Ostiarium - Evening - Tolan's Errand

Tolan moved through the muddy street, in the distance he could hear bells calling the acolytes to prayer and another answering from the keep marking the hour for the guards. He moved into and rapidly across Suncross Plaza, where a few straggler wagons, carts, wheelbarrows were finally departing for the night – their iron-rimmed wooden wheels turning roughly over the uneven cobbles of the square, the loosely packed goods they contained rattling. The assistant turned off the plaza onto a muddy path into an alley, dank and unsavory, heavy with the stench of decay, leading to the docks. Eventually the overarching houses gave over to low, crooked timber buildings, with no proper foundations, many divided into tiny, rented rooms. Shutters hung at angles or were missing completely. The roofs, covered in lichen and moss or streaked with birdlime were missing many wooden shingles. The paths and alleys leading to them little more than stinking open sewers. As he passed by one such hovel, Tolan glanced through the open door into the gloomy single room divided into two unequal parts, the smaller with children sleeping, and the other with a woman cooking and man sleeping on a ragged straw mattress with the communal bucket nearby. Tolan glided past unnoticed, but heard the woman toss a bucket of offal into the alley and slam the door as he turned off down an even more narrow path.

Near the docks, the banks were littered with piles of broken crockery, entrails, human feces, rotting meat, animal bones and other detritus, in some places the muddy banks slide into thick quagmires where refuse had been hauled and pitched into the putrid bay. As he watched, three half-naked men lifted a barrel of excrement from the back of a cart and emptied it into the water.

Well, it wasn’t called the Canker for nothing.

When the men departed with the jingle of harnesses and the rattling of their cart, Tolan searched the now quiet dock for his quarry. There, in the deeper darkness created by a stack of rotten fish traps and torn nets was the man selling Felfar.
Tolan studied the surrounding then strode unconcernedly into the docks and looked about, then apparently seeing the man walked to his side.

“Good eve friend. How many drinks are you good for?” Tolan said pleasantly to the grey faced man in a shabby and many holed green cloak.

The man gave Tolan a hard stare. “None, I don’t know ye.”

“A friend said you could help me with a trip to the divine?” Tolan held up an empty vial to the light of the heavy moon.

“Tell yer friend to come see me then, if they know me.” The shabby man raised a hand and larger shadow separated from the darker depths of the alley behind the man. A heavy cudgel slapped into a hard and calloused hand.

“I think ye should be on yer way.”

A clatter and wooden squeaking sounded from the alley and all three men looked to see a full bellied man with thick sloped shoulder laboriously push an old barrow filled with rubbish towards the bay. His head wrapped in a filthy bandage covering a purple fungus was just visible as he passed into the light of the moon.

Tolan cleared his throat. “Well, I brought some other friends.” He dropped the vial and held up an open pouch of gold. “With more to come.” He reached for another pouch and drew out a handful to show the now attentive men.

And threw a handful of silver-blue powder into their faces.

Tolan quickly stepped back and let the dust settle. Both men had recoiled then dropped like poleaxed cows. The heavyset man pulled the bandages over his nose and mouth and was quickly at his side with the barrow. He dragged the smaller man into the barrow with Tolan's help, arranging an underlying sheet, followed by the garbage artfully arranged over the still form. Then he carried on with the barrow without a word, whistling a broken tune.
Tolan waited a moment more then seized the large man by the arms and dragged him into the alley darkness. A few moments later from further down the bank came a muffled splash.