Returning to the sender took no time at all, and checking for a literal ton of pots took even less time.

  That meant that someone had messed up because those were my pots, and I was no longer trying to be diplomatic. I had a long evening ahead of me and a whole lot of ground to cover, and I needed to get going now.

  The guards were no help, obviously. They didn’t know about the pots, they were fresh, and most of them were normal people with an inflated sense of duty that I had met along the way. The number of actual [Guards] among them was nearly nonexistent.

  When I mentioned the loss, they suggested: That I should get the sender to send a new shipment because I didn’t have an invoice, That this was clearly an ill omen and that I should mind my own business, and that I should go help tend to tasks more fitting my station.

  That last one was not what was said, and it made my state of peak even worse.

  Part of that was just a further reinforcement that I was somewhat right… But it was also because a part of me wished that they were better than they were, and the disappointment sat well next to my increasingly impulsive anger.

  I stomped off and started thinking.

  There had to be something here that pointed to them existing. There had to be even just one pot, even just broken pottery. A spot that was suspiciously dry or the lingering smell of someone that should not be.

  The only thing I found were the smells of those that were already there. The weariness of the men and women that had been holding the fort, the pointless pride and aggression among the citizen soldiers. The stench of bodies starting to go, the rain and the fear stark among all the others as the [Scribe] watched me, periodically.

  The more I marched around and around, the more my instinct started to rile me. Guards, wenches, corpses, [Scribe], guards, wenches, corpses, [Scribe]. Around it went, slowing before going the opposite way, my feet tapping on the cobbles.

  Then, the reason for it began to dawn on me.

  The [Scribe] was afraid.

  He was the only one who reeked of fear sweat.

  I slowed, coming to a stand still, trying to piece together why my instinct had changed its mind… And then, it occurred to me why.

  The [Priest] had told me, that the [Scribe] was supposed to take care of logging everything. The [Scribe] said he was supposed to only note down the names of the dead.

  I had spooked him sure, but had he been truly afraid before I had mentioned the pots?

  I was staring off into space, before my head turned slowly toward the [Scribe]. Like a Balista orienting on a formation of troops.

  He looked at me, waving guiltily.

  The rest of my body oriented, my movements predatory and he stopped waving. He started panicking a little too late, because I was already running at him.

  He was lying, that’s why he was afraid of me. I knew there was something going on, no one else was aware, but I could add these clues up.

  Moving like a bat out of hell, I sprinted toward him, taking my spade and a thin draw of mana to bury the spade between the paving stones. I slammed forward onto the desk, the solid wood frame creaking beneath the force of my assault.

  “Please leave me alone,” the [Scribe] squeaked, his logbook to his chest with one hand, the other on the desk as he caught his breath.

  “Give me that book, or I’m going to make you sing like a [Choir Boy]. Where are the pots!” I shouted across the desk at the weasel.

  “Would the two of you stop that racket? Ma’am, stop harrying the [Scribe].” A newly arrived [Guard] called toward me from behind.

  “Keep out of this, ankle bitter. This [Scribe] is in charge of logging everything,” I shouted. “There are missing goods, and he’s not only lied about that, but also about his job,” I shouted back at him. “I’ve caught him in a lie about that, and unlike everyone here, he’s actually afraid of me. If anyone here is dirty, its him.

  The more I mentioned it, the closer to panic he became and the more sure I was that he was crooked.

  Someone behind me called up to me, but I was too busy. I was quite a bit taller than most people, and with it, I frequently found myself either looming or slouching like I was trying not to blot out the light. Now, I loomed, my form raised and back straight but for the bend as I leaned over the tiny figure.

  “I have no idea what your- Gurk.” He said, his words cut off when I reached over the table and picked him up by the armpits.

  Lifting him up and over the table like a cat as he fussed, shouting wordless noises, I asked him, “Where are my pots, pen pusher? Start talking, or I’m going to start shaking you. They were delivered, I have [Priest] Thatcher's word on it.”

  “Ma’am! Put the [Scribe] down; you're interfering with his duties! Were in a state of emergency.” The voice from behind shouted.

  Turning to face him, I tucked the [Scribe] beneath one arm like a bundle of laundry as he panicked, though not vocally. He was squirming and breathing heavily like a trapped rat, but he was fine.

  “We're going to be in a worse state if those urns aren’t found, Guardsman. I was given an allowance by Lord Clause, so I could explicitly prevent the spirits of the restless dead, and this buffoon has now placed all of you in danger. Either you can start helping me, or you can stay out of the way,” I told him, my words forcefully and edged, a mace as opposed to a fine blade. I was willing to be diplomatic, but just barely.

  My current opinion of most people was somewhere between barely sentient and pack-bonding animals, and the way the guards were piled together like a pack of wild dogs was not helping their case. It was a shame, the real [Guards] I had met yesterday were actually decent.

  As if to make his case for ignoring humanity in its entirety for me, the guard valiantly charged on with a “Likely story.”

  Gods above watch over me in this time of trial and give me the patience to not beat half a dozen men for being exceptionally thick in the head.

