It hadn’t been William’s intention, when he awoke that morning, for the day to drag so long. There’d been little indication of what he was in for beforehand. Once William was at Bell Yard, angry and insistent requests from the Commissioner General’s office rolled in, and there was some nasty combine squabble the Office of Organizations was attempting to mediate (which was not William’s problem yet, but he still found it difficult to stay out of their business). He extracted himself from the place late and dragged himself home. Inside resting crooked on the middle of his doormat was a folded up piece of paper.
William picked it up. He unfolded it.
‘Meet for coffee at seven?’
There was a little map drawn underneath peppered with street names, with an arrow pointing to, presumably, the coffee house. The handwriting was different. Jagged and sharp in a way William hadn’t seen before. Legible, but unusual. The name at the bottom of the note was signed in the same script, loose in a way that develops after writing the same word millions of times.
‘Everett’.
It was six-thirty-something.
He knew that street. He’d never been to the coffee house, but the street he had been down quite a few times, most recently when visiting Perien ‘Valloy’s Academic and Legal Texts’. The books were down the road from the coffee. Everett had even drew a little square to represent the building, among the other little square buildings on his note.
The place wasn’t exactly next door.
William climbed the two flights of stairs to his bedroom and had his swordbelt off before he was through the door. The swords were tossed on the bed, his jacket, dress shirt. He undid the concealed carry holster and redid it over civilian clothes, hid it under a coat. He shoved the note in a pocket and was back out the door.
As a rule the ground was better for speedy traversal than the roofs (if one didn’t want to fall to their death along the way), but damn, were the trams busy this time of day. William got lucky on one, unlucky on the next and had to fight his way through a couple of dense crowds. He turned into an alley, hoping what he was looking for was still there…
And it was. He flipped up the latch and opened the door to the small wrought iron cage, only a little wider than his shoulders. He stepped onto the metal floor and latched the door back up, grabbed a bar on the ceiling with one hand and the lever with the other, braced himself, then pulled the thing down.
The shitty little service elevator rocketed up six floors at just shy the speed of sound.
It hit an abrupt stop that jogged William’s shoulder even as he braced for the impact. The service elevator swayed. William undid the latch and stepped out onto the roofs. The coffee house was just down the road.
Everett was sitting at one of the few tables outside the establishment spilling out into the street, facing away from William’s direction towards Perien’s store. William announced himself with a hand on the back of Everett’s chair.
“I need a coffee.”
Everett looked up. If he was startled, he didn’t show it. He already had himself a coffee in a cream colored mug on the table.
The coffee house was long and thin with a bell on the door. William ordered, and the bell tolled again as he exited back out onto the street. It wasn’t wide, and most of it’s real-estate was filled by a cutout in the middle to let light reach down below, guardrails boxing in the holes in the concrete. The few outside tables cut into a third of the remaining road. Amongst them Everett sat alone. William took the seat across from him and pointed with a thumb over his shoulder back towards Perien’s bookstore.
“You know he knows me, right? If he walks this way I bet he’ll have questions.”
“He takes the other way home.” Everett said.
“People take different routes home.”
“You’ll figure something out, I’m sure.”
Everett looked over William’s shoulder to the bookstore sign. William looked too, it was a fair distance away and across the street. The facade of the store was otherwise hidden, minus the swaying sign. William turned back and took a sip of coffee.
He’d been sleeping well lately, compared to normal. He wanted to be winding down, on the couch with the radio or bed, not preparing himself for whatever this was.
Everett wasn’t continuing the conversation.
“Did you get the information you need?” William asked.
“Not yet.”
“Do you need my help?”
Everett had one hand wrapped in the mug. He didn’t fidget, or do much of anything. “I have some concerns about the aveitium.”
“Oh. Is it fake?” William hadn’t heard of fake aveitium before, but he could imagine a lot of things he’d never heard of. “Was Naskan not able to get it’s grade? I can get you more if you need it.”
