[b]Name:[/b] Tanis

[b]Age: [/b]34

[b]Gender: [/b]Female

[b]Race:[/b] Fae

[b]Position and Trade:[/b] Tanis is an apothecary by trade, although due to her being a Fae she is a rather underappreciated, underpaid, and sometimes even unwanted one. 

[b]Appearance:[/b] Tanis is exceptional amongst the Fae because the first thing most notice about her are not her long, knife-like ears, but the hideous, cracked web of burn scars peeking out from behind her hair that spreads from the right corner of her full lips, up her cheek, and end around her right ear lobe. Her brown, tangled, sun-bleached hair is parted in such a way the it spills over the burnt side of her face, and at the right angle Tanis can almost look like a halfway decent catch. She has a sharp, elven nose, high cheekbones, and bright yellowish-orange eyes that resemble the color of gold. Her smiles consist of white, somewhat crooked teeth, and lines have begun to form on her forehead and next to her eyes on her lightly tanned skin. 

Standing just below five-foot-five, a teetotaler lifestyle combined with frequent walking left Tanis with a lean figure. She dresses for travel and tends to stick to more masculine clothing for sake of avoiding any long gowns getting snagged on brush. Usually she wears a somewhat soiled cotton tunic with tattered sleeves and dark pants that fit a little loose that she tucks into heavily worn boots. Around her neck she wears a black string as a necklace that has a simple silver ring looped through it that she tucks into her shirt for safe keeping. Tight brown gloves protect her calloused hands from thorns and irritants when picking ingredients. A sash tied high around her waist keeps her shirt from billowing and she rarely goes out into nature without throwing on an indigo shawl to provide her head with some protection from the sun when necessary. Tanis loops a well-worn satchel over her shoulder and across her chest so that her hand almost always rests upon its flap, protecting the herbs, vials, and bandages tucked inside. 

[b]Personality:[/b] Tanis carries herself as a woman of demureness and modesty. She is polite, well-mannered, and soft spoken, and seemingly comes off as a hospitable, earnest, and hardworking individual. She does not curse and does not imbibe in drinking, gambling, and other “crass” matters. If Tanis ever does have to speak ill of someone, she generally tends to muddle her words with euphemisms instead of through direct insults.  An early life of servitude has embedded her with a habit of lowering her head and avoiding eye contact in social situations, as she is cautiously well aware of her position in the world as a Fae. Despite her apparent meekness, Tanis is far from a shrinking violet and enjoys hearing tales about perilous travels and trials of combat. Likewise, she could talk somebody’s ear off when it comes to her passions, be it herbalism, alchemy, or cooking, although questions about her past life will often result in her clamming up or quickly excusing herself. 

Beneath the surface, Tanis is a venomous woman consumed with bitterness and anger that she keeps bottled up tight. Her main motivation in life, and the reason she needs the promised riches of Dunwick Manor, is to extract revenge on the mercenaries who have wronged her. Being unable to determine who these mercs actually are has driven her to view most sellswords with suspicion and disgust. Likewise, she is slow to trust humans and tries to always be aware of her environment in case the local uneducated riff raff turn hostile upon encountering a Fae peddling her “witch magic in a bottle”. Tanis is not quick to lose her temper, but she does not have infinite patience and under stressful situations it is not uncommon for her swallowed rage to spew forth—even to the point of violence. 

Tanis considers herself to be a realist, and in return has a rather pessimistic and skeptical view on the world in a whole. Although she will express sympathy to strangers, she is uncharitable and will always politely refuse to give out handouts when it comes to her medicine. Likewise, she when she commits an act that has repercussions she only worries about her own well being and will only after the fact express regret for inconveniencing or even endangering others. Really, it is quite possible that her entire purpose for seeking revenge is to not exact some kind of justice, but to ensure that her own neck stays thoroughly protected. In the end, she sees herself as a petty women with lofty goals and little hope of ever achieving peace—and, admittedly, being filthy rich would be a rather nice perk to have as well.

