Molly Sara went up to Maru to give him his platinum coin and his kiss. She puckered her lips and leaned forward, lifting her head up to him, but he gently refused, "No, no, my lady. You know how it is." He held, instead, his hand out to her, and she kissed that instead, then set the coin into it.
"Same answer every tenday!" said Molly Sara.
Kytharrah also came up to Maru and patted him on the shoulder. "Play?"
"Another time, young oni. I go to drink water now."
The group broke up and the majority of the patrons said their farewells to their friends and headed to their homes. Maru returned to his stool and put his kimono back on.
Jayce went back to the table, followed now by one of the young nobles, who had taken a liking to him.
Nargroth, who usually loved beer and would stay in any tavern until kicked out, strangely left to return to the
Frihet.
"Wait!
Nargroth! Let me walk with you," said
Oma, and she left the tavern as well.
Solisar and
Hakam went to one of the available rooms for the night, but the rest joined
Jayce at the table. Rustreene appeared and asked if they wanted more drinks.
Szordrin ordered another drink but then excused himself, supposedly to go out back to visit the privy. In reality, he used the opportunity to prepare his regular magic that allowed him to read thoughts. When he returned back inside, he approached some of the other guests and said, "Excuse me, but I am from out of town; could you tell me more about the queen mother?"
"She should re-marry. It has been long enough, and she owes Cormyr a real king." Such was the gossip that he heard from those at the other tables, both spoken and unspoken. Some of the surface thoughts were about the strangeness of
Szordrin's eyes. "His eyes are like a cats — the Nine! Well, I suppose it would be worse if he had dog eyes. Ha ha ha!"
"Is the queen a powerful wizard herself?"
Szordrin asked.
She was not; she relied on her War Wizards for protection. He also learned that she was an older woman, once with blonde hair, who still showed most of her beauty. Some said that she had not married the former king out of love, but most agreed that she and her husband had had a cordial relationship and seemed to be fast friends. He learned other gossip such as that, but nothing that was particularly useful toward their quest.
"Well," said
Jayce, as
Szordrin sat down with his companions and Rustreene brought out their drinks, "I was going to go visit a festhall tonight with some of the boys from our ship, but that was better entertainment than I could have imagined. I do not need anything else; I am content for the night."
"What is a festhall?" asked
Sofi.
"A place for people to be festive, of course" said
Jayce.
"It is a brothel," whispered the young noble who had joined them.
"That is horrible," said
Sofi.
"They are not all simply brothels!"
Jayce insisted.
"Festhalls are dishonorable dens for friends of yakuza," said a quiet, gentle, calming voice behind them. It was Maru, now clothed again. "The horned spirit lady speaks true."
Maru then glanced around. "Did the half-oni young warrior leave? He fought honorably."
"He retired for the night," said
Jayce.
"May I join your table? I would be honored to drink with the hairy horned oni who also fought alongside me." He looked at
Kytharrah when he said this.
"Of course," said
Sofi, and
Kytharrah nodded.
Szordrin tried to read the man's mind but felt resistance. Maru glanced around looking nervous, so
Szordrin ceased trying. Then the large man sat down, the chair creaking under his weight.
At this point,
Belvin and
Leokas also entered the tavern and joined them, now that most of the crowd had gone home. They ordered some Suzale but remained quiet while the others chatted. Maru also was silent until finally
Jayce addressed him directly and asked his name, though of course, every one knew what it was by this time.
"I call myself Maru," he said, "but it is not my true name. My true name is no longer spoken, because I am a warrior without honor."
Sofi asked, "How does one lose his honor? Am I allowed to ask? I do not wish to be rude."
"I am
ronin," said the large man. "I was once a samurai of my clan, but my master tried to take a peasant's daughter by force, and I took his head from his body. For this, I am shamed."
"Bar that!"
Sofi protested. "You saved an innocent; how is that dishonorable?"
"Because of the chaos and disorder in the world, sometimes the honorable and good things to do are not the same."
"Why did
Hakam go to bed?" asked
Jayce. "He would like this guy!"
"It is not that way, however, in the Celestial Empire," continued Maru, with real sadness in his voice, "yet that is not yet where I live."
Maru then asked the ones at the table where they were from and why they were in Cormyr.
"I am
Szordrin Dundragon," said the tiefling wizard when it was his turn to speak. "I am on an honorable quest for vengeance against my master and teacher's murderer."
"
Wakaramas," said Maru with a somber nod.
