Her husband ran a tight ship. Where other drinking establishments remained open to the small hours, Ranaie closed at midnight, sharp. He suffered no arguments and his loyal customers knew better than to try. That left the Timid Fox empty by the time Bilain returned, and she sat at the bar, a bottle of Yürzlend run set before her, nursing a drink that she had taken only sips of.
She could have returned much earlier, but had sat in her office, across the street, pretending to read through the day's reports, listening as the members of the night shift of the Watch went about their business, and wondering how it had come to a point where she could not face her own family.
The fires. She had stayed at her post, orchestrating the efforts without once leaving to give Ranaie warning, or, at the very least, sending someone, anyone, to take a message of caution. She had done such things before, but, for some reason, this time felt like a greater betrayal of her familial trust. It felt as though she had left him and little Amaini to the danger. Abandoned them.
The fire in the hearth had started to become nothing but embers and it only served to remind her of her decision. With a sudden flick of the wrist, she sent the warm alcohol slipping down her throat, refilled the little cup and repeated the move. Half-way through refilling the glass again, she heard a scraping from the stairs and, soon, Ranaie appeared, rubbing his eyes.
"A hard day, I take it?" Shuffling, half-asleep, Ranaie moved behind the bar, taking away the bottle of run and lifting a bulbous bottle of Garthaen brandy from its hidden position near the floor. "If you want to sleep, you need a couple of fingers of this."
He removed the little cup from Bilain's hand and replaced it with a larger, rounded cup, pouring the brandy into it, before filling a cup for himself. After taking a sip, he smacked his lips, letting out a satisfied sigh. He appreciated most alcoholic beverages, but he liked his brandy more than most. With a circle of his hand, he swished the contents around the inner surface, head drooped. He still hadn't woken up fully.
"You should be in bed, husband." Once again, Bilain drank the contents of the cup in one swallow, setting the cup back down and rolling it between her two hands. "It's too cold to sit around here."
"You should be abed with me, wife." After another sip, he passed from behind the bar, carrying the bottle and his cup in one hand, laying his other upon her forearm as he moved, heading toward the diminishing fire. "Come. Let me bring the fire back to life and we can talk beside the flames, as we once did."
He moved a table to sit in front of the fire, placing his cup and the bottle on top, before shifting two chairs to sit either side of the table. Bilain watched as he poked the embers of the fire with a fire iron before resting a couple of small, thin logs on top. He crouched, watching the logs begin to blacken and then, after only a short while, begin to catch aflame. With one last poke of the embers, he set the fire iron aside and sat back upon the chair.
The fire began to crackle, the two logs settling as they caught and began to burn, and Ranaie sat with his hands folded atop his stomach, the flames causing shadows to dance across his face. Even now, after all these years, Bilain found that man the most beautiful person she had ever met. Others would disagree. His nose sat a little too large upon his face. Lines upon his skin told of his ageing. As did the greying of his receding hair. But he was beautiful to Bilain. He always was.
"I ... I feel too much is expected of me in these recent days." She traced her fingers across his shoulders as she moved to sit in the other chair. Wide shoulders that still held a little of his muscular youth. "As you well know, I am not a learned woman. Put a spear in my hands, a sword? Patrons' blood! Even a fire log! That I know. I understand that. This?"
She waved a hand in a vague fashion. What she waved at, she couldn't say. It could mean the task of finding the reason behind the Senator's death. It could mean this strange, murderous vigilante that had so caught her attention. The fires. The fears of another Lord of Shadows rising in her Ward. That wave of the hand encompassed it all and none of it and Ranaie could only nod, his eyes locked upon the flames.
Bilain drank the brandy and poured more into the cup. She preferred the rum. A sweeter, smoother experience, but Ranaie knew better than her. The brandy would help her to sleep and the Patrons knew, she needed it. She could already feel the bags beginning to appear beneath her eyes. Only two, no, three days since the Senator's death. Without looking at her, Ranaie reached across the table, holding out his hand for hers. Their fingers entwined.
"You are the cleverest person I know and you always have been." His thumb rubbed the back of her hand. The roughness gave her comfort and strength. "But, this is you. You think like this every time something new comes along and you always, always, take your good time realising that, yes, you can do it. This is how your mind works. It overwhelms you until you go on the attack and you attack everything with a vibrancy I can only admire."
