The young messenger boy ran down the busy, overpopulated streets. Cobble stones clacked under the boy's thick, leather boots, as his uniform cap bounced on his head. Wearing the crimson red and midnight blue of House LeTrenche, there were few places the young elf would not be allowed to travel. Looking down at the envelope he carried, he read once more the address, turning his head from side to side as he scanned the numbers above the doors of the many apartments that lined the streets.
"123 Tenement Street, apartment B..." He would whisper, his small voice lost to the wind. Looking along the street, he had found the appropriate street, the appropriate apartment, yet to his surprise he saw only a single-story building. The building was at the end of the street, before it rounded the corner, so at that point the street and number would change if he continued forward. He was about to give up, thinking he had perhaps been given the wrong address, when a loud cough and a waft of smoke issued from the alley around the other corner of the building.
Looking down the street, the young elf would catch sight of a strange scene. Crawling out of a hatch, one presumably leading to the building's basement, was a very short man in a plague doctor's mask and cloak. Scanning around the hatch, the boy happened to catch sight of the sign, a label denoting this hatch as the entrance to apartment B. Staring at the man for a moment, clouds of variously colored smoke spilling out from behind him, the young messenger approached with caution.
"E-excuse me, sir?" The boy asked, unsure of what he looked at. The man was too tall to be a halfling or gnome, and too slender to be a dwarf. Yet he was clearly no child, the powerful cough easily that of a fully grown man. Still, strange as he was, the odd little man was the only one around to speak to, and seemed to come from the home the message was meant for.
"I'm looking for a, uhm... Mister Snoot? I've a missive for him, from House LeTrenche." As the boy approached, he was forced to stop quite abruptly in his tracks, as a pistol was drawn and aimed between his eyes. Now shaking, he held up his hands, the message held in his left. While the law dictated that it was illegal to harm messengers, carrying a stricter penalty that attack upon an average citizen, the law existed because the practice was far too common. The boy had been warned when he got the job, though this was his first time experiencing it.
But, the gun vanished, almost as quickly as it had appeared. The short man stood, the glass eyes of his mask changing colors as it reflected the nearby smoke. When he spoke, his voice was deep and gruff, sounding quite like a fine gentleman suffering from a decades old smoker's lung. "What the devil does that woman want now? I told her already, I've no tonics for enticing gentleman callers. If she's asking me to make those damned utters of her bigger again, I swear by all nine hells, I'll-"
The man was cut off as the boy shoved the letter into his hand. His face was read as he spoke, his voice shaking, still young enough to be embarrassed by adult language and very afraid of the weapon he'd seen. "Lady LeTrenche sends a request for audience, along with invitation to her estate for luncheon! P-please, give me your response, and I shall return, post-haste."
"If you are indeed Mister Snoot, then please, Sir, act quickly. The Lord LeTranche has been gone missing, and the entire house is in uproar. The Lady believes yourself to be the only one who can help. Please, sir, the other nobles will think to blame the Lady for his vanishing." The boy simply stood there, waiting, as the short man then seemed to read the message. While it was written in less certain language, it largely said the same thing, which the boy new because he was under orders to describe the situation in more specific terms.
"Well, if Victor has gone missing, then I suppose I've no choice. Young man, inform your lady I shall be in attendance. As soon as my new assistant arrives with our transportation, then I shall make my way there. Run along, then." Brindle spoke as he signed his name at the bottom of the invitation, marking with his signature that he had indeed received the message, before shoving it back in the boy's hands. Of course, the messenger took off at a sprint once he had it back. As he watched him run, the ratfolk could not help but ponder the irony of himself referring to the elf as a 'young man' when he was very likely older than himself by a matter of decades. One of the reasons elven children were often employed as messengers, they were children long enough to learn the job without growing too tall to not fit among the sections of the city sized for small folk.
Plunging back into his lab, Brindle set about making himself ready, preparing his many elixirs and potions for the day as he waited for his ally to show up. As far outside town as the little man lived, it always took him far longer than Brindle cared for to arrive each day. However, he had to admit to himself, it worked out quite well. He was himself rarely ready to go by the time he was supposed to be each morning.