[b]Boons:[/b] [i]Cuisines[/i] - Tanis is a talented cook. While the more folksy type of people will say that a well-cooked meal could lift one’s spirits to help them overcome even the toughest of challenges, Tanis just tends to think that it’s best to have somebody around who can make the limited ingredients found around a camp become nourishing meals that don’t taste like dirt and twigs. Plus, it’s always nice to know exactly what has gone into your dish.

[i]Prescriptions[/i] - As a trained apothecary, Tanis is able to whip up salves and potions that can heal minor wounds, ailments, and treat shaky nerves assuming she has the supplies. She is also capable of stabilizing more grave injuries, setting bones, and producing antidotes and antivenoms. Her speciality, however, is poison, and she has crafted a hybrid oil that, upon entering the body, is almost always fatal. 

[i]Recollective[/i] - Tanis also has an incredible memory, and rarely forgets anything she has ever seen or heard. Largely helpful when it comes to preparing meals or medicine, she also has a rather uncanny ability to find her way through seemingly identical city streets and wandering forest paths assuming she has been to her destination at least once before. Likewise, she never forgets a face or a name.

[b]Vices:[/b] [i]Cowering[/i] - Tanis favors flight over fight and tries to avoid being directly involved in conflicts that are both verbal or physical. While she will not back down from her goal and can defend herself if needed, Tanis cannot be completely relied upon to help others when situations turn sour and is not above throwing others to the wolves if it means that she will momentarily not be hounded—yet she wonders why there are none she can trust to completely have her back when something wicked falls upon her. 

[i]Pursued[/i] - Unfortunately, Tanis is right to be suspicious of others. There is a small but worthwhile bounty placed on the head of the woman in the Valedean Empire by the son of her former master, although the description of elf with burn scars sadly (and fortunately) fits a number of escaped and freed servants—although there is only one who worked for the Roth’s. As well, mercenaries still spread tells of the Fae poisoner that worked for the Ashworth Company and many would do drastic things to get their hands on her formulas. She is forced to keep her history tightly under wrap and is not the most convincing of liars. 

[i]Retributive[/i] - Tanis doesn’t just never forget, she also never forgives. Grudges steer her life and influence almost all of her decisions, from great plans of revenge to downright petty stubbornness. Due to her somewhat volatile fury, her retaliations often overshadow the original sin and even with her capable memory she fails to see that these plots often lead her towards self-destruction. 

[hider=History] Tanis had a joyless childhood of indentured servitude spent in the kitchens of Roth Hall, hurriedly rushing back and forth between pantry and prep stations to assist the cooks as they prepared lavish meals for the Roth family and the frequent visitors that came to the settlement of Adderbury. Her only reprieve was stories she heard from the visitors servants that would come and relax downstairs when their masters were in private talks, tell stories of the world outside of Adderbury. Tanis’s was particularly interested in the stories of those connected to mercenaries, for they sometimes involved Fae like her. She’d scrub the floors while daydreaming about a handsome Fae mercenary, who was a gentleman despite his line of duty, coming to the house one day, waltzing into the kitchen, falling in love with the elven girl instantly, and whisking her away to live a life full of adventure and other childish bullshit.

Of course, that would never be the case and even Tanis knew it. An exceptionally bright child, at least when compared to the other kitchen girls, Tanis learned much of the ways of the world during her youth despite rarely ever setting a foot outside the walls of Roth Hall. She learned it was always best for those like her to keep her head down and to address her betters with the utmost respect. She learned that those considered to be her betters were not just the well-dressed people upstairs, but those downstairs as well as long as their ears were shaped like spoons instead of knives like her own. She learned to never make this mistake in front of Lady Roth, even if her son wanted to get handsy with the elves, and with this she also learned the difference between humans and Fae: humans got scolded, Fae got scalded. After all Fae were, in the words of Lady Roth, intellectually inferior and bound to make the same mistakes unless they had a constant, burning reminder. 