He gave a little chuckle, shaking his head as though his own mind had returned to an earlier time, remembering, perhaps, when she had balked at becoming a sergeant in the army, barking orders passed down from officers. Or when she, herself, had taken a commission and became the one making the orders. When she had sat in their tiny quarters, tossing books and sheets of paper to the four corners when she swore to the Patrons that she would never be able to read and write, and that she should ask for voluntary demotion.
Ranaie had sat with her through all those times with a patience that Bilain thought would enrage her, yet did not. When she had learned they were expecting their first child, that she would have to take unpaid leave from the army, Ranaie had stood by her side, taking on even more work, encouraging her, comforting her, listening to her outrage that her pregnancy didn't mean she could not perform her duties. A quiet, indomitable patience. She almost wished she could stop loving him in order to feel the joy of falling in love all over again.
"I didn't warn you about the fire." She tried to pull her hand away, but Ranaie held her fast. "It burned only four streets away, the Weather Mages were late and we all know how fast a fire spreads if it catches right. You and Amaini were in danger and I didn't even send someone to warn you."
With her other hand locked within Ranaie's, Bilain lifted the other to her eyes, wiping away tears that had already wetted her cheeks for a good while. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, drawing a deep sniff, and looked away from her husband. She bit at the nail of her forefinger, hoping that he could forgive her.
Putting her work first at any other time was not such a problem. Were a murderer abroad, or thieves, she would not have come running to the Timid Fox every time. A riot? Perhaps. A fire? So close and under the strangest of circumstances? Most certainly. What she should do and what she had done were so very far apart and it pained her. The job, the Watch, even The Sprawl, were not more important than her family. She had lost too many of them to allow any harm come to those who remained.
"Oh. I am so angry at you in this moment. You put the safety of others in greater need before Amaini and I who were perfectly safe. How can I ever forgive you?" The monotone nature of his words caused Bilain's head to snap around. Ranaie gave her an eye-rolling smile. "Is that what you want? I could go on. You are so selfish, thinking of the lives of innocent people. How dare you do your job and not come running to your poor, defenceless husband. Woe! Woe! Woe!"
He howled those last words, his head raised toward the rafters, free hand coiled into a fist, beating at his chest, before he curled over. He had a deep laugh, a thunderous laugh that could shake the walls of the entire neighbourhood, as could his snores, but he tried to muffle his laughter with his hand. They both knew if Amaini awoke, she would cry until dawn.
"You mock me?" With a wrench, she pulled her fingers from his and punched his arm before slapping the same place for good measure. "Carry on and you shall find yourself out on the streets, my most dear and attentive husband."
"You wouldn't. You hate putting Amaini to sleep because she likes to be sung to ... and you, my most beloved and sensitive wife, cannot sing." His chest continued to heave with contained laughter as he picked up his cup, holding it in salute. "So I am safe and sound and will never see a cold night upon these streets. At least until Amaini learns to sleep without entertainment."
Again, Bilain wiped tears from her cheeks. Only, this time, they were tears of laughter, happiness and joy. That, among many, many other things was what Ranaie brought to their marriage. Everyone thought her the strength and backbone of her family, but only if they had never met Ranaie. She stood, leaning across and kissing his balding head, cupping his cheek.
"Still, I have three investigations to pursue, perhaps four, and I have no understanding of any of them. I find myself torn in many directions and none look any nearer to the truth of the matter." She sat back, her fingers tickling Ranaie's palm, her other hand raising the cup to her mouth. "Three, or four, different avenues. I know not where to start. Separate mysteries."
"Perhaps they aren't separate? Not all of them." Ranaie raised his head to the rafters once more, not acting, this time, but listening to a stirring above. "I'll be off to bed. The little one will scream if no-one is there if she awakes. Do not wallow for long, wife. The bed is incomplete without you by my side."
He lifted her hand as he stood, kissing it, and their fingers lingered as he made his way back to the stairs up to their private accommodations above the tavern. Bilain watched him leave and thanked the Patrons for sending him her way. He had said something worth considering, however. Were all the various threads becoming tugged in the tapestry of life in The Sprawl separate, or were some only frayed ends of the same thread. Something to consider, at least.
