With the sun setting beside the blocky gray Admiralty offices, Indirk loosened the thick, high collar of her sailor’s jacket and walked up the muddy roads of the Angolhills, swinging her heavy briefcase full of absconded files and notes as casually as anyone taking work home from the office. Being casual was key. She had to live this life, to carry it as lightly and as heavily as anyone carried any normal life. She did, perhaps, carry it too lightly. People she passed side-eyed her easy smile the same way people in Pharaul might grimace at the grinding of an improperly maintained autocarriage.
On a narrow road where the salt-worn facades of the tenements had been reinforced with rough wood but never rebuilt, Indirk stepped through an empty door and went upstairs. She knocked at a room where she was greeted with surprise by a gray-furred alpin who had left the offices only a little before her and gotten home just prior, as though she’d been following his footsteps. She pushed in his face the bottle of wine he’d left for her, and he put in her hands a narrow-bodied creature with white fur and small black eyes.
She greeted the little thing with a smile, saying, “Hello, Avie. How’s my girl?” This was not an intelligent animal. It likely had no memory of her, after more than a month. But she embraced it and it found her familiar enough to curl up against her chest.
As Indirk and the gray-furred man named Mardo sat in the tiny room he lived in and drank his favorite wine, Indirk fondly rolled Avie around in her arms, the creature going limp and enjoying the movement. Mardo offered her a printed flier, telling her, “There’s going to be a performance for the Sickle-Sough Festival in a couple weeks. I don’t know if you care for that kind of thing.”
“I really don’t,” Indirk said with a chuckle. “Sorry. You just wait for the Veiled Night, though. I’ll show you how to have fun for real.”
“I think I’m a little old for that kind of party,” he sighed.
She frowned at him. “Well, no you’re not. I’m older than you and I’m not.”
* * *
Much later, with the moon lost so far behind the clouds it might’ve faded from the world entirely, with dawn hinting at the edge of the horizon, Indirk walked with long, half-drunk steps along the quay. She counted businesses she passed, looking at numbers carved into wooden signs, until she found a particular building and swung herself heedlessly into the yellow lamplight to proclaim, “Made it!”
Surprised faces lifted from maps and notes to look toward her, blinking in surprise at this admiralty woman swaying through the doorway. It took a few seconds for them to realize who she was, for the sigh of recognition to move through the room, and Nymir was the first to speak: “Oh, look. She showed up, after all.”
“I told you she would.” Amo rose from their seat at a flimsy old table in the middle of the room, stepping quickly over like Indirk was about to lose her balance and they wanted to catch her.
Amo still wore their sleek black coat. They explained that being undercover as an assistant to the port authority let them dress how they wanted. Most of the others were ruddily dressed, resorting to the easy cover of fishmongers, which let them hold a place of business to serve as a home base and to move about the quay and sail the bay. It was passable for spy work, though they’d have to try to infiltrate more jobs like Amo’s and Indirk’s for real results.
“I like fishing,” Meryl put in at one point. The young alpin had taken a seat on the windowsill, back to the night, while the rest conspired about the lamps in the center of the room. Meryl’s hair grew over their eyes, shaggy as their tail, but their smile was broad beneath it. “Good work. Lots of sunlight.”
Nymir said, “At least we finally got someone in the Watch,” and gestured across the room. There Phaeduin sat in a quiet shadow, seeming to doze somewhat but awake enough to glance up when attention turned on him.
Indirk said, “Oh, we’ve been trying to do that for years. Funny he’s the one that got in, though. Didn’t take Phaeduin as that good of a liar.”
“Not about lying,” Phaeduin grumbled. The armor of the Watch looked heavy on him, his face lost in the shadows of his helm. “I know when a job needs done and I get it done. It’s good enough work, with the spying bit set aside. Nothing wrong with protecting Gray Watch’s commoners from pickpockets and thugs while I’m at it. They’re just people, after all.”
Indirk smiled. “No, I get it. Good for you. Anyway.” She put her briefcase on the table and said, “Back to work. Here’s what I’ve got for us to start with. Lighthouse renovations and typical ship channel reports. Isn’t that exciting?”
“Oh, the mundane. How thrilling.” Nymir opened the briefcase to peak in. When a narrow bolt of white fur jumped out at him, he cursed and fell off his chair. Indirk cheered as she chased after Avie. Amo and Meryl laughed. Nymir was angry and tried to start an argument over it, but nobody took him seriously.
An hour later, Indirk shoved Avie in one of the huge pockets of her coat and left. On the road outside, she snuck over to the window to surprise Meryl with a little tug on their shoulder that almost made them fall off the windowsill they sat on. Catching themself with a swing of their tail for balance, Meryl leaned out the window and said, “Hey, it was neat seeing you shoot out in the Warring Lands. Your aim is perfect. Like a ranger!”
Indirk tried to keep a pang of unhappiness from showing on her face. Meryl didn’t know Indirk’s past, was maybe too young to know why a comment like that might misfire. But Indirk did frown, and managed only to say, “It wasn’t that impressive.”
Amo, coming out the door, said, “It kind of was, actually. Very scary in a good way.”
“Yeah!” Meryl nodded fast agreement. “In a real good way.”
At Amo, Indirk just grimaced unhappily. She wouldn’t have expected a comment like that from them.
Too smart not to notice Indirk’s reaction, Amo nonetheless took her sleeve and pulled. “Come here.” Drawing her away from Meryl and into the more private space of an open road in the purple dawnlight, Amo said, “I was actually worried about you when you didn’t show up right away. You totally alright?”
Instead of answering, Indirk held up the flier that she’d been given earlier in the night. “There’s a dance performance at the Sickle-Sough Festival in a couple weeks. You should come along so I don’t have to go alone.”
A disappointed look passed over Amo’s face, and Indirk nodded at their disappointment. It was a small moment that they shared in the dark, one expression saying, Please have a conversation with me, and the other saying, No, never, obviously. Amo tried to let the silence linger, to let it become heavy, just staring at Indirk and waiting for pressure to grow. But Indirk felt no pressure. There was, in the night and the wind of Gray Watch, salt and warmth and magic like a song far off, all things that did not exist in Pharaul, and Indirk spent these long seconds appreciating the fullness of the quiet.
Eventually, Amo took the flier out of Indirk’s hand and turned away from her. Indirk watched Amo’s back, feeling in her hands an impossible desire to reach after them. Indirk said, “Good night, Amo.” Walking home, she took Avie out of her pocket and held the limp creature close to her face, whispering, “Let’s go home and rest, love. Love, love, love.”
