"A luxurious... prison cell?" Al asked, skeptically.

  "Yes, very! Not every prisoner is a common criminal, so no matter what degrading spectacle they might be sentenced to some families are wealthy enough to cause problems if we don't treat their criminal members well enough. I've had some additional comforts added for Gruntle here, too, got to keep our celebrity-to-be happy! Come! Come! You must be hungry after your long trip, let's discuss our arrangements over dinner!"

  Gruntle licked his muzzle and stepped forward as the man pulled a ring of heavy iron keys from his belt and turned to unlock the door.

  "We shouldn't just...," Al began to object, only to have to move aside to avoid being stepped on by the advancing donkey who was trying to follow.

  "Wait, what are we going to do with Haunch?" Al asked, "And our cart with all of our possessions?"

  "Oh, I can get some of the guards to bring your stuff in and find space in the stables for your donkey, no need to keep our dinner waiting!"

  "Now hold on! We're not even sure who you are or exactly what's going on here! All I know for sure is a captain of the city guard just dumped us at a prison and now you're eager to get us into a prison cell!"

  "Oh, right! Will isn't big on social introductions, he's more the lie down and put your hands behind your head, criminal scum! sort of person. I'm Patrick Stonebreaker, steward of the Southwall penal arena and warden of its prison. I'm sure Cyrus must have explained how much I wanted to meet your unique and possibly very lucrative gnoll here!"

  "Just how lucrative do you mean," asked Wikwocket, rubbing her hands together.

  "Depends on how good of a show he can put on! If he can really pull in the crowds like I expect, your percentage of the admission fees could amount to quite a lot!"

  "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's eat!"

  "Haven't you been insisting that I have to be the leader here?" Al complained.

  "Oh! Of course, I'm sorry, sir! You should go in first!"

  Bote examined the door.

  "It appears wide enough. Haunch seems to want to accompany us," said the dwarf.

  "He's a donkey," Al reminded them.

  "Yeah, but he fought goblins with us! Doesn't that make him one of us?" Wikwocket objected. "He should get to eat with us!"

  Patrick laughed delightedly.

  "Ha ha! You folks are great! If your gnoll is as entertaining as the rest of you we're all going to be rich! Al here has a point, though. Donkeys tend to..."

  As if on cue, Haunch's tail lifted and a small pile of used hay and oats was deposited on the road behind him.

  "And now he will not need to," Bote said.

  Al squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead, feeling resigned. "Fine, whatever, we've just spent the entire day dealing with long-distance travel, violence, and danger almost nonstop and I just want to sit down and relax for a while. If Haunch wants to hang out with us, let him."

  Patrick laughed again. "Really? Ha! Hey, if it smooths negotiations, I'm all for it. All right, let me get the door open and I'll show you to your lodgings."

  He inserted one of the heavy keys into the door's keyhole and turned it several times, then pushed the door open. Gruntle immediately ducked in behind him through the door into the wide bare stone room beyond. Al stood aside and watched Haunch walk in immediately following. He shook his head and shoved the cart sideways hard to keep the wheel nearest him catching against the door frame. He looked back at Bote and Wikwocket who were waiting patiently.

  "Well?"

  "We're waiting for you to lead us in, magical sword hero, sir!" Wikwocket answered, sloppily saluting.

  With an exhausted sigh, Al turned and uttered a half-hearted "forward, march" and passed through the door. The square room beyond was composed entirely of stone, with walls a good ten paces long. It contained simple iron lamps one two walls another door in the far wall, everyone who had just entered, and nothing else.

  Once everyone was inside, Patrick pushed the door shut again and re-locked it.

  "This doesn't seem as luxurious as you made it sound," Wikwocket objected, to Patrick's amusement.

  "This is just the intake room, we only unlock one door at a time so when someone gets loose who isn't supposed to, it's not too easy for them to escape."

  "When someone gets loose?" Al questioned.

  "It happens, we get some resourceful prisoners sometimes. Follow me!" Patrick answered, crossing the room and turning another of his keys in the far door. He pushed that one open as well. The halls beyond were easily wide enough to accomodate the cart. The exit from the intake room opened into a small open room connecting to a perpendicular hallway, with another hallway straight ahead. Regularly-spaced doors lined the hallways, some made of iron bars, others of iron-bound wood with hinged shutters that could be opened to look inside without opening the doors. Patrick motioned everyone out, then closed and re-locked the door behind them.