Before following Ranaie up the stairs, Bilain began to tidy up, moving the cups and the bottle back behind the bar, returning the chairs and table to their correct positions and poking the fire down, placing the metal guard in place before it to ensure no sparks could fly and ignite outside of the hearth. When she heard the quiet taps at the door, she almost ignored them.
-+-
She did not cry. Not here and not now. Not in front of her colleagues. For certain not in view of the crowd that had gathered upon this cold night in this dark, filthy alley to gawk at the body that someone, some foul, evil someone, had pierced with several long shafts of metal to the mud wall. Their blood, though mostly gone from the body, made a steady drip, drip, drip as the remains fell into the black, sludge that had formed beneath the feet.
Bilain had brought Ghusz into the Watch. She had served with him in the army and he had contemplated retiring and returning to a homeland he had never seen. He had lived his entire life within a stone's throw of The Sprawl, much like Bilain, but he had always held the Steppes close to his heart. If she had the ability, she would see his remains sent to that distant land for burial, but she could not. The gruff Sergeant would have to settle for the flames of the Pyre building, as everyone in The Sprawl would one day do so.
The entire night shift of the Watch had spread out among the dirt strewn alleys and streets in search of the culprit, but Bilain could only stare at her old friend. Only two days before, he had shown as close to satisfaction in his life as she had ever seen him, lost in his work, interviewing the working folk in the bowels of the Municipal Ward. He had never felt comfortable around any of higher stations.
"Move these people back." It took her several attempts to find words, any words, and though she called these vultures 'her' people, and loved them, she had never hated them so much as in this moment. "Get them out of my sight. No! Forget that. You ask them if they saw who did this, at the end of a bully stick if you must, but let them know that if I, me personally, find that anyone has lied to us, they will suffer for it. Understand?"
"Yes, Chief ...I mean, Captain." Trenna bobbed his head, moving away to the gawking crowd at the end of the alley, drawing his bully stick along the way.
The short, stocky Eass man began grabbing the nearest, biggest man he could find, dragging him to the side and lifting him from the ground. Bilain didn't like treating these people in this way, but someone had killed Ghusz. Not only killed him, but eviscerated him and put his body on display for all to see. Not only did it offend Bilain on a personal, emotional level, it gave the impression that the Watch had become weak. She could not allow the denizens of The Sprawl to believe that and that meant she would have to solidify their authority, one way or another.
She looked up to the eaves and rooftops of the houses around them, searching for a sign of that shadow figure. Not because she believed them capable of performing such an atrocious act, but because she wanted to know, of all the criminalities that they had put an end to, why they hadn't intervened here. Why they had saved her, but not Ghusz. It didn't seem fair.
Her fingers drummed against the handle of her bully stick. Three feet long, almost an inch thick, with a corded grip and a hoop attached to the end, to loop over a wrist and keep from losing it during the more rowdy brawls, the bully stick was supposed to be their symbol of authority. An aid for anyone that could chance attacking a Watchman to think twice about what they should do, how far they should cross the line before they saw that bully stick leave its loop upon a Watchman's belt.
Ghusz's bully stick lay broken in the dirt and the pooled blood beneath him. They had beaten him bloody with his own stick before affixing him to that wall. Bilain moved closer, though she had no wish to, holding her lantern high, searching the surroundings for anything that could tell her more about Ghusz's attacker. Or attackers. It would be difficult, but not impossible to have impaled the man alone but, as Bilain looked at the scuffs and footprints all over the floor, she assumed there was more than one person to blame here.
Despite her every instinct to do so, she did not blame herself. Ghusz would have snorted at the very thought of it and she wouldn't sully his memory by making this about her. He had a job to do and he knew well the risks of that job, as did all who joined the Watch. Watchmen had died in the past and they would die in the future. To die like this, however, strung up like a side of beef, that made Bilain's blood boil.
She lifted Ghusz's hand, looking at the battered knuckles, and then the other, the knuckles of a similar bruising. Of course he had put up a fight. She brought the lantern in closer to his preferred hand, the one he punched with the most, to see something glinting in amongst the blood and bruising and swelling. Switching the lantern to the other side, she tried to take a closer look but she couldn't hold the lantern and hold up the hand at the same time.
"Serge ..." The word caught in her throat and she paused before looking around. She saw the young recruit, Malaena, a girl of Larissan descent. "You, Watchman, come here and hold this."
