9.5

Adelyne was not sure that she actually liked the new task that Lady Jewel had for her. She could not deny she was a lot more comfortable with it then the near panic of trying to clean terribly fragile items worth more silver than she ever held in her life.

But roving the familiar streets of Kaeketeh while dressed in a clean dress worth an absurd amount of Pfennig in ‘Wyrmspun Wool’ in order to try and do what she could to ‘speak for the alleys and shadows’ was not anything she had ever been prepared to try. Also it made her rather uncomfortable how some of the children had started treating her like a challenge to hone their craft.

She released the wrist of the latest sneaky bastard (as most children were).

“Lil Gombj flaker! I’ve caught ya thrice now! You know the deal! Haepenny each for a good solid true word on what’s up with the waifs! Lie or snatch at my purse and a kick in the ribs!”

Now properly admonished Adelyne kicked out into the side of the too brave by half boy, but soft like. Jewel would probably turn her into whatever the Wyrm’s idea of a frog was if she ever heard that Adelyne did anything harmful to even a thieving child.

Lil Gombji flaker (so named for when he was younger and left too many crumbs when he ate) winced and bowed to her and called Adelyne “her Ladyship” just to rankle her.

It was not even four years ago she was in the same place he was!

She scowled at the silently laughing boy and rolled one of the half silver coins she’d been using to bribe the roving band of orphans (or near enough) that lurked and worked the crowds in gate town.

“So out with the word then?”

The shine shut him up better and faster than any amount of cursing or kicks could. A whole silver this size was fresh bread roll. Or if his stomach could handle saving it a good ways towards one of the meat pasties that you didn't have to run away with.

Adelyne remembered the weight of silver on a hungry stomach well.

She knew Lil Gombji did too.

“Right your ladyship, so like, word is a waif was spotted through a window in the old Sopper’s house this morning.”

Adelyne raised a brow, she’d already gotten word of one last being seen on streets near there and never coming back out. Confirmation was good and a more specific location definitely worth half a pfennig.

Still she wanted a bit more.

“The one that was left fallow three years for wood rotting out the roof? The one none in the guilds gone to fix?”

The boy nodded and Adelyne rolled the half silver into her palm then spun a full pfennig into view.

“Got more for me lil Gombji? What the state of her was?”

The boy scowled and wrinkled his nose at that.

“It was bad, I peeked through the window, she was strung up with dock rope, bleeding and indecent. Still breathing though!”

Adelyne sighed and rolled three full Pfennig between her fingers before settling them in her open palm to the boy. It was honestly a better tip then most she’d heard.

And that was a good spot well within Tanner's turf.

On Jewel’s word, the count consort’s deal with the Butchers & Soppers and Adelyne’s own clout being ‘Ginter’s girl back from the dead’ she could probably rustle up a good mob of men very handy with the art of cutting meat from bone and strong enough to haul full grown pigs over each shoulder.

The boy snatched up the coins and then was off running like he stole it.

While Adelyne could not fault the lad (you needed to have your pride on Kaeketeh’s streets). But if he ever actually claimed to have gotten the coin from snatching off her she’d track him down and whoop his hide raw. She might be under the owned bond of the Lady Jewel herself and dressed in a ransom of magic wool but she still had her reputation to uphold on the street.

Still that was a good tip and now she needed to do the far less pleasant part of her newly assigned duty and make way to the absolute stink and wretchedness that was the tanner’s district.

Most of the guilds kept their houses or halls somewhat close to their work. But the Butchers and Soppers seemed to delight in having their main building right next door to the tanner’s.

Adelyne was not sure precisely why but she’d seen a few and heard of more late night brawls between the apprentices of both guilds.

Exactly what the business was that led to such she never quite found out and even now that she’d talked with them on more than one occasion could not even imagine. Tanners in Kaeketeh were either best of friends or mortal enemies with Butchers.

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Likewise Soppers either were welcomed like brothers in the tanner district or liable to end up with a slit throat. Or so the word went, but Adelyne was pretty sure that Ginter would have told her if there had ever been any actual murders between the guilds. Either way for whatever reason it seemed like at least for the time being the Butchers & Soppers were throwing in with Lady Jewel.

While the Tanners apparently were taking this opportunity to make a lot of fuss and not much else.

Big burly men who reeked of blood and carried heavy sticks and maybe a cleaver or other work knife from the shops had done wonders for ‘restoring the peace’ either way, And Adelyne figured it was time that whatever price they had taken from the Lady Jewel was further earned.

