“Quick! Over here!” Hissed a lean man with an unruly mop of dirty blonde hair. The man dressed in simple, home-spun cotton clothes lunged across the narrow alley. His fingers closed around the arm of a mousey young woman that wore a cloak with a deep hood obscuring most of her face.
“We’re never going to ditch them at this rate,” the woman seethed as she was hauled toward the door her partner had opened with a swift application of his heavy boot. “There’s no way we can get out of the harbor district without crossing more of The Lost and Found. They’ve surely put an alert out by now.”
“I don’t think so. At least, not yet.” The man checked up and down the alley as he shoved the cloaked woman through the open door. Her squawk of outrage was lost amidst the clatter of the door as he quickly swung it shut behind them.
This was the third warehouse they’d broken into over the past two hours. The first time they’d nearly been cornered by their pursuers before they found an open window to slip through. The cat and mouse game that followed had seen them scrambling from one end of the harbor district to the other while trying to avoid an ever tightening net of thieve’s guild personnel. Cutpurses, footpads, and even beggars had hounded them relentlessly ever since the failed attempt to contact a capo of The Lost and Found at a dive bar called ‘The Stinky Pinky.”
“I can’t believe this was your great idea.” Rowan, the cloaked girl, said, exasperated, as she threw her hands up in the air. “Everybody else has these great stories about you being this amazing detective. Hell, Lester was bragging just this afternoon about barging into Reverend Fraud’s office and setting that sleazy prick straight.”
“But me? Me?,” the aggravated woman growled as she stabbed an index finger into Dax’s chest. The effect was odd considering the illusion disguised the sergeant’s build enough that Rowan could feel his chest even though it didn’t look like her fingertip was close enough to touch him. “I get one of your Gods damned bad luck adventures. Plenty of stories about those too.”
“Are they going to sell us to the pirates, Dax?” Rowan ranted, lashing out to kick a nearby crate. Dax had to turn away to hide his laughter when she hissed and started hopping on one foot. “Mother…Are you laughing at me?”
“Uhm…no?” Dax tried lamely. He ventured a look over his shoulder only to find Rowan’s illusion staring menacingly at his back. “I was just looking for a way out.”
“Sure you were. Asshole.” Rowan muttered as she lowered her injured foot and took an experimental step to assess the damage. “So what’s it going to be this time? Are they going to sell us to the pirates? Is our only way out going to be through the ooze infested sewers?”
“There aren’t any oozes in the sewers, Row. You know that. We have people who clean them weekly and the Watch performs a full purge once a year.” His eyes narrowed as he stopped stalking down the wall to turn back toward her again. “You were with me last year when we cleaned everything out.”
“Sure, there shouldn’t be any oozes. But this is your luck we’re talking about.” Despite her frustration, years of operational policy had kicked in and now Rowan was quietly following him down the wall with her attention focused on the long hallway behind them. “If there’s one ooze in all of Dalthan’s Rest, I’m sure you’ll find it.”
“We’re not going to have to deal with any oozes,” Dax muttered, less than thrilled about his luck being the topic of conversation. Again.
“Are you sure? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’d rather deal with an overgrown slime than get sold to pirates. I am way too pretty to get sold to pirates, Dax.” The matter-of-fact tone of Rowan’s voice made him close his eyes and draw in a deep, calming breath.
“Look, the plan is still working fine, okay? We skipped a couple steps but that shouldn’t matter.” Now that they’d reached the corner of the building, Dax lowered himself into a crouch behind a stack of shipping crates. He motioned for Rowan to join him. She regarded him icily and tapped the toe of her boot three times against the coarse stone of the warehouse floor before she crouched down beside him with an impatient huff.
Darkness clung to the inside of the warehouse like ink covering dry parchment. The wane rays of silvery moonlight leaking in from the windows at the top of the outer walls only served to make the shadows cast by the large stacks of crates even more impenetrable. Nevertheless, Dax kept his eyes peeled while his mind churned through ideas in search of the best way to adapt his plan. Options, unfortunately, were vanishingly slim. Rowan was right about that, at least.
“We were always planning to make enough of a nuisance of ourselves that one of the heavy hitters had to come out and investigate the out-of-towners that were causing trouble.” The sergeant’s voice was soft as he leaned closer to Rowan. With the darkness draped around them like a funeral shroud, he couldn’t make out any details of the illusion she wore, but he could feel her hand on his arm and the tension in her clenched fingers.
“I thought we’d be able to do all that from the comfort of the bar.” Dax said, musing over just how wrong he’d been on that assessment. “I didn’t expect the entire bar to be a front for The Lost and Found. Remember to write a memo for the guys down in the vice department when we get back.”
When Rowan’s clenched fist hit him in the back, Dax rocked forward hard enough to wrack his forehead against the coarse wooden crate in front of them. A muffled thump echoed through the silent warehouse like thunder rolling across the empty prairie. “What the hell was that about?”
“Write your own damn memos, you prick!,” Rowan hissed as she walloped him on the back again. “This was not part of the plan! None of this running through alleys and hiding in warehouses was part of the plan! We need to drop the illusions and blast anybody between us and a warm bath!” The more she spoke the more animated she became until Dax was curled up into a ball on the floor with Rowan hammering at his back with both fists. “That’s what we should have done hours ago!”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Would you stop?!” Dax turned and warded off her furious assault until he managed to catch one of her wrists. A second wrist followed and the fae woman responded with a feral growl. “We’ve been over this. If we turn up in uniform and start flashing our badges Delilah will just go to ground and who knows how long it’ll take us to find her. This is the fastest…”
Suddenly, as if the noonday sun had manifested beneath the roof of the warehouse, light flooded every corner of the building. The pale yellow light that emanated from the mage globes high above banished the darkness cloaking the warehouse as surely as the night was shattered by an arriving dawn.
