Temple slowly came to. It was bright all around him and something held him down. He wasn’t home where it was dark, cool, and safe, and where he had armed his traps for protection before sleeping. Despite his sensible mind’s protestations, he gasped for air and closed his eyes in the too-hot brightness.
“You’re safe. Don’t be afraid,” a warm, sleepy voice cut through his confusion. A hand rested gently on his shoulder. Bare skin. Temple opened his eyes and lifted his hands to repel the attack, but his whole body was aching and sluggish and barely obeyed.
“Shh, lie still. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you in any way. I won’t turn you in.”
He did as the voice said and laid still …and then a portion of time vanished for him.
When Temple slowly opened his eyes again, the light was less stark and painful and the sluggishness less prominent. He looked around. A bedroom with light-green walls. A cabinet, a clothes chest, a small table. A sword belt was hanging on a hook above the chest, the weapon resting in its scabbard.
A man sat a little way off, curled up with a leg outstretched to rest on the bed. He was wrapped in a blanket and slept peacefully, head resting on the side of the chair. He still had some summer freckles on his tanned skin and was tall and well-muscled. Short, golden-brown hair and broad shoulders that barely seemed to fit the chair, although he looked comfortable enough. He was so familiar and yet not at all.
Temple kept focusing on him until recognition and identity abruptly clicked together and he caught his breath in a sudden rush of fear. He quickly scanned the room. There was a door behind the Watcher captain and, beyond that, what looked like a hallway and an office. There was a window on the wall to his right, but the curtain was drawn, so he couldn’t see how far up they were. But there was sunlight coming in, so no matter where he ran, he would be visible, and shadows would be scarce.
Slowly, he tried sitting up, breathing quietly through the echo of pain in his side and leg. He slowly pulled the blanket aside with the hand that didn’t ache. A further complication to his escape: he was clad only in his undershorts, and the hem was stained with dried blood.
“You have nothing to fear. I swear I will not turn you in or harm you in any way, Magpie,” the captain of the Kaala Wharf palisade said softly. He shifted slowly in his chair to face Temple as one would do near a frightened animal that might attack or run off at any moment. “My name is Gilbert.”
“Armstrong,” Temple finished quietly. There was no point trying to feign ignorance. They had held each other’s gaze before, and the Watcher had made it clear he recognised him.
The Watcher was silent. “All right,” he finally said with a hint of a smile in his voice. “Are you hungry? Do you need some venom-ash? The loo?”
Temple looked at the man who was staring back in return. “Why is a Watcher captain not tallying his gost right now?” he asked and slowly tried to gain leverage to sit up. “Why am I not in a drowning cage?”
The Watcher slowly and wordlessly reached out, so Temple could take his hand for leverage. There was a small glimmer of challenge in the man’s green eyes, and Temple took his hand in defiance of the apprehension he felt. This was wrong. All of it. Reality had tilted on its axis it seemed. Armstrong’s hand was calloused from holding a sword, warm and large. Temple didn’t want to let go.
“You know why,” Armstrong just said. “I saw you when it happened. You got Milla to safety. She told me what you did.” Their eyes met and a strange sort of resonance swept through Temple’s battered body. The touch of their hands seemed unreasonably familiar from just having looked at him once before when he had been dragging the wounded Watcher to safety.
“How were you hurt?” Armstrong asked. “Do you remember?”
The snarls of hounds and shouts of guardsmen resounded to his inner ear and his cheeks grew hot. It had been so unprofessional! It was such an easy theft to pull off, but suddenly his mind had rebelled against him and the mental image of the kneeling woman, the child’s hand, the knife… all of it had forcefully inserted itself into his thoughts until he had gasped audibly and fallen over in his fight to get back to reality.
The sound and inattentiveness meant he had been spotted, and had needed to run; they had sounded the alarm and he had only escaped by hauling himself onto higher ground and changing direction like a madman; until they caught up again and he had to throw himself on the mercy of coincidence. That landed him the kiss of a solid wall at high speed and a bolt to the leg before he made his escape into the blessed shadows, where not even the hounds could follow.