Her lessons did not stop there, although Tanis would consider it perhaps her most important one. She learned that nobody cared about a kitchen elf with burn scars on her face, and she learned to treat others with the same disregard—although she was wise enough to keep her bitterness locked deep inside of her and appear focused on her important work of churning butter and kneading dough for some time to come. Tanis also learned how to subtly express her frustrations, slipping secret seasonings of rat poison into certain dishes that were, to the knowledge of the rest of the kitchen staff, untouched by her. Hearing of Lady Roth’s maladies filled Tanis with her first taste of schadenfreude, even if it meant half of the kitchen staff being thrown out onto the streets with no hopes of finding work in any of the other kitchens in the city. What did Tanis care? They had given her no sympathy and she, the ever diligent and hardworking kitchen girl, was forced up through the kitchen hierarchy. Lady Roth’s stomach illnesses stopped soon after Tanis began handling the main courses, and no suspicions were ever cast upon the ever-polite, ever-subservient scarred elf girl.

In fact, her favor turned even more fortunate as the new head chef recognized the talents that Tanis’s former head chef had overlooked: the girl had the most profound memory. She could accurately recall any recipe that she had ever learned, including those that they had only made once for a foreign guest with peculiar tastes. Why the girl was wasting her time in the kitchen was beyond the chef, and he petitioned Lady Roth to have Tanis apprenticed in a more fitting role inside the household. Lady Roth, who believed that Tanis was the miracle cook that had prepared the dishes that had calmed her tormented stomach, agreed much to the surprise of the elf girl. This taught Tanis a new lesson: people were to forget their transgressions and even quicker to underestimate those they thought to be beneath them. 

She began training underneath the family’s apothecary as a nurse, learning what herbs did what and how to prepare them into salves that would ease aches and pains among many other things. Her apprenticeship lasted many hard years, where in the morning she would assist in aiding the apothecary nurture the Roth family, visitors, house staff, and farmhands, evenings she would specially prepare Lady Roth’s meal (who insisted that only the burned girl could please her sensitive taste buds), and nights she would teach herself to read by paging through [i]materia medica[/i] by candlelight. After many years she was as well qualified as the apothecary to provide medicine and aid for the family. In Lord Roth’s eyes she was even more qualified, because unlike the apothecary the indentured burned girl cost no more than a few meals and a bed.

It seemed like a rather brilliant idea in his mind, and Tanis was fast to agree. After all, now there was nobody but her that could access all of those [i]useful[/i] components locked away in the walls and walls of cabinets. Say, for example, she wanted access to something with a little more kick than rat poison; the only person to know it was removed would be her. Tanis acted as if it was a major honor for an elf like her to be entrusted with such an important duty. She even said more or less the same thing out loud, and Lady Roth had gone out of her way to chide Tanis for belittling herself. “It is because you are an elf like you that you’ve been given this task; I would certainly never entrust it to some other elf, nor some humans for that matter,” Lady Roth had said. Tanis almost considered it sweet that the Lady of the house considered that to be some form of compliment, although her mistress’s words did little to change Tanis’s plans of revenge. She had already palmed the bottle of cantharidin extract and was ready to spike the Lady’s drink with the poison when the Lord went away for business. 

Yet the Lady did not stop with her comments there. She kept pouring praise on Tanis, mentioning how she considered her a beacon to her kind and would even, in private, consider her to be a friend. Tanis, unmoved by the words, fell into her usual pantomime of smiling, nodding, and thanking Lady Roth. And then Lady Roth began to apologize to Tanis for a great wrong she had done to the elf some two decades ago. Tanis’s scarred face turned to stone as anger welled up inside of her. The bitch had already taken her beauty away from her, and now she was going to try and take away her revenge by apologizing. Tanis’s refused to give her the opportunity as her frustration that had been kept locked down for years finally overflowed and erupted from her body like a volcano or the blood blossoming out from Lady Roth’s neck after Tanis had ventilated it with a nearby letter opener. 

Feeling strangely unsatisfied and knowing that there would be no way she could spin the blame of the attack onto someone else, Tanis pocketed some of the Lady’s personal belongings, hid her face beneath a hood, and fled from Roth Hall. She traded the stolen goods for a small room below the deck of a merchant ship, as well as purchasing a few small medical supplies, and sailed from her home in the Valedean Empire to the Star Kingdom. Knowing it was unsafe for an elven woman to travel alone in the Star Kingdom, even one that was a capable poisoner and quick with a knife, Tanis quickly attached herself like a leech to the side of a man-at-arms in a human led but largely Fae mercenary band called the Ashworth Company that, at the time, was of little note. 