“Shit,” Dax hissed as he released Rowan’s wrists. He flattened his back against the crate as the woman beside him did the same.
“Yoooouuuu whhhhooooo! Is anybody here? I have a friend with very good hearing and he promised me that there were two rats skulking around our stuff.”
There were at least five other voices joining together in a chorus of laughter. Dax frowned and wondered if he could take a peek around the edge of the crate. His thoughts came to a screeching halt when he saw a Watch issue wand suddenly appear in Rowan’s hand.
“I’m going to blast these little shits,” Rowan hissed like an angry viper.
Instead of speaking Dax held his index finger perpendicular to his lips in the universal sign for silence. He then carefully put his palm on Rowan’s service weapon to guide the business end toward the floor. Oblivious to the murderous gleam in Detective Rowan’s eye, the petty thief in the center of the warehouse continued his theatrics.
“Everyone is looking for you two! We heard about the party down at the Pinky and we cannot believe that you didn’t invite us!”
“Yeah”
“Bitches”
“Big mistake.”
“...who are we talking to again?”
Dax winced when he heard the dull thump of a balled fist striking an unprepared body. When the ringleader spoke again, he knew his guess had been right.
“Shut the hell up, Two Toes. And stay down! I’m tired of your dumbass following us around.”
From the sudden wheezing cough that followed, he assumed it was a shot to the solar plexus. A plaintive groan followed on its heels along with the rhythmic crack of boots striking a defenseless target.
He knew he wouldn’t get a better chance.
Dax pointed his finger straight at Rowan’s nose and almost lost it when he saw her eyes cross to try to see what he was pointing at. Barely holding back his sudden, inexplicable laughter, he pointed at her a second time, then at the floor where she sat. He silently mouthed the word ‘wait.’
She waited two whole heartbeats before she flipped him off with a sneer.
Dax sighed and mouthed ‘wait’ again. This time she crossed her arms and glared. It would have to be good enough because the sounds of street justice were beginning to die down. Either he moved in now or they started looking for an exit strategy.
Dax chose the former.
Years of military training kicked in before he even rounded the corner of the crate. Knees bent and his back arched slightly forward, Dax crept through the warehouse as quiet as a spectre drifting through a graveyard. As he moved down the aisle separating one row of crates from another, his emerald eyes swung from side-to-side in a search to find anything that would give him an edge in the fight looming on the horizon. He still had his wand holstered against his thigh, but that was a last resort. He needed something less flashy.
And, preferably, less official.
He was nearing the open area in the center of the warehouse when something finally caught his eye. A stack of recently arrived crates still had the unloading tools laying on the ground beside it. A crowbar, a tool box, a hammer, and a four foot length of rope sat where some dock worker had abandoned them in his haste to dive into the local bar. Dax instantly disregarded the crowbar as too dangerous. The toolbox was locked by a heavy padlock, leaving him with only the rope and a hammer. Which should suit his purposes fine.
Dax laid the handle of the hammer across the crook of his right elbow and then bent his forearm back against his bicep to hold it in place. Then he began winding the rope around his right hand as his silent steps carried him closer to where the hoodlums had gathered.
“We know you’re still in here, chumps!,” the gang leader bellowed. “If you come out right now we’ll just break your knees for making us chase you around.”
Dax could see them now. There were five of them standing with a sixth member on the ground curled into a fetal position. None of them seemed particularly noteworthy. They were all dressed in threadbare clothing and shoes with more holes than leather. All of them had the gaunt, malnourished look of lifelong poverty exacerbated by substance abuse. Pixie dust came to mind, but that was just one of the many vices peddled down here in the harbor district. They’d probably committed to this manhunt just for a few silvers in reward money.
They would not, in fact, be collecting said reward money tonight.
While the gangster in the red coat continued to rant, Dax stepped back and drew the hammer from the crook of his elbow. He carefully gauged the distance across the warehouse to the aisle directly across from the one he stood in. Once he’d made his calculations, the sergeant took a deep breath and launched the hammer in a high arc through the air.
The Lost and Found hoodlums didn’t see the hammer flying through the air, but they certainly heard the discordant racket it made when it struck a crate and then fell to the floor.
“Over there! They’re down that way!,” the leader shouted as he sprinted toward where the hammer had fallen. His cronies were in hot pursuit. “You assholes are dead meat!”
Pressed against a crate, Dax counted the lanky figures as they disappeared in the aisle across from him. When the fifth one turned the corner, Dax rushed across the warehouse floor like a winter wind sweeping across the tundra. Silent and deadly, he fell back into the simple mechanics he’d honed through years of service in the Imperial army.
He’d always been jealous of the magic that Rowan and Lester could wield. Their skills were so mystifying that he couldn’t imagine anyone not being impressed with the way they could reshape the world with the power of their mind. By contrast, the ‘magic’ Dax employed was mundane. There was no cosmic mystery to the way he moved. Nor was there a sense of mystical wonder surrounding the skills he used.
There was nothing impressive about Dax. Unless, that is, you were impressed by the sheer, brutal efficiency of flesh, blood, and bone sharpened into a living, breathing human weapon.
Dax wondered, as he crept toward the slowest of the hoodlums, how many flunkies of The Lost and Found he’d have to go through before he finally got to sit down with Delilah.
There was only one way to find out.