  “I’m starting to see what Strause meant about forming a militia,” I said, my disappointment immeasurable and my evening ruined. “You guys are just… Not thinking with your heads, are you?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” The pack leader asked.

  “It means that unless one of you is actually a [Guard], I’m going to do what I think I need to,” I told him.

  “You can’t do that; we’re still guards,” a second one said as if to rile the rest of them up.

  “If you were guards, you would be guarding the square, not standing in a posse,” I told him before turning to look down at the form of the [Scribe] beneath my arm. “Now, let's go look through your log book together and read all the funny things inside and out loud.”

  “Please don’t,” the [Scribe] said, but I had already turned around to the table and flipped the book.

  “Bunch of names… Bunch of names… Let's see… Oh, here's some stuff. Man, these numbers are all over the place; let's see what's with this one right here. You get to call for guards, but you knowingly asked for only four of them? For the entire square? Fascinating… And here's a bit written in about there being a dozen people working on organizing the dead… But there are more people here than just helping. Who are all these people?” I asked aloud.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “They went home early! It’s been a long day!” He said hoarsely.

  “Funny, it says right here that they were only here for two hours? What was delivered… Oh, that’s a whole lot more than my pots, though there are some urns in here… Oh, would you look at that? There was a collection of grave goods. An itemized list of the dead's belongings… Funny, I don’t see those goods anywhere,” I told him. Looking up from the book to observe the square.

  Those gathered looked around the square, at least the workers did. Bless them; they had at least some sense.

  “Everything is accounted for,” the [Scribe] said.

  “Likely story,” I told him, echoing the words from the guard. Half of them were still thinking over what I had been talking about. But there was still a cadre of knuckle draggers that were unmoved.

  He had support, but I bet I could get him to cave if I pulled it out from under him.

  “Well… I suppose if you're unwilling to tell me where these goods disappeared, I’ll just have to drag you off to see a [Guard Captain]. They’ll sort you out. I mean… You’ll be ruined, but that’s a price I am willing to pay. What do you say guards? Do you guys know where the nearest [Guard Captain] is?” I asked them, picking up the book.

  That both chastened the guards and made the [Scribe] panic.

  The rest of the militiamen seemed to panic slightly at the idea of bringing up a [Guard Captain].

  “I’m sure that isn’t needed,” the [Scribe] said.

  “Well, you’ve misplaced a vital resource. They were here, but there was no destination, so someone clearly made a mistake,” I told him.

  “Uhh… Whoops?” he asked.

  “Whoops?” I asked back, “What does Whoops mean?”

  “I mean… I remember now that you’ve jogged my memories… I’m sure we can come to a reasonable compromise?” He said, looking up at me.

  I smiled, for that was the best way to do this, before saying, “No” drawing out the ‘o’. It was, the most fun I had for quite some time, and so saccharine that just saying it made my teeth ache. “You're going to tell me what I want to know, and then I’m going to leave you with these nice, kind people behind me. The other option is I’m going to hop up onto the rooftops and start searching. I’m not very good at that yet, though, so I’ll admit, I’ll probably drop you multiple times. Once I’m done, then I’ll show you to Clause Mynes personally, and assuming the Mynes family guard doesn’t cut your head off because you're unwelcome, you can explain to him why you aided a bunch of criminals.”

  I told him it was like I was telling him I was going to bring him out for brunch and then get him an hour with a strapping lady with a red light outside her room. The look on his face as I did it, made the entire thing worth it, as terrible as that would sound outloud.

  He looked at me like he just got kicked in the nuts and asked for rent at the same time, a contortion of panic where there was clear doubt on how much of that was serious. My grinning probably didn’t help.

  But than again, a grin was not enough to undercut my image. If I was a bedtime story, a warning of a credible threat than a smile would only unnerve him. And while I looked into his eyes, seeing all the confusion, my grin must have been a terrible thing indeed, and it only grew wider once he started to react to it.

  “So… What do you have to say?” I asked him.

  Because at that point, the only thing that mattered was his answer.

  ***

  He folded. He folded so quickly that it gave me ten kinds of whiplash… which was surprising.

  Normally talking took up so much more time, but just walking in and acting confidently had somehow stunned the entire crowd into just… Going along with it.

  It was like I had mind control powers based purely on ego.

  I had even had a little fun by just acting like my shit didn’t stink. It made me feel drunk with power, but all good things needed to come to an end, and for me, that was handing him over to the guards, who still didn’t believe me but started to act the part from pure peer pressure and crawling up to the rooftops.

  Why the rooftops? I had, after all, done this once before and gotten winded when I encountered the eaves of a rooftop stomach first.

  Well… It wasn’t a smart idea, but as it went a little like, ‘But I can’t just walk off, or I’ll look like a liar,’ to which I countered by thinking, ‘I mean… Why not the rooftops?’

  It turns out that being drunk on anything has a way of making something seem way smarter than it really is.

  It wasn’t all that hard, though, once I got the hang of it.

  The [Scribe] gave me a general area to head toward, and I got going, moving across the poorly planned housing like a janky road paved with roof tiles. They were very janky, though, and the windy nature of the buildings got me there just faster than going on the ground, and even then, it was only because there were patrols, roadblocks and a few areas that were covered in rubble.

