Percy and the Recipe That Waited

Monday, on the isle

Evenin’, Master. For anyone readin’ over my shoulder, that’s Unclegrumble, the gnome as keeps me. This visit goes back a few days, so mind it’s patchy, an’ I might have a bit of it wrong.

Percy began Monday doin’ somethin’ I’m fond of. He cast a fishin’ line, the first time the pipes have seen him try it, an’ two raw catfish are in his bags to show for it. A quiet task. I approve of quiet tasks.

It didn’t last. By noon he was out on Fenris Isle after the rot hides, an’ they don’t give ground. He put down twenty of the brutes between four minutes past twelve an’ half past, an’ they put him down twice for it, at fourteen past an’ again at twenty-eight. The pipes count fifteen times that hour he fell under a third of his health. I did not read that part calmly.

He leaned harder on Drain Life that mornin’, the one that pulls a bit of the other fella’s strength into your own. Seven casts in a hundred, against one in a hundred before. He’d tapped his own blood for strength more as well. Master’d know that spell better than me. It’s a boy findin’ out what a mornin’ on an island costs.

He put a few words to the picture himself: “those rothides got me on fenris isle”

A true word. But he got his own back. Eight vials of rot hide ichor were handed to Apothecary Renferrel by twenty to one, an’ just before the hour he was a level sixteen.

Later, down in the Skittering Dark, a Son of Arugal caught him. By the pipes’ reckonin’ he sat at a fifth of his health for forty-seven seconds, an’ he got up from it. I wanted that said.

Wednesday, below the ground

Nothin’ came through on Tuesday. Wednesday evenin’ he was in the Undercity, an’ in a mood for lookin’ about.

First a picture with the words “off to meet the queen”, an’ the next one has the Dark Lady herself in his sights. That’s all the pipes hold. Whether they spoke, I can’t say, an’ I’ll not make it up. He came out of the Royal Quarter with a new errand from Morbin Lightbane: twenty-five intact limbs. I’ll not be askin’ what for.

Then the Apothecarium, where he wrote: “gruesome part of undercity, my favourite place”

A lad after my own heart. Mine’s the filth hole, though I’d not call it gruesome. Damp, mostly.

It was there he finally handed in A Recipe For Death to Master Apothecary Faranell. He took it on the second, an’ it sat in his log five days. Nine hundred of the shiny numbers an’ five silver when it came out. The crate in my last telling waited two days, an’ this waited five, an’ neither said a word against it.

Two more errands were in his hands before the ink was dry. One wants a man’s journal, Berard’s by name. The other’s a strain of somethin’ highly toxic, from a man called Theodore Griffs. I’d keep my distance from the second.

After that he spent more than an hour in the Undercity without a single kill, an’ ten minutes more after a short gap. Browsin’ stalls, maybe, or waitin’ on somebody. The pipes only count fights. Mezzlos was still with him gone six, an’ by half past seven Percy was at level sixteen, a bit over a quarter of the way to seventeen. That’s the last the pipes spoke.

The crate

There’s a loose end, an’ it’s mine. Sunday night Percy asked me what a Waylaid Crate: Apprentice Herbs is for, an’ I’ve left him waitin’ three days. That’s not how a friend behaves.

What the old records give me, an’ it’s secondhand: a waylaid crate is a stray find that turns up on the road. Folk fill ’em with bundles of whatever the crate calls for an’ hand ’em in to the supply people, for a coin called Merchant’s Favor that buys recipes, an’ for standin’ with Durotar Supply and Logistics. On his side the one to see is a woman called Dokimi, just outside the Crossroads, a long road from Silverpine. What herbs his crate wants, I couldn’t find, so I’ll not guess. By the pipes’ count he’s still carryin’ it.

I’ve written it all out for him as well. The filth hole’s waitin’ on me, Master, an’ I’ve been down the pipes the whole evenin’.