She wouldn’t say that she was happy, however. Tanis had actually enjoyed quite a large amount of freedom underneath the Roth’s despite her seething anger directed at the Lady of the house, perhaps even more than the so-called Free Elves living in the Star Kingdom. Likewise, her sweetheart, short, portly, and ugly, was nothing like the man she had dreamed of as a child, although he did seem to care about his little scarred flower and she was courteous enough to pretend to not be disgusted by his presence. As the weeks in the band turned into months and years Tanis could not shake the feeling that she had made a huge mistake by putting her heart in front of her mind. In Adderbury she had a promising, if somewhat gray, future. Here, she had nothing but hope that she’d find a life better than trudging along behind the mercenary band swathed by peddlers and prostitutes looking to make some coin.

But Tanis put herself to work. She wasn’t a fighter and had no desire to ever be one, but she did have skills that the band direly needed. As they travelled Tanis had taken it upon herself to pick herbs, fungus, and other components from nature and stockpile the items so that she could begin making medicine for the mercs. Also, due to her years of running a pantry, she took over the supply lines and helped cook meals that didn’t give the fighting men and women food poisoning the day before an important battle. However, it wasn’t until she introduced an oil for their blades and arrows that was coated in a fast-acting poison that the Ashworth Company began to see her true worth. Tanis soon found herself riding in the front alongside Calder Ashworth and his captains. Hushed rumors spread throughout the camp that the burned woman had been seen entering Calder’s tents late at night and leaving before dawn, and the quick end to her relationship with the portly man-at-arms all but confirmed it. 

She wasn’t the first person to ever think of poisoning a blade, but she certainly revolutionized the art by introducing a few choice compounds into the poison to help bolster its effects. Naming it Ashworth’s Bite in honor of her new lover, the Ashworth Company quickly rose in notoriety for their ability to unfairly turn the tides of any battle. Of course there were plenty of dissenters who cried out that they lacked honor, but they made up for it with coin and results. One noble deploying a band from the Ashworth Company on field, with its black-and-green banner of a dead tree, often resulted in the opposing noble’s hired mercenaries packing camp and marching in the opposite direction. After all, nobody who fought for coin wanted to painfully die on the field because an arrow nicked their cheek. The Ashworth Company had become the most feared mercenary group in, and it was largely in part due to a Fae kitchen girl who had taken up the hobby of tainting dishes more than twenty years ago—and they were ruining the business for the other mercenary groups. Human-only bands were especially bitter that a bunch of elves led by a Fae fucker were the ones responsible.

It was a moonless night in late autumn that the other bands came to collect on their lost pay as well as steal the secret weapon of their largest rival. The Ashworth Company had just come off of a great victory and were celebrating by getting blind drunk in a swamp, oblivious to the enemies that had snuck into their camp, until the fires broke out. Men came charging out of surrounding forest and fell upon the unprepared soldiers like rabid wolves, and when the fire burnt through the barrels of poison created a deadly miasma that fell all in its path. After the smoke cleared the Ashworth Company was no more, and to this day the water in the swamp is littered with bloated bodies and toxic from the poison that had not burnt up fast enough. Calder Ashworth was found burnt to a crisp in his tent, notably unaccompanied by his elven mistress whose body was never found, survivors of the Company fled and melded into other groups, and the coalition of mercenaries never acquired Ashworth’s Bite. For a time, the deadly, fast acting poison was lost.

Tanis spent the next year in serving as a wandering, nearly penniless apothecary. Most of her supplies had been lost in the fire that had consumed the Ashworth Company, and at first it was a daily struggle just to get enough copper to purchase some moldy bread or find an only somewhat damp corner in a barn. However, in time she was able to stockpile a fair share of components and offer more services to the backwater slackjaws that she catered to, assuming they did not label her a witch and try to throw her on a pyre like some of the more suspicious villages. It was a life, but it was not the reason she went on living. Tanis never forgot the wrong the other mercenary groups had done to her family, and just as she had been when she was a younger girl facing against Lady Roth she would have her revenge even if it destroyed what life she had managed to scrape together. After all, it was just like her Ladyship had said: Fae were bound to make the same mistakes unless they had a constant, burning reminder—and Tanis had escaped from the Ashworth massacre without being licked by a single flame. 

