General scutchery

The scene still wasn’t wrapped up by the time our shift was meant to be over five hours later. Both Curry and I would have preferred to stay and see things through, except we weren't approved for overtime, so Lamb and Ladd sent us away with strict instructions to shower, get a little drunk, and sleep in tomorrow since we weren’t on duty in the morning.

As they explained it, most scenes might be processed a bit quicker, but in this instance the removal of a body this far gone was a delicate process and required care to avoid either ruining any potential evidence, or contaminating this residential neighborhood any further. It hadn’t taken the detectives any time at all to rule that this **** was most likely the result of “general scutchery,” as Lamb put it, which Ladd corrected to the official watch guard term “foul play,” with a roll of her eyes that wasn’t far off the eye rolls that Curry and I sometimes traded when one of us felt sillier than the other.

She talked much less than her partner, but Ladd seemed to have no end of information stored in her head. After Curry asked how one decided in a case like this whether it was foul play or an accident, Lamb observed to me and Curry that after all nobody ever just settled into a rain barrel in a dark alley just to have themselves a nice relaxing soak. Ladd had immediately cut in: “Summer thirteen-seventeen, Pedersen-Babin. Drowned in a water barrel trying to get out of the heat.”

“Listen to the resident savant of the fourth ward here, citing a case from before either of us was born,” Lamb said to me and Curry. “I think the sixty years that elapsed since then give me some latitude respecting the word ‘ever,’” he told her, with an air of habitual forbearance.

I was grateful to Lamb, for the chat we had when he and Ladd first arrived, and for making sure the Rook who attended the scene also performed a brief purifying ritual for me. Whatever the woman did took only a few minutes, and finally banished the sickly, nauseating sweetness that had lodged in my nose and kept me queasy since I left the alley.

He in particular had calmed my initial worries that I would never be able to do this job. And he and Ladd together, despite how nervous she had made me starting out, were both quite decent to us. I was still a bit preoccupied with some of Lamb’s advice, but at least I was no longer actively worried about how I would break Curry the news that if he wanted to be a **** guard one day he’d be stuck doing it on his own.

“I feel like I learned more about guard work today than I did through the whole academy and the last two years combined,” Curry said as we made our way back to Vox Castle to punch out our shift tickets.

“Yeah,” I agreed. I was thinking about some of the things Lamb had told me today, about him and Ladd, and how people would make up unfair shit about me and Curry, because petty bullshit that let them pretend to take us down a notch was how they reconciled their own mediocrity to themselves. “Laddie was pregnant with my love child something like thirty or forty times in our first fifteen years,” he’d said with a roll of his eyes. “Times like that, you focus on the stuff that matters—the work, and your partnership. Fuck the rest.”

Lamb's talk had left me a bit conflicted—it made me glad to think that one day maybe Curry and I could ourselves look after younger officers the way they had seen to us today. I also felt a bit apprehensive about what kind of things we’d have to put up with from other guards. I hadn’t given much thought before to the kind of unpleasantness that might come from people being jealous of us.

“You’re awfully quiet,” my partner observed as we waited to cross one of the busier streets on our path between the scene and the watch house. “You all right?”

“Just thinking about some stuff Lamb said to me when we went around the building. What about you? What was Ladd like on her own?”

“The best,” Curry said without hesitation. “Nice. And lots of good sounding advice. She looks tough as hell—I really didn’t expect her to be so nice,” he told me happily. “I thought we’d be in the way, but she didn’t act like that at all.”

“Him neither. Did she tell you their partner name?”

“Partner name?” He shook his head.

It was our chance to cross, so I waited to speak until we were on the other side and free of the street noise. “He said he heard we were the wonder kids,” I said. “I told him, not if it was up to us, and he said their partner nickname was Titty-Tusk.”

“Oh. How… sexist," Curry said, making a face.

“And racist.”

“That too. I'm can't say I'm surprised she neglected to mention it."

“I really liked Lamb,” I said as our destination came into view, because I hadn’t yet worked out how to come at all the stuff I actually wanted to talk about.

“Yeah? You said you were thinking about something he said.”

I shook my head noncommittally. “I don’t think it’s been exactly easy for them,” I offered, after a short pause.

“Yeah?” he said again.

I was looking ahead, but I could feel Curry’s eyes on me. “It was a good talk,” I said without looking up. “He made me feel better, I think.”

Curry offered me his arm, and let me link elbows with him. “Is it too nosy, or too oblivious, if I'm hoping you’ll describe more of what you needed to feel better about?” he asked as we kept walking.

I shook my head. “It’s neither. You know that.”

He shrugged. “It seems politer not to assume.”

“Nan taught you well.” I looked up at him. “The body rattled me pretty hard. I’ll tell you some more about that when I’ve had a pint or two. But he knew all the right stuff to say.”

“What did you mean, it hasn’t been easy for them?”

I was the one to shrug this time. “He told me some of the stuff that happens when other guards are jealous of you. I guess I hadn’t thought through any of that. Gossip. Other things, in various degrees of meanness. He said starting their first year on serious crimes, about every season or two somebody anonymously reports them to IG for fraternization, and since any report like that automatically requires an investigation be logged and a formal verification interview, they have to do that every couple seasons. Even though they and IG both know it’s bullshit.”

“Gods… that’s fucking terrible.” Curry’s expression was incredulous. “Other guards do that to them?”

“Yeah. It makes me tired just thinking about it, honestly.”

A brief silence ensued.

“Are you reconsidering some things?” he asked carefully after a while, then gently withdrew his arm from mine. “This conversation made me think better of going around like this so close to the watch house,” he explained when I looked questioningly up at him, nodding ahead to where the Vox Castle tower was now visible above the shop roofs.

“Yeah,” I said, a bit glumly.

“Yeah—you’re reconsidering some things? Or yeah—you agree maybe we should avoid doing stuff in public that people might gossip about?”

“Maybe both. You mad?”

Curry shook his head no. “Let’s talk about it over pints.”

Since our local was between Vox Castle and home, neither of us felt like going all the way home first so I could clean up. It was rare that I ever showered at work, but in this case I was willing to overcome my usual ****. Without either of us discussing it, Curry stood unofficial sentinel outside the shower stall, leaning against the wall and chatting with me about what we’d learned from listening to Lamb and Ladd go up and down the block finding out whether anybody had seen something unusual lately.

When the last lingering reek of **** was only in my imagination, I dried off in the shower stall and Curry passed me the street clothes from my locker.

“You’re a really good partner,” I said, when I’d finished pulling on my leggings and tunic and opened the curtain. "You know that?"

“So are you,” he said, handing me my belt.

I took it and fastened it around my waist, then accepted my socks and boots from him and brought those to one of the benches. Curry sat next to me, studying me thoughtfully in a way I had learned meant he was brooding on something and in the process of pulling together what words he wanted. I let him have the silence so he could think uninterrupted, and by the time I’d finished lacing up my first boot he asked, “Are you having second thoughts about our career plans?”

I considered this. “Not exactly. I think chatting it through like you said will make things sound better.”

Curry nodded. “Were you earlier?”

“Second thoughts? Kind of. But Lamb said that’s normal and then the rest of everything today with him and Ladd got me set right again.”

I finished lacing up my other boot and checked my belt pouch to make sure I had pub money, then went to my locker and threw my dirty uniform in there. “Ready?”

Curry nodded, moved to offer me his arm, then checked himself when he remembered we’d just decided maybe it was best not to encourage people to make up rumors about our closeness. We walked to Marwick’s, not touching, both of us adrift in our own thoughts.