“No, it’s not fake.” Everett had sharp eyes and wore his hair more loosely than the last time William saw him, straight black and framing his face. He sat still and well postured. “How did you obtain it?”
“It’s not tracked anywhere,” William said, “if that’s your concern. Nobody in the world knows you have it, save me.”
Everett grit his jaw. “How did you source it?”
“Didn’t I make it clear this wasn’t your business?”
Everett’s gaze flitted between William and the bookstore over William’s shoulder. He sat dead still and tense. William ran a finger along the handle of his coffee mug. He really shouldn’t be having the stuff this late, he wouldn’t sleep.
The street was quiet. This street was always quiet.
Everett finally shifted in his chair and placed his elbows on the table.
“Look, Captain Belafose-”
“Will’s fine.”
He took a slow breath. “We’ve been trying to purchase aveitium, any aveitium, for eight months.”
“Could you not afford it?”
“We cannot find a seller. We haven’t been given a price.”
The customs office did not capture all ilicit materials that found their way to Asier’s gates. Not even close. There was no shortage of layers of rooftops to conduct business. But still, it could be tough to break into, William supposed?
“You missed the obvious seller.” William said. “You have the combine already, why not go the legal route?”
“No, it’s…” Everett leaned in. There wasn’t a soul in sight but still he lowered his voice. “How did you convince the Arcadium to give it to you?”
“I didn’t get it from the Arcadium.”
“I know how much it costs when you don’t buy it through them, and I know how much your government pays you.” Everett hissed out. “I don’t believe you purchased it. Who’s your seller? I want to confirm with them.”
Through the illegible fog surrounding Everett and his ‘Order of Alynth’, William could see the thin spires of the Arcadium, bearing down on them. Their struggle to obtain this reagent didn’t make sense. He could walk away from the table and have thousands of clips of aveitium procured on promise alone from upstairs and be home in time to lay in bed, stuck awake from the caffeine buzzing through his brain.
“The Arcadium sets the regulation for reagents, who can have them, standards for documentation.” William’s dislike for the arrangement slipped into his voice, oh well. “Who do you think handles enforcement?”
Everett opened his mouth slightly. He closed it.
“I’m not going to claim I don’t have a relationship with them, but transactionally, it really only flows in one direction.” And most favors only flowed in one direction, and most professional interactions only flowed in one direction… “What I mean is, if I asked them for aveitium they wouldn’t give it to me, but I don’t have to ask.”
William would have loved to say he purchased it. Despite Everett’s incredulousness, he could afford it. In truth, the guard still had those storerooms down at the docks full of all the recent seizures, and they were minimally manned because finances was still upset about the rent situation. It was easy enough to just, wander over, after work. He stopped at a corner mart on the way, grabbed a few things to fill his empty fridge, then snuck in through the back with the key he pilfered from Bell Yard earlier that day. From there, it was trivial to grab the onsite records, the package, and walk home with a paper bag full of eggs, bagels, and twelve hundred florins worth of undocumented aveitium. Truly undocumented. William had grabbed the offsite records earlier that day. That evening he burned all the paperwork in his upstairs bathroom sink.
Everett didn’t have a response.
“Perhaps you’d like to know, we submitted a request for reassessment with the trade commission over these regulations. Our processing office thinks we have enough proof of burden to get them withdrawn.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The hounds at the Office of Policy get to do their job. If the Arcadium doesn’t have a really good reason for setting things this way, it will get overruled.”
“You think that will work? They have an excuse, I’m sure.”
William thought back to that conversation with Dune. “I didn’t get the sense they had a good excuse.” The Arcadium liked fights they knew they could win, and Dune, well, she’d all but begged William to hold off. “The policy group can get vicious, and these new regulations are so clearly excessive. It’ll take some months, but I don’t see the Arcadium getting their favored result, regardless of their reasons.”
Whatever those were. William still couldn’t fathom it, or rather, he didn’t want to think too hard on it right now. He didn’t think about the picture sitting lonely in an otherwise empty combine folder. He didn’t think about how the regulations kicked in just quick enough to screw over Everett Oracle, if he really started looking for his reagent eight months ago. Coincidence was infinitely more likely.