Only she had next to nothing regarding information on the mercenaries that had wronged her. Most were fairly unfriendly unless pressed with coin, and coin was something she hardly ever held onto—and if she wanted to buy an audience with the men and women who had ruined her life so she could slip a coated blade between their ribs she’d have to hold a lot of coin. The answer to her money troubles came to her, from all sources, a mercenary. Despite her growing displeasure for every sellsword, she still treated them in hopes of finding information (and to open up opportunities for a bit of malpractice if none were there to watch over them). One man, in a fever state, began prattling on about a letter he received regarding a place called the Dunwick Manor. 

She humored him as she did with most mercenaries, who even in a healthy state she believed to be always a bit cracked, and to prove that he was telling the truth he showed her the letter. She read over it, her eyes lighting up at the promises of gold and the distant possibilities that those in service of the ones that had crossed her would too pursue the ridiculous claim. Tucking the letter into her robes, Tanis fed the man a cup of tea brewed from belladonna leaves and left immediately for the Roses. Surely, the brave men and women who responded to such a thing would be pleased to hear that a traveling healer had coincidentally come to town the same time they were about to set foot in a potentially dangerous trap. Somebody had to make sure that they were well fed and kept [i]safe[/i] from harm, and it might as well be the former kitchen girl who never, ever forgets. [/hider]
[b]
Weapons/Equipment/Supplies:[/b] Tanis’s shoulder satchel is nearly exploding at the seams with miscellaneous leaves, twigs, pastes, vials, bandages, paper pouches, and a mortar and pestle for the preparation and preservation of medicines and toxins. She also keeps an emergency supply of food rations tucked in the smaller secondary compartment to prevent any accidental contamination. Tanis hangs a large waterskin from her sash next to a small bulge that betrays the location of her hidden coin purse.  She carries two knives in her sash as well on the opposite side from where her satchel rests. The first is a broad, slightly curved knife that she can use for butchering, cutting stems, or striking flint to create fire. The second is a small stiletto, the tip of which has been coated with oil from the vial of Ashworth’s Bite that she keeps hidden underneath her tunic alongside other poisons and antidotes. As well, she has more than enough medical supplies strapped in the saddlebags on her donkey to last her for some while as well as a week’s ration of food and water, a bedroll, rope, and a heavy cloak in case of bad weather.   

[Hider=The Contract] Wind battered against the shutters and cut through the cracks in the walls, threatening to snuff out the candles as they made shadows dance like strung marionettes across the small storage shed located behind a rundown tavern in some one-horse town. The chilly breeze did little to dissipate the old stench of mildew and manure, although it did manage to kick the smell of blood and rot off of the slowly breathing man strewn out across the table. It was a sadly nostalgic smell to the elven woman hunched over on a stool in the corner, a blue shawl draped over her head. She had spent nearly the last decade and a half of her life surrounded by the smell, and part of her was glad that she had yet to grow used to it. She pulled the perfumed cloth closer to her nose and continued mashing a concoction of purple flowers into some sort of bitter smelling paste. 

Tanis had not come to this town to sell her wares, let alone to spend the night trapped in some shed with a dying mercenary. She had always been cautious of small settlements, as they were often cesspools rotten with bigots, halfwits, and humans, and a recent event where she was nearly lynched for, allegedly, consorting with demons and, definitely, for being born a Fae had convinced her that she would no longer waste her efforts on backwaters. True, in larger cities she had to deal with giving a “courtesy tax “to everyone and his brother, but at least there the citizens have heard of hygiene and the only thing likely to tie her up was red tape from an overzealous censure with a bruised ego to repair when she tried to get her peddler license. However, Tanis was quick to make an exception to her new rule after a well-armed man had approached her when she had stopped inside of the tavern to ask permission to use the well out back. She doubted he would take refusal well, and he had even promised that he would waive the convenience fee for the well [i]if[/i] she saved his friend's life. It seemed like the fairest deal a Fae could hope to get. 

