"We'll learn what we can right here first," Annalise said gently. "Thank you. We didn't hear a thing from you."
"Bless you." Jerverm said, and though he swore by no god I could hear a prayer in it. The lines around his eyes softened, the way rope relaxes when you finally ease a burden down. "I'll be at the gate. If you need me, just ask. But… please don't repeat anything I said."
"Not a soul." Annalise promised.
He trudged away, smaller with each step, until the lanes and the dust and the work swallowed him.
"Well," Annalise said under breath, "that's nightmare fuel. I thought we were here to stomp bugs."
"Sometimes the bugs wear faces," I said.
"Cheery thought."
"You ever heard of anything like this before?"
"Never. I know changelings pull pranks like this all the time, but changelings don't get memories."
"Let's be careful then. We should dig a little bit and report back to Helena."
"I agree," We turned to the work. Annalise knelt by the slag, eyes narrowing, fingers hovering just above the stone as if she could feel the heat that used to be there. "No grain left," she reported. "They ate it to the wall and then they softened the stone crawled out. See the drip runnels? And tracks this way."
I didn't see tracks. I smelled them. Once the burnt stink thinned, other layers came forward: singed chitin, panic sweat, a smear of blood one human, one not and beneath it, a creeping damp, the scent of mildew and cold cellars. I closed my eyes. The world became a map drawn in air.
"Adrastos?" Annalise said somewhere to my left. "You got something?"
"Something was here before the breach and after," I murmured. "Mold and stone damp. It moved." I let my feet follow my nose, circling until the burnt reek ebbed and the damp rose sharp as old rope. It led me to the inner wall, where the smell gathered like lichen.
I opened my eyes to stone pocked with narrow divots in the cracks. Three in a set, three again, small triangles chipped deep. Claw marks. They stretched a path upward.
I backed away to take them in, craning for a clearer line. A sentry passed above. Annalise cupped her hands. "Excuse me! Guard! Hello?"
A confused face leaned over the parapet. "Er… yes?"
"Rope?" Annalise called. "We're with the guild. Investigator business. Need to get up there."
"One moment," He said, and disappeared.
"What did you find?" she asked me, already moving to the wall.
"A vertical trail. Three claw set. Something damp. The scent's thick as cellar mold," I said, pointing out the marks. "I don't know the species, but it definitely wasn't a firebug."
"Then it's tied to Reckon and the others," she said, mouth in a thin line now. "I don't like it."
"Nor I."
Boots clanged; the guard reappeared and tossed a coil. The rope slapped the stone and dangled.
"I'll go first." I said, catching it. I scaled, claws finding purchase where the rope swayed. My breath set a steady rhythm: up, up, up. I swept my leg over the parapet and found the guard staring.
"Are you well?" I asked
"Ye-yes," he stammered, "Just fast. And… you used only your hands?"
"What else would I use?"
He pointed down. Annalise had braced both boots, elbows locked, her violin and satchel dragging her center of gravity into treason. The rope jolted. She reached, missed, and thudded onto her back. She lay there motionlessly staring at the sky as a loud groan echoed out.
"Are you okay?" I called.
A beat. "I've been better." She groaned
Really. I would never have guessed. From behind me the guard cleared his throat, "You know there are stairs."
I turned very slowly. "There are stairs?"
"How do you think we get up here." He gestured to stairs a dozen yards away, perfectly sensible and perfectly obvious.
"Interesting. Annalise." I peered over again. "Annalise. The stairs."
She blinked up at me, then at the flight of practicality we had collectively ignored. No words. Just an orc rising with the kind of dignity you earn by abandoning none. She dusted her tunic, shouldered her violin like a banner, and walked to the steps and began the ascent as if the rope were something we had all imagined together.
I hid my smile behind a cough and turned to the guardhouse where Quillan took his break, and where the smell of mildew, faint but present, threaded the air like a rumor determined to be heard.
Then the trail split.
One thread skated along the parapet stones toward the guardhouse. However, there were no marks or divots of claws, just stone worn down by time and the weary. The guardhouse smelled of a heavy underground musk, revealing Quillan's location.
