…leave while you still can, empty handed, but alive.

Sanity prevails. Tonight, you’ve done more for the world than anyone could hope. It’s time to leave before your beleaguered luck finally runs out.

You clamber from your hiding space, moving through the room and towards the window. Searching the place would take time, but you cast your eyes about anyway, hoping for some convenient jewels or piles of gold that slipped your notice. You see none. The still open window casts no breeze, but-

Wait.

You look back at the captain’s corpse, lying still and bare, her face a mix or red and purple blotches. She’s still armed, and though you hardly fear pursuit from the dead woman, your eyes are still drawn to the gold gilded handle of her rapier. It’s nowhere near as famous as the necklace, but it could still be sold for a good amount. It may even help you escape, a little. Maybe.

The door Captain Roland left through is still closed and no footsteps can be heard beyond it, and making the decision to act fast, you move to her body and tug at the buckle about her waist. The ugliness of the corpse’s robbery is not lost on you, tugging at the belt and lavish sheath and rocking her dead weight body back and forth, but after all she endured from Captain Roland, you doubt she would mind much. The belt comes free and you tumble backwards with sword in hand, landing on your bottom with a loud thump. Time to go, for real now.

You run to the window and climb out onto the short roof, opting to briefly hang from the gutter and drop rather than going to the trellis at the end. The hard lawn sends a shock up your legs, and you fall further, rolling in the grass as you throw off the impact. The lesson was learned from your parent’s tree and all the times you ruined your skirts climbing it. Your even hear the faint memory of your mother screaming ‘Grass Stains!’

Its cut short when the buckle of the belt attached to the sheath smats you in the face just hard enough to sting your gums and wipe away your smile. You get up and move, crossing the lawn and disappearing into the still dark forest. A fires crackle can be heard from somewhere, and a short distance in, a fog of smoke crawls between the trees like a wondering wraith, wisp limps curling through the upper branches, warning you away. You go in the direction you need to go, checking the stars where you can through the falling ash and doomed leaves, trying to reach the islands rear. Despite tripping several times, you make it and smile as the bracken thins to reveal a lumpy looking field of grass and a long stretch of stair glittering ocean water. In the distance you see and islands, where your well paid guide waits for you with his fifteen well-earned silver pieces pinning him to place.

You buckle the belt around your waist, thinking about those silver pieces. Perhaps you could get compensation from the Agency? They were needed to do your job after all. You’ll have to convince them of what you did, and the sword should help, but you know them well as a tight fisted bunch.

The sword is pulling down your trousers, and a look out at the swim ahead makes you shift the belt to between your shoulder and hip, slinging the sword along your back. You could sell it to the person who sold you the stiletto! Or, maybe a collector would be best? You’re sure it has some history, even before being wielded by her. The names of several people to check with come to mind, but only a few are reputable enough to make the sale. You’ll cross that bridge when you swim to it. For now, you wade into the water, alive and successful, and begin to labour toward your ride.

In the weeks that followed, you had requested the tribunal and given your testimony (to the Truth Finder himself no less) in a very uncomfortable ceremony. The truth demands sacrifice after all, and you had been fine to give it to such an authority. Your words had been accepted, and while no bounty came your way, it would not go to whoever turns up with the amulet either, at least uncontested.

The sword had been reasonable evidence, but it was not unique. It was a better sell. The beggars wage Agent work pays was never enough to live on, and the work of justice, for the guard or those that can pay, went on as it always did. The sword only paid for the time spent on Wendigo, plus the next two month’s rent.

In the meantime, the whore was still talking.

“’The Beautiful Maid’ over on the dockside. Sally does it. Always go for Sally otherwise it’ll be Bekka and Bekka can’t do it.”

You nod emphatically, trying with all your might to convince this woman you really do want to dye your hair as much as she thinks you should. In all fairness, getting whores talking (especially once arrested and put in the public cells) was a real pain and her runaway mouth was a blessing. She was an important witness, albeit to a very unimportant case.

“Go on, feel it!” she offers her long yellow hair to you with a somewhat dim grin, and you stroke the slightly greasy hair with thumb and forefinger.

