Five more people came by whose names I've forgotten, and they left, and then Goodwife Filster came out and mumbled to herself and looked around and glared at me and said, "What did you tell those last two people who were here just now?"
And I said, "That you weren't open yet," and she got a look on her face that reminded me of the Wylmeens' dog when it bit me on the finger, and she called me a name that meant I liked my mother more than normal people were meant to, which was silly because I don't even remember my mother, and Goodwife Filster grabbed me by my robes and brought me here to the magistrate to be hanged.
We had to wait until Jarvis, the magistrate, could get out of bed and find his spectacles, and he was as tall and thin as ever, and his black hair was all messed up from sleeping on it. He combed out his hair and big moustache, then looked at me and said, "You again?" and looked sad, probably on account of this being the fifth time this year he would have to throw me in jail for being a public nuisance, which Jarvis says is really just a way to let everyone cool off and forget whatever I had done so they wouldn't tie me to a rock and drop me on a kelp farm, as Jarvis puts it, which sounds interesting but which I don't understand, since that would mean I was underwater.
"What now?" said Jarvis to Goodwife Filster, who then said a lot of things that weren't true, like that I was a plague carrier and a thief and a liar, and she was about to explain what she meant by my being responsible for the fall of Istar when Woose, the dwarf, ran into the magistrate's office and yelled, "Fire! Fire at Goodwife Filster's!"
Then Woose saw Goodwife Filster and yelled, "Gods, woman, your bakery is on fire!" and Goodwife Filster went all white and staggered like someone had hit her, then she ran out, and Woose ran out, and Jarvis ran out, but before Jarvis ran out he locked me in here and said he would be back.
So here I am with my facts machine and nothing to do. I should write down some notes on the economic situation in Newshore after Istar blew up and the crops drowned because of the ocean that used to be two days north of here but now comes up to the place where the Karkhovs once had a giant melon field and is where Ark and I fish for moonfins, but Jarvis is back now, and he's waiting for me to leave my cell after I finish this first.
"What are you writing?" he just now asked me, and now he's looking and…
Report Number Three
Same day, about an hour after noon
Hi, Astinus! I'm writing this from the rooftop of the Cats amp; Kitties, which is really just a tavern with a sign showing a woman's bosom with no dress on and isn't a pet shop at all, which was what I thought all the time I was growing up but Ark wouldn't take me there to find out. It's warmer now, and the sun is out and the sky is clear blue, and I can see lots of bird droppings on the roof from last year now that the snow is gone, and I might be sitting on some but I can't help it. Someone should clean this roof up, but then no one is supposed to be up here and I wouldn't be either except that Magistrate Jarvis said I was safer here than in jail, and he's gone to try to calm down the mob before I show up in town again.
So here I am, writing away on the roof and reading over some letters that Ark left in the satchel with the facts machine, and those letters are very interesting, though I can't imagine why Ark put them in here since I doubt very much he meant to send them to you. I think Widow Muffin wrote these letters to Ark, and she says a lot of things that make me think that maybe they aren't telling me the whole truth whenever Ark asks me to go into town to buy groceries when Widow Muffin comes over, and when I get back they tell me they were just talking. I was quite amazed at some of the things she said, and I don't think I will ever be able to look at either her or Ark again and not think about them playing "warming the weasel," which I should probably explain but am too embarrassed to do, and you wouldn't believe me anyway.
How I got up here on the roof is an interesting story, and I will write it down in case it is important. After I left off last time, Magistrate Jarvis took my satchel away while I was sending my report through the facts machine inside, and he took me out of jail, then gave me my satchel back and said that I could leave now, but I shouldn't try to talk to Good-wife Filster for a few years.
"What happened to her bakery?" I asked, and he said, "Oh, the old windbag left a cloth sitting on an oven when she went outside, and the cloth caught fire, and that spread to the wall and ceiling. The place is pretty well ruined now. She's probably going south to Gwynned to stay with her brother until she gets things sorted out."
I felt bad for her having to leave town, but I also felt bad for myself and everyone else, since she had the only good bakery. Jarvis went on about there being a lot of confusion as they were trying to put out the fire, but when Woose tried to get people organized, no one would listen to him, because he was rich or a dwarf or both, so the whole place burned up and took the tailor's shop with it. Jarvis said a lot of things about certain people that I should probably not put down here, because I think he was just angry, and I doubt he would really know if those people were as much in love with their barn animals as he implied they were.
Magistrate Jarvis stopped and rubbed his face and then looked at me and said, "By the way, where did you get those?" and he pointed at my gray robes, so I said, "Ark made me his official recorder this morning, and these are my official recorder's robes, and this is my official Palanthas paper, and this is my steel scribing pen, and this is my once-holy symbol," and I showed him my silver necklace that has the tiny silver open book with the tiny little scribbles in it that you can't read no matter how close you hold it to your eye, which I did once when I was smaller but poked myself in the eyeball and couldn't see for two days, so I don't do it now.
Magistrate Jarvis snorted and said, "Arkie'd be better off sticking to his shoe business. People don't have a need to read or write all that much. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way."
I was going to ask what he meant by that, but he looked at my satchel and asked about that, too, and I said it was just to hold all my papers.
Jarvis sighed and said, "You'd better be getting on out now. Try not to get yourself killed before nightfall," and I promised, and he let me go.
I was almost out the door when I remembered what you wanted, so I turned around and said, "Can I ask just one question?"
Jarvis was heading back to bed, but he groaned and said, "If it means I can get to sleep afterward, sure, anything."
So I took out my papers and my pen and tried to remember the question, and I asked him, "Do you think the gods did right when they sank Istar to preserve the balance of the world and to protect the freedoms of will, thought, and action among all beings?"
Jarvis stood real still for a while, which made me a bit uneasy, and I slowly began to roll up my papers in case I had to run for it. His face got old and white, and his black moustache looked droopy and dark, but he only said, "Why would you ask me such a damned foolish question as that? By the Abyss and its dragons, no, that wasn't good at all. The gods ruined everything for us. Istar had evil on the run. We had those goblins and minotaurs and other scum in our grip, and we were smashing down the wizards' towers right and left. We could have had a golden age here on our world, the first true age of freedom ever, but the gods broke Istar and turned their backs on us. I was a soldier for Istar before the fall. I was out here in Ergoth hunting down blood-crazed barbarians when the sky lit up to the east and the mountain fell on my homeland. Then the earthquakes and windstorms came, and there was suffering and starvation for all of us who were left, every damn one. That was twenty-two years ago, and I remember every moment of it, every single thing, just like it was yesterday. The gods did us wrong. The good gods turned evil and sold us out. They sold us into a pit of serpents like the lowest goblin whelp."