Everett sat silently, again, looking at William, or rather, through him to the bookshop.
“Does that allay your concerns?” William asked.
Everett was a still sort of person. With the relatively blank facial expression he didn’t give very much to contemplate on. William didn’t stare and tried to fidget just the right amount to make him seem average and approachable but not so much to seem he was nervous or hiding anything. He leaned back in his chair and looked around. The sky was darkening. Perien’s street sign still swayed in the distance. He wondered why Everett picked a coffee shop just down the road.
William heard the sound of Everett setting something down.
On the table was a small object of beige painted metal, delicately curved with a node on the end no bigger than a dried kidney bean. A tauber. It looked like a tauber.
“Is it calibrated?” William asked.
Everett reached into a pocket and pulled out a small magnifiying glass and an even smaller flathead screwdriver. “Four-hundred-fifty.”
William scooped up the pile of stuff from the table. The last time he’d seen Everett he had his hair neatly tucked behind his ears. Today it wasn’t. He looked less put together for it, even if the rest of his demeanor read the same. William’s fingers found the familiar way to grip the tauber and the magnifiying glass together with one hand. He’d always, always, handled his own commanded sonnant arrays during his O-three days. The near microscopic rolling digit display ticked up as William turned the screwdriver on the end of the kidney bean.
“If you were waiting for me,” Everett said to definitely not William, “you can go ahead.”
William turned quicker, four-thirty, four-fourty. He slowed for the last few numbers and aligned the zero about as perfectly as he could manage, then he jammed the thing over and into his right ear. It pulled straight to the meridian. Another voice flowed in, drapped in static.
“-told you that. Shit.” A series of clunks and thuds came in through the earpiece. “He really keeps this place a mess.” William turned back over his shoulder, towards Perien’s shop.
“Rell.” He could feel his heartrate rising.
“Hm?” She hummed in his ear.
“Are you in the bookstore?”
“We did tell you he was hiding things in here, didn’t we?”
She was coming through steady, if a little distorted. William wouldn’t dare remove the tauber to adjust right now, though.
“I think this evening is a good as any of them.” Rell said. “Although, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to find anything in here. There’s books and papers everywhere.”
Everett watched William quietly from across the table. They were trying to make him an accessory to robbery. If they thought William wouldn’t bite they were sorely mistaken.
“You might want to try upstairs.”
Through the static, “got it,” she said.
A little forewarning to this bullshit would have been nice. William had physically entered the store three, maybe four times. He took a quick look at his wristwatch, not even seven-thirty.
“He left early?”
“About an hour ago.” Everett said. His voice echoed back over the tauber, shifted in time just enough to detect.
Changes in routine weren’t a welcome sign, but with Rell already in the building there was little William could do about it. She was making a mess in there, he could hear it, low bangs and shuffles, and a low, whitish pulse working to insert intself in his ear. William grabbed the miniature screwdriver.
“I hear it too.” Everett said. “You have the right frequency.”
William set the screwdriver back down. “Who’s managing this array?”
“Hi there.” A familiar voice. “That would be me, Naskan.”
“Naskan, there should be three small dials on the panel labeled abscissa, ordinate and applicate. Bottom left, maybe?”
He hummed. “Yes.”
“And another guage labeled ‘f.projection’, what’s that reading?”
“Hmm, seventy-six.”
Awful conditions. William always found it bizarre how the air could be perfectly pleasant, temperature good, winds low, yet underneath, the sonnant was whipped into a frenzy, unbeknownst to anyone, except those listening.
“Adjust those three dials until that guage goes down, you should be able to get it to about ten.”
Before the white noise got better it got far worse, firm in his ear like he was standing on a shore weathering a crashing wave, enough to make William wince, enough to make even Everett wince, before it settled quickly and the majority of the static dissipated.
“Is fifteen fine?” Naskan asked.