“Very nice!” It wasn’t. Or perhaps it was, you really don’t know much about hair dye. You smile and nod anyway.

“Guess how much. Go on, guess?” You blow out your lips, pretending to think, and smile when her eagerness makes her answer for you. “Three. Copper. Pieces.” You raise your eyebrows. That does seem cheap. Suspiciously cheap. “Right!?”

You look into her ecstatic face, quite at odds with the bars between you. The cell was empty and accounted for her easy conversation, but it was you who requested that she not be turned out with the other whores come morning and you feel a little bad tricking her.

“Do you get many customers near there? I thought you’d get more on Bridge Side?”

She doesn’t mind the sharp turn, quickly going into a spiel about how Bridge Siders are ‘good for it but don’t tip at all’ and how ‘broke bunnies turned the place down’ whatever that means.

Your client is a Bridge Sider.

As is her potentially wayward husband.

As the conversation goes on, turning it to where it needs to go becomes more and more of a chore. It’s as though fighting your way upstream against a torrent of nonsense. Eventually, you get somewhere useful.

“Yeah, he hired me and Katy. You know Katy?” You shake your head. “Katy’s nice. Me an her get on real well, you know? Real well. An he hired me first but asked if I knew anyone and it was me who said I know Katy, so he said to find her and bring her and you’ll never guess where she was! Next. Door. Coming right out of the next house like it was magic or something. So I says to her ‘this guy wants a show or something’ and she gets this look on her face right, like ‘bunnies getting paid!’ and we go up there and get into the usual you know, and end up shearing and he watches it all like ‘By. The. Gods!’ which is weird that its mostly guys into that sort of things you know, and me and Katy, we like it just fine.” You keep nodding, half listening. “And in the end, he just beats it like a rent man until he goes and he was grinning and guess what? No tip. Nothing.”

“That’s crazy.” You respond still nodding. You didn’t follow it all but the gist is clear. The husband definitely broke his vows. Time to go tell your client the bad news and collect your merge pay.

“Right!? Like, exactly what he was looking for and we do it and not a copper extra for the gush, not that real gets more but you know. Prefer it anyway right?”

“Right right.” You nod your head idly, beginning to wrap up the conversation. Your client seems like a crier more than a fighter. Better to tell her when the husbands away anyway, just in case, and make sure she has the money to hand. Gods but you sound heartless, even in your own head. Not for the last time, you miss the amulet you never had.

“Tell you what,” you interrupt the very helpful (if headache inducing) girl, “how about I talk with the guard and get you out of there?”

She looks at you with big impressed eyes, “You’d do that for me?” You’d guess she’s about five years your junior and she’s here _because _of you. The pang of guilt intensifies; the things you do for justice.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

It takes only a nod to the bored looking jailer sitting in the front room, closer to the men’s cells, to set things in motion. A thump on the wall brings out his backup and the keys, and you and the lanky looking guardsman walk back the way you came.

“Oh thank you!” The lock clicks and the door swings and she jumps out at you, throwing her arms about your shoulders and hugging you tightly. She hums as she squeezes and you almost gesture to the guard to get her off you, as though it was some kind of attack, but you settle for patting her back awkwardly. She pulls back, still with her arm at your neck and kisses you.

It’s a deep puckered press of lips upon your own shocked mouth and she gives a little humming moan again, holding your head steady while pressing forward. Her lips part and wrap and pull at yours before departing.

“Dockside north, any evening. Me and Katy’ll give you half off.”

She winks and you jump as both her hands squeeze you buttocks, briefly pulling your crotchets together before she jogs out the door. “Love the hair by the way!”

You long hair loosely balled up at the back of your head is the last thing on your mind.

What?

You shift your eyes sideward to the guardsman, who looks as shocked as you. Your lips are still wet, and slightly puckered.

What?

The guardsman smiles as your face takes on a no doubt stricken expression, and your body remains frozen amongst the empty cells. “Plans tonight miss?”

Whatever expression you wear next makes him snort with suppressed laughter.

What?