Who: Lady Wachter’s manservant and errand-runner. A polite, forgettable man in a good coat — except that Henrik named him: Ernst threatened him, and Ernst’s hands took the stolen bones.
Also: As of Session 11, a person. We regret several things.
Status: The enemy’s man — with the most understandable hatred of the Baron in Vallaki, and an open invitation from Sirius in his pocket.
The story he told
At the canapé party he opened by observing, accurately, that we had been “flashing the Baron’s writ around” and had frightened the poor bowyer into overpaying for a crossbow. Word travels. Then, instead of answering a question about the Baron’s authority, he told Sirius an anecdote:
Two brothers. The younger threw a rotten apple at the Baron during a festival; the elder tried to take the blame; the guards took them both to the Reformation Center. The tea that addles the mind. The room where you are filled with bone-deep terror unless you keep smiling. And when they didn’t break — the no-hopers’ basement, dark, patrolled by creatures, with too little food for a growing boy. The elder brother passed his share through the bars, every day: “I believe in you. We will not break.” Above ground, Lady Wachter did what she does best — parties, sympathy, pressure — until one day, a crack of light. Both brothers freed. The elder, who had not eaten in weeks, died.
“You probably can guess I was the younger brother. I am going nowhere near the baron. There’s only one devil in Barovia, and you are flashing his writ.”
We looked for the lie and could not find it — only fury. Behind him, the household chorus: Haliq in the hall, young Madalena — “each one of us was rescued by the lady.” The man we were told to think of as an appendage is a person, his grievance is legitimate, and the lady’s good works are real to the people she saved.
The standing invitation
Sirius told him there are undead in this city and that he knows who took the bones, and offered to show him. “You know where we are.” That was the evening of the canapé party. By mid-morning the next day, the whole town had seen the undead — let in, whatever else is true, by errands run from his lady’s house.
Which way does a man like that break? It is one of the questions on our minds.
The errand (Session 12)
We may have watched the answer. On the day the town burned — the day the whole city saw what those coffins held — Ernst’s recorded contribution was to walk into the Blue Water, calm as morning, and invite Ireena to Wachterhaus. The Burgomaster’s sister, our charge, the one person we had told nothing. She went, of course. It was a kind offer from a kind house that had just opened itself as a hospital.
Loyal. Effective. Unhurried. Whatever cracked in him when the vampires came out, it did not slow his hands. We are updating the file from “which way does he break” to: has he already chosen, and did we mistake grief for doubt?
Me baby. Just a baby. (Session 13)
For the record, and for morale: during our escape from Wachterhaus, Ernst Larnak — the lady’s shadow, the man who misses nothing — looked directly at Lily twice, saw a small child in a commoner’s cloak, and shoved her roughly aside on his way to the crime scene. He then regrouped with his lady on the landing and descended with her, loyal to the last stair. We are recording this as the first fight Ernst Larnak has ever lost, and he does not know it happened.
At the festival he will be wherever she is. He always is.
Appears in: S9 · S10 · S11 · S12 · S13. See also: The House of Wachter, Ireena Kolyana, Henrik the Coffin Maker.