The enforcers were not guarding the Municipal hall the next morning, so Able took some time to inspect the carvings on the pillars. He even took out his notebook to sketch out copies of them. His foreigner's eyes recognized boats and fish and perhaps nets, but other patterns and objects were indecipherable. He'd need to ask about them.
That done, he went inside. If he was lucky, the mayor would have another odd job for him. He'd promised Lark they'd go shopping for groceries later today, and while he was certain he had enough money to cover that, more would not hurt in the long run. But Nightwatch's office was deserted.
No, just unmanned. The lantern was still lit, and the inkwell was uncapped. The pen even lay beside a half-written sentence in the margin of the town plan. Able listened in the stillness until he made out muffled voices. He followed the sound past the empty offices until he could clearly make out the hushed voices of two men behind a storage room door.
Best not skulk. Able opened the door.
Nightwatch jolted in alarm. "What are you doing here?!"
"Well, I had a question for you, and it's not like the door was locked?" Able shrugged, then looked at the thin, blond man beside the hoary elder. "I'm going to guess Forest Mason?"
Fear flashed in the man's eyes. "What do you want?" So he was indeed the arrested secretary.
"Well, I was going to ask if the mayor here might have another odd job for me, and now I have more questions for him. But before you get any more apprehensive, I'm going to talk long enough for you to recognize my voice and reiterate that I am maintaining neutrality in this conflict to the best of my ability. I draw the line at putting people in danger, and I expect telling anyone that you're here would count."
"...you're the one they kept calling 'chronicler.'" Mason let a few of his hackles fall.
"Yes, I am." Able put a professional clamp on his rush of excitement. "Are you willing to answer my questions?"
The secretary exchanged a long, questioning look with the mayor, whose face was studiously blank. If only Able had brought Lark along—no, he could certainly manage this himself.
"Heh, asking questions is the only thing you know how to do," Mason scoffed lightly. "What do you want to know?"
Able fought back a smile. Mason's forced machismo was a sign he might cooperate. "Did the sheriff recover his missing men, or is there likely to be a hostage exchange in the works?"
"Oh, uh," Mason stalled with a surprised blink. "Maybe you didn't realize this, but I am not actually a member of the Resistance. Or was not. I might not have a choice anymore."
"The sheriff knows the evidence against you was trumped up," Able assured...or maybe that wasn't very reassuring. "I read the report myself."
"But that was before the Resistance rescued me. Now he may think I know of a secret base or something."
"Do you?" Able raised his eyebrows.
Mason folded his arms and looked away. "...I don't know. There was a camp, but... it didn't look very permanent. But I could still find my way back to it if, for example, my life depended on it. Look, I'm scared and I don't know what to do or where to go. I'll admit that. Write it down, if you like."
"Do you wish they hadn't freed you?" Able frowned and cocked his head.
"No?" Mason seemed startled. "Who's to say the sheriff wouldn't have just locked me up indefinitely once we got to the castle? Or...or worse?"
"True enough."
"I shouldn't have come back." Mason tugged at his hair hard enough that some came away in his fingers. "I'm putting everyone in danger. But I...they asked me to join them. Me! I can't join them!"
"No?" Able raised his eyebrows inquisitively.
"They're not asking me to take minutes at their secret strategy planning sessions! I can't..." Mason inhaled to pull himself together.
Able understood how he felt. He'd come to Borealund expecting he'd uncover some mismanagement, at least, and some meaty corruption that he could level against official reports if he was lucky. He'd never expected his sympathies to be pulled by the natives. God forbid he be pushed to join a side in all this, but what on earth would he do if it came to that? As such, he knew nothing reassuring to say to Mason.
But Nightwatch did. "It doesn't make you a coward. I'll find you a safe-house. It will be all right."
"Don't say that in front of him!" Mason's eyes grew wide and wild again.
"He already knows you came here asking me for help," Nightwatch replied, "and I'll be damned if he'll put in his book that I might have denied you." It was actually nice that people were starting to care about that.
"But they did have prisoners?" Able pressed on, since he was, after all, trying to write a book.
"I—what?" Mason blinked, frozen now instead of panicking.
"The Resistance had some prisoners?" Able prodded again.
"Oh, I...yeah, there were a few guys tied up and blindfolded. You're saying they were the sheriff's men?"
"Probably. While they were trying to break the gate down, Reeve sent scouts around to the woods who did not return. So now I'm trying to track down where the next show-down is going to happen. Unless...you don't think they'll be ransomed back?"
"I already said I don't know anything about that. But..." Mason frowned deeply and took two breaths before shaking his head. "No, I don't remember anyone talking about it."
"Were any of the other rescuees more eager than you?"