“It’s whispy enough out we’ll have to take what we can get.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Naskan was clear enough now William could catch the hesitancy, and a hint of frustration. “Mar would be handling this, but she’s out of town.”
William didn’t respond, or didn’t have a chance to. With brand new fidelity they could all clearly make out a large crash from, presumably, Rell.
“So.” She said, “there’s books up here.”
“Just books?” William asked.
“Far as I can tell.”
William hadn’t been upstairs. He remembered the staircase pushed up against the back wall, wooden and thin outfitted with a flimsy suggestion of a guardrail. He remembered the way the light filtered in through the windows tinted, the books littering the floor, the massive desk Perien lorded over his store behind, but William couldn’t recall a door to a staff room, he sort of presumed it was upstairs.
“What about the front desk?”
He heard her steps down the stairs. He heard her knock over more books.
“There’s a cash register, locked, a stack of recipts, and books.”
“No file cabinet?” William asked.
“No.”
“Lockbox?”
“The only thing in this store is books.”
“What is it your looking for, again?”
Everett had been quiet for a while, watching in that way he’d been since William arrived. “Documents.” He said.
“Is it possible he hid them inside a book?”
“No.”
William raised an eyebrow.
“No,” Rell interrupted. “I agree with Everett. He wouldn’t leave these out. I’m going to start pulling books off the shelf, there might be a hidden compartment.”
William did have one idea. Last time William had trounced through the store, far more desperate then than now, trying in vain to corner Perien, the wood floorboards didn’t creak, firm beneath his feet. The red patterned rugs tucked between the shelves looked like they hadn’t been washed in a while. None of this invalidated his idea, such an architecture as he imagined possible wouldn’t be unusual in this area. Docks had never respected building regulations.
William stood up and downed the rest of his coffee. It was tepid and gross, not worth the milligrams of caffeine. He grabbed Everett’s empty cup as well and placed them in a half filled crate by the door.
“Where are you going?” Everett asked.
“Need to check something.”
Those long holes in the road to let the light filter down into the alley below were wide, a few metres, and surrounded by a thick iron fence. William walked beside them as he headed over to the bookstore, Everett trailing behind. Rell loudly flung books off the shelf in William’s ear. Perhaps he’d be more concerned about the visible tauber on the side of his head if there was much of anybody else on the street with them, which there was not.
William squared up with the bookstore and crouched down against the fence. He could make out some of what was underneath the building, the same brick above continued below, no windows for several stories, and those were shrouded enough that William couldn’t make out anything through them. The store sat on the corner of a long stretch of wall, marking the top of the mass of brick and wood reaching to the ground. Who knew what sort of mess of rooms and hallways hid within.
“Hey Rell?” William pulled himself up with the iron fence. “Try pulling up some rugs. I think there might be a hidden basement.”
There was the clatter of books, and then silence.
“Yeah, on it.”
He continued down the road, Everett in tow. There had to be a good alley around somewhere to crouch in, and there was, there were plenty squeezed between buildings, he found one quickly. The spot was caked in darkness, the sun being as close to setting as it was. The streetlights had long been on, the remains of dusk were disappearing fast, but there was enough light for William to make out anyone walking by, not that there were any. Some places on the roofs would be crowded even this late, not here.
Rell inhaled in William’s ear. “I think I found it, behind the counter.” He heard a creak. “There’s a ladder and a dark hole, oh, there’s the lightswitch.”
She stepped down the rungs. They must have had the gain on her tauber all the way up for William to make out as much from her as he was.
“Yeah.” Rell said. “This is it.”
She got to work, every bit of it audible. The surrounding city wasn’t dead quite either. Tram horns in the distance broke through the base tones of power converters. William watched the road. Everett watched him.
“That was well spotted.” Everett leaned against the wall across from William and spoke softly enough his voice didn’t reverberate through Rell’s ruckus.
William sighed. “It’s such a mess up here.” There was a pair walking towards them in the distance. They didn’t look like anything special. “The buildings change hands often enough, layouts get adjusted. I’m always suprised by the-”
There was a loud… not a crash, but a singular pop.
