Expression of Empathy

=====

December is nice, sometimes; when it isn’t cold, and blowing, and generally shitty weather, December can be nice.

It can also be nice when you’ve got good company.

“Eva, Earth to Eva, you awake you little fart?” Jay says, wandering back into the room.

“I was doing great, but now I’m thinking I should work on finding better company to keep,” she snipes back, grinning as she burrows further under the blanket on the couch.

“Uh huh,” Jay dismisses, falling onto the couch next to her. “What time is it?”

“You’re the one that just went into the kitchen, which has at least two clocks, and came back with nothing, so why don’t you tell me.”

Jay just shrugs. “I was getting some water.”

“And kind enough to offer me some, thanks.”

“You have most of a glass right next to you,” Jay points out.

“Fine. Then pick up my phone and look at the time. It’s right beside you, and don’t just-” Jay cuts her off by picking up the younger girl’s phone and throwing it into the mass of blankets ensnaring her arms, taking her time to smirk.

“Arrg,” Eva throws off the blankets, and fishes her phone out of the wreckage of her comfort, the screen coming to life and slapping her in the face with the time.

“Sweet shit is it late!”

“How late.”

“Like, early late.”

Jay leans over, resting her chin on her shoulder to see the time.

“Well would you look at that, so it is,” she remarks, distinctly lacking surprise.

“Shouldn’t we get some sleep?”

“One more episode. Come onnnn,” the older woman goads.

“Oh fine,” Eva concedes, crawling over to Jay and leaning into her. “But you need to keep me warm then.”

Jay immediately starts to push away, “Oh don’t you dare-AIIEE!” Eva’s cold hands glue themselves to Jay’s sides like ice cubes, taking her breath away for a moment or ten.

“I swear to god woman, how are you so cold all the time?” she says, slowly relaxing.

“I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t so warm, so it’s really your fault. Hah! Lawyered.”

“No, Eva, just… No.”

“Whatever,” she says, moving her hands to a fresh warm spot and hearing the other woman’s sharp inhale of breath.

“J-just get that blanket, and let’s finish this cliffhanger,” Jay says, hitting the spacebar on the laptop with her toe to unpause Netflix while the younger woman wraps the two of them in a big cozy blanket and snuggles into her side.

Neither of them make it to the end of the episode.

---

Jay has read about short sleepers, people who seem to need to sleep less than most people, and she’s pretty sure she is one. Whether it’s genetic, or because she read once that happy people need less sleep, she’s found that a few hours of sleep generally does her.

In her life, this has become invaluable, and something she relies on to do the things she does, but it is never so readily apparent as when she is sleeping with, or around, other people. This particular night, she wakes up after about five hours to a room lit by filtered morning sunlight, and a timed out Netflix session on the TV. The quiet sound of a beautiful woman’s breathing, head resting on her chest, fills her ears in a way a concert never could.

Needing sleep, and wanting to sleep, are two very different things.

A few more hours would be nice.

---

“Hey, did you know that Java is like Champagne?” Eva asks Jay, almost idly, as they wait in line at one of the many hot beverage tents around the fairgrounds.

“What?” Jay says, looking over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Java and Champagne. They’re only called that because of a locaiton. Champagne comes from that place in France, and Java refers specifically to coffee beans produced on a particular island.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why do you know this? Why does this matter?”

“Because it’s interesting!”

“It’s trivial, and I mean, it’s novel, but hardly interesting.”

“Did you know that the coffee grown on that island puts it into the category of high altitude coffee, and that has a distinct impact on the flavour?”

“Ok…” Jay says, waiting for more information she knows is coming.

“Those climates typically bring out citrus, vanilla, chocolate, or nut flavours,” she says, smiling.

Jay takes a quick glance at her hands, noting that there is a distinct absence of cell phone, telling her that all of the information she just prattled off was from memory.

“Fascinating. So, what do you want to drink?”

Eva leans around Jay, placing a hand on her hip for stability, and examines the menu.

“Oooo, today’s special looks good, I’ll have one of those.”

“That looks like cake in a mug.”

