The Fairness of the Sea Maiden’s Faire (City of Splendors #9)

Zloton,
 
I meant to write again last night, but as it happens, fighting trolls after a wild festival is draining. I fell asleep, but now I can articulate a little of what went on last night after Sargent Cromley and wizard apprentice assistant left us.
 
As you recall, Ristrien saved a young girl with a far off accent I could not match. Turns out her name is Tozi and she is a chef in a carnival. What a delight it is to find a kindred spirit, and one so starstruck by my tavern.
 
She seemed so pleased with what she saw that we offered her a job at once. Alas, she joined the faire this year and her contract is still in effect. Shame.
 
She said that the Sea Maiden Faire came into the harbor on three galleys. She invited us to come visit, and we enthusiastically agreed. I mean, how could I turn down good food and parades?
 
I went to bed in good spirits and awoke to even better. We were making good contact with Tham and his wines. Repairs were continuing at a promising rate. Tally is making furniture and Steam and Steel are making metallic fixtures. My orders of cooking pots and the like are starting to appear at our doorstep, and as you can imagine, I couldn’t be happier.
 
Another morning delivery arrived for “Manther,” but Flynn had not ordered it. It turns out that Pete has allocated some money for custom silver and blue cloaks with The Holey Hag and the slogan: Best draggone food in the deep.
 
Yes. I know. I have been trying to guess whether that will make you laugh or wince. Perhaps both? I did both, and as our similar sense of humor was where we usually found common ground, I’m going to guess both.
 
In any case, the cloaks were pretty, and Laeral Silverhand sent us these small pins that matched them wonderfully. There is comedy to be found, I think, in that Pete and the Open Lord’s fashion choices *don’t* clash.
 
We intend to go to the Faire around sunset as that was when Tozi said it opened. Just in time for dinner. I’ll be sure to relay all the flavors I sample.
 
So here’s what’s happened so far
 
The smell of the sea is stronger down by the dock ward for obvious reasons. The faire is on a T shaped pier with two ships docked on either side if the T. There’s a third ship not by the dock, but anchored further away deeper in the harbor. Apparently, the ships sail up and down the coast, bringing the Faire with it, and dear me is the Faire massive
 
The piers are Sixty feet across, wide enough to allow blue and white tents billowing in the sea breeze
 
The entrance was manned by Oscar, a tall lanky half orc with slicked back hair, a golden megaphone and big toothy grin. I think the term for his job is “barker.” There were so many sights: signs and colors and men on stilts.
 
We also found Jenks, Squiddly, and Nat fighting a seagull for what snacks they had found at the shops
 
They were excitedly telling us about a massive guy that was apparently at the end of the pier. They said that he wasn’t from around here which prompted this little gem:
 
“I think no one here is from around here.”
 
We made our way in that direction, although I confess I made the progress far slower by sampling the tastes along the way. It was wonderful, Zloton. Just imagine: fried fish and chips, fried bread, some drizzled with honey, another seasoned with garlic. These sugared delights called coiled cakes. There were also these large soft pretzels that came in the shape of dinosaurs, dogs, dragons, horses, even bats. (I had a bat one) Frankly, I think they were slightly over-salted. If I were to duplicate the flavor, I would rein in that ‘sea water taste.’
 
I drank lemonade and grog. What’s grog, you ask? From taste, my guess would be cinnamon, honey and cheap rum. So delicious.
 
Eventually though we made it to this massive seven foot tall Chult guy named Bolu who was wrestling a twenty foot long slobbering Dinosaur like it's a big puppy. Seriously, he put his head in the creature’s mouth and everything.
 
He also offered rides with Murdermaul (the dinosaur) and Nettie was eager to partake!
 
Do you remember your first ever ride on a giant bat? I do, and Nettie gripping for her life as Murdermaul bounded up and down the pier reminded me of that excitement.
 
There was an "X" marked into the ground where the dinosaur skidded to a stop. He topped off the performance by roaring, a noise so frightening kids hid behind their parents.
 
Nettie created sparks to go along with his flourish and spin flipped down his tail.
 
Bolu beamed, impressed. I seem to recall him saying “give this girl a contract!”
 
Pete is apparently from the jungle dinosaurs like that come from and he said "This is what we call a baby dinosaur."
I tried to imagine a dinosaur bigger. I mean, do they come dragon sized? Pete mentioned there were other kinds. Small and big. Plant eating as well as meat eating. Some could even fly.
 
"I could fly!" Nettie exclaimed excitedly to which Pete replied drily, "once."
 
