The next morning I was up before the dawn and on the tram for Ironforge, a warm stick of Tram Rat Kabob in my hand. There was a lot to do, and Keynala could not afford to have an advocate not in Ironfiorge, so I was going to have to do something that only such an extremes could force me to do.
I was going to have to beg a place to sleep from "family".
The theory was that I was primarily identified as a Greyhawk, which was my mother's surname; however, given that my mother was human, this carried little weight with my father's clan, the Stonefists. The Stonefists had a storied history of various criminal and anti-social activities, both in Ironforge and Stormwind. They had connections to the south with the Defias Brotherhood, and to the north with the Syndicate out of the Arathi Highlands and Alterac Mountains.
Or as the gnomes like to say "Dirty deeds done dirt cheap."
When I was growing up, I was vaguely aware that my Dad's family were often involved in sketchy activities, and without doing anything at all I learned how to shadow (and dodge a shadow) people, how to open locks without a key or explosive devices, and fourteen ways to hamstring someone who had pissed me off. Before my fifteenth birthday, I was well on my way to establishing a fledgling criminal career.
Fortunately, Mom and Dad bundled me off to the Alliance military before I could get caught breaking the law in any serious way. After my discharge from the Scouts, my sergeant got me a job in Northshire, fighting Defias... and I learned something. No, two things - the first one is that I preferred to operate on the right side of the law. The second thing I learned is that the same skills and abilities I'd learned from my Stonefist uncles, aunts, and cousins were remarkably effective against those who operated on the other side of the law.
Part of operating on the right side of the law in Ironforge was learning the ins and outs of the justice system, or what passes for one, under the rule of the Iron Throne. There were three levels of justice in the Kingdom of Ironforge; what they called High, Middle, and Low Justice.
High justice was reserved to the King and his appointed nobility, and covered pretty much all the crimes which ended up with capital punishment in various ways; death by hanging, death by firing squad, death by impalement, death by immolation, and so forth.
Middle justice involved full civil and criminal jurisdiction, except for capital crimes. This stuff was handled by the courts and magistrates appointed by the Iron Throne - often paladins who were above reproach. Most of the penalties here, under Ironforge law, were fines - dwarves had a slow reproductive rate, and so a dead dwarf could take decades to replace. Dead dwarves don't make anyone money, and without money, taxes suffer. And the Iron Throne adores collecting its tithes, it does.
Of course, anyone could appeal their sentences to Trial by Combat. Heh. Good luck with that.
Low justice, also called "Clan justice", was all the rest of things which made life bearable - weddings, wills, minor property disputes. Inside of a clan, the heads of the clan kept order. Between clans, usually, the head of both clans would work out a weregild of some sort - cash payments.
Did I mention that Dwarves are remarkably fond of cash? Its what they use to keep score.
Anyways, with a charge of treason, this was likely to be brought before King Magni himself, which was both good and bad. The good - Magni had a busy schedule, so the trial was unlikely to take place any time soon. The bad - Magni had a real hard-on against the Dark Irons, who had left a trail of bodies from Grim Batol to Shadowforge City.
Because the trial was not likely to happen soon, all evidence would be filed in the archives, which was as well-guarded as the royal vaults.
Archives had archivists, who kept things in the archives safe and, at least in theory, accessible.
The Chief Archivist was a stuffy old bureaucrat named Hjalth Redfingers. Even if I thought I might have a chance at setting an appointment with him, he'd refuse to cooperate seven times before my ass hit his desk chair for visitors. He served Important People, not Stonefists of dubious Dwarven heritage.
Being the supercilious prickknob that he was, his three Assistant Archivists were also booked solid for weeks, if not months; the difference is that if you got on their calendar, they would do their best to help you if all your paperwork was in order. I didn't have that much time.
Fortunately, each of the Archivists had assistants as well. One of them, a fine young fellow named Anand Paledust, who, from my perspective, had three things going for him. First, he had no talent for his job, and had obtained it because his aunt was the head Librarian for the Hall of Explorers. Second, Anand was known to be enamored of Jesicara Stonefist. And third, our good fellow Anand had an addiction to dice games played with crooked Troll Dice in the less savory dark halls of Ironforge.
Jesicara was eager to convince him to see me, and even convinced him to fill out my paperwork in exchange for a small pecuniary remuneration.
By the time I arrived at his office for our appointment, dear Anand had piles of paperwork on his desk almost as tall as he was.
"Ah, Master Greyhawk, an honor to meet any cousin of dear, sweet Jesicara!" he said, clearly embodying the maxim that Love is Blind. "Please, sit down."
I sat in the spare chair at his desk. "I understand that you are the advocate for one..." He read her name from the file under his hand. "...ah, here it is - Keynala Softstone. However, advocate or not, I cannot possibly show you the contents of this file here in the red folder. Red folders are to be held strictly in the highest confidence, and I barely have aurhority to have pulled the file so as to familiarize myself with your request before informing you as to its impossible nature." He gave a look so full of crockolisk tears that I almost thought I was sunbathing at Lake Nefertiti in Stranglethorn.
"Of course," I said, frowning my frustration.
"But to prove that it is only regulations and rules that compel me to refuse your erequest, let us drink together, perhaps in a toast to the Iron Throne?" he said.
"That sounds marvelous. To justice!"
"Excellent. Let me just run over to the Stonefire Tavern for a small keg of ale," he said. "It should not take me more than fifteen minutes. Please wait here in my office, in comfort," he said.
"Oh, but if you are going to do the fetching, ther least you can do is allow me to pay for the drinks?" I insisted, handing him a rather large pouch. Stuffed with a pre-determined amount of gold.
He had not been gone a minute before I moved across the desk to his seat and opened the red file.
This was bad.
This was very bad.
The file was full of the usual stuff I had been expecting - insinuations that her Dark Iron heritage had overcome her. Implications that she had chosen to work for a so-called "foreign" organization rather than for an Ironforge company. A list of known associates, of which I was disappointed to not have been found worthy of inclusion - I must be slipping.
Finally a report from the Stormwind intelligence service, who had slowly been recruiting gnomes. Their agent, a gnome woman named Kelsey Steelspark, had detained and killed a Dark Iron agent provocateur, discovering a pouch of gemstones and instructions to deliver it to Keynala Softstone, payment for supplying them with the defense plans of Gnomeregan prior to the sabotage of the city and the invasion by troglodytes. The bottom levels, those occupied by Dark Iron saboteurs serving the insane Sicco Thermaplugg, were clear proof of Dark Iron involvement.
 |
| Exhibit A |
Well, the good news is that now we knew what evidence they had for charging Keynala with treason, and it wasn't good.
I think it was time for a chat with Captain Beld.
Whoever he was.
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