Leaving the Duke's Castle.
Leech noticed an extra carriage had joined his retinue. On it sat an iron cage draped in cloth. "What's this?" he asked.
The guards exchanged glances, none of them knowing how to answer.
It was his manservant who finally spoke up. "My lord, it's from the Tuna family. They said you bought it."
"I bought it?"
Leech's mind was currently swimming with formulas. The moment he closed his eyes, he saw hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon.
He took a few deep breaths to clear his head.
"Oh, right, I remember now. The gnome sent it, didn't he?"
He was more interested in the griffin corpse on Monkey Island; the two were now inextricably linked in his mind.
"Yes, my lord." His own lord could casually jest about a noble like the gnome, but the servants wouldn't dare.
"He did say he wanted to sell me a Snake Woman back then. For 50 Jinri, I believe." Not that Leech ever intended to pay.