The other thread led over the parapet stones, with the three neat divots repeating down the vertical like it preferred a sheer drop to a doorway. The faint mildew, cellar scent drifted across rooftops and rigging lines towards the city's heart.
From up above, the streets climbed in orderly terraces, ring rising above ring, houses stepping on the shoulders of houses. At the summit the High Ward sprawled behind its inner wall, holding the gilded mansions, council domes, and needle-spired temples, arranged with the geometry only old money and older law can afford.
Above that crown of the city, hung a cloud.
It wasn't unusual. There were other clouds in the sky, but they were higher. But unlike the other clouds, this one sat like a lid set too tight on a boiling pot, huge and gray-bellied, shading the High Ward in a cool shadow while the rest of the morning shone.
Flags along the wall, and the lower terraces snapped west in a steady breeze; birds rode the current and veered wide. Yet the cloud didn't so much as fray at the edges. Light inside its shadow went flat, the breeze muffled as if sound itself was hushed beneath its mass.
Annalise followed my gaze, shading her eyes. "Still there?" She said softly, "It's sat there the entire time I've been here. Never seen anything like it before."
"Me neither," I agreed, "But it's unnatural."
We both stared. The breeze carried the scent to my nose once more and I refocused.
"There is one scent that goes to the High Ward. The other leads over that guardhouse." I said in a low voice, "I think we should handle this one first."
"Yeah." Annalise said, eyes locked onto the cloud. "Let's go."
As we approached the building, the mildew scent grew stronger. As I reached the door, I tried to open it, the door sputtering on the first pull, before giving way on the second. The first breath burned all the way up my nose. The second turned everything into one taste. Tobacco. Charcoal. Old Grease. Under it all something damp kept trying to stand up and kept being shoved back down.
"Quillan on break?" Annalise asked the smoke.
Laughter answered from a round table in the corner. Two goblins, two kobolds, and an orc all in patch mail sat in a haze so thick it could have been a sixth player.
A deck with a hand painted suits drifted from palm to palm. A pile of glinting shillings and chips sat in the middle. Dice clicked like teeth inside the cup.
"Pull up a chair if your buyin in, else there's stew and tables up top for some fresh air." A blue kobold said without looking up. His voice had the sandpaper of a man who had chewed more guardhouse nights than bread.
Annalise leaned on the chair, "What are we playing?"
"Kings and Cups," a goblin said, dealing the cards with a practiced hand. He had a scar that tried to pull his left ear to his jaw. "Pairs beat runs, Cups trump all. Double if you show a king last."
Annalise's smile found a home. "Father used to play this game all the time. Taught me a few tricks." She tapped the bowl with two knuckles. "Mind if I try a hand?"
"Try three." The blue kobold grinned, missing one of his teeth, "Quillan," he said, tilting his chin at a narrow goblin with a neat mustache, "make room."
Quillan shifted his chair without ever quite turning his head. He smelled like everyone else. Smoke and sweat. But when he lifted his sleeve to throw a pair on the table, a thread of cellar air crept out against my tongue. Cold stone. Wet rope. Gone at once beneath the tobacco tide.
Annalise settled into her seat, and the guards looked her up and down.
"Now who might you be?" Quillan said with a rough smile, "I thought you were a new hire?"
"Basically. My name is Annalise Kane. Just a wandering adventurer." Annalise let out a drawn sigh. "We were told you all had a firebug infestation. We were paid to check it out. So, me and my friend made our way across the city in the blazing heat just to find out you all already took care of it. I was hoping to play a few games and knock off some of the annoyance."
The guards paused for a tense moment, before Quillan broke the silence with a chuckle, "Damn do I feel you. We've been out in this heat day in and day out for the last three weeks. Playing cards is all we get as a break." He spat on the floor.
"We mainly play to pass the time, so the buy in is only two shilling." The mustached goblin said.
Annalise was already putting down a stack of shillings. "What about ten?"
The guards all sat up in the chairs.
"Well miss Annalise. I do say, welcome to the table." The guards grinned as they dealt her in.