Bilain almost tossed the lantern into the girl's hands, expecting her to drop it, but she caught the wire handle before it fell. She was fast. Fast and she only paled at the sight of Ghusz's bloody body so close. Malaena's eyes had widened, her hands trembled, but she didn't vomit, and she held the lantern as still as Bilain could expect under the circumstances. One to watch for the future.
With both her hands free, Bilain lifted Ghusz's wrist once again peering at the glittering thing embedded in the bruised skin and, with great care, tugged it free. It looked like a tooth. A golden tooth. Out there, somewhere in these streets, someone walked with a bloodied mouth and a gap where this false tooth once sat. It wasn't unusual to find people missing teeth, but a gold one? That would have caught someone's eye.
"Umm ... Captain?" Malaena edged forward, holding the lantern away from her body as she looked at the tooth. "My father worked the docks at Vicerini, back in Larissa. He used to tell me of sailors that had gold teeth to replace lost ones, a way of keeping their wealth about them. Sailors from ..."
"Mikinart in the Great Desert. Yes. I know." Bilain had met a few people from Mikinart, one of the the slaver cities, but it wasn't only their sailors that replaced their teeth with gold. Mikinartans prided themselves on it. "And the number of Mikinartans in this city are low. Very low."
The gold tooth became hidden away in the same pocket in her jacket as the badge Asnarrus had given her, but that symbol of authority, so very different from that of the bully stick, would not help them here. Mikinartans, perhaps more than any other culture, held their own counsel in matters of their own people. Even were she to order the rousting of every Mikinartan within The Sprawl, none would speak of their own, even if they despised them.
Taking the lantern back from the girl, Bilain took another look around Ghusz's body, but found nothing that could enlighten her to who had committed this vicious crime. She wanted to hit someone. To hit someone and not stop until they, too, were nothing but a bloodied corpse. Again, she looked to the line between the tops of the buildings and the night sky, cloudless, cold and crisp. Still the shadow figure refused to appear.
"I've interviewed those in the crowd, Chief, but none saw anything. Or they refused to admit so." Trenna returned, wiping the end of his bully stick with a rag. He had made her point for her. "If it's worth anything, Chi ... Captain, it would seem people held Ghusz in high regard. Even scum can recognise a good man."
"They're not 'scum', Trenna!" She didn't mean to snap, but did so anyway. "They're just people. Just like you. Just like me. Just like Ghusz. Have him taken down. With care! Has ... has anyone informed his wife?"
With only a glance toward Trenna, his eyes flickering toward Malaena and back to Bilain, she knew no-one had even thought of it. If she were to die in the course of her duties, she would want Ranaie informed immediately. Another thing to add to her growing list of unwanted tasks, though, in fairness, this was a task she alone should perform. He was her Sergeant, after all. Her friend.
She had sent him out to continue interviewing those folks who had witnessed the shadow figure and if anyone could have persuaded someone to talk, it was Ghusz. Under that gruff, growling exterior, a man of good humour, steadfast friendship and dedication resided. She could rely upon him when she could not rely upon herself. Were she to fail, to make a mistake, a misjudgement, Ghusz would have picked her up. He would have pointed out her mistakes, cautioned against her bad judgements.
Now she had no-one by her side. Oh, she had Ranaie, but not for the job, and she had a number of people in the Watch she could rely upon, but not near as much as she could rely upon Ghusz. She looked around as Trenna, Malaena and several others attempted to take Ghusz's body down with as much dignity as they could muster.
She couldn't see a one of them taking Ghusz's place as her Sergeant. Each had their skills and talents, but none had the sheer breadth of them that Ghusz had. Ilivno had the brains, Trenna had the brute force and others had their own calls to the position. She didn't want to decide straight away, not while Ghusz's blood was still warm, but she had to. And she knew it had to be Trenna. At least as a temporary elevation in rank. Before she could call him over, it felt as though thinking of Ilivno had called the Kannai to her, pushing through the crowd, out of breath.
"Captain! The Watch House. It ..." The girl had almost exhausted herself, leaning against a wall before her dog-like muzzle opened at the sight of Ghusz's body, held in the arms of the others. "The ... the Watch House, Captain. It's been raided."
Another blow. Something, or someone had decided to test the resilience of her, or the Watch, or the entirety of The Sprawl, and she would not have it.