Small rivulets of white clung on the stone walls of the Frosty Hearth, reflecting both sunlight and Spire light back into the street. The combination was a cacophonous showering of light shifted with every step Samuel took towards the building.
"It even looks like a hearth," Samuel reflected.
"It's aptly named," Angela agreed, shrugging her shoulders.
Samuel glanced back, feeling the need to count the four uniformed orderlies accompanying them on this arrest. Usually, the two of them along with Bertram would have sufficed, but Clovis was important enough that Captain Vaska had offered to send half the precinct.
Samuel had talked her down to four on the premise that a marching band would give Clovis enough warning to pack his entire bar before they arrived.
"How many entrances are there?" Samuel asked.
"Two. This one, and a service entrance at the back," Angela said.
"Easy enough," Samuel said, turning around. He faced the four orderlies and said, "Clovis Hannover is a middle-aged man, comes up to my nose in height. Slightly thin, reedy, beginning to bald."
"Sir, Clovis the bartender here, right?" one of the orderlies asked.
"That's right," Samuel nodded.
"We've all seen him before, sir. He won't slip through us."
"You have permission to be as rough as you need to. We have a patrol mustering point two minutes down the street. If he's giving you trouble, get him there and ring the bell. We'll tie him to a cart if we need to," Samuel instructed. "Two up front, two at the back."
"And try to avoid making a scene," Angela added. "Bars are like ammunition dumps. Hit it too hard, and the whole thing could blow up in our faces."
The orderlies rewarded her last comment with grins and chuckles, before they broke off and moved to their posts. Samuel marched to the entrance and took a deep breath.
"To live is to burn," Samuel muttered to himself, as he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
There were dozens of people sitting, all staring at a small stage near the bar. The bar was far from full, but also far from empty. The crowd was murmuring in hushed tones, a buzzing of whispers that would have sounded loud only at a funeral. For a bar, it was eerily quiet.
On the small stage beside the bar, a wisp of a woman with black hair cascading over her eyes sat and set her fingers on the strings of a guitar.
Samuel's eyes widened when he realised the guitar was made of wood.
"I don't see the bartender," Bertram muttered, just as the woman on the stage began to sing.
Hands shiver in the cold grip of duty
As twilight drowns 'neath grey night
"He'll show," Angela assured them. "For now, let's sit. You won't want to miss this.
A warrior reaches to the unearthly beauty
Of a courage warm and bright
Angela guided them to the nearest bench and urged them to sit. Samuel, listening to the woman sing, found he couldn't muster the thought to even wonder if he should argue. He sat down without knowing he was moving, his ears transfixed on the voice coming from the stage.
She laughed like songbirds in the sylvan
Wore wildflowers in her hair
Treasured trinkets given by children
And loved without a care
They met in a sea of sorrow and fear
A man colder than his sword
Finds in a red coat and a single tear
What his heart had long ignored
She whispered hope in his ear
And joys in tender caress
Vows exchanged in reckless fear
In deed, love silently professed
Midnight locks turn ashen grey
To call upon the raging red
A price she will gladly pay
Let no one stand in her stead
Blind rage tempered in passion
His wet sword became a standard
From cowards he would fashion
Heroes the City once slandered
Their hearts stripped bare by the walls
They loved as fiercely as they fought
Raised mugs in Crafter lit halls
And lived the joy they bought
Until in Withering Evergreen
Upon a hundred feet of stone
With fire bright and courage keen
She fought a monster of the Gloam
Against the grey night she fought alone
And laid low our bane
Her reward a knife, steel over stone
A miracle paid in pain
He stands upon the battlements still
A half-century of love lost
Eyes fixed on grey mists until
He learns what else our lives cost
The crowd erupted into cheers and applause, hoisting mugs and bellowing their appreciation. Samuel found himself joining in, rising to his feet with the group at the table in front of him.
"The Watchman and The Pyre. It's an old folk song," Angela explained, clapping as enthusiastically as Samuel.
"It's about Crafter Olivia Polden," Bertram said. Samuel was surprised to see tears in the shadow's eyes. "She fought a Golem during the Fifth on the Withering Evergreen Walls, just in front of the Foundry. Her tale is a bitter one to Oversight."
"Why?" Samuel asked.
"We failed her. You heard that line, 'her reward a knife, steel over stone'. Oversight's knives."
Samuel couldn't think of a response, but his applause was somewhat subdued by the news.
The wispy woman on the stage stood up and bowed.
"She sings it beautifully," Bertram added, wistfully.
"I see Clovis," Samuel said, gesturing with his head towards the bar. "Bertram, cover the path to the back door at the end of the bar. Ang, talk to Clovis, try to convince him to come with us."
"On it," Angela said, as she rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles on her waist.
Angela's bravado and obfuscating anger couldn't entirely hide the pain she felt. It showed in the grimace, the shimmer in her eyes, and her still shaking hand. She was angry, and she was also hurt.