Then there was a parade and it was as if it was made with Nettie in mind. There were automatons everywhere
 
It was led by a metal drow man on a fully metallic horse that at one point stopped, reared its hindlegs and farted glitter.
 
It was very popular. I had seen posters calling the horse the "Ivory Charm" and automaton man "Ebon Death." However, I heard people in the crowds murmuring "is that supposed to be Drizzt?"
 
What in the world is a drizzt?
 
There was no time to ask though. There were automotive crabs, spider, clowns and Ristrien was not sure how they're made. Nettie however thought that it could be the work of a Lantonese Technomancer. Lantana is a country southwest, across the Sea of Swords.
 
After the parade, we found Tozi's stand and oh, so many new flavors: meat pockets called empanadas, colorful corn fritters, fried plantains, roasted corn ears, this fermented juice of a strange plant which Tozi called 'chihtli', and something called salbute. It was a deep-fried starchy dish topped with sauteed chicken, pickled red onions, and an ingredient I have never tasted before: avocado. It was green and soft and fatty and unlike anything else I have ever tasted. It’s a fruit from Maztica, all the flavors are from traditional foods in Maztica, Tozi told me. Things like avocado are almost never seen in Waterdeep.
 
It strengthened my resolve about the novelty of my own cooking. I certainly will be the only one in Waterdeep selling the flavors of Tymanthar.
 
Nettie told Tozi about her ride on Murdermaul. She said that was just a stage name. His real name is apparently Fluffy. There also is apparently another, bigger parade with other beasts that are not as friendly.
 
Nettie asked about the mechanical things in the parade and learned they were designed by a gnome named Norbert. Nettie expressed her intense desire to meet him. She admires his work and wishes she could make things like that. Tozi said that you could win a small mechanical invention of Norbert at the knife throwing booth.
 
Nettie grew giddy. “Come on Pete! We have to go. You are good at knife throwing, right?"
 
I don’t think I can adequately put to paper the utter lack of confidence that was infused in Pete’s "um, yes."
 
But we went there and there was an older man wearing a checkered blue and white motley uniform. He said we needed three bull's-eyes to get the prize we desired, and it took some Pete magic and Squiddly distracting the attendant, but he made 3 Bull's-eyes.
 
"Champion of Chult!" Pete cried. "Slayer of beasties over there." He pointed to Fluffy.
 
And Nettie officially got her miniature Mechanical Murdermaul. She was rambling about where she would put it in our restaurant as Pete gave Squiddly tickets.
 
She took the little toy to Bolu and he signed it with Nettie's knife. Then Murdermaul bit it as his own signature. Nettie was delighted.
 
…
 
A couple of hours has passed, and it's proper nighttime now. We tried to get Nettie through to meet Norbert’s by talking to the First Mate of one of the ships, but he said we would have to talk to a captain. Besides, Norbert was on the Eyecatcher, which was the ship in the middle of the Harbor. So, that didn't work, but the Baron did run up and give the first mate a drink free card. Which was excellent marketing.
 
I’ve sat on a barrel to write this. We've been on our feet so much, I needed a quick breather. I'm not as spry as I once was as you well know.
 
I’ll have to write more later. It looks like Nat is trying to get our attention.
 
…
 
Well, that escalated. It’s been chaos, utter chaos, but I finally have a quiet moment, sort of, so here’s the report
 
We followed Nat beyond the edge of the circus lights onto this smaller offshoot pier. There we found a colorful wooden box with three windows and striking pale figure within.
 
Beneath the figure were the words: Zolton Foresayer
 
My heart skipped a beat as I misread Zolton as Zloton, something that I have no doubt will amuse you greatly when you read this.
 
But it wasn’t you in the box, and Jenks was not there either which was the chief point. His fallen owlbear stuffed animal lay cast aside, but the boy was missing.
 
Baron tried to help us search, but got distracted by food. We analyzed the planks beneath, looking for a trap door, but instead I found a scrap of Jenks fortune: Speak your greatest wish now, and it will come to pass.
 
Apparently, that was an unusual one.
 
Nat's fortune was, for example, "Opportunity will soon knock on your door, unfortunately, you were in the privy."
 
We asked Nat, and by ask, I mean wrote it down on a piece of paper and she wrote back, but we asked her what Jenks would wish for.
 
Her answer was immediate: to be a wizard.
 