I had never seen, nor heard of this game before. But Annalise sat relaxed. She hummed the tiniest note you could hum and not be accused of singing. The cards went round. She watched their hands, not faces as the cards were exchanged. Then she matched their antics. Copper chips clinked against the table. My stomach rolled with the dice. This stench was unbearable.
I looked about as the game carried on, there, a small lattice window. I slid over and opened the window a crack. A breath of street came in. Horse. Yeast. Sun warmed stone. It helped. Not much.
Groans echoed out behind me followed by a singed cackle. I looked back to Annalise pulling a sizable amount of the coin to her side.
"Beginner's luck," said the scarred goblin, already cutting the deck again.
Round two began. The orc rolled his shoulders before each call. The goblin with the scar rubbed the same spot on the table with thumb, leaving a smudge the size of a tear. Quillan sat still, his feet planted into the floor, head set upon his neck straight ahead, hands unmoving unless passing a card.
He smiled when others smiled, a heartbeat behind, like he was watching for his cue. When the bet came round to him he hesitated, eyes blank as if no thoughts stirred behind them. It looked as if he was searching in a box whose label was absent when it should have been present. He tossed two chips and then touched the rim of the bowl as if testing whether it was real.
Annalise raised a finger to the cup of dice. "Mind if I shake some god fortune into it?"
"Shake mine while you are at," the mustached goblin grumbled.
She rattled, laid the cup down without rolling, and looked at Quillan as she did. "My father said luck is just the name people give skill they do not see." She turned her cards over to reveal a pair, lifted the cup to reveal stacked dice that increased, and with an innocent little sigh flipped the middle card to reveal a king. The table cursed as one. She swept the copper chips with the side of her hand. A growing mountain in comparison to the others vacant plains.
"Your father taught you cards, did he?" The scarred goblin said, eyes narrowing as if that might stop the coins from sliding. He let out a puff of cigar smoke, "What did he do when he was not creating a menace?"
"He was on the wall last I saw," she said, still smiling as usual and yet it did not reach her eyes. "He was fighting the hordes. Fought Cloudbreaker himself, he did. Just so the rest of us could get to safety."
Silence hit the table.
The orc cleared his throat and lifted a flask up. "To the Tifan Watchman. May their sacrifices for us never be forgotten."
"To the watchman." The table echoes as they all sipped from flasks. I hope that was water, they were supposed to be on break, not off duty.
"What was his name?" The red kobold spoke for the first time.
"Amos Kane."
The guards choked on their water. Quillan coughed alongside. The orc spoke up through coughs. "As in. The Iron General?"
"The Father of Steel?"
"The Calm before Death?"
"The Last Blade?"
I had heard of Amos before. I knew his titles even more. He went on an expedition to map the dark continent. Over a hundred left, and only twenty or so remained after. He came and established a military school and a city on the wall that became known as Ironcliff. He led that city and defended the wall for the last decade, until that wall became no more.
Annalise laughed at the guards. "To me he was just my father. A good one at that."
"Is he still alive?"
"Oh yea. It would take more than a few beasties to kill him. He's the strongest."
There was a brief quiet once more, the guards spying glances around the table.
"I had no idea the famed general was so good at Kings and Cups. Much less passing on that fearsome skill to his daughter." The orc said with a chuckle and the guards all let out a laugh.
With his words the tensions in the room faded away. Another round began. More chips were thrown in the middle. Annalise played the table like it was an instrument she had owned since childhood. She never flourished or boasted. But there was asilent patient pressure at the exact right notes.
Her eyes seemed to stare directly into them, watching their breaths and betting at the end of them. And just as it seemed to begin, the game ended as Annalise pulled the king once more. She pulled over the bowl of chips. Then tossed a shilling to each guard.
"For the lesson." She smiled. "Been a while since I played."
They laughed, the returned money taking the sting out. The scarred goblin shook his head. "Your father taught you too well."
"He taught me that men tell the truth with their hands." She spoke. She let the line hang. "Even when they lie with mouths." She looked at Quillan when she said it, before her gaze smoothly slid to the rest of the group.
Annalise stacked her winnings and threw them in her pouch, then tapped the rim of the bowl twice. "Quillan," she said, "Could I borrow you for just a moment?"