And so, Tanis had spent the better half of her evening stuck in some rotting shed patching up the man’s friend. At first the man had stood vigilant beside his comrade, but soon grew antsy and proceed back into the tavern where Tanis could only assume he had proceeded to get belligerently drunk since he had not been back in many hours.  She was grateful for this, truly, because it meant that she no longer had to suffer from his constant, prying questions as she patched up the infected wound on the dying man’s gut. Between the injured man’s gear and his worried friend’s demeanor Tanis could tell that they were mercenaries. She had heard a day ago about a recent battle between nobles in the area, and the wound was old enough to fit the timeframe. Besides, nobody living in a town like this would be able to afford steel swords, let alone be crafty enough to think up of some lie about a convenience fee. 

And, despite her doubts, she needed to know if they were [i]her[/i] mercenaries or not.

A sputtering cough drew Tanis’s attention away from her work. Setting down the mortar and pestle and smoothing her clothes as she stood, she cautiously approached the writhing man on the table and peered down on him with cold eyes. He might’ve been considered handsome if not for a large scar that bulbed his nose and the leathery skin of a man who had spent his life out in the sun. The new bandages across his stomach were still mostly clean, and unless Tanis had missed something he would likely recover after several days of rest once the fever broke and leave well with a scar and a story. The coughing stopped and the man settled back down into a restful state. She removed her glove and touched the back of her hand to his forehead—only for the man’s eyes to bolt open as her cool hand touched his burning scalp. His hand lunged forward and wrapped around her wrist before she could pull it away as a startled shout escaped from her throat. 

“Who the fuck are you? Where’s Danners?” barked the man, his voice dry and rasped. 

“I’m nobody. Just a healer,” said Tanis quickly, trying to maintain a composed voice as his hand squeezed on her wrist. Her eyes darted everywhere but onto his hard, near delirious gaze. She assumed Danners was the name of his friend. “Danners asked me to take care of you, good sir. I meant no harm by touching you; I was only checking your fever.”

The man offered no reply and let go as he was overcome by a coughing fit. Grabbing her waterskin, she offered it to the man before rubbing her wrist and pursing her lips. He drank greedily from it, nearly draining all she had left before handing it back to her with a pained groan as he began to sit up. Jolting forward, Tanis placed her hands on his shoulders and tried to ease him back down. 

“You mustn't move yet,” she said in a calm, collected voice, “or you may reopen your wound.”  

“Sod my wound. Where’s Danners? Bastard abandoned me and went after the treasure himself, the worthless prick,” he said in protest, although he hadn’t the strength to resist her gentle push and allowed her to ease him back down. “I need to go. The treasure. It’s waiting.”

“The only thing that needs to be waiting is you, sir, at least until your fever breaks and your wound seals,” said Tanis. Clearly, the man was more feverish than she thought. She dipped a rag into a cool bowl of water and dabbed at the man’s forehead in hopes that his brain had not been completely cooked before she had gotten her answer to her question: had these men ever associated with the butchers and bastards that had cowardly eradicated the Ashworth Company? “Your precious coppers will be able to wait awhile longer.”

“Coppers? Are you daft, you Fae bitch?” She narrowed her golden eyes. “I’m talking treasure. Gold, relics, things you can’t even put a price on. Enough of it that you’d make that fuck Romshire shit himself with delight if he ever even saw a tenth of it,” he said. 

Tanis couldn’t help but frown. If such a thing existed then the Master Censure, if he was anything like his charges, would have already found a way to tax more than a third of it—two-thirds if it had been discovered by a Fae. The man saw her frown and grew angry, thrashing around on the table and yelling that he’d show her if she didn’t believe him as he groped at his chest for something that wasn’t there: his jacket. She had removed it when dressing his wounds. She grabbed it as he began to writhe even wilder, like a worm trying to escape from being fried by the sun, and handed it to him. He thrusted his hand inside the breast pocket and pulled out a soiled letter, unfolding it as he began to read out loud to her as if she were a child before he succumbed into a fit of coughs.  

“I can read it,” she said, eyeing the peculiar broken seal as she held out her hand. The seal was unfamiliar to her, although there were so many minor nobles these days that it was hard to know them all—but she would know if she had seen it before.  

