gotten his eyeful, and Tav told himself he’d keep track of the investigation in the papers, but it was the Fists business, not his. Still, maybe he could put up some ads for his agency nearby. Not, right in the plaza of course, that’d be tasteless, but close enough that maybe someone passing through, who’d now have the problem of local crime rates on their mind, might see...
As he scanned the plaza, planning the route of least resistance out of the crowd, Tav spotted a familiar boat floating further down the docks. A smile spread across his face. He was long overdue for a visit, and since he didn’t have any other plans for the day...
It was easier getting out of the plaza than getting in. Even a brutal murder could only hold people’s interest for so long, and once the Fist or the corpse failed to do anything else, people started drifting off. Work and the day’s errands wouldn’t stop because of one dead elf.
Tav made his way down the docks. The boat was as he remembered it. At one point it had been painted in bright colours and patterns, but Tav had only ever seen it faded and worn by time and the sea. Bundles of herbs were hung from every possible space to dry, and pots of living plants were so thick on the deck that it looked like the boat was overflowing with plant life. Luckily for Tav, she’d left the ladder down.
Tav practically leapt up the rope ladder onto the deck of the little houseboat, with surprising grace for his size. He then proceeded to politely announce himself by banging his head on the door frame and swearing loudly. The doorway was a lot shorter then he remembered.
“Who in the hells-” The boats owner came shuffling out from the depths of the boat, blinking in the sun.
“Drusilla!” Tav greeted her excitedly. The short woman blinked up at Tav for a second before recognizing him.
“Tavryn!” She exclaimed, throwing her arms around Tav’s waist, the highest part of him she could reach. “As I live and breath, when did you get back?”
“Just a few days ago.”
“Days, and you haven’t come to visit ol’ Drusilla?” She shook her head in mock disappointment. “Are you finished with school already?”
“Ah, well...I kind of...”
“Tsk.” This time there was real disappointment in Drusilla’s voice. “Again? How many times is this now? If you keep this up, you’ll have to go all the way to Neverwinter to find an academy that will take you!”
“I don’t need to,” Tav said, not mentioning that he couldn’t afford it even if he wanted to go back to school. “I’m starting my own business. A private detective agency!”
“What!?” If Drusilla could reach him, Tav was sure she’d have grabbed his ear to drag him back to his parents, like she used to. Instead she settled for shaking her finger at him. “I should have known with all this bad business going on you’d be getting yourself involved-”
“I’m not involved, I swear!” Pleadingly Tav held up his hands. “No one’s going to hire me to investigate it anyways.”
“But if they did, you would.”
Tav, smartly, didn’t answer. Drusilla composed herself, tossed her scarf back over her shoulder, and turned back towards the door.
“S’pose you might as well come in, tea’s already on.”
Tav followed her into the small living space-and-shop that made up most of the boats interior. Shelves lined the walls, filled with potion bottles of every shape and size, and filled with mixtures of almost every colour. Few of them were labelled, and the ones that were, were labelled in a hand so small and messy Tav wondered if even Drusilla could read them. What wall space wasn’t taken up by bottles was filled with books, and even more dried herbs. The one space clear of clutter was the chair that held a terra cotta urn and a small engraved cameo of a woman. The small wood stove, usually used for brewing the various concoctions Drusilla sold, was for once being used for it’s intended purpose- brewing tea. Drusilla took the steaming kettle off the stove, and set it on the table.
“’s a bad time to come back to the Gate,” She said, as she rattled around in the cupboard looking for a clean cup. “And this time it’s happened right next door! I’ll have to move docks!”
“This time?” Tav said, as he sat down at the table, “There’s been other murders?”
“Yes, and don’t go poking your nose into them!” Drusilla placed a mug in front of Tav with a little too much force, making the table rattle. “It’s the Fist’s job, not yours. They’ll be carting that body off soon enough, and then we can both put it out of our minds.”
“Don’t worry, I’m strictly taking on small cases.” J said as Drusilla poured the tea. He blew on his cup, and took a small test ship, before adding sheepishly, “Of course I...haven't gotten any cases yet.”
“Well that wouldn’t be a problem if you’d just stayed in school!” Drusilla scoffed, before her eyes softened. “Work will pick up soon, you’re smart! And you’ve always been good at finding things- remember that talisman of mine you helped find?”
“I was eight, and it was in the back of the drawer.”
“But who was it that thought of looking in the drawer, hmm?”