“What was that?”
“Oh, just breaking the lock on this cabinet.” Rell replied.
There was another pop a moment later. William wouldn’t have placed it as the sound of a cabinet forced open, William couldn’t place it at all, actually. The couple in the distance turned a corner before they had a chance to walk past the bookstore and hear the sound emenating through the street below themselves.
“Were you planning on rampaging through his paperwork until you found something interesting?”
“No. I know what I’m looking for.”
William would have liked to know as well, but neither of them made to share.
“How are you so sure what you’re looking for is hidden in Valloy’s bookstore?”
Rell sighed, followed by another pop. It was Everett who answered, eventually.
“The constant visitors, not the sort to buy ‘academic and legal texts’ from a store such as this.” It was hard to see Everett’s look through the dark. “Manton Stockwell among them.”
“He was probably picking up his Hastiin winnings, they played cards sometimes.”
“Manton Stockwell has been missing for ten months.”
So he had been. When had nine months turn to ten. William remembered near the beginning how every day was slow and so, so long, filled dawn to dusk with change and desperate longing to go back, not to mention the way the nights went… A few weeks had slipped through his fingers. Sometime recently time had started passing normally again, William didn’t feel good about it. He felt a knot in his chest. He felt a more, severe and urgent knot higher up in his throat. In the distance on the road something very bad was walking their way.
“Ah, shit.”
The noise from Rell stopped.
“What?” Everett asked.
“Valloy’s coming back.”
“What.” Rell barked. “Fuck, I need more time.”
Perien was in the distance still, and didn’t walk especially fast. His arms full with a crate of what looked to be, William really couldn’t tell, but he’d guess it was books.
“It’s okay.” He told Rell. “Just keep going.”
Not that William needed to instruct her. There were two large pops and a crash before the words were even out of his mouth.
“Look. I’m not leaving until I find it.” Rell grit out. “Perien be damned. We aren’t going to get another chance, Everett.”
Everett didn’t argue. This was why you put off the operation if someone’s routine changed, it was fairly elementary strategy.
“It’s okay, I’ll buy you what time I can.” William fished out his cigarettes and lighter. Smoking in dark alleys on empty streets was normal right? It was normal enough for William. Perien wasn’t on them yet, they had a moment or so more. He popped on the flame of his lighter.
The light played on Everett’s features. “You shouldn’t.”
“Why not.” William lit the etche. “I’d head out the back.” William gestured with the etche towards the back of the alley, it looked like there might be an exit, Everett would figure it out.
Everett glanced at the alley and looked… concerned. William couldn’t help but be a little charmed.
He took the tauber off his ear and forced it into Everett’s hand. “I do this for a living, you know? Go.”
He gave Everett a little push further into the alley. Everett let himself be shoved, and kept walking. Within a few meters he was all but invisible. William took the only breath he’d get out of this etche and whispered a silent prayer of thanks that Perien was walking on his side of the road, this would be much harder to pull off if he wasn’t. William exhaled smoke, heard the footsteps, then stepped out of the alley directly into Perien’s shoulder.
He let instinct guide his hand to grab a fistful of Perien’s jacket, but the crate, William caught a look - yeah, full of books - was a lost cause and dropped straight to the ground. It had been overflowing, in fact. The extras originally stacked on top now littered the street.
All day William had been fight down the tension and exhausted that had continuously mounted as things kept going wrong, having to beat it deeper and deeper down into the floating road under his feet. No point hiding anymore. Dishevelment would help sell it.
“Shit. Shit, sorry.” The etche had dropped on impact. William stamped it out with his foot.
“Belafose. Captain, I mean.” Perien looked more suprised than annoyed.
William pretended to be suprised. “Oh, Mr. Valloy.” He crouched down and picked a book up off the ground. “I need to learn to look where I’m stepping.”
Perien stayed standing with that bizarre look on his face.
“I’m sorry again.” William said. He wiped the road dust off the book in his hands. “Hopefully they aren’t damaged.” William placed it back in the crate and looked up at Perien.