“Jay, don’t ruin Christmas.”

Jay sighs, and hangs her head. “No. Christmas isn’t- What are-. Ugh. Nevermind. No Eva. Sometimes you need a smack, you know?” causing the younger girl to beam back and straighten up.

“You’re insufferable,” Jay mutters through a smile of her own before placing their order.

---

“For God’s sake, it’s a Ferris wheel Jay.”

“Ride. From. Hell,” Jay says, draining the last of her cider. “Ride from Hell, Eva,” she continues, dropping her empty cup in the trash can next to the bench they are on.

“It barely moves. Like, at all. I mean, look at it,” Eva retorts, motioning with her free hand towards the large wheel looming in front of them.

“That’s hardly the point-” Jay starts after several seconds of watching.

“For a woman who might as well change her status on Facebook to ‘in a relationship with rooftops’,” Eva emphasizes the phrase with one-handed air quotes, “You’ve sure got a thing about heights.”

“Listen here you little troublemaker. For starters, rooftops don’t swing in the wind-” Jay starts, turning to look at the younger woman next to her.

Eva busies herself licking the last of the whipped cream from the inside of her lid as she watches Jay’s facial expression carefully to make sure she’s on the right side of the antogonism line.

“And second… Second… What are you looking at?” Jay tries to scold, the twitch of a stifled smile tugging at her mouth.

“Nothing,” Eva smiles. “Can you throw this out for me?” she asks, handing over her cup and lid.

“Ugh. Fine, the things I do for you.”

“You love me.”

“Like an ulcer.”

Eva stands up and stretches as Jay drops her empty cup into the bin. Glancing over at the base of the Ferris wheel, she notices that there’s no line. “Hey, Jay! Come on, there’s no line! Let’s go!” she blurts, grabbing Jay’s arm and making her way to the ride, older woman in tow.

“Wait, what? What?! What are you doing. Why are you doing this? I thought you loved me.”

Reaching the entrance to the ride, the man operating the controls waves them onto a chair near the back of the ramp.

“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you,” Jay protests as the younger woman drags her down onto the seat with her.

“Oh whatever, you’ll survive. Come on. Selfie while our hair is still pretty and not like lions’ manes.”

“Lionesses don’t have manes…” Jay protests as Eva gets her phone ready.

“Shut up and smile,” she says, smiling at her phone.

Jay doesn’t even try to smile.

“You suck,” Eva pouts.

“Not as much as you.”

“Oh come on, why couldnt-”

Eva is interrupted by a loud buzzer and the safety bars coming down in front of them.

“See, at least there’s safety to keep you from falling out.”

“A token safety measure at be- Ahh!” Jay is interrupted by the wheel lurching into motion, causing her to let out a yelp of surprise.

“We’re barely moving, Jay.”

“It’s a pinwheel of awful, Eva,” Jay says, dead serious, causing the other woman to start giggling.

Eva can’t decide if she’s laughing because Jay is being pretty hilarious, or if she’s getting anxious because what if she is right.

She looks over the side of the chair down onto the rooftops of the buildings around them. They are only about two thirds of the way up, and are already over some of the buildings around them. The lights from the city look like glitter thrown over a carpet of snow and asphalt, twinkling and blurred by the snow blowing gently around the streets. The wind is noticeably harsher up here, but nothing too bad.

“Jay, it’s so pretty! Look!”

“Hmm… Yeah. Pretty.” Jay’s lack of enthusiasm is palpable.

As their chair clears the top of the last building, the wind starts to really pick up, a gust sending their chair swinging slightly.

“Ah!” Eva starts, grabbing the safety rail.

“Eh? Eh?!” Jay sounds out a thinly veiled ‘i told you so’.

“Oh it’s fine, just a little wind.”

“Just wai-” Jay is interrupted again, this time by the ride stopping leaving them dangling at the very top of the wheel’s rotation.

“AH HAH! See! Ride from hell!” Jay has discarded the veil entirely now.

Eva scoots along the bench and presses against Jay.

“What are you doing you crazy woman!”

“I’m cold, and you’re breaking the wind for me.”