They drank their tea as they caught up. Or, Tav drank his tea, while Drusilla talked, and as she usually did, the talk eventually turned to local gossip. Which happened to be mostly about the recent murders. Tav did his best to not look like he was fervently interested in them. He didn’t want another lecture. Before he realized it, it was well into the afternoon, and any chance Tav had of plastering the lower cities with advertisements today was gone.
“Oh blast it, is it that late already?” Drusilla said looking out the window, I had so many orders to fill today too!” With promises to visit again soon, Tav let the woman shoo him out the door. Once on deck she stopped him, hurried back inside, and after after a few minutes with the clinking of glass bottles and occasional crash, reappeared holding a small bottle. Drusilla pressed this into Tav’s hand.
“An invisibility potion,” She said, when Tav looked askance at her, “Good for detective work.”
“Thanks Drusilla.” Tav pocketed the bottle and climbed back down the ladder. Not wanting to walk past the Fists and the murder scene again, he turned and headed up what he hoped was a shortcut. Instead it turned out to be a winding sidestreet that branched off into a network of alleys between buildings. Unperturbed, Tav kept going. It was good practice to learn the cities various pathways that weren’t the main roads, he told himself. Besides, Tav wasn’t truly lost- the main road and the plaza could still be seen in glimpses between buildings, the side street running parallel to it.
As Tav neared Sailor’s Crossing, a sudden commotion and shouting made him stop in his tracks.
“Stop, thief!” A loud voice barked out. A lean, cloaked figure, clutching something to it’s chest, burst out from a skinny lane, barely wide enough for their own scrawny body, and turned pelting down the road towards Tav. The street was too narrow to dodge and the cloaked figure barrelled into him, shouldering Tav roughly out of the way before ducking into another alley. Tav caught a glimpse of the purse clutched in their arms before the figure was gone, and recognized it as the same coin purse that had sat beside the body of the elf.
The risks of following a cutpurse desperate enough to steal a dead man’s coin right in front of the guards, versus building a bit of goodwill with the Fist by tracking them in this warren of alleys, or even better, catching the thief, were calculated and weighed in Tav’s head in a half-second before he started running. In that half-second the thief was already out of sight. Luckily, the alley they had run into had one opening, and he bolted down it, his long legs eating the distance. Another turn and he could see the thief in front of him, turning down another lane.
As Tav followed, he nearly tripped over a much shorter person who appeared out a door in the street, like a rabbit peeking out a warren. Tav nearly threw himself into a wall to avoid colliding with them, barely pausing to mutter a breathless apology as his coat brushed past them. He caught a glimpse of a top hat though something about it struck him as odd- but he was already past and the thief was ahead of him, squeezing through the gaps in a wooden fence. Tav skidded to a stop, eyeing the top of a fence which seem to be made entirely of splintered wood and rusty nails dubiously. The risk to reward ratio was suddenly skewing very far in favour of not following. The thief was already lifting up a sewer grate. The thief looked up at Tav as they heaved up the heavy metal grate. The bit of their face Tav could see showed them to be a young human, barely a teen.
“Hey, some of us need to make ends meet, yeah?” He said, his voice cracking a little, “Besides, he ain’t using it no more.”
The boy started to climb down into the open sewer mouth, yelling a warning as he disappeared into the depths.
“Don’t even think of following, this here’s guild territory!”
With a heavy clank, the grate slid back into place. Well, there was no point in following now. Everyone in the Gate knew about the guild, and running headfirst into their undercity labyrinth wasn’t something you did on a whim. Tav turned around and headed back. When he ran into the Fists coming the other way, he told them the direction he’d seen the kid go, but not the boy’s description. He cared more about looking like a helpful citizen then getting a child thrown in prison. The guards thanked him, then hurried on.
Tav retraced his steps back to the side street he’d started on, and a few minutes later was back in the wide open space of the main road. As he turned to head back towards his apartment, Tav placed his hands in his pockets. He stopped. Something was missing. His hands rustled around in the deep pockets, finding the folded bundle of posters, his coinpurse-
His lucky almiraj paw was missing! Frantically he thought back to where he might have dropped it-
Of course, when the thief had run into him, he hadn’t thought anything of it, but a skilled cutpurse would take the opportunity to grab something, anything of value. All sympathy he’d had for the plight of someone so young in such a seedy business left him as he glared down the street, as if he would see the boy still there. That little bastard-