"Clovis!" Angela called out, striding forward. She waved her arm and pointed to the middle of the bar, towards several empty stools.
As Samuel drew closer, he could see Clovis gesture to someone sitting at a stool at the end of the bar, closest to the stage. The bartender leaned forward and said, "I need some cover."
It was an odd bit of phrasing, enough to send a spike of cold fear through Samuel's spine. Clovis' words were close to an innocuous request for help at the bar, but slightly off. It was, Samuel admitted, the kind of coded phrase he would use.
Clovis then moved to meet Angela where she sat. "What are you drinking tonight?"
Angela shook her head. "Clovis, what the burning hell?"
"I..." Clovis began to say, but Angela slammed her fist on the bar. It rattled nearby drinks and drew several sets of curious eyes towards her.
Samuel grinned. It was a smart move. If a few people heard the accusations, it might help incite Clovis to come with them quietly.
"Why the burning hell are you harbouring that little ash stain?" Angela said, loudly. "He murdered fourteen people! Injured nearly a hundred others."
An exaggeration, Samuel noted. Although with the full tally at sixty-seven, it was a believable exaggeration typical of newspapers.
"I don't know-" Clovis began to say, but Angela cut him off.
"Don't you burning say it. Because Sam and I all that's stopping Oversight from coming in here with knives and Crafters. Fourteen people are dead, and the murderer can craft. Help us, right burning now."
Samuel cringed at Angela's demand. She relied too heavily on demands and threats, and implied the backing of power that wasn't immediately in their grasp. It was how you talked to an insubordinate soldier, or someone drilled in the demands of duty.
It was a bad way of talking to a man who was even now weighing his options.
Samuel hazarded a glance at Bertram, who was now in a quiet but intense conversation with a young pair of soldiers at a table near the bar. Samuel was curious, but he couldn't risk the time it would take to find out.
"Do you know what revenge tastes like?" Clovis asked. Samuel was a little surprised to see that Clovis was addressing him.
Samuel didn't say anything, inviting Clovis to continue.
"Angela doesn't. What she lost was taken by a ricocheting Valkyrie shot from the Fury during the Dragon Chase," Clovis said, rubbing the inside of a glass with his cloth.
"I've lost friends on the job," Samuel admitted. "And I remember how it felt to put away the burning bastards who put my friends in a crematorium."
"So you know what I wanted. Now imagine that unsatisfied thirst lingered in your throat for fifteen burning years, Inspector. Fifteen years, with your children dying of cold and exposure as Civil Developed continuously finds an excuse to deny you a home. Do you know how long I've waited for a chance to put that ash stained little shit onto the street? To taste what he did to me?"
"You offered to shelter Silas Miller, knowing his family connections. And leveraged it," Samuel said quietly. He didn't need to speak loudly, as most of the bar had turned deathly quiet.
"Wouldn't you?" Clovis asked.
"You didn't know he murdered. Not at first. And once you knew, when I told you last night, you weighed your options and felt you were in too deep," Samuel said.
"Not quite. You see, Silas thinks there's a conspiracy out to get him. Conceited little highborn prat has quite the ego on him. But he's not entirely wrong," Clovis said, with a grin. "Do you know how Coldstone is made, Inspector?"
"It's one of Research's secrets," Samuel admitted.
"Yes. But have you learned anything more than that? Because this one is a dangerous secret, even for Research. It's dangerous enough that, when Silas claimed it was the reason Oversight sent a hit squad to murder him, I believed him."
"So you believed the City was trying to kill him to keep his mouth shut?"
"An opportunity for revenge, and all for the price of helping a persecuted kid? At first, it didn't seem so bad," Clovis said.
"It isn't too late to help make this right," Samuel insisted. "Secrets live in darkness and survive on shit. But Silas has already made his funeral pyre. The first shadow he murdered had his hands open and was offering his aid. Help me fix this."
"He's burning made up his mind already, Sam," Angela said, standing up from her barstool.
There was a sharp crack at the end of the bar. At the edge of his vision, Samuel saw a young man dash out through the door, his heavy boots clopping at the street as he ran.
"He made up his mind the moment he saw you two," Bertram said as he leapt over the bar, hardly making a sound as he seemed to flirt through the open space towards Clovis. The shadow took one of the glass jars off the bar and flung it towards Angela just as he drew a knife in his other hand.
Angela barely had time to blink as the jar flew past the side of her head, and smashed into someone else's face.
The man behind Angela staggered backwards, knocking into another two. The trio had a look about them Samuel recognised, the thicker builds and easy anger of the kind of people who are often the first to start trouble.
But it was the woman who stepped around them, her hand wreathed in flame, that made Samuel's blood run cold.
Samuel pulled Angela by the shoulder and dragged her back. Across the bar, Clovis cried out in pain and surprise as Bertram pressed a knife into his throat, just hard enough for a trickle of blood to begin falling down the blade.
"Sam, Ang, go for the exit. Now!" Bertram said. His eyes were wide, his face was pale, and his free hand was holding a pair of throwing knives.