“It’s…” Perien gazed over the scattered books and William. “I’m sure they’re fine.” He also crouched down. “What are you doing up here this time of night, Captain?”
His curiosity sounded genuine. William hadn’t known Perien to be a good liar, it very well might be. “A friend of mine owns a bar-” William gestured, book in hand, in the very general direction of Leonard’s tavern, “but I went for a walk.” He glanced at the book’s cover, ‘Potential of Projectile Archetypes Utilizing Introdynic Sources, Javah Longwei, co-author Aaro Soini’. The cover had an embossed eight pointed star. William ran a finger over it then stopped. He needed to not get distracted, Perien still looked at him funny. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”
Perien picked up a few books and already the crate was more full than it should be. “You can have it if you’d like.” He said. “The book. You look interested. Longwei’s work is fairly approchable”
“What?” Oh no, William was interested. “Why?”
“You’re a friend of a friend.”
“I can pay for it.”
Perien had taken to stacking the books off to the side, now understanding his original folly. “Do you know your asterponics?”
“Some.” William set the book in the growing pile. “I’m more of a practicioner.”
“Really? Manton never mentioned that.”
William couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t think he was fond of it.”
“I bet.” They’d just about contained the damage to the crate or the stack. “Help me carry these back and you can pay for it?”
“Sure.” William grabbed the crate before Perien could and was suprised by how heavy it was.
Perien took the remains without argument. “I didn’t want to pay for delivery.” He chuckled, “and then I didn’t want to take two trips.”
William would have done either of those two things instead.
He didn’t have very much time to figure out expectations for the interaction beforehand, but William wouldn’t have guessed he was about to have a cordial interaction with Perien, especially after last time. What changed? The asterponics admittance? That rarely bought one good graces. Maybe it was different if you sold asterponics research in your bookstore? They reached the front of the shop before William got too sick of the crate, under the hanging sign. Perien opened the door and William had almost forgotten.
Almost. He hadn’t forgotten.
William also hadn’t had the time to conceptualize Rell’s chaos. He wouldn’t have imagined what she’d done anyways. Every shelf William could glance over Perien’s shoulder were ransacked.
“What time did you leave, Mr. Valloy?”
Perien jerked. “Not-” he swallowed. “Not much more than an hour?”
William set the crate down. “They might still be inside.” He pulled Perien out of the doorway as gently as allowed. With his other hand William fished out his wallet and pulled a stamped steel card out. He pressed it in Perien’s trembling hands. “Go to the nearest payphone and call one-one-zero” William pointed to the top right corner of the card. “Give them this ID number and explain. They’ll send someone quicker.”
Once Perien had the card in his grip William reached a hand underneath his jacket and removed his revolver from it’s holster.
Perien locked onto the gun. “Are you-”
“It’s okay, Mr. Valloy. Go make the call.”
He didn’t move.
“Go.” William said.
Perien ran off in what William could only hope was the direction of the nearest payphone. The question now, was whether Rell was still stuck in the basement. He looked in again. The place was tight and littered with tripping hazard enough before, without all the books ripped off the shelves. William crept a few careful steps in. No creaks in the floorboards. He listened for a moment to try and get a sense for if she was still down there, but nothing, not a sound from below. She could be long gone, or not.
William had to step on a book or two to reach further into the store, from title to title, onto a textbook bigger than a dinnerplate, then the first shoody wooden step of the staircase, one hand on the rail, another still full of revolver. He’d never been upstairs. He climbed up and it looked the same as below, rows of shelves, less destroyed, not spared in totality. If she was still lurking, William really needed her out. He wondered, and… slipped a hand on a nearby shelf and let it… knock about a dozen books to the ground. As each one reached the floor he felt the reverberation at his feet.
Barely a moment passed before the footsteps below sounded, not at all subtle. Loose construction was normal on the roofs. It unnerved some, the shaking structure with every frantic step so high above the ground, but William was used to his feet being planted above sealevel. Just in time he turned and glaced down the stairway to catch the figure, or rather, not a figure, a shift of colors, reflections of woodgrain, bookspines, orange rays of light, in movement, out the building, door slammed shut behind her.