  I had seen the [Hunters] on the rooftops the other day, and I had to wonder if there was a skill for this or something because it seemed a strange way to traverse a city, even if it worked.

  It was, if nothing else, a little fun, which was good enough for me. Perhaps Selly was right, and I needed to ‘Show off,’ or more accurately, just mess around a little. I mean… I was running on top of houses instead of around them; it was, if nothing else, novel.

  It was also good for one more, ever so slightly important thing.

  I could see further.

  And that made finding the stooges and their cart.

  All I had to do was cross over the rooftops until I found a cart moving in the night; the tap of my footsteps drowned out by the rain on the tiles as I watched them roll down the shadowy street, wood wheels thunking on the uneven paving stones.

  I could jump down, but I wanted to make sure the rest of the goods were there; the urns were visible their bulk covered by oiled cloth to keep their insides dry, but the possessions weren’t. If they weren’t there, I’ll would need to find where the rest of it went.

  The people themselves struck me, however, not as thieves.

  They were wearing dark clothes, but not [Thief] clothes. I hadn’t seen many of them, but presumably, they wouldn’t favour baggy black cloaks.

  No, these lots struck me as [Cultists], though their size meant they were not Gremlins, at least. I couldn’t be sure, but the thought just made me not want to stop them.

  After all, where there was one, there would be more, and the three down there, the two normal human ones and the giant frame of the third walking next to the wagon, would be my ticket to finding whatever hole they were hiding in, and excising it before something else came to rip up the lives of those I actually cared about as few and far between as they may be.

  I didn’t care if there was a chance that they were one of the ‘good ones’ when the other chance was they were gathering some kind of component to summon a demon or something.

  I followed along making sure to not be spotted as I made my way across the wet tile as I tried to listen in on the three as they talked, their voices drowned out by the rail and thump of wheels as they made their way slowly back to their hide away.

  What wasn’t drowned out was the tones, most of them anyway. Of the three, two were men and one a woman. They talked normally, their voices not hushed like they were hiding, and when they came upon a small checkpoint, they didn’t shout as they got let through.

  They were acting… Normal, which threw me further as I stalked them across the rooftops.

  How deep did this go? Were they in with the [Guards]? Were they allowed out as part of another duty, and were they just using that as a cover? Were they not cultish enough? It certainly struck me that way, but maybe I was wrong. Was it just because they were faceless to me, their hoods pulled far over their faces? Were these weirdos secretly a pillar of the community?

  I mean… They had to have dyed those cloaks black, there was no way they got those from someone else; there was no way they would come in that colour or fit. They looked like they were dyed with iron char and they didn’t even fit as mourning robes or even a normal cloak.

  This confused and annoyed me, but I didn’t jump the gun; I stuck to my plan, waited and let them come to a stop after pulling into an alley, waited for them to enter, and as they closed the door behind them, I made my way down the building the hard way.

  I dangled over the side perilously with the closest fall and fell, my body cussing me out to the sound of, ‘Oof ouch, my bones,’ as I flinched my way back around the building and started trying to figure out what was going on here.

  The goods were still in the cart, so I checked there first.

  I found only a few goods that weren’t urns, the surprisingly small vessels stacked densely in the cart, though a little simple math told me that there weren’t enough vessels, assuming there were thousands of souls out there, even if I could fit three or four into one of these smaller urns, I would need two thousand of them, and this was maybe one and a half, some three-quarters of the number I needed.

  Checking the jars closer led to me finding goods inside the urns. Each was lain out like they were personalized, a weird trick perhaps, or perhaps these three had ulterior motives.

  I was, after all, looking to use these for holding souls. If you could set up a bunch of families with urns, you could safely harvest the souls inside, pluck them out. The last set of cultists had proven that through some sort of blasphemous magic they could collect the souls in a well and have them produce energy. Why not harvest them from urns? Tip out the souls into a well and presto, no one was the wiser and you had helped them.

  It was certainly a little devious but less monstrous approach.

  The rest of the cart was less than helpful, the mule pulling it was wet and very disappointed looking but I gave the poor lad a scritch behind the ears and he and me were solid.

  Very important, should I decide to ride off into the sunset with the urns, but while I could do it right now, I should make sure that there wasn’t some kind of nightmare scenario about to unfold.

  And with that, I gave the mule one last scritch, pulled a blanket over him after plucking it from a pack behind the cart seat and stalked around the building.

  It had a red lantern outside the front, and that was all I needed to know.

  There weren’t even signs telling you what it was, but a red light was a red light.

  How to approach this? Head on? From behind? Perhaps some chin waggling would occur, but otherwise, I had a feeling this was going to be rough and troublesome no matter how I approached it, and leave me with an ich after I was done.

  “Land… Don’t tell Anna where I am right now… Ok?” I asked it, my thought sent over cool, moist air.

  It gurgled a confused, warbling sound like a dozen birds chirping in unison, but I took that as agreement… I could only hope it was, anyway, because I had a feeling Anna would kill me if she found out.

  I entered the brothel.

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