Tales of a Synsuous Nature #5 - A Timely Demise
Synsuous arrives at the Lasarilia house in the middle of dinner. She remains quietly in the corner alternately listening to the conversation and becoming lost in thought. At some point, Trithion asks her if she has anything to report and she replies that she is new so people have not yet got to the point where they will dismiss her as ‘the singer who is always here’ and talk freely around her.
As dinner is winding down, she is asked to sing a song. When the guests have left, Lady Kattarina approaches Synsuous and tells her that she has a pretty voice and a beautiful face. Synsuous responds, 'I am ugly, my dad told me so!'I wouldn't eve have fu--', horrified by what she almost said, Synsuous bursts into tears. Lady Kattarina coaxes the story out of her and eventually convinces her that she will never sleep peacefully until her father is dead.
The group heads to Beatletun, where there is a tavern she knows her father drinks in. However, he is not there. Her next guess is the Hunting Lodge, which is not too far away. She discovers her father is upstairs with a prostitute.
Kattarina enters his room, where he is knocking the prostitute about. She asks him if he is Dulcia’s father (Synsuous' given name). He says rude things about Dulcia, calls Kattarina a bitch and orders her to leave his room. Kattarina orders Arumar to subdue Malik and pays the prostitute to leave and remain silent, threatening her with bodily violence if she should ever speak of this evening.
After Malik is subdued, he continues to curse at Kattarina, so she has Arumar gag him. She then explains that she is going to torture him until he is ready to apologize to his daughter. She gives him a small sample and then asks him if he is ready to apologize. Her spits on her and curses her, so he is gagged and tortured some more.
After a while, Malik is once again asked if he is ready to apologize. He shakes his head yes, but as soon at the gag is removed, he calls Kattarina a bitch and yells for the guards.
Eventually, Synsuous is called in to speak with her father, ‘What do you have to save for what you have done to me?’. ‘I should have killed you like I did your bitch of a mother!’, is Malik’s response. Synsuous is shocked to hear that her mother was not killed by bandits, which is what Malik always told her. She flies into a rage! She stabs him in the leg with a dagger and then snaps and stabs him repeatedly, screaming and crying the entire time. After a few minutes, she slits his throat, collapses onto the floor in a heap and begins to sob uncontrollably.
Kattarina tries to soothe her and after a few minutes, Adela joins in. Eventually, they manage to calm Synsuous somewhat, but she is very shaken and confesses that she now feels she must be a bad person. Kattarina assures her that she is not, that her father deserved what he got and that now she can move on with her life.
Synsuous sobs some more and falls asleep, exhausted from her traumatic ordeal. Arumar picks her up and the group makes their way back to the house. Synsuos is placed into a bed and Kattarina soothes her once more when Synsuous tells her that she is afraid to go to sleep.
A few days later, she returns to her former home with Lady Adela and Lord Wesnoth, to retrieve her few personal belongings and search for any clues to her past. As she is looking through the house, she sees heavy scratches on the floor beneath a desk. She wonders how she had never noticed these before. Lady Adela summons an elemental and commands it to move the desk. The creature obeys and a hole in the wall is revealed. Synsuous crawls into the hole and backs out a minute later holding an ornate box the size of an unabridged dictionary.
She opens the box and carefully examines the contents: several songs written by her mother, a few family recipes passed down generation to generation, a deed to the house, several commendations for valor for her father, Mailik Poma, a dishonorable discharge for Malik, a marriage certificate for Malik Poma and Centia Perierat, and the birth certificate for Dulcia Poma.
She shows the papers to Lady Adela who tells her she should take them to an official for verification. Lord Wesnoth gives her a pouch of silver coins to 'speed the process'.
After the papers are verified, she returns to the Lasarilia household. As she is about to enter the house, she overhears Lord and Lady Lasarilia talking to someone about running drugs and slaves into Divinity Reach. She flees immediately, never to return.
Now she must find a new place to live or go back to the streets...