The Dreaming Mark and the Vessel of Fools

Wand of "Speak to Fenceposts"

The city watchman and I had reached the front of the old nameless church. The Free City was noted for being neutral to the major powers of the land, and most notably had no central authority figure, but as a result, the power structure was a bit of a mess. The heads of the various organizations were all expected to agree on things in order to get anything done. The chief of the watch generally opposed doing anything that'd change the way of life in the city, which most displeased the city's various spiritual leaders - they'd wanted to finally settle the debate of which god (or gods) the church would be dedicated to, but nobody could agree on which one(s). So even though the church's construction had finished (the city's head foreman insisted that the builders at least still get the job done and get paid for it), the church never opened for worship or spiritual services. It sat there, untouched, for years. Until, of course, a visitor to the Free City had turned up dead on its doorstep.

The watchman - an officer who'd been the first to notice the body - looked at the front steps. The body had since been removed, but the bloodstains remained. He did not seem to be able to look away from it; his expression was deeply unsettled, unblinking. "Sir Randulf..." His voice shook.

"I'm no 'sir', watchman. No knighthood or high honors for me," I explained. "What did you see here?"

"Too much," he'd said, his voice quivering. "Never seen so much blood in my life."

"Never really gets any easier," I remarked, leaning over the waist-high wrought-iron gate to get a closer look. "Don't suppose you saw it happen?"

"Not I, sir," he said. "Chief of the watch had me ask around the block, too. Nobody saw much of anything."

"Well I might know someone," I offered, rolling up my sleeves, showing him one forearm worth of the intricate tattoos and runic inscriptions of the Shadow-Guide. I looked back and forth, at either end of the gate, to notice two prominent spires of stone. They were undecorated; usually one would see gargoyles or lions or other forms of protection, but without a patron god for the church, there would be no direction as to which creature should take up watch. But that did not mean nobody was there to be watching.

I laid a hand on one of the stone posts. "Good morning," I told it. "Don't suppose you'd like to chat?"

The watchman, still aghast with worry, now seemed as if his whole world no longer made sense.

I held my hand there for a while. "Mmhmm...yes, oh, that must have been horrific... Oh, no, no problem at all, it's my job. No worries, Capst'n, we'll get the man, you have my word." I released my hand from the stone fencepost and turned back to the watchman, who now looked as if he was questioning the very reality he existed in. "Well, good news from Grundstein here."

"It has a name?!"

"Everything has a name if only you'd know how to ask it," I explained in short-form. "The good Capst'n here tells me he witnessed the murder. Not much else to watch when nobody attends services."

"Gods, stars, spirits..." he muttered, not having processed that I had a witness for him.

"He says our killer was from out of town, had an ongoing dispute with your victim and tracked him here."

"...deliver me from this mental ordeal..."

"Pay bloody attention, watchman!" I'd hoped raising my voice at him would snap him out of his cowardly sniveling. "Look, I can put you in touch with him if you'd like, I've got a spare blank wand I can allocate to the job. I don't expect the Capst'n will appreciate having to repeat himself, but--"

The young watchman raised one of his hands to stop me. "No, no. I would rather not. Would be much simpler if we could call it your witness account and not the fencepost's."

"But you'd be disrespecting the honor of an esteemed Capstone. This fencepost dedicated his life to the job, only to be denied his decoration. And yet, here he stands stern and ever watchful, and more importantly, as a material witness to the murder you're investigating. Now, do you want me to spin up a wand for you to talk to him, or not?"