"I am from a city in middle of the multiverse," said
Sofi, as if this were a common, everyday thing, "yet I have never heard of this Celestial Empire."
"It is the Bureaucracy of the Spirit World, the world that is nowhere and yet everywhere in Wa."
"Oh, you are from Wa then?" said
Jayce. "Tymora's smile, that is where many of us are heading next! We would be happy to learn what you can tell us about it."
Through conversation mostly guided by
Jayce and
Sofi, they learned the following: Maru was from a small town named Benoka between Rukimbaru, the emperor's city, and Uwaji, the capital of the shogunate, on Tawata Road along the Akano River on the east coast. When he became a ronin, he moved to the west coast, to Jasuga, where he became a wrestler in Kowa Arena and took his new name. He left Wa on a Shou trading vessel after a competition in Semmishi, back on the east coast, where a person in the crowd recognized him somehow and called down curses on him for betraying the
bushido code. Shamed, he left the country and came to Cormyr via Shou Lung and the Golden Way. This was three years ago. He had decided to continue heading west on foot until he could walk no further, as penance for his "crime", but when he came to Suzail, he was visited by a stray cat that reminded him of a childhood cat he once kept named Foo. He called the new cat Foo Two.
"I see that Foo Two has made a new friend," he said, motioning to the bar where his cat was drinking from Milo's bowl of milk.
Panther,
Oma's cat, was sharing the same bowl.
Kytharrah, bored with the conversation and not strongly affected by human-doses of alcohol, went over to pat the cats, and soon he had all of them purring.
"We have come upon evidence suggesting that one of the past emperors of your nation was a rakshasa, a fiend, in disguise," said
Szordrin. "Thankfully, he was removed from power and replaced with a true emperor. Is this a commonly known tale among your people?"
"
Sugoi!" exclaimed Maru. "No, it is not. The line of emperors is said to descend from the first emperor Goshukara, who holds the Moonlight Arrow, a gift of the gods themselves. I cannot believe that the Celestial Bureaucracy would permit such an imposter to live."
Sofi began querying Maru about the Celestial Bureaucracy and the Spirit World.
Jayce was not sober enough to ask further thoughtful questions, and the elves remained silent and observed.
When Milo announced the final call, Maru called to
Kytharrah and said, "I promised that I would play with you, young hairy oni. An arm wrestle?"
Kytharrah was delighted. With his larger size, the
minotaur defeated the large human twice in a row, though the former samurai indeed had good technique, and the matches were close.
"Did you ever perform for the nobility as a Jasuga wrestler?" asked
Szordrin.
"The Jasuga style is only recently growing in popularity in my nation," Maru explained. "Jasuga is a city on the west coast of the main island of Tsukishima, just north of the Fochu Peninsula. The citizens of the east coast, where Rukimbaru and Uwaji are, see the people of the west coast as backward and show them little respect. The people of Jasuga hope that their sport will take root in the eastern cities soon, but this has not yet happened. Neither the emperor nor the shogun have shown any interest in the sport. The last city where I performed, Semmishi, where my shame was exposed to all, was an east-coast city. That had been a demonstration match. I do not know if the sport has spread more since I have left Wa behind."
"Are non-humans permitted to compete in this form of wrestling?" asked
Szordrin.
"The Spirit World thrives with non-human creatures," said Maru, "but the Spirit of Wa gave his islands to man."
"Are there no elves in Wa?" asked
Belvin.
Maru seemed confused by the question. "Perhaps there are elves living in the Spirit World, but my eyes do not see into that place. Those spirits who leave their world and enter man's are most often dishonorable, such as oni." He looked at
Sofi as he spoke. "I mean no offense to you, young spirit maiden. I have learned since coming to Faerûn that it is different here, that not all spirits are constrained to the Spirit World, that an oni in Faerûn may in fact be good. Indeed, the Spirit World does not seem present here at all, except for in the lands of Thay and Rashemen perhaps."
"We have fought and slain evil oni in our travels," added
Leokas, referring to their battle at the ice devil's fortress on the Great Glacier.
"My friend," said
Jayce to Maru, "
Sofi here is not a spirit at all; she is made of flesh, but you keep calling her a spirit maiden."
"Why can a spirit not have flesh and blood?" asked Maru.
Milo now announced that it was closing time. The two bar wenches cleared the tables, and everyone found a room on the first or second floor of the adjacent building and passed the rest of the night.