Honestly, I probably could have guessed that myself. Jenks is not exactly subtle in asking Ristrien to teach him magic. For some reason, she insists that she can't teach him. Not sure why. Perhaps she is not good at explaining. I can understand that. I had a drillmaster back in the military who only thought he was good at teaching. All he taught me was that there are some people who just should not teach. Maybe Ristrien is one of those.
 
In that present moment however, Pete was incredulous that the box could make the boy a wizard. "People don't just get their sight back for no reason at all.” A statement which made me realize his incredulity was probably sarcasm.
 
Nettie sensed magic from a half a dozen magic schools from Zolton.
 
We asked Ristrien where the box might have taken him to "make him a wizard." She suggested he could have been brought to a wizard tower, the House of Wonders, even just the closest wizard in general, but she pointed out that with magical requests like these, wishes are often twisted.
 
To test, Pete put in copper, which gave him: Make sure you cross the river before you tell the troll under the bridge he has bad breath
 
His response: "What is bad breath?
 
Jenks had to put a copper in himself, but to "test" again, Pete put in a gold and received: Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes, so that they will be a mile away and barefoot.
 
The box, obviously, had no desire to be helpful. We tried to move it, but it refused to budge. Pete decided that we had to test it by cutting the planks of the pier beneath the box and see whether it fell or levitated.
 
Squiddly eagerly promised to help with that and cheerfully took to trying to saw through the pier.
 
We looked for clues beyond the box, and twelve feet back toward the carnival, we found Jenk's play wand by the water.
 
That made us fear that he had been pulled into the water, but we had no way of knowing. We went back into the dinner line for Tozi's truck and she said that the Zolton box wasn't put out by the faire, but that she had heard that it was a clockwork that belonged to Norbert.
 
We asked if we could talk to Norbert and she said that we would have to talk to the faire's captain—Gran Marshal Zord of the Sea Maiden Fleet.
 
So, that's what we tried to make happen. I talked to Osgar, told him of Zolton and the missing Jenks and stressed that we were worried that some legal trouble would befall the faire if Norbert's contraption was endangering children.
 
He was looking at me with alarm then. "How do you know it's Norberts?"
 
I avoided that question. You know as well as me that you never betray your source for accurate gossip.
 
Never.
 
I convinced him that we should talk to the captain and so he led us, left at the intersection and down the pier.
 
The Dinosaur rides had stopped, both Bolu and Fluffy nowhere to be seen. We were about a hundred feet from the ship when we began to hear commotion. Knowing us, we ran right for it.
 
And by "it," I mean chaos. Because we ran right into a stand off between wranglers and out of control white bears, giant striped cats and large apes.
 
The hold where they kept all the animals had been opened.
 
Pete tried to swing across the deck and instead, fell into the hold. Nettie cast feather fall so he would land softly. The rest of us followed him down the normal way.
 
The Captain of the ship seemed terrified, on top of a cage to keep out of the reach of two double headed dogs.
 
They ignored the captain once Pete got down there though. ¾ heads bit at Pete.
 
Nettie hit one dog with a dagger and Ristrien hit it again with her spectral book. Pete shoved one of his frenzy inducing berries into his mouth and hit it with his war pick.
 
Bolu shouted from beyond the ship hold: "Don't kill them!
 
We called back the obvious question: "Are you talking to the dogs or us?"
 
I tried to follow Bolu’s directions by bringing out the spell I used to put my grandmother to sleep with, but it didn’t work.
 
It was at that moment Flynn did something I had hitherto never seen him do. He lifted Pete out of the hold.
 
With his mind.
 
That was an interesting development and the dog agreed. He attacked and missed Flynn
 
The other dog attacked Ristrien, but Flynn made a shield of what appeared to be pure force and blocked it.
 
Nettie then heated one of the dog's metal collars and it howled in pain.
 
Ristrien created a defense of shifting, swirling stars. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was beautiful. I barely noticed her throwing her spectral book at the dog.
 
With me distracted, my frost bolt missed, of course, but the injured dog fell anyway from Ristrien’s starry…something.
 
Pete hit the second dog and Flynn, in an attempt to keep Bolu happy, levitated a nearby cage and forced it over the dog.
 
That's when Nettie saw a big vulture thing. I don't know how to describe it except it moved with an intelligent sort of malice. It lashed out at Flynn, barely missing.
 
"Is this one yours, Balu?" we asked him.
 
He said, "don't kill it," again. Ristrien and I followed that direction well enough knocking it down with a spectral book and frost.
 
We helped down the grateful captain who was relieved to see us, as if he knew us. Suspicious, we ask for his name.
 
"Captain Jenks."
 