  "This way! You missed the official afternoon tour but I can show you around a bit on the way," he said, leading straight ahead.

  "Official tour?" Al asked.

  "By appointment, but for five silvers each we have one of the guards show people around. Reminds people there's a penalty for criminal behavior and gives them a chance to see actual criminals in a safe environment. Some of them are very disturbed and deranged. It's great fun and brings in some revenue! Now, the ones here nearest the door are the ones we don't expect to be here long but aren't sentenced to something in the arena, mostly minor crimes like drunken disorderly behavior or minor theft. Of course, some are more interesting."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He stopped and opened the shutter in a door to his right.

  "Hello, Gladys! Just stopping by for a visit! Got anything to say today?"

  "Finally, someone who will listen!" a rough but feminine voice answered from within. "I'm telling you, the bread is possessed by spirits of the dead! They must be freed to return to their rest! You've got to gather the guard and help me destroy the bread!"

  "Now, don't you worry yourself, the city guard will take care of it. We can't be having innocent civilians such as yourself putting themselves in danger for things like this, you know."

  "When are you going to let me out of here this time?"

  "As soon as it's safe for you, don't worry. You just get some rest."

  Patrick closed the shutter in the door before Gladys could object.

  "Poor woman has fits, hears things, causes problems. She doesn't mean any harm but we can't just let her run around lighting visiting bakers' stocks on fire or whatever she feels compelled to do to save us all from whatever otherworldly danger she's imagining at the time. How would you feel if you dragged a cartload of bread to trade here from Ebonflow and some nut burned it all when you got here?"

  "That would depend upon whether or not my bread was actually possessed by spirits of the dead," Bote answered.

  "Ha ha! Good one!" Patrick laughed, continuing down the hall to the next door, which was simply an iron frame with iron bars on a hinge. This gave everyone in the hallway a clear view of the occupant. Too tall for a gnome but too short for an adult human, with bare hairy feet and dressed in filthy scavenged rags, he sat on the floor apparently deep in conversation with a handful of rats.

  "What do you want this time, can't you see I'm in a meeting?" the irate halfling asked with a scowl as he scratched at his wildly unkempt hair.

  "What I want is for you to get legal so we don't have to keep doing this," Patrick answered. "You know there's a variance available for legitimate druid-priests."

  "I'm not going to shackle myself to your oppressive laws! What are you looking at?"

  "Oh, uh, nothing, just curious," Al answered, looking away.

  "Not you! Him! My council is not for eating!" the halfling barked, pointing at the drooling gnoll behind Al.

  "Don't worry, we've got a proper feast for the big guy here. You know, you'd eat a lot better than the garbage you scavenge if you'd get legal."

  "You want me to cooperate? You can start by telling her to quit staring at me!" the halfling complained, pointing to what appeared to be a mural of a stern elven woman on the wall behind him.

  "Don't want you tempted to repeat your crime while you're serving time for it already. Don't mind us, we're just passing by, we'll let you get back to your... meeting." Patrick said, pointedly ignoring the halfling's rude gesture and continuing down the hallway.

  "This place looked pretty clean, but you've got rats infesting the place?" Al asked.

  "Nope, just Kwingus' cell. We still don't know how they keep getting in there. Probably something to do with him being a druid. He's in here for unauthorized shape-changing, we keep catching him transforming into a rat or racoon or stray dog. We really ought to be harder on him but the city guard's a bit cautious about making the other druid-priests mad."

  "And the painting of the elf on the wall?"

  "A representation of Respublica, whose divine gaze prevents the use of magic to disturb public order," Bote explained.

  "Yes, exactly, otherwise he'll rack up another violation of the law in the process of transforming into something that fits through the bars. Oh, here's Edgar's cell," Patrick said as their tour continued. He pointed to another wooden door with a closed inspection window. "You probably don't really want to look at that one. Inappropriate public lewdness."

  "Oh, let me see!" Wikwocket insisted. Al watched paralyzed with scandal as she jumped up to grab the handle of the viewing-window and swung on it to open it. She lifted herself up further to look inside.

  "Hmm? Well, hey there, little lady," Al heard a voice from within say, "What do you think of this?"

  Wikwocket's answer was uproarious laughter.