He knew what auctor she wore, the guard had a handful available in the armory, not that they saw much use. William remembered the way they made his eyes hurt when he tried to make sense of the changing hues. He tried one on himself once, just to know what it was like to hide behind a shattered series of mirages, to understand how the auctor felt tugging at his brain (weak, the introdynic arts will never shake their unfortunate reputation). Not a cheap piece of equipment.
How interesting, that she wore a dissimer.
Perien called for him from the front of the store. William took the stairs down and looked passed a shelf and to the front door.
“Someone ran out the back.” He tap danced back along the books.
“You didn’t chase?” Perien said, a little breathless and presumptuously spoken. William wouldn’t have chassed even if he didn’t know the burglar. Rell made that convenient for him.
“They were wearing a dissimer.”
“Really?” Perien was rattled ever further on top of the plenty rattled he already was.
“There’s nobody else on this floor, or above,” William continued, “far as I can tell. Do you know any hiding spots?”
Perien stepped inside then worked his way past William in the direction of the front desk, then behind the counter. He stared down the hatch to the hidden basement, then without hesitation stepped on the first rung.
“Wait.” William rushed around the counter. “There might be someone else down there. I haven’t checked.”
Perien stepped from the rung back onto the ground floor.
“Is there another exit?” William peered down. She’d left the light on.
“There is. Perhaps we should wait until the other guards arrive.”
William could handle a revolver and a ladder at the same time. He took the first rung down.
“I think it’d be best to wait.” Perien said.
William ignored him.
Above his head Perien sighed, the kind with gritted teeth. William found the floor as quietly as he could, not that there was any danger in the first place. The room was long, claustrophobic and very well lit, rows of cases and cabinet and shelves lining either side. Glass littered the floor, and something else - rended apart metal shards. William came to a file cabinet, or the remains of one. The poor thing still sat flat on the ground, but where a handle and lock might be expected was instead a hole and it’s surrounding jagged, tetanus ready metal perimeter. Some paperwork was still jammed inside, but much of it laid around the floor, like fallen leaves, or Hakra’s office on a very bad day.
The glass crunched apart under William’s boots. He always wore thick boots. He ended up walking through situations often enough to warrant it. The far door, the other exit as mentioned by Perien, was unsuprisingly locked, so William returned to the ladder.
“Clear.” He called up. “Come down.”
Perien scrambled down the ladder. William dodged out of his way as he pushed through to look out at his wreaked storage room. He didn’t make a sound, not so much as a pained breath.
“Some of your glass cases are broken, but it doesn’t look like anything was taken from them.” William tucked the revolver back into it’s holster. “The files on the other hand…”
Perien walked through, eyeing bookshelves, picking up papers, then on the far side of the room opened a cabinet door to reveal a safe, closed and in one piece. He looked down at it with a frown. “I don’t understand.”
A yell reached down from upstairs, “Guard!” It was good timing for them. William knew the averages, not because he cared much, but Chiara knew the averages, and she cared, so he knew the time was very good. The Captain was involved, of course, so that probably colored their response. By the ladder, William looked up to see someone above in their clean blue uniform looking down.
“Whole place is clear, if you’d like to come down.”
William recognized the pair of patrol officers… vaguely. He gave his statements with a promise to write something up for them tomorrow morning. Perien’s relief was palatable after their arrival, even more so when William mentioned he was going to leave this in the officers hands.
There was more reason than just the cramped quarters of the storeroom that had Perien eager for the Captain of the Guard to vacate his establishment. Funny, William was acceptable for manual labor, but not for his actual job. He’d figure out Perien’s problem one day, maybe when he hunted down Manton Stockwell and beat the information out of him.
The front door was left open. William stepped out on the street. What now? He could catch up with ‘The Order of Alynth’, but it was late, the moons were out, two cresents hanging high in the night sky. Maybe it was finally time to head home.