"How old are you 'captain Jenks?'"
"Eight years old!"
 
Okay, bear with me. The "captain" was actually Jenks...who switched bodies with the real captain. Why, you ask? Well, going by the tarantula familiar in his shoulder and the magical component pouch on his belt, the captain was obviously a wizard. Probably the closest powerful wizard to Jenks when he made that wish.
 
I mean, I was probably closer, but I guess I wasn't powerful enough for Zolton's standards which is hilarious.
 
The first mate showed up, incredibly concerned and soon incredibly confused, as their leader lacked the decisiveness or presence that he no doubt usually exuded.
 
We managed to badger the poor man into agreeing to get us to Norbert, but before we could even take the launch to the main ship, Norbert came to us on his own launch.
 
Norbert had the upper half of a gnome, but with clockwork legs, making him the size of a human. That was striking, but Norbert did not give us much time to marvel
 
"Where's Zolton?" Was practically the first thing out of his mouth. We took him to where Zolton remained and Squiddly was still trying to enthusiastically saw the planks.
 
"Hi guys!” he welcomed, clearly proud of the three whole inches he had made in the 12 inch plank with the saw. Pete was proud along with him.
 
Osgar was tasked with keeping random faire goers out of the area, and Ristrien waved to him. He had a job anyone could sympathize with.
 
Norbert opened Zolton with a contraption, although I could not say for sure what he was trying to achieve.
 
Pete was as always blunt. "Can you fix things that Zolton fucked up."
 
"I don't know everything about it. My father had it."
 
"Yes, blame father." Pete rolled his eyes.
 
"I just did," Norbert said, undeterred. He did know some stuff about it though.
 
So, there is a Jinn trapped in the box, placed there by his own people, which tells you exactly how malevolent he is. His power is limited in there, but he can do enough. He can grant wishes, delighting in twisting them to amuse himself.
 
Norbert withdrew a strange coin. He said it could force another "fortune" that Jenks received. He would be able to reverse it, but we need both bodies.
 
That meant finding "Jenks" or who he really was: Captain Clar Besham.
 
There was a captain for every ship and it seems that they all are wizards. We spoke to a colleague of Clar Besham, Captain Tarwind Arryhook and we gave him Jenk's fake potion to use divination to find out that he was in a warehouse in Misty Shore in Dock Ward
 
So we went there. We asked if the captain wanted to, you know, assist in the rescue of his colleague, but he shrugged us off. He said that whoever took him was in trouble anyway. A wizard like Clar could only be kept if "he's trussed up."
 
I decided not to point out that if he had not escaped in all this time, he probably *was* "trussed up."
 
Anyway, we went alone. What we found was a shack attached to the pier. Grisby and the Baron went in. Well, more like raced each other in, and then they ran right back out within a minute. I soon learned why.
 
There was an explosion, no, that isn’t the right word, a green cloud spewed forth. Mokuz had only mentioned something like it. All I knew was that it was powerful magic, and out from the building strode a powerful wizard.
 
Jenks. Scowling in a manner that on any other face would be intimidating, but on him, it was just hysterical.
 
We tried to talk to him, but he just raised his hand high and curtly said, “Not talking.” When Pete pushed him, he added darkly, “I have spells left.”
 
That kept even Pete quiet. He would eventually regale us the tale of Grisby and the Baron eating through the wizard's bindings, but that was for later.
 
We returned to Norbert and Zolton. Pete plopped the coin in and announced, among other more agreed upon things, that he wished for the jinn's freedom.
 
Before I could panic, an explosive amount of nothing happened. Norbert explained that his freedom was not in his power to grant. Pete deflated; I think he has a general issue with infringements on anyone's freedom.
 
Disappointed, Pete let Norbert take the lead and said, "I wish that things returned to the way things were before Jenks made his wish.”
 
And so it was done.
 
Jenks is back in his body and Captain Clar Besham has understandably stormed off, but not before making clear that we are never going to speak of this.
 
Once the crisis passed, Norbert grew shy and reclusive, but Nettie caught him before he could completely withdraw, and once he realized she wanted to talk shop, he grew animated.
 
Nettie and Norbert are chatting as I write. She's given him a mechanical butterfly as a gift and seems to be seeking his advice for that revolving stage idea of hers and the talking Trollskull.
 
I think all the chaos has passed for now. We're about to head back to the hovel in Misty Shore. It seems clear that someone kidnapped Jenks from the pier and that might be connected to the missing people throughout the city.
 
I'll update on our findings when I can.