Chapter 24: Hands of the Artisan V
[THE SILVER SEAT - Vandamme’s House of Blades]
Sometimes, the quiet afternoons were too much to bear.
At times like these, Vincent Vandamme tried to keep himself busy. It was time to forge. Nothing in particular he was looking to make, just whatever popped into his mind. Something to occupy himself with, that’s all it was.
He fired up the forge as he had done many times in the past. The crackling of the flames within helped keep the silence at bay. There were too many things in the silence, even if he had somehow managed to get used to it in the intervening years.
A lump of cheap iron, lit red-hot.
He raised his hammer above his head, the heat and embers from the forge lighting his face up the same as it ever did. However, if there had been a mirror in front of him at this moment, he would not have recognized the dwarf in it.
So much had changed, yet so much remained the same.
Too much had remained the same, perhaps.
He’d mash on it until things made sense again. Until the soft whispers of a warm and comforting family disappeared back into the darkness. Until he could forget again.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Nameen poked his head out from behind him as Vandamme pretended not to notice. His eyes, which had been dark and frightened before, looking for danger in every shadow, were now lit and bright as they beheld the fire and sparks.
They continued on like that for an entire hour. Vandamme forged away, not sure what he was making, simply pounding iron into shape. Nameen watched the embers fly, from his position in the doorway, mesmerized.
Until finally, Vandamme stopped his hammer, wiping away his sweat before turning to his little black-eyed shadow.
“Do you want to try, lad?”
[THE SILVER SEAT - White Hand Precinct No. 7]
Cain and Alonzo followed Muse as she rushed to the armoury of the precinct. She had burst out of Alonzo’s office frantically, as if she had been possessed. It was clear that some sort of idea had come into her head, but for Cain’s life he did not know what it was.
They raced, disturbing other knights and squire as they power-walked through the halls.
Wait, no! Looking around and taking in the precinct and its people right now wasn’t the point, Cain had to make sure he was keeping up with the green-skinned girl in front of him!
She knew where she was going, and she knew what she was looking for.
“Wh-- what do you mean?” asked Cain.
She didn’t even turn her head. Muse wasn’t running, but it was only barely on the borderline. Any further and she would’ve been making it down the hall in a dead sprint.
“Think about it!” said Muse. “What we were sent out here for!”
[THE SILVER SEAT - Lamplight Abbey - Flashback]
“...And so you are to offer your help to bring the White Hands’ investigation to a close,” said Ronove. “It should be a rather simple affair. Although, don’t forget. You are not simply there to assist another order, you are there to further the mission of the Black Lamps as well.”
It was the day they had been sent out to assist Knight Inspector Alonzo Sierra, their first job as Lampknights. Ronove had given them the basics of what they had heard.
“What do you mean?” asked Muse. Was assisting the White Hands in bringing the perpetrators to justice not the entire reason they were going?
“Didn’t the Grandmaster just say?” said Ronove. “Strange rumours and unexplained phenomena. These are the things we look into, just in case they lead us to a Player. That is to say, we try not to involve ourselves in mundane cases that could be easily explained. Though of course, it’s not a hard and fast rule.”
The two of them nodded. Cain hoped that Muse would be able to tell him what things were mundane and what things were not - to the interdimensional traveler, everything looked pretty out of the ordinary still.
“Investigate as far as you can using your identities as free knights,” said Ronove. “If the results end up being mundane, you are free to discontinue your investigation and return. If the results are indeterminate, use your own discretion as to whether or not to keep investigating. And if the results are positive...”
Ronove smiled, raising his hand in front of his face. The Corpse Candle.
“...Contact me immediately.”
[THE SILVER SEAT - White Hand Precinct No. 7]
“That man, Vandamme, said it! He said that the wooden sword was beyond the ken of mortal creators, even beyond him! In his prime!”
“What does that have to do with--”
“Everything! I finally remembered where I heard of him!”
Alonzo grinned, despite the rush the three of them were in. It seemed that not everybody had forgotten the old man after all.
Still, a shame. If it had been twenty years ago, a knight of her rank wouldn’t have dared enter the boss’s workshop. Or rather, never would she have been given the opportunity, considering how business had roared back in the day.
“Steel Whisperer Vincent Vandamme! He forged the official weapons of each Grandmaster’s office, as well as the one to reforge Diplomatic Victory, the personal sword of Solomon I, national heirloom and treasure! In his prime he was the greatest weaponsmith alive, considered a hundred years ahead of his peers!”
“What the--?” Cain’s eyes widened. “Why’s somebody like that living in such a shabby shop? It sounds like he was a total VIP amongst VIPs!”
Alonzo’s face fell.
“A national disgrace’s what it was,” answered Alonzo somberly. “The boss was accused of attempted regicide by a former apprentice. Said that he had snuck a poisonous coating onto the Diplomatic Victory, which would slowly kill the king over the course of months to years. Folks checked and it was true that there was poison on the blade.”
