A Good End in Badside - Part LIV

From: bernuetz.oliver_at_...
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 15:01:03 -0400

"Treibonus, you are such an idiot," Count Belvani declared after I'd told
him what had happened with the ogres. "How could you be so stupid as to come out here in the first place?" I made to interrupt but he glared at me stopping me in mid-utterance. "And why would you be so trusting as to send a street rat to me with a message? Didn't you think that she might just bugger off or fail to be allowed to contact me? And what made you think that you're important enough to me that I'd want to traipse off into the Rubble looking for you? Or to Haloric Gold-brow for that matter. Those templars out there aren't all my bodyguard. And why wouldn't you just contact your fellow Lunars Sor-Eel or Jortaran?" He paced back and forth ranting as I rubbed the circulation back into my leg. His dragonewt just squatted by the door and I could hear the rattling of metal outside, no doubt from those templars Belvani had mentioned. He continued, "And you really believe that those damned ogres were telling you the truth?" He stopped and glared at me again. "Am I to be allowed to speak now?" I ventured sarcastically. He nodded sour agreement.

"Well first off I'm a pretty good judge of character. This made me confident
that Daphne would do as I asked. And paid for by the way. I'm not a complete fool after all. It also made me pretty confident that I could rely on you and Haloric. For reasons of my own I'm not so sure about the local government." He raised an eyebrow at this statement but I wasn't prepared to follow through. Instead I continued my points. "Second, I'm pretty confident that the Sun Dome here would much prefer it if the whole story came out." He snorted amd looked extremely dubious at this point. "Err, correction at least they would like to know all the details even if they'd rather not share them with the rest of the world." He nodded reluctant agreement to this. "My good judgement of character tolds me that you like me enough to help me out." He snorted again and rolled his eyes at this but I was pretty sure he was secretly flattered. "I thought it was a reasonable risk to come out here like I did and I was right. I learned that the ogres didn't kill Cressidus but they did off Belarus. Plus I learned some stuff about the ogres' drug smuggling. They're working against some nice official Lunars. And now I wonder if they offed Cressidus."

Belvani stared at me and sighed. "Just when I was sure we had enough suspects." He shrugged and spread his hands, "So now what?" I glanced over at my artificial leg protruding from the fundament of some poor unfortunate who had fallen afoul of the ogres and replied. "Now we get my leg out of there then arrange to torch this damn place. After we first search it top to bottom to make sure there isn't any evidence here that the ogres left behind by accident that is." I looked sheepish and said, "Do you think your dragonewt could get it out of there?" He laughed and pointed at the leg. The dragonewt got it out and they helped me strap it back on after we cleaned it up as best we could. Then we got down to some serious searching.

To be continued..

Oliver
http://www.geocities.com/bernuetz/stories/goodend.html