The man hooted with a pained laugh and handed her the letter. “Now ain’t that something, a Fae with half a brain. What next, they going to start letting you become doctors?” 

“I—” Tanis swallowed and changed her tone as she reminded herself that the man was delirious from his fever, although she doubted he’d be any more pleasant with a clear mind than a sick one. She let out a sigh that could be disguised as a polite laugh, baring her teeth in an almost smile. “Quite right, sir. That’d truly be an incredulous sight.” 

Tanis stepped away from the man, both to get a better light and just for the sake of being away from him. The wind was still whipping violently against the shed, but the sound soon dampened as she began to read the letter. It was a kind of call to arms for the exploration and excavation of the Dunwick Manor. The name rang familiar to Tanis; she remembered one of Ashworth’s men from the bay telling ghost stories about the place around the campfire one night. She had dismissed it as hogwash then, and dismissed it as hogwash now. She knew for a fact now that the Censure knew about the manor because the man had acted as if it was some big deal for them to redact information, as if it wasn’t in regards to how much money that had more or less pilfered like common grave robbers.

Yet between the vagueness of the letter (it had been addressed to “whom it may concern”, implying that it was a call on mass) to the fervent determination of the wounded mercenary it had caused a pique in Tanis’s interest. Not because of the promise of riches, although she wasn’t opposed to the idea, but because it would draw a kind of simpleminded people who hunted after money instead of trying to make an honest living as part of a society. With so many mercenaries in one place there was a chance one of them might be connected to the attack on her former company. It was a long shot, but long shots were better than anything else she had to go on these days. She folded up the letter and looked over at the wounded man who was staring back with expectation.

“So you and Danners are going to Roses together to hunt this treasure?” she asked, scooping the paste from her mortar into a cup and mixing it with the last of her water. She had put her gloves back on.

“With Danners? Hell no, I never told him. I’m abandoning that pigfucker the minute I can. Nothing but dead weight. He’d just slow me down, and I’m not letting any others beat me to my treasure. Something like that gets out and all sorts of bottom feeders start crawling out of the swamp,” he said, another cough escaping his throat. Tanis nodded, secretly pleased by his answer as he struggled to sit up. This time she didn’t stop him, and a pained yell escaped from his throat before he was all of the way there. Quickly she came to his side and steadied him with her arm; it was as if she was actually concerned about him.

“Now now, don’t push yourself,” she said, keeping him upright as he coughed. Her eyes lingered on his bandages that were now running crimson with blood, but she made no mention of it. She grabbed the cup with her free hand. “You’ll need your strength if you’re going to get your treasure.” 

“Barely even hurts. I’ll live. Thank you,” he said and then turned to look at her. She quickly looked downwards, stopped by his momentary appreciation for her. Tanis couldn’t remember the last time someone had thanked her for doing her job. She hesitated and lowered the mug in her hand. “Half of a brain and half a decent face, I’d say you’re not half-bad,” he said with a choking laugh.

“You’re half right,” said Tanis, tightening her grip on her mug and her resolve as she felt a rush of heat flush over her scarred face.

The feverish man continued to chuckle to himself. “But really, Danners can go fuck himself, but I wouldn’t mind tossing a few coins your way if you kept me company. I heard Fae are absolutely wild in the sack. Comes with being savages, I suppose.”

“I’m flattered, really, but I think my husband, Calder Ashworth, would disapprove,” she said, giving the man a quizzical look to see how he’d react. 

“Yeah, and my wife the Queen would too,” he said, giving another laugh and shaking his head with a snort. “Calder Ashworth, shit. You can just refuse; I know I’m no looker.”

She quietly laughed as well. They hadn’t actually gotten married, certainly not in the eyes of the law anyway, but a lack of an official certificate hardly ever bothered her. However, those involved in the attack would have certainly reacted in a different way to a burned Fae claiming to be the widow of one of the most notorious mercenary commanders in recent history. If this man had been there he was either too low on the totem pole to be of any circumstance or the greatest poker player in the all of Argas. 

Unfortunately, she couldn’t risk him mentioning it to anybody.