“I must have slipped,” Temple just said, looking into Armstrong’s eyes and letting go of his hand, so he could rest against the headboard of the bed.
Armstrong huffed a small laugh. “Slipped… That’s probably what happened.” He nodded and then got up and stretched, his back clicking, before pushing the chair over to the wall. He folded his blanket neatly and, while his attention was on his task, Temple looked around the room and tried to catch a better glimpse of the office beyond.
“You were pretty badly hurt, Magpie.”
Temple looked back sharply.
“I think you even …well, stopped breathing for a moment after I gave you a tincture.”
“Why am I not on my way to the cages, Watcher?” Temple demanded slowly. “What do you want?”
“Want? What do I want?” Armstrong gave a little laugh.
It sounded genuine to Temple’s ears, which confused him. He didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t.
“Sorry, nobody has asked what I want for years,” Armstrong said. “I already got what I want,” he added dismissively.
“And what would that be?”
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“You’re alive. I paid you back.” The Watcher captain shrugged and went to open the cabinet.
Everything in there was neatly stacked and evenly folded, and he picked out some clothes and a belt and put them on the bed. “I had to cut your trouser legs open because of the wound,” he said. “But you can use this if you want. Or stay in bed and rest. You are welcome to stay until you are well again. Your clothes are there,” he nodded to the clothes chest next to the cabinet. “Along with your hood and …baggage.”
“And you will just let me go?” Temple asked suspiciously, watching for any sign of duplicity. “When you of all people know what I’m worth?”
“Oh, trust me, I’m not impressed with my own intelligence right now, but yes, I will let you go.” Armstrong drew a deep breath and then nodded to himself. “I’ll make some tarbean tea and breakfast. The washroom is right there if you need it,” he pointed to the hallway. “Kitchen is just down the hall. If you aren’t feeling up to it, stay here and I can bring you food.”
Temple’s eyes flickered from the Watcher to the hallway and back. He seemed serious. But he couldn’t be. It had to be a ruse of some kind. Some kind of ploy to track him to his home to ambush him there or… or a truly mad figment of his own imagination. Perhaps he was actually dying from his wounds and was lying in a dirty alleyway, hiding behind the garbage boxes in the hopes of masking his scent from the hounds, desperately fantasising about a way out to make death less strenuous.
Armstrong left the bedroom and the sounds of a metal stove being lit sounded while Temple still sat uncertain.
Slowly, he swung his legs out of bed and tested if he could stand. The wound ached, but he could keep his balance if he made no sudden movements. He ran his hand down his ribs. There seemed to be a few odd indentations on the bones when his ink-painted fingers probed them, but it wasn’t directly painful.
First, he went and pulled a corner of the curtain aside. It was late afternoon, and the greenish glint of the roofing tiles on the house across from here made him quite certain they were in the district of Draggok Hill near Eastgate. He quickly surveyed the street below and the flats across the street. Nothing seemed amiss.
Thoughtfully, he let the curtain drop and took the shirt from the pile of clothes. Good quality. Too big. The same for the grey trousers, but he put the clothes on anyway and secured them with the belt. Then he went to the clothes chest where his things were supposedly hidden; Glob’s Eye, the diamond from last night’s job, included.
‘Supposedly’ was the keyword. He slowly knelt by the chest, while keeping an ear out for sounds in the kitchen or footsteps in the hallway. The Watcher captain was still in the kitchen, and Temple gingerly opened the chest and found all his work gear lying neatly in a pile. He found the pouch that still contained the diamond. There were no smears of groping fingers on the precious stone when he checked it, so likely the Watcher hadn’t touched it.
He found his boots and put them on and then listened for the sounds in the kitchen. Armstrong was frying something, and a warm scent of butter, herbs, and cooking lizard meat reached his nostrils. Quickly and quietly, he hid Glob’s Eye in the bottom of the cabinet, behind a box of socks.
If this was some sort of bizarre setup, he wouldn’t make it easy for them by walking around with the stolen goods on his person when they apprehended him. He could always come back for it later, or at least do his best to take the captain with him if he fell.