"Yes," Mason replied with a slow frown, "but I'm not going to tell you who."
"Hum." How could Able convince Mason to trust him? Once again, he found himself wishing Lark were here. Maybe he had time to go get him?
"Look, Houser," Nightwatch said and turned to him. "Come with me, and I'll set you up with some filing. I'll pay you for it, clear? And you just stay there until I get Forest situated...clear?" He was perfectly clear. If Able didn't go along with this, he'd lose Nightwatch's trust, as disappointing as it was.
"I have a noon appointment," he put in, mildly. When he'd asked the Super at the docks about sending the letter to his mother, he'd also gotten permission to look through the records there while the clerks took their lunch.
"I will get you both out of here before then," Nightwatch promised, then led Able to the side room he'd used the other day.
Able kept to himself while the two other men made plans and bustled about. It was too difficult to make out what they were saying from here anyway. When they left, Able did get up to snoop around the mayor's desk some, but this was also too difficult, as it was the sort of mess that would readily look disturbed. Unlikely that anything useful was in the piles anyway, so Able returned to his own desk and finished the tasks.
"To be honest," Nightwatch said from the doorway, "I wasn't sure I'd find you here."
"I try not to antagonize my sources," Able replied after he recovered from being startled.
"Tell me, Larbant, how long do you think you can keep playing both sides?"
"Indefinitely—I can be pretty stubborn." The old man was still scrutinizing him, so Able added, "besides, like your secretary, I have no stomach for violence. Part of the reason I worked so hard to get into university was to avoid the draft when I turned sixteen"
Nightwatch's scowl deepened. "They were taking their own boys off farms to attack us, were they?"
"Not only farms. My father was a fisherman, and actually...he disappeared during the blockade up here. I never did find out what happened."
Nightwatch went quiet at that. After a moment, he left the doorway, leaving his echoing footsteps in his place as he returned to his office. Able listened to him sliding cabinet drawers and rifling through papers a moment before triple-checking the work in front of him. Just when he was about to get up with it, he heard Nightwatch's footsteps approaching again. He entered the room with a full bound sheaf that he set in front of Able.
"You should have mentioned that earlier, lad." His voice and expression were both kindly now. "We do keep track of unidentified bodies that wash up here, you know. Perhaps I overstated the state of disarray. But that should be organized by date."
Able stared at the stack of paper. Had he just been handed a bar of gold or a scorpion?
"You can, of course, come back later to look through it if you're worried about missing your appointment," Nightwatch added, mistaking or perhaps in spite of Able's hesitation. Either way, it helped snap Able out of it.
"I'll take a quick look at least, but yes, I may have to return later." He slid the packet closer and cautiously began searching through for appropriate dates.
"I'll leave you to it," replied Nightwatch somberly, and he did.
It didn't take long for Able to find the first instance after the date his father left Blueport. He took a bolstering breath to slow down the racing pace of his heart and turned the page. And the next. And the next. And there it was.
A middle-aged man, described as having a salt and pepper beard, eye color uncertain for their having been eaten by fish. Able stared at the notation of the man's height. He could not remember his father's height—if he had ever known it. Pa had always been tall. Taller than him, at least, when he had been thirteen.
He examined the report, and, since there was little to suggest it was his father in all, he turned to the next one. Which was similar. His breath now dragged down below his sinking heart with every new page describing a bearded, middle-aged man. Some were blond or blue-eyed and could be discounted, but he easily had a dozen cases that he'd have to review more closely and hope he'd overlooked useful features. He was about to give up and go to the docks when he spotted a notation on a page he was about to turn over.
Dark-skinned—Larbant?
Dark-skinned. None of the cases he had pulled thus far had described skin color nor made a guess at the victim's nationality. Able looked down at his hands—"brown as a beechnut," Tranquility had called them. In Larbantry, though, Able was light-skinned and most likely to be described as a "coastal mud"—someone whose heritage came by way of the multitudes floating through the churn of the seaports. What might the difference between "brown" and "dark" be on these shores?
The case before him was of a young man, so he turned it aside but continued specifically looking for "dark" or otherwise "-skinned" victims. There were a number of them, and not all of them men, much less bearded, middle-aged ones. He sorted the stack down to two candidates and neither were pale-eyed as his father had been, but Borealunders might have a different description for this too. He'd have to find out later because it was surely already after noon.
He thanked the mayor, telling him he would return, then jogged as best as his sore legs would let him down to the docks, where he hoped the Super would not turn him away for tardiness. A lot of wasted worry and effort, as it turned out the records at the wharf station went only six years back. He didn't really need more disappointment and frustration, but since he was here, he used the time to at least familiarize himself with the movement of goods through the port. The numbers, at least, made sense.