“Shit, laughing hurts,” he said, wincing in pain. 

“Here, take this,” she said, lifting the mug up to his lips. “It’ll help ease the pain.”

“Really, you should come with me,” he said, the fever talking as he swallowed the tonic, unknowingly sealing his fate. “I don’t care if you’re a Fae. You’re different than the others.”

She smiled, said nothing, and got up as the man began to cough and sputter, choking to death on his own poisoned blood.  

---

“You’re different than the others.”

Not one word had been uttered to Tanis since she had entered the hamlet of Roses, although the burning, vicious looks that the backwater peasants shot the Fae as she had led her donkey through the muddy streets already said quite enough for the elf to know that she wanted little to deal with these cretins. Even the rotund tavern keeper that glistened with some sort of perpetual sweat hadn’t addressed her when she had ordered a cup of tea and a plate of bread and cheese, although he finally did nod in acknowledgement once she had produced some coin. Tanis had sat there lost in thought and exhausted from her trip, eating her stale bread and dried cheese while drinking what might as well have been a cup of sludge, and thoroughly enjoying the silence that had just been stripped away from her. She stirred, sitting up properly so that her shoulders were no longer hunched and adjusting her shawl so that it now fell around her neck. 

“I beg your pardon?” she said to the tavern keeper, tucking her hair behind her ear. She had learned long ago that pretending to not be a Fae was pointless; humans were good at spotting what made them different. She supposed this made up for them failing to be able to tell what made them all the same. 

“The point of ‘em long ears if you can’t even use ‘em?” said a mouthful of black teeth bared like an animal ready to strike. “I said you’re different than the others.”

A polite smile appeared on Tanis’s lips; the same kind of smile one she had on her face when they she had been stuck in conversations with nobles’ young, inbred, and idiotic children that could not understand why her ears were pointed while their doting parents glared at her, waiting for a slip-up. It was a smile Tanis wore quite well if one disregarded the web of scars. She had not seen another Fae since setting off to the town of Roses, and Tanis ventured a guess that the residents of this mire perhaps only knew of Fae through the stories of travellers (although she assumed these stories would be quite abridged, as the oppressive air around the town did not make one want to relax and chew the fat for some time). 

“Than what others, sir?” she said in an attempt to bait out some clarification. If she was going to be operating out of Roses, she wanted to know what the odds of her hanging from a tree were. 

“The outsiders,” he said, casting a shadow across her as he loomed above. 

Tanis glanced up and quickly averted her eyes, turning them instead to look at the other patrons that had filed into the bar as she had relaxed against the far wall. They wore the hard look of fighting men and women, and were weighed down by heavy, well worn battlegear. So, it appeared that her dying [i]friend[/i] had been right: others were coming for his treasure. The polite smile faded back as her lips set themselves tightly together, her eyes slitting at the harrowing prospect that she was about to spend quite a large amount of time playing the good doctor with a bunch of legal thieves and cutthroats. She turned back to the tavern keeper, although she kept her head inclined in such a way that her view was filled up with nothing but his massive gut and the dirty floor behind the bar.

“In more than one way, actually,” she said, nodding. “I’m an apothecary, not a fighter. Although I must say that it’s good fortune that I arrived here when I did—people are often in need of a healer after mercenaries come to town. Which reminds me, sir, would you know of anyone in town that would be in need of my services? Anyone who is haunted by some sort of malady? It’s not too expensive, rea—”

“You can’t help anyone here,” said the tavern keeper, and he lumbered away from the elf. 

Tanis slouched down in her seat again and sighed. It was a downright lie, of course, she had seen the telltale signs of disease and rot on the same villagers that had cast evil eyes in her direction; they were in a desperate need of some relief. Of course, she wouldn’t do it for free—the one similarity she counted between herself and mercs—and with the grotesque owner’s quick dismissal of her once she had mentioned prices informed her that nothing, not even gratitude, would be reward to her for helping these hayseeds. Not that it bothered Tanis, much, as the keeper proceeded to return to ignoring her and did not show any sign that he was secretly whipping up an angry mob to storm the lone Fae out of the village. She returned to her foul meal and, once again, found herself lost in thoughts of revenge. [/hider]