As a thief and before that a beggar Adelyne had long since learned to endure smells the softer kids in the country did not.

Something rotting and awful could be an excellent place to give an angry mark the slip.

But even at her most desperate of times a youthful Adelyne would have thought thrice about running for the Tanneries of Kaeketeh.

There was the rot of trash, or meat gone a bit sour. And then there was the concoction of foulness which the filthy tanners and dyers seemed to delight in! Adelyne was glad that the winds either followed the currents of the river or had the decency to go clear across them.

The few times in the highest summer that the air in Kaeketeh went stagnant and still the stink of the tanners, dyers and other terrible miasma filled gate town like an awful bowl of fetid stew.

You’d think maybe that filthy terrible smell would be what inspired the ire of the soppers.

But the bastards were as often proud as can be to walk into the worst of the stench!

Adelyne walked fast as she could and kept to the streets most upwind to help with the smell. While holding her breath as often as possible on the route to south Kaeketeh.

When she finally was able to get into the Butcher and Sopper’s guild house and the doors had swung solidly closed behind her, Adelyne gave a deep and thankful breath. You could still smell the blood, but it was buried under the sweet perfumes and other sharper accents of soap and boiling fat.

The clerk was as always smugly sitting behind his desk and pointedly not looking as Adelyne savored the almost entirely clean air. She was not sure precisely what his name was but he knew Adelyne and the arrangement with her Lady Jewel. He also managed guild affairs and larger work orders, mostly for soap (although skilled butchers were sometimes called on to join on hunts for an entourage.)

There was still a stagnant pungency beneath all the rest that filled the Butcher and Sopper’s guild chambers. But compared to what even the street outside smelled like so close to Tanner's district it might as well have been a star blessing on Adelyne’s nose.

There was unfortunately no one else ahead of her to delay the return to that nostril scouring air.

So Adelyne sighed and approached the Butcher and Sopper’s Guildhouse clerk.

Voice ringing out clear to fill the room and spaces beyond.

“Word is there’s another one that was spotted holed up on your turf. In one of the old sopper’s houses even. Probably won’t be nothing but the Countess’ law is gonna need to call on some of your boys in case the idiots who did it are there and rowdy.”

The guild clerk sighed and nodded. But he did not yet move from his chair to go round up whoever was available and thirsting for potential violence. Which was usually the younger apprentices or journeymen guilders in house.

“I don’t suppose the countess might also have an order for something in the proper purview of guild business?”

Adelyne made a show of thinking about it before shaking her head.

“Sorry the linen washers were still full up for soap this morning. Unless you lot feel like you want to take another stab at that kraoska sausage she’s so homesick for?”

The clerk actually paused at that, as if considering it. Adelyne didn't really understand it much herself. The guilds were always just a dangerous background to Kaeketeh when she was a girl. You didn't try to thieve off full proper guild members (the apprentices were fair game, a Journeyman you always made sure you took what was his and not his master’s).

But as far as what strange feelings guided the comings and goings of anyone of a standing and skill to be in a guild?

Adelyne was left confounded.

The best she could compare it too was the way that a street child would rise up and do some truly foolish things if there were at least two others to watch them.

But applied to something different then posturing to keep your rivals off ya when you slept for fear of the violence you could later do, or showing that you were willing to go above and beyond for an avowed friend or family.

Guilders were strange like that.

They took making things as something like a matter of pride.

Sausage was for eating, if it filled your belly and didn’t make you wretch what more was the pride of it for?!

That her lady and countess was finicky and apparently wanted something more than a good salty fish and pig in intestine sizzled up and oily with that slight woody hint of sawdust?

Well that was just strange nobles being noble and Jewel was strange, noble and a dragon besides.

But the butchers apparently took that as some kind of a challenge.

Some kind of a failure, like somehow not being able to make a sausage taste like what the lady wanted would risk them getting shoved out of a warm corner in the bunkhouse.

Adelyne huffed and apparently that was enough to get the Guild clerk moving.

Which was all the better, there was some waif bloodied and who knows what in the tanner’s district.

And Adelyne needed to get a bunch of burly men skilled in the act of splitting meat and bone to go with her in case someone in Kaeketeh was stupid.

Which of course meant there was no question this would end in a terrible beating and violence.

Adelyne was just going to make sure that it was the other guys that suffered the worst of it.