Saturday, November 23rd

Indirk awoke to the smell of cooking meat. She smiled immediately, laying right where she’d fallen asleep, and chuckled sleepily, “Even on the weekend.”

Mardo said from the kitchen, “You need to eat every day, I assume.”

She laughed at that and pushed herself up. The coat she’d left slung over the bed slid off and hit the floor. There was a click and a clatter of metal as the spyglass fell out of one pocket.

Her pistol fell from the other.

Indirk stared down at the pistol, her sleepiness suddenly gone, but paralysis locked her in place. She’d grown so comfortable that she’d completely forgotten about the weapon. Nobody in Gray Watch had a gun. They were weapons of Pharaul and Vont, cursed iron contraptions, the bane of sorcerers, illegal and feared. Moreover, it was the weapon that had slain Hado, the carnage unmistakable. At once, Indirk’s mind began to compose the lies she would need to explain the weapon, to say she’d taken it off a fallen soldier in the Warring Lands, or that it was a keepsake from her time in the Writhesea, hoping to assemble something that wasn’t utterly absurd.

While she stared, Mardo casually scooped up the coat, the pistol, and the spyglass. Without pause, he put the pistol back in the coat’s pocket and hung the coat up. He looked, instead, at the spyglass, remarking, “You’ve cracked the lens.”

Indirk watched him, muttering a quiet, “What?”

“These are expensive. I hope it still works, at least somewhat.” He put the spyglass to his eye and squinted, then shrugged, and set it on the table to return to the stove.

Watching him, Indirk slowly pivoted to sit. She looked to Avie, curled into a sleepy white spool of fur watching her from the table, and then to Mardo’s back. There was no way he’d overlooked the pistol. Indirk wondered, and in fact almost asked him, feeling the words on her lips and wanting to form them, How long have you known where I’m actually from?, but she didn’t say the words. With his silence, he’d communicated something that it took her a few minutes to understand, but gradually she settled into it.

He knew, Indirk decided. She decided that he knew she was a liar, and that he did not care. And at that, she felt comfort settle back over her. It was as though he’d once again taken her by the collar and pulled her into his home, inviting her once more, and with far more certainty this time, to stay.

* * *

Sunday, December 8th

Amo didn't bother to perform their cover-story with any particular effort. As a functionary in the inspector's office, Amo mostly went about the quay accepting bribes instead of performing ship inspections, then using that money to pay the inspector's assistant to complete the paperwork for them. Of course, the key to getting away with this was to make the money disappear as quickly as possible, so Amo would treat themself to extravagant meals and then slip into the back offices to dig through the Chief Inspector's logs. At noon on Sunday, Amo carried a sack of spiced, roasted okra in one hand and with the other pinned a copy of the month's shipping logs to their side beneath their coat, as they arrived at the Fishmonger shop looking for Nymir and Myrel.

Instead, Amo was surprised to find the place empty, but for a conspicuously armored figure standing hunched in the middle of the room. Light leaking through salt-rotted boards cast long, stark shadows over Phaeduin, the old man unmoving and faceless beneath his helm, and Amo for a moment got the very strange sense that someone had erected an empty set of armor in the middle of the room. Perhaps a haunted one.

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Then Phaeduin turned slightly toward Amo, his curled horns casting strange shadows over the angular face of his helm. "Nymir and Myrel are still out on the bay. They won't be back for a few hours."

"Right." Amo eased into the building and shut its rickety door behind them. "And what are you doing here? Aren't you usually on patrol about mid-day?"

"I've been told to take the weekend off." Phaeduin’s long, lightly furred tail shifted unhappily on the floor behind him. "And report for reevaluation on Monday."

"Oh. That sounds like a problem."

"I'll be fine. I know how to say what they want."

"Alright." Amo found themself giving Phaeduin a wide berth as they snuck around the perimeter of the room. They'd had some wine with lunch and suddenly felt that they should be sober. "I'm just going to make some coffee."

"Those Suncursed bastards!" Phaeduin tore his helmet from his head. It clattered roughly, perhaps painfully over his horns. He threw it hard against the wall, knocking hooks and ropes to the floor. "People are still going missing in the Slowrise Estates -- two people a week, like to some predator on a steady diet -- and the Watch won't acknowledge it. They tell me to stop searching. They bury the reports. And now they're threatening me. Oh, not openly!"

"Hey, volume! Quiet!" Amo retreated toward the stove. "Thin walls. People might hear."

"Let them!" Phaeduin marched a furious circle, his hooves like hammers on the wooden floor. "Don't the people of Gray Watch deserve to know their protectors are hiding from their responsibilities?"

There was a dangerous aura about Phaeduin, and being trapped in the cramped little shop with him made Amo chuckle nervously. "Let's not pretend we know what's going on. They've got their hands tied. You knew poking this would lead to trouble."

"Oh, the sorcerers! Yes, the sorcerers, kidnapping people to fuel their magic, holding their power over the Watch. I haven't seen such twisted abuse since those Redfall vermin set up that cathedral in..." He slowed his pacing, grumbling, and suddenly leaned on the table in the middle of the room to try and catch his breath.

Amo frowned at the sight, offering, “You know, my mom runs an orphanage out of that old cathedral now, so it didn’t turn out all bad.” Amo watched the deep creases on Phaeduin's face. They'd gotten so much deeper, and his fur had turned almost white, thinned so much that the age spots around his eyes could be seen. Once, Amo was sure Phaeduin had been fearsome in power and charisma. Now, though he didn't say so, his advancing weakness sharpened his anger. Amo understood what the old man wouldn't say: there was a mystery to solve, and he didn't have long left to solve it. Phaeduin didn't want to leave it behind for the rest of them. He didn't want to burden Myrel with it.

There was a question Amo wanted to ask Phaeduin, Did you really think we'd finish this mission and be home before you died?, but Amo didn't ask that. Phaeduin's reasons -- for choosing to be here, now, as his death settled in, so far from home, and with his only child dragged into his final work -- were all his own. They weren't Amo's business. And Amo never could have understood it perfectly, anyway.

Finally, Amo just said, "I'll make you some coffee, too," and, after another moment, "It probably doesn't feel like it, but if they're targeting you, that means you're making progress. You're getting closer."

* * *

“Getting closer,” Phaeduin huffed. “Amo’s too good of a liar.”

“Dad?” Myrel managed only minor worry, despite the gleam of these foreign lamps upon their fur. The wind of the deep night moved around them, stirring the hair that hung over Myrel’s face and giving a rare glimpse of their blue eyes.

“Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine.”

“I wasn’t worrying. We’ve got a plan. Plans we make together are always perfect.” With a weightless little chuckle that made Phaeduin wonder if he’d misjudged his child’s courage, Myrel trotted along the pathway, hooves clicking on the paving stones.

Phaeduin watched them move, a strange sight, his child in the robes of a Gray Watch sorcerer. How had it come to this? Was this what they’d wanted? Beyond them, up the path, the ambassadorial suites that had once belonged to Revan – now long abandoned here in the Embassy District – shone with lively yellow light. The place was still kept up. How many in Gray Watch knew that the city’s sorcerers had moved in, taking it as a place of ritual and secret meeting? Too few. The people of this city were not suspicious enough of their own sorcerers.

Grumbling, Phaeduin adjusted his armor, donned his metal helm, and slouched toward the gates.