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“I’m just stopping in for a debrief,” Beau said, pulling her Expositor vestiges on over her usual clothes as the towering library came into view. “Don’t pick up any books, don’t ask any questions, don’t even bother getting curious. If I come out of Dairon’s office and have to dig you out of a pile of books so that we can leave at a decent time you will never hear the fucking end of it.”
Caleb sighed, disappointed, but nodded. “Very well.”
Beau rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that kicked puppy look, man. We’re on our way to Port Damali in a few weeks, they have another library there and we’ll have more down time by then.” They reached the front door of the Soul just as she finished speaking and she pushed it open, stepping inside first and then waving him after her.
There were two young people standing near the door, one with a sword on his belt and wearing similar robes to the ones Beau used to wear and one in the more adorned robes of a cleric with a large symbol of Ioun around her neck. The cleric glanced up first when they entered, then looked back down at her desk to gather the sign-in book, then she did a double take. Her eyes got wide as she looked Beau up and down and she hurriedly started pushing on her friend’s shoulder to get his attention. He frowned at her and knocked her hand gently away, then followed her eyes. The second they landed on Beau, his eyes widened too and he stood up stock straight.
“Expositor Lionett!” he exclaimed.
Beau looked uncomfortable with the formality and shrugged. “Just Beau’s fine. I’m here to see Dairon, they in?”
The cleric spoke next, nervousness in her shaking voice. “Dai- Yes. Yes, in her office.”
Beau waved. If she noticed their reverence of her, she didn’t show it. “Thanks. This is my friend, Caleb. He can’t read so don’t give him any books.” She gave him a smirk and a wave and stepped around the entry desk towards the stairs.
Caleb huffed and crossed his arms. The second that Beau was out of sight, the monk turned to the cleric and gasped.
“Holy shit, it was really her!”
The cleric bit her lip, still watching the staircase where Beau had disappeared. “Amelia is gonna be so jealous, she’s got such a crush on her.”
Caleb tilted his head in confusion. “Is Beauregard a bit of a celebrity here?”
The cleric jumped in surprise and looked at him. “Oh! Sorry, I forgot you were there. What did you say?”
“Beauregard. Is she a bit famous here?”
“Are you kidding?” the monk boy asked. “She’s basically a legend. Expositors… well, before her they were kind of falling into obscurity. There used to be powerful, famous heroes among them but the last one was almost fifty years ago. Truthfully, most of the people around here thought they were just a myth to keep us from acting out.”
Caleb hummed thoughtfully. He honestly had no clue what Expositors were meant to do and he knew for a fact that Beau didn’t either. Could it be possible that she was doing a good job without meaning to? It honestly wouldn’t be out of character for her when he thought about it. “And Beau is different?”
The cleric sighed in a way that Caleb would describe as ‘dreamy’. “She’s so cool, like an Expositor from the old stories.”
Caleb smiled a little and glanced up when he heard Beau’s voice on the second floor catwalk. She and Dairon were speaking quietly as they walked towards the shrine of Ioun in the back of the building, Dairon handing her a book that Beau instantly started flipping through before they disappeared again out of sight.
“Is she a friend of yours?” the monk asked next. “Do you have any stories?”
Caleb thought about it for a moment. He could tell them about how she snored so loud this morning that she woke herself up or about last night when she laughed so hard at something Jester said that she snorted wine out of her nose. He could tell them about the time she stole mail just because she was trying to be petty and ended up getting them involved with an underground criminal network and inadvertently finding Jester’s father, but even he didn’t quite believe that particular sequence of events. He could tell them about the way she got arrested trying to help a little girl who didn’t need to be helped or about the time a few days later when she tried and failed to choke that little girl out. He could tell them any one of a million stories about who Beau really was. A hero, yes certainly. A legend? In her own right. But cool? No. Beauregard Lionett was a nerd.
Instead of any of those stories, he cleared his throat and nodded. “Have you ever heard of the island of Darktow and their leader, the Plank King?” He began to tell the story of their battle on Darktow and of Beau’s conversation with the Plank King and how she had saved their lives and ended Avantika’s just with the power of her words. He wasn’t the storyteller that Jester or Caduceus were but he knew how to spin a compelling narrative when he needed to. Just as he reached the end, the Plank King’s final words letting them leave the island and never return, he heard his name called from across the large, open room.
“Caleb!” Beau exclaimed, appearing on the catwalk again. She hopped up and over the railing with the ease of a cat and landed on the marble on three points but didn’t pause. She grabbed him by the arm and started pulling him towards the door. “We have to go. We have to go now.”
Caleb blinked in shock but let himself be pulled along. “Beau? What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she said, pushing open the door and hauling him out of it. “There’s a giant fucking pile of paperwork sitting in my room and we have to hurry before Dairon realizes I left without doing it.”
Caleb huffed and smothered a smile as she pulled him through the streets.
‘Cool’ they had called her. If only they knew.