“If we fall, I’m going to use you break my landing, you know that right?”

“We’re not gonna fall.”

“Then stop gripping the safety bar so hard.”

“Shut up,” Eva pouts, not letting go of the bar.

Seconds pass like minutes before the wheel begins to move again, and soon the two women are back on solid ground.

“Ok, fine, it wasn’t hell, but it wasn’t exactly awesome,” Eva admits as they walk past what she would have sworn was an operator doing all he could to hold in his laughter.

“I think he did that on purpose,” she says to Jay.

“Oh, probably. Come on, picture time, Ms. Lady Lion Mane,” Jay says, pulling out her phone from a zipped pocket.

“I’m not smiling.”

“Fine with me,” Jay says, taking the picture.

“Don’t we look fine,” Eva comments, seeing the picture hang on the screen for a few moments of review.

“Damn right we do. Come on, I need a drink, a real drink.”

“Where to?” Eva asks.

“Where do you think?” Jay smirks.

“Works for me!” Eva responds, grabbing Jay’s arm and falling into step.

Jay looks at the young woman attached to her arm. “Are you cold?”

“Jay, of course I’m cold.”

In the end, the people who love you only want the best for you, and are doing what they think is the most they can do to help you get it. That's easy to forget when you're not thinking straight.

=====

“‘We should do our homework first’ you said,” Hannah says mockingly to Grace as they make their way to the market.

“‘We should go buy things,’ you said,” she continues, turning sideways to slip between two women with their backs to each other.

“‘Come on, it’ll be fun,” you said. Do you see what you’ve gotten us into?” Hannah says, as scoldingly as she can muster among the throngs of people. “It’s like a bleeding herd, or a forest, or… or… Or a school of people! They’re like fish!”

A middle-aged grey-moustached man nearby overhears her this time and gives her a stern look of disapproval. “Sorry, not literally…” Hannah trails off, attempting to apologize while simultaneously skipping to the otherside of Grace to get away from the stranger.

“Just because you’re a leetle womanlet,” Grace shoots back, making the ‘tiny’ symbol, pretending to squish Hannah’s head, with her finger and thumb, “that can’t see anything in crowds, doesn’t mean that we all have that problem.”

“Then give me a piggyback ride you towering giantess.”

“Yeah, how about I don’t,” Grace says over her shoulder, striding ahead. Hannah just harrumphs in protest and kicks an errant rock at Graces feet, missing completely.

Her brooding is interrupted when she hears Fred’s voice over the clamor of the crowd.

“No, ye cannot ‘ave two, I won’ say it again. One, n’more, and now, the prices doubled ‘cause i dun’ like ya. … Fine! Be gone. Y’smelled of piss and sweat anyway!”

Hannah laughs, and she can see, although not hear, Grace chuckle too. Fred can be picky about who he sells to, and often makes a game out of driving particularly irksome customers away by arbitrarily raising prices, offending them, or telling increasingly inappropriate jokes.

Hearing Fred’s exchange, or one half of it, reminds her of a time he tried that last tactic with Mamrie. He didn’t win, that’s for sure, and Hannah might even go so far as to say he lost. It was, however, the beginning of a beautiful, and lucrative, friendship. Mamrie often needs items procured, and Fred has gotten increasingly effective at finding her what she needs for her mad science experiments.

There is a small buffer around each vendor’s table, a purely social construct since there certainly isn’t any clearly marked line, which lets the two women break away from the oozing mass of people and regain something resembling a personal bubble. Fred is facing away from them, seemingly taking a moment or two to organize his various sacks of wares and equipment.

“We want our money and we want it now!” Grace yells in as deep a voice as she can conjure causing the short man to startle and jump around holding a woman’s perfume bottle as threateningly as he can.

Hannah isn’t sure if it’s the sight of a short, wide-eyed, red-faced man holding a perfume bottle like a crossbow, or the fact that Grace’s attempt at a threatening voice sounded a lot like her I’m-hungry-feed-me-now voice (the parallels didn’t escape Hannah), but she folded over howling. Grace, on the other hand, got a few squirts in the face with the atomizer in Fred’s hand and a disciplining finger shake.