He shook his head.
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“But that hadn’t been the boss’s fault. The apprentice did it. He had framed his own master in order to get his hands on the workshop and the old man’s secret forging techniques!”
Alonzo growled, but his face fell right after.
“But it was too late by the time we found out. My old man’s the one who found somethin’ suspicious in the case, but by the time the boss’s name was cleared...”
Muse nodded, sadly.
“Regicide is the highest charge in all of Goethia,” she remarked, sadly. “The punishment goes past capital punishment and... into family extermination.”
Cain’s face paled.
“You don’t mean...”
“From his line, his parents and grandparents,” said Muse quietly. “From his wife’s line, only her parents. Of course, she and their children as well.”
“He was spared, but not out of mercy’s sake,” said Alonzo dryly. “Kept in the dungeons under the watch of the torturers for a year. They broke his hands over and over again. They wanted his spirit dead before they drew and quartered him.”
[THE SILVER SEAT - Flashback]
Alonzo remembered the first time he had seen the boss, when his father had gone to get his sword sharpened. The vastness of the workshop and the heat of the flames, attended to by dozens of apprentices. The boisterous laughter of the boss as he and his old man promised to break open a bottle to celebrate their shared birthdays.
His own first sword as a kid had been a present from the old dwarf as well. A simple weapon, it was nothing special. Nothing like he had expected from the personal hands of Vincent Vandamme. The old dwarf had seen his disappointment, and grinned.
“You’re not ready, not yet, lad. A sword beyond your caliber will forever stunt your growth,” he had said, his ruddy healthy face lit up against the flames. “Once you become a good man, come back here. I’ll have another ready for you then.”
That never came to pass.
The arrest came. Then the public execution that they had attended of a dwarven woman sobbing bitterly, and three children roughly his age. The oldest brother faced his death with dignity, comforting the younger two in his final moments even as they dropped from the gallows.
They had left before the grandparents could be brought onto the gallows, although by the wailing they were already there. Cheers and jeers that he still couldn't quite get out of his mind.
His father, Alphonse Sierra, had clenched his fists so hard he had been sent to the Lifeweaver’s Ward for stitches.
Then he stopped seeing his father at home. Not long after, his mother had left with him in tow to stay with his grandparents. Only later did he hear of how hard Knight Inspector Alphonse Sierra had worked, night after night, burning every bridge he could to get to the truth of the matter.
Alonzo had been there to see the dwarf’s release.
The hearty laugh was gone. The vigorous brown hair had been reduced to white. His muscular form, larger than any other dwarf at the workshop, reduced to infirmity. A new limp, where there had been none before.
And his hands, his hands. The hands of an artisan. His once delicate yet powerful fingers.
Battered, bruised, broken. Scarred and gnarled, his fingers had bent every which way. He hadn’t been able to look at them. The Lifeweaver’s Ward then did what they could to restore them to their old form, but they would never be as nimble nor as dextrous again.
And so, Vincent Vandamme, was released. A pittance of money for his troubles, enough to live the rest of his life in relative comfort. Nothing to address how Goethia had robbed itself of one of its greatest talents. No apology by Solomon VII.
Silver Seat’s high society simply turned their back on him, wanting to wash themselves of the entire torrid injustice.
And so he disappeared into the backstreets of the Seat, never to once again make his presence known on the larger stage. The legend of Vincent Vandamme faded into myth, and then into nothingness as nobody wanted to relive the disgrace and shame.
In the intervening years, Alonzo’s path had been troubled. Society didn’t make sense to him anymore, he had regarded Goethia itself as his enemy.
Until he had found the sword that Vandamme had forged him in the storage.
Then, against his mother’s wishes, he joined the White Hands.
His sword remained strong and sturdy at his side, even when his friends and comrades lost theirs to erosion and breakage in battle. It had seen him into the position of a squire, and had been promoted with him into the seat of knight.
And then, as he had been chasing a suspect into the backstreets of the south side, he had found that little shop in the back alley, Vandamme’s House of Blades.
The perp had escaped him that day.
He walked through the doors of the shabby little shop as the footsteps got further and further away. It was a small crime, no real victims, just an attempt to resist arrest. Not a big deal in the slightest. This was far more important.
When he saw the gnarled dwarf sitting behind the counter, he felt as if he had been transported back in time, holding his father’s hand again.
[THE SILVER SEAT - White Hand Precinct No. 7]
Alonzo shook his head, breaking himself out of his reverie.
“...So you see?” said Muse. “If we can confirm it, we can get his help!”
“B-but are you sure about this?” asked Cain. “I know we’ve already messed around with it, but it’s still the only clue we’ve got so far!”
What had Alonzo missed in his walk down memory lane?
“Hey, inspector gruff,” said Muse, smiling at him in what he assumed she thought to be a charming manner. “You don’t mind if we destroy some evidence, do you?”
Alonzo’s eyes widened.
These free knights were too much.