With that out of the way, he scooped his work gear up, rolled the whole thing up in a bundle, and cast a glance at the weapon hanging on the wall. Then he went to the washroom and cleaned up, getting rid of the rest of the grease paint around his eyes, while keeping an ear on the kitchen. But the Watcher stayed there, apparently cooking. In defiance, Temple forced himself to take the time to shave too, feeling much more level afterwards.
When he was done, he walked into the kitchen. The Watcher captain was scooping lizard meat onto fresh fried bitterleaf flatbreads on a large, green plate. There was warm sunlight in the kitchen, and everywhere shelves were holding well-used and mismatched kitchen utensils, as well as potted herbs that competed for the title of most aromatic. Temple didn’t even bother having a kitchen at home, but this one was clearly a workspace that was often used. In the middle stood a table with four mismatched chairs.
The whole thing had a deliberately chaotic, feminine feel that didn’t fit the tall, broad-shouldered man who kept his clothes and everything else Temple had seen in his home neatly folded and organised.
“I have a feeling you will say no and assume I’m trying to poison you, but there’s enough for you too, if you want,” Armstrong said and put the plate on the table.
“I can’t figure this out. What are you getting out of it? I suppose you would claim I could just leave when I want as well, and you wouldn’t do anything about it.”
“Door is there, just down the hall,” Armstrong pointed. “If you go right when you get out, this street joins Shishop Road two streets down, which leads you to Traid Port and Kaala Wharf beyond it. It should be easy to orient yourself from there if you don’t know the area. Well, I know you’re familiar with Kaala Wharf,” he added as he sat down at the table and poured a cup of black tarbean tea.
A small flame of anger sparked in Temple’s chest, and he looked around the kitchen and found a row of mugs – colourful and mismatched, of course – hanging on hooks near the stove. He threw the bundle of his work clothes on the table, picked up a cup, and sat down opposite the Watcher. He poured himself a cup and stared at Armstrong, who gave him a small, seemingly genuine smile that lit his face up and made little smile lines appear at his eyes. He reached behind him, fished an eating knife from a coloured clay jar, and offered it to Temple handle first.
“Now you proceed by arming me?” Temple gingerly took the slender blade. “The same with letting the sword hang in there,” he nodded towards the bedroom. “I’m that little of a threat? Are you sure about that?”
“I’ve had to deal with your shit for four years now, and I’ve never known you to harm anyone,” Armstrong said and cut one of the fried flatbreads in half, scooped meat and chopped herbs back onto it, and began eating. “If you’d ever harmed a Watcher, though, I wouldn’t have helped you,” he added when he finished chewing.
“So the life of one of the Watchers of your palisade is worth fifty thousand gost to you? Fifty thousand?” Temple demanded. The man was mad if he really thought so, and Gilbert Armstrong was not mad, as far as Temple knew.
Armstrong had never stood a chance of catching the illustrious Magpie King, but he had always dealt harshly and efficiently with the area under his palisade. Even to a point of having been slightly annoying, when he cleared out a nest of high-end smugglers Temple had been working with temporarily and sent them all to the cages, even the merchant aristocrats ones among them. Temple still had the damned collection of strange historic sex toys made of kittle ivory and gold that they had asked him to procure, which he couldn’t quite dump at Miss Kaia’s feet and ask her to fence – not without it getting categorically awkward.
“I understand why you wear a mask,” Armstrong said with a small grin. “I’ve never seen so expressive a face on a criminal. Whatever it was on your mind just now, it must have been on the annoying side. But yes, a Watcher of my palisade is worth fifty thousand.”
“You’re the only one who thinks so!” Temple exclaimed, feeling outmanoeuvred by the man’s comment and angry because of it.
He put the eating knife down and got to his feet, ignoring the echo of pain in his body. He marched to the door and was a bit surprised to find it had a perfectly simple lock that he would be able to pick in a matter of seconds, and probably already had a skeleton key for. Not that he needed it; the key was in the lock.
Despite his best efforts, Temple didn’t see a single Watcher lurking in the area when he emerged on the street. Though he went to one of his temporary safe houses, so he could rest and assess the situation before potentially bringing any of them home, he remained unobserved for all he knew.
It didn’t make any sense. Gilbert Armstrong had to have tricked him somehow.