  "Hey, Al! You should see this! It's hilarious!"

  "Uh, no, thank you," Al answered.

  "Hey!" objected the voice in the cell. This only served to make Wikwocket laugh even harder. "Its not funny!"

  "No, really, Al, he's so proud of it, check this out!"

  "I don't think that will be necessary," Al insisted, looking away. He saw Patrick trying to restrain his own amusement.

  "Stop laughing! It's normal!" the voice inside shouted in angry desperation, followed by a scream as Gruntle stuck his head up to the window next to Wikwocket to see what all the fuss was about.

  "Oh, messy! Good thing you're not wearing pants, right?"

  Haunch apparently felt left out, and he brayed loudly.

  Unable to contain his mirth any longer, Patrick burst out in laughter alongside Wikwocket, and reached to swing the shutter closed.

  "Ha ha! Okay, we'd better stop staring or he's going to want to charge admission!" he declared. Wikwocket let go and dropped to the floor so that Patrick could shutter the viewing-window.

  "Was it really that funny?" Al asked skeptically as Wikwocket's amusement calmed down to a chuckle.

  "No, not really, assuming you've seen naked people before. The thing is, being able to shock an audience is a useful skill, but if that's all you've got you're a bad performer. Hopefully this'll encourage him to broaden his approach a bit," she answered.

  "Oh, I hope not," Patrick said, "he's enough of a public nuisance already. Come on, food's going to get cold if we take too long!"

  The tour continued past a series of petty criminals - small-time pickpockets, shoplifters, trespassers, a cell crammed with drunks sprawled in uncomfortable-looking positions sleeping off their inebriation, and a litterer. Gruntle sniffed the air and drooled as Patrick directed them down a side-hall towards a wide door, bound in gold. Or, more likely, gilded iron, Al decided as they got closer. Still, it certainly presented a higher-class appearance than the doors they'd passed on the way. Patrick selected a gold-plated key on his keyring and turned it in the gilded lock in the door. Al found himself feeling impatient as the smell of roast meats, bread, pastries, and spices reached him, and his stomach rumbled.

  "We've put a lot of thought and effort into making these accommodations as luxurious and comfortable for a gnoll as we could, based on what we know about them, I'm sure you'll all love it! Behold!" Patrick announced, and pulled the door open.

  The second and subsequent features of the room that Al noticed were the fine comforts that Patrick had been hinting at. The room was at least fifteen paces square, well-lit by oil lamps mounted on the walls. Four large cots with thick mattresses, heavy woven blankets, and fluffy pillows waited along one wall. In a far corner, a heavy curtain was drawn back to show a gilded privy. In the center of the room was a wide oval table laden with plates of food and pitchers of drink, surrounded by padded chairs. A writing-desk and a couch occupied the wall opposite the beds. An actual plush carpet had been rolled out over the stone flooring.

  These details were noticed after Al managed to tear his disbelieving eyes away from the... artwork. The walls held framed paintings of gnolls, as the artist imagined them to be. About half of the portraits were at least plausibly realistic, depicting a reasonable approximation of actual gnolls menacing the viewer, or in the act of eating someone, or in a few cases posed in comically humanish "heroic" stances.

  The other half were unnaturally curvaceous and showing off very unlikely breasts.

  "We didn't have time to commission a sculptor, but the painters worked very hard on these. Don't they look great?" Patrick said with admiration.

  So that's what the gnollish "I have no idea what I'm looking at and am slightly horrified" facial expression looks like, Al thought as he saw Gruntle's reaction.

  "I, uh, don't think those are accurate," Al said diplomatically.

  "Yeah, nobody seems to know exactly what gnoll women look like. Are they supposed to have four of them or something?"

  "From what I've seen of the research, gnoll, um, women look very much like any other gnoll, except they might be a bit larger."

  "They got the preference for lack of clothes right, though!" Wikwocket admitted.

  Gruntle's head slowly tilted to one side as he stared at the confusing portraits.

  "Oh, sorry about that, then. Let me get those out of there," Patrick said, quickly rushing inside to take down the fanciful gnoll women paintings and hurrying to set them out in the hallway. "I'll take them with me when I leave. Let's forget about those and get you all fed, I'll go get one of the guards on duty to bring some oats for your donkey and then I'll tell you all about the amazing opportunity that I've asked you to come here for while we eat!"