“You don’ go sneakin’ up n’ scarin’ people like that, Gracie!”

“I’m sorry, something came over me.”

“Yeah yeah,” Fred squirts her again before putting it back in the bag. “Sure. So, what brings ye by, givin’ an old man a heart attack?”

“We’re heading off on a short trip north of the city, we’ll need some overnight gear. Ideally, just to rent,” Grace says, handling the situation while Hannah works on composing herself.

“Mmmhmmm….” Fred nods to himself. “You needen’ night gear fer ones… Or twoooos?” He drags out the syllable and winks at Hannah and Grace in turn.

“Oh for cryin’ out loud, there will be none of that. I just want something that’ll keep the critters and crawlies out of my sleepytime, OK?” Hannah says.

“‘critters and crawlies out of my sleepytime’? What are you, eight?” Grace jabs at Hannah.

“Aw shut it or I’ll fill your bed with spiders.”

“Ok, duin’ y’worry you two, I’ve got just what’n you’ll be need’n,” Fred says. “Not here, of course, but back home. When’re you ladies plannin’ on leaving?”

“Leaving? Who’s leaving?” a strong woman’s voice says from behind them. The two women pivot their heads and are face-to-face with Mamrie’s fire red framed disapproving expression.

“Oh, uh…” Hannah starts.

“Nuh uh. You spill it, we both know you can’t lie for shit.”

Hannah’s instinct is to try to get away, but she knows better, and thankfully, almost as if she can she the look of relent in Hannah’s face, Mamrie lets up.

“You can tell me later,” the redhead says, dropping into her mom tone, glancing at both Hannah and Grace, before skipping back into normal Mamrie without missing a beat.

“Freddy! Out of my way ladies, I’ve got a date,” she says, wedging herself between Hannah and Grace and giving Fred a hug across his table as only Mamrie can.

Hannah gives a wry smile to Grace, turning around to watch the exchange. The man on the other side of the table gives her a quick peck on the cheek before they separate.

“Mames! S’good t’see ya! What a lucky man I am, luckiest ‘ere I dare say. Got th’ prettiest clientele this side of, well, anywhere! So, what can I do ye for? ‘Ere fer yer things? Ah’ve got most of the order in.”

“Yeah, actually. I’ll take what you’ve got, and I am hoping you’ve got a couple other odds and ends around. I need sugar, sulfur, and salt peter.”

Without skipping a beat, a lightbulb goes on for the man and he starts riffling through one of his many sacks, eventually pulling out and placing in front of him three medium sized bags.

“This is all I’ve got. That enough?”

“I don’t need it all. Can I take half?”

“Jus take it all, I can’ be bothered t’measure. Fya’want, bring back what you don’t use,” he says smiling.

“Sounds good to me,” Mamrie replies, turning to Hannah and Grace, “were you guys buying anything, or just here to drive away paying customers like myself?”

“We were going to, the little miss moneybags here swooped in and took over,” Hannah sticks her tongue out as she finishes.

“Put that away, I don’t know where it’s been,” the redhead says, swatting the air towards Hannah dismissively with one hand and reaching into her coin purse with the other as Grace cackles loudly. Hannah acts offended which, she thinks, might be misinterpreted as sexually frustrated… Not that they’d be wrong.

Fred waves his hands, getting Hannah and Grace’s attention. “Hannah, Gracie, stop bah me place on yer way out of town, I’m on yer way out, aye?”

“Yeah,” Grace answers.

“Aight, I’ll have what ya need ready t’go t’night. Pay me the rental when y’ get back safe, mmk?” he says as he pulls a large bag with ‘Mames’ written on it from the ground to table, landing it with a heavy thud.

“Alright. We’re not exactly sure when we’re leaving, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow,” Hannah says.

“Well, either way, come by, I’ll feed you first!” he says beaming.

“I’d love that,” Grace replies, smiling back.

“Alright you chatterbugs-” Mamrie says, turning around.

“Chatterbugs isn’t a thing,” Hannah cuts in.

“Yeah don’t care- You gonna let this nice businessman sell his wares to other unsuspecting individuals at grossly inflated margins, or what? Come on, let’s go back to my place.”

“Well, we were-” Hannah tries.

“That wasn’t a suggestion, Hannah.”

“Right, yeah,” Hannah says looking at Grace who is visibly uncomfortable at the exchange between the two Harts. Hannah smirks and shrugs, mouthing Awww she cares. Grace smiles and relaxes a bit, the three women making their way back out of the square to the nearest side alley to get some privacy.

---

“I’m getting real fucking sick of being surprised, and not in the good way, by news you two bring me. Why can’t you bring good news, like ‘Hey, I won a lottery!’, or ‘Grace just inherited a massive fucking estate on a private island, and is secretly the sole heir to a bunch of family money and sexy servant boys!’” Mamrie isn’t yelling, and Hannah’s pretty sure she’d be less uncomfortable if she were.

“Instead it’s shit like ‘Hey, someone tried to kill us,’ and ‘Swike is involved in some weird, scary, dangerous shit, and won’t say what,’ and ‘We’re going on a two day trip to the middle of fucking nowhere, to seek out more people that will probably try to shoot us on sight because we’ll be trespassing.’” She puts down her bags, which land with a dead blow on the ground and Hannah can’t help but be amazed at how strong Mamrie is, to unlock her door.

The redhead turns around and looks them both in the eye, somehow simultaneously. “You stay here, we’re not done,” she says, before walking into her house and slamming the door behind her. From outside, Hannah hears some brief talking, a short scuffle, a clattering of chairs, and suddenly the door is open again. This time, though, it is a naked man, holding his clothes in a quickly gathered clump over his groin, being shooed out the front door by Mamrie.

“Alright, it was fun, I had fun, well no, I mean after you fell asleep, I had fun. You were terrible. I pity your right hand. Bye! Ok, come on in girls,” she says, stepping out to grab her bags. Hannah gives the guy the once-over, and reaffirms her almost complete lack of interest in men - Dave is an exception, he has this certain quality she finds attractive, but she thinks that might just be his sense of fashion - before following the redhead and Grace inside.

“Oh man guys, I am so gay,” Hannah says once she’s closed the door and drawn the bolt.

“I dunno, he was cute, and seemed well enough, y’know...,” Grace says as soon as Hannah closes the door behind them.

“Oh, honey, that’s so not the important part. He was abysmal. Like, worse than bad. I’ve had better orgasms from an earthquake,” Mamrie corrects. Hannah and Grace collectively decide not to ask.

Mamrie dropped her stuff down and sat down behind her work bench, Hannah and Grace taking their seats.

“Ok, I’m calm,” the redhead says, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Do you want to come?” Grace asks, causing Hannah’s jaw to drop open.

“Of course you fogskull! Who’s going to take care of you otherwise? Plus, I’d hate to waste an adventure like this on horrible storytellers like yourselves.”

Hannah breathes a sigh of relief. That could have gone much worse.

“Well, we need to pack,” Hannah says, hoping to be allowed to leave.

“And eat, I’m famished,” Grace adds.

“Famished?” Hannah quizzes.

“Mastication. Digestion. Ingestion. Gastronomification. Whatever. Food, Hannah, you ass.”

“Wow, hangry much.”

“Playing with fire, Hannah…” Mamrie warns out of the side of her mouth, and Hannah knows she’s right.

“I swear to god, I will eat you if you keep being a little wench, and not in the way you want.”

Hannah laughs a little nervously. Hangry indeed.

“Ok, Mamrie, we’re going to go pack, and eat,” she says, glancing at Grace who is showing no signs of finding the exchange entertaining, “and we’ll see you back here tonight with our stuff? We can do a checklist, and get ready and such?”

“Sounds good to me. I won’t belabour the point, Han, but you know you can tell me these things, right? I’m your friend, I’m here to help, and be the third stooge.”

“I know Mames, I’m sorry. See you soon?”

“Aights. Go, feed her before she kills someone,” Mamrie says, nodding towards the door which Grace has already opened and stepped out of.

---

When they get back to their place, there is a piece of mail sitting on the floor just inside, having been slipped underneath the door. It is sealed with a wax seal that, to Hannah, looks pretty and fancy, even if she doesn’t know what else to make of it.

“It’s an academic seal, from the library. The Professor?” Grace says as she picks it up while Hannah closes and bolts the door.

“I certainly don’t know anyone else that would use a wax seal and send mail. Open it up,” Hannah responds, hopping up and sitting on the counter. Grace slides a fingernail under the wax, and peels it off, unfolding the paper and reading it to herself first before passing it to Hannah to read. It takes Hannah a little longer to read it, the handwriting is unfamiliar, and reading was never really something she spent a lot of time practicing, but she absorbs the message in her own time.

“So… what?” she says when she finishes.

“Yeah, i don’t really know how to process it either.”

“So, some guys, with that pin, visited him, asked some questions he’s pretty vague about, then went and say that other Dr. guy?”

“Dr. Sylvester, yeah.”

They’re both silent for a couple minutes before Hannah speaks up.

“This doesn’t change our plans though, right? This is new information, but not useful information.”

Grace nods absentmindedly for a moment before stopping and looking over at the shorter woman. “It might be useful, just not yet.”

“Agreed,” she says.

“Alrighty, let’s go pack.”

---

Grace and Hannah, loaded with as much of their equipment and food that they could reasonable bring with them, make their way towards the flickering flame-lit windows of Mamrie’s house.

“For a woman who spends most of her time inventing, you’d imagine she’d have invested in some of those newfangled lights,” Grace notes. Hannah just hums and nods.

Hannah doesn’t even need to knock, the door gives way as though Mamrie were expecting them, the door flying open and the redhead quickly ducking through the door ahead of a huge plume of smoke that engulfed the three women. In her hurry, the redhead almost plows straight into Grace, luckily, had the wherewithal to sidestep the charging woman.

“Uhh… Mames… Is your place on fire?” Hannah asks, it now clear that Mamrie had no idea they were at the door.

Mamrie coughs and gives the two women a bewildered look. “Oh, uh what? Oh! No! No no no. Not on fire. But smoke!” Her expression goes from dumbfounded to gleeful enthusiasm instantly.

“Smoke?” Hannah asks, hoping for clarification, noticing that Grace is nervously examining the doorway.

“Smoke!”

“Mames, is your house going to explode?” Grace asks genuinely concerned.

“Not at all! Come on in!” she says, heading back into the cloudy building, Grace and Hannah following cautiously.

“One of you hop on that bike in the corner, would you? I’d like to be able to see,” she says, pointing absentmindedly at the strange contraption she had rigged up a few years ago after what they only refer to as the Cheese Incident. It’s a bicycle connected, through an intricate series of pulleys and belts, to a large exhaust fan in the ceiling that vents the inside air out through the chimney.

Hannah is too short to be effective on it, so Grace carefully sets her bag on the floor and hops on the bike as Mamrie pulls on a large lever that opens the flaps. It only takes a few minutes of the leggy woman pedaling away to clear the room, leaving the air slightly hazy instead of opaquely white. Deciding that her contribution is done, she dismounts, breathing heavily as she makes her way to her seat, Hannah closing and bolting the door before taking her own.

“So, you gonna tell us what happened?” Hannah asks as looks around through the haze.

“Sure, in a second, Hey Swike, come on up,” Mamrie yells down the stairs into her basement.

“Oh, thank god, I thought we were going to die. Mames, you crazy mad scien-” Swike stops dead when she sees Hannah and Grace sitting at the bench.

“Well that’s not unexpected,” Mamrie says, exercising control of the situation. “Swike, take a seat. Hannah, Grace, you stay quiet for a bit. I feel like there’s some more metaphorical air that needs clearing here too. Everyone’s going to talk, we’re not going to hide things anymore, because we’re going to deal with this together. Capiche?”

The three other women nod in agreement.

Hannah is relieved in a way she didn’t think she would be, and she can feel Grace relax as the moments tick by.

We’re all friends here, sometimes we forget that, she thinks to herself as Sarah sits down.

---

The conversation that ensued was about making sure they squeezed every sliver of information out of what they knew collectively.

Sarah knew that the pins that Hannah and Grace had been noticing were worn by members of a group called The Ordered. No one had heard of them, or knew what their thing was, but Sarah had heard through one of her networks that they were genuinely unhappy about Hannah and Grace bearing witness to them deal with their dissident.

Hannah and Grace shared what they had learned from the Professor, and the potential relationship with Dr. Sylvester and this group. Grace was careful to stress the fact that they didn’t really know anything about this Dr. Sylvester guy, other than that they thought he was creepy, and felt like the enemy of their ally. Swike was, in turn, eager to caution against calling the Professor an ally when they knew so little.

“So, we don’t know much, but at least we’re all on the same page. That about right?” Mamrie says after staying relatively quiet throughout the discussion.

“I’d say that’s about right,” Sarah answers.

“Ok! Good! Then I can show you my cool new thing!” Mamrie’s face lit up, effectively defusing the situation, as she pulled an arrow out from under her workbench with a strange bulbous sack on the end.

“Well that was abrupt,” Hannah says, soliciting a sharp glare from the redhead.

“Don’t steal my thunder, I’ve been waiting patiently to show you guys this.”

“What is ‘this’?” Grace asks, leaning forward to examine it better.

“This, my dearest lady, is a smoke arrow. At the end here is a small combustive charge wrapped in a special mixture of things that, when ignited, produce huge plumes of thick, white, non-toxic smoke. It actually smells a bit like cookies and vodka, if you ask me.”

Grace reaches out to take it from Mamrie, deftly turning it over in her hands. Hannah watches as Grace slides the arrow along an outstretched finger, finding it’s centre of gravity.

“Well that’s really neat. How much smoke?” Hannah asks, forcing her eyes back to Mamrie.

“Well, you know what it was like in here when you got here? That was about a quarter of the charge in the arrow that I accidentally lit on fire.”

Hannah bounces her head back and forth, pondering the implications of this when her reverie is interrupted.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t leave you out,” Mamrie says, handing her a much larger metal ball, almost too big for her hand. “Same thing, except four times the charge of the arrow. I basically just stuffed four of the arrow-sized charges in there, you can see the extra venting holes in the case. It’ll burn for the same duration as the arrow, but will produce about four times the smoke. Rip out the flint pin, which will spark and ignite the charges, and then toss it.”

“So, since I’m coming, do I get anything?” Swike pipes in.

“Wha-” Hannah’s head spins. “What do you mean you’re coming?” Hannah asks, not quite convinced this isn’t a joke. Grace pauses from her examination, looking between the other women.

“She’s coming, Han,” Mamrie points out.

“I’m coming, Hannah.”

“Right. Ok. Yes. Sorry.”

“Team, remember? The four of us. The four stooges.”.

“Three stooges,” Mamrie corrects gently.

“Well, there’s four of them now,” Swike says, lips spreading into her naturally brilliant smile. “So?” she continues, looking at Mamrie.

“So what?”

“So am I just going to flash them and hope they all die of nose bleeds, or do I get something more fun?”

“I think that’d be pretty fun,” Hannah mutters to herself, smirking to herself.

“Oh! Yeah! Sorry, totally forgot. I just bought it, so it isn’t anything super special, but I figure you’ll appreciate it. I’ll give you some lessons tonight, but you’ll figure it out. You’re a smart cookie,” Mamrie says, as she hops off her chair and grabs a wooden box from the floor, placing it on the bench. “Open it up.”

Swike unbuckles the lid and flips it open, revealing two small two-shot crossbows and a dagger.

“Aww, Mamrie, you shouldn’t have!” Swike beams at her new toys.

“Umm, can I go sleep somewhere else? Somewhere, y’know, with lots of brick between me, and her learning to use those things?” Grace says, half jokingly, wringing laughs out of the other women.

Hannah missed