Two nights ago William spent his evening at Leonard’s bar with Chiara drinking and losing at whist. Leonard had been unusually attentive, William wasn’t permitted to suffer an empty glass for more than a few moments. Generally, Leonard spent his energies on patrons that had a shot in hell at considering another establishment, but not that night, which William immediately noticed and did not comment on. That wasn’t the only peculiarity of the evening. William also found himself unusually unlucky. They were just betting pocket change, a quarter of which Chiara pilfered from the register while Leonard wasn’t looking, and still William was cleaned out a few hours before the end of the night. Even the sympathetic restock from Chiara didn’t last, not that it still wasn’t fun, the night was plenty fun, and William was good and drunk when the bar started to close. In hindsight, the constant drink in his hand had to be part of the scheme, because before he was shoved out, while Chiara ran off to the restroom, Leonard leaned in close over the counter and said in a low voice, “stay, after she leaves. I need to tell you something.”
So William sat and waited and sobered up long into the evening that night, while the resturant and bar settled down, and when Leonard finally climbed into the chair beside him William had to listen to a bunch of horrific excuses about how this information didn’t make it’s way to his ears nine months ago. It didn’t matter.
William stood before a building. Fat raindrops ricochetted off his umbrella. It had been a kind spring so far, weatherwise at least, but the rain was never one to hold off forever. Written above the building’s huge carved doors was the phrase ‘Ritar Seq Libertev Aleth - The Order of Alynth’; alouvian, a language William could not read and nobody anymore spoke. The building itself, tall and long, was registered to a combine. Not a guild, but a parish. They had a religious designation, five members, and not a single further detail forthcoming. William really didn’t want to know how they afforded the place.
With the big sign out front it couldn’t be too impolite to let himself in, so he gave a tug on the very heavy door and found it open. Inside was an atrium, an unusually striking one. Stained glass lined the walls, they didn’t look half so pronounced out in the gloom and rain. The plaster ceiling above was carved, the wood floor was laid in herringbone. William dropped his umbrella in the umbrella bin and before he could take a single step a voice rang out.
“Shoes.”
From behind a plush chair a scarlet-haired woman stuck out her head.
“Sorry.” William crouched down and undid his laces. When he looked up the lady still stared at him. On the walk over William had prepared himself, whispering verses under his breath in another language, so when he spoke now it was easy to slip into the accent. “Are you Rell Penumbra?”
She looked suprised to be called out by name. “Who’s asking?”
“Ilmater Nirahiim.” William slipped his feet out of his shoes and stepped into the atrium. “I’m looking for someone and I heard you might be able to help.”
Her eyes flitted up and down him, but after a moment of deliberation she gestured to the chair across from her. William had barely sat himself down before she said, “who gave you that impression?”
She had a similar accent herself, far less pronounced than the one William donned, but audible and clearly northern.
“Helene Bossuet told me.”
Rell stared at him blankly, hands resting on the large book in her lap.
“She told me you tried to throw Manton Stockwell through the front window of her bar.” Saying it out loud, William wasn’t so sure. Manton Stockwell was a decorated fencer built like a brick house, and this woman looked slight underneath the monsterous book she’d been reading before William interrupted her.
“No.” With a clean motion she slammed the book closed, then dropped it on the side table with a thud. “He broke the window.”
“That’s not how Helene told it.”
“Helene is a bootlicker then.” She leaned back in her chair. “How did you even learn of this? It was months ago.”
“I asked.”
It had been a source of angst amongst William’s collegues for some time, his ability to drudge up information like this. They called it luck, said he should use it on scratch off tickets instead. If William’s track record at cards was any indication, he was not nearly so fortunate. What he was, was persistant, and more than willing to ask the same question over and over until the answer changed. Often it changed to ‘you need to leave’ or ‘fuck off’, but sometimes…
Rell took a moment to respond, and her expression gave nothing away in the meantime. “You’re not from around here.” She stated.
…wasn’t that obvious? That should be obvious to everyone. She didn’t say it in a leading way, she said it like a revelation. “I’m from Episier. The Arcan mountains.” William replied after some consideration.
Rell hummed with more thought than a statement such as that deserved.
“Could I ask,” William continued, “why you tried to throw Manton Stockwell through a window?”
“Look, I don’t have good relations with the Flicaille.” William had been called that term more times than he could count and every single time was said with scorn. “The Captain and I did not get along. As for finding him, the best advice I have is to give up. You won’t find him in this city, or anywhere else.”
There was a jolt of lightning William always felt when he knew he had something, small most of the time. This one made him want to grit his teeth, clench his fists, and scream. He’d been at this shit for nine months. He didn’t do any of those things. “I’m very motivated.”
“That’s great.” She said. “I am too. If I could get to him that’s where I’d be.”
“Then what’s the problem? Transportation? I’m capable of chartering a ferry. We can get anywhere we need to go.”
“No it’s…” She trailed off and looked at him confused. She looked at him several different ways in short succession before she stood up. “I mean it. It’s a lost cause. I can’t help you anymore than that.” She pointedly looked between him and the door.
“I’m very resourceful.”
Rell opened her mouth and William interrupted her before she had a chance to get even a noise out.
“I also do not give up easily. You need something. What is it?”
She shut her mouth and actually looked to be thinking about it, that was, before a voice sounded from behind the double doors at the far end of the atrium.
“Rell.”
Out from behind the door stepped a man, tall, shoulder length black hair. He looked to William with suprise, a lot of it, and a pretty clear flash of suspicion before he managed to wipe it off his face. William had been in the game long enough to know what recognition looked like.
“Rell.” He kept his gaze pinned on William. “Who are you speaking with?” His voice was smooth and laced with an accent William could in no way place.
“Ilmater… something, right?”
“Are you sure?” The man said.
William adjusted back from the spot he found at the edge of his chair. “It’s not a fake name.”
Rell had stood up in the meantime, opening and closing one fist. “Who are you?” She didn’t snarl it out, but she was moving in that direction.
William did not answer fast enough.
“He’s the current Captain of the Guard.” The man said. “William Belafose, Manton Stockwell’s protege.”
“Nobody calls me that-” Faintly in the back of William left ear he could feel the pressure change - a very, very slight breath, a single hazy exhale directly into his brain. Rell Penumbra was standing a few feet away with her hands balled in fists and her shoulders tense. Her eyes were wide and her irises were scarlet. They matched her hair. William had never seen anyone with that combination.
He was hyper aware of the revolver strapped behind his right hip, just under his coat. He’d strapped the holster over his shirt for this, thank god. William set his hands on his thighs, fingers splayed out. All he had to do was reach a hand behind and the trigger would be in his grip. There were six shots, but she’d be disabled on the first, and William wouldn’t miss. The sleeves on her shirt only came about halfway down her forearms, leaving her wrists fully exposed. The pale skin was completely blank, no lines, no marks, and no visible tattoos (there almost never was), but William knew any physical motion he used to defend himself would take an infinitely longer time than the motion she would use to aggress. He kept his hands on his thighs, visible and harmless.
William’s put upon accent was long gone. “Please, I meant it all sincerely. I’m just looking for him. No other motive.”
The man gestured to Rell, a low placating hand. Nothing dicernable changed in Rell’s demeanor. “I think you should leave.” He said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
William should leave. “Tell me what you’re missing. Let me prove my intentions.”
Silence fell across the atrium. William could hear his own breathing. He could see Rell’s, the rise and fall in her chest. He considered bolting to the door and calling this a lost cause. He’d all but stood up.
“We need one hundred clips of aveitium.” She said.
“That’s it?” That wasn’t how he should have responded, not even close.
But she took it nonetheless. “That’s it.”
“Give me a few days.”
He stood up, dove around the chair and darted to the door. Boots in one hand, umbrella in the other, William escaped the atrium and landed out into the streets directly into a puddle of muddy water, in his socks. The rain still fell. He ran out of eyeshot of that place before he dared stop and tie his boots on.
His hands were shaky as he pulled the laces together into the tightest knot he could manage. The rain water mixed with the sweat on his palms.
Seldom had William seen people like her in the city, people with iconoms, not never, but not often. Logically he knew this, iconoms were more favored in the countryside and colonies. She felt like something out of Episier, sideways northern accent and all.
He paused, fingers twisted in soaked laces. She hadn’t used it, though. There was no fire, brimstone, or other source of immediate death to indicate she activated the thing. Why was he so sure she had an iconom? Why was he so sure she was about to use it on him? She did something, right? Squared up with him, eyes blown wide. It seemed as if she had thought about it, but she hadn’t manifested anything he could point to and say, ‘yes, that fire, that change in force, there is the iconom’. This was why people liked swords, the threat was more explicit. Rain dripped down William’s nose.
He took his hands off his laces and popped open the umbrella, lost cause that staying dry was at this point. He wanted to go home. The water in his boots sqeulched uncomfortably under his feet but he started taking steps in that direction, away from the ‘Order of Alynth’. The sky was dark despite the time of day and thunder rumbled faintly over the ocean in the distance. All in all, it was not even close to the worst exit William had ever suffered.
People were out in their own umbrellas and raincoats, which went some way in lowering his heart rate. The city was nice in the rain, when it smelled less like city and more like storm. William waited for a tram to go by before he crossed an intersection. It flung water a metre up in the air as it passed. Aveitium wasn’t the hardest thing to obtain, or at least, it wasn’t a few months ago. Procurement ran through the Arcadium though, and William wouldn’t be suprised if they couldn’t secure purchase permission. The Arcadium rejected half the things he asked of them too…
Black market aveitium was an option, albeit an expensive one - one growing more expensive every day the strict regulations on reagent importing were upheld. It would be feasible for them to be priced out in that regard. If a little aveitium was all William needed to get his foot back in those double doors though, maybe he was lucky.
The neighborhood broke into a thoroughfare. The people in the occasional cab driving by were lucky enough to be shielded from the rain. A cafe across the street’s line spilled out into the sidewalk, the people waiting huddled under an awning. William walked on the thoroughfare for all of one block before he turned into a thin side road, then through an alley, then another side road.
He chanced a brief glance back and sighed. It was what he thought. A figure in a black coat had been following him for the past seven blocks. He’d guess the man, the figure was too tall to be Rell, and thank god it wasn’t Rell, because William absolutely wouldn’t walk home with her on his tail. About the only place he’d be comfortable leading her is Bell Yard, and going into work soaked to hide from one person was an embarrassment he wasn’t keen to stomach. He was in a familiar part of the city, tight back alleys William had wandered through before, so he took another turn, and another, then squeezed through a little tunnel and then found what he was looking for.
An awful looking fire escape with a shabby ladder and a gate too short to act as a real deterrant. His poor umbrella would need to be abandoned to the city, but William was kidding himself that hiding under it was any use when he was already soaked, and it was guard-issued anyways. He jumped the gate, scaled the tarnished rungs as fast as he was able and faster than what was safe given the conditions, and there he was, the roof, interwoven roads laid bare before him.
He started on the path home. William couldn’t say he knew every secret passageway, every little trick of navigation up here - there were jumps he wouldn’t make, spots he wouldn’t dare set his feet upon, but he knew enough to say he knew it well, and could prove it too. Let that man try to follow him through the mess that was the roads on the roofs, the crisscross of bridges, the shitty staircases, the retrofitted balconies. He crossed a gap covered with screwed down wooden planks, walked over a couple legitimate businesses and three William knew weren’t. When he looked back, there was nobody else up above the city with him, and it finally felt like he could take a breath.
A short hop down and his feet landed on Elysia Street Two, three and a half stories up and about ten metres over from the Elysia Street on ground level. William walked across his neighbor’s roofs until he reached one-seven-two. He dragged his soaked self across his upper porch, fumbled with his key to get the sunroom door open, and then, at last, he stepped into a dry room, albeit a dim and gloomy one. He locked the door behind him.
The rain pattered against the glass ceiling. William dripped on the entryway rug. The windows were fogged up. He dropped his soaked coat onto the floor, got off his boots and rung out his hair. He really didn’t keep much in the sunroom, a few stacks of firewood, bags of weird smelling comburere pellets for the heater, but when he looked up his eyes settled on his big entechiana plant in the corner - the sunniest spot. It’s early spring buds had valiently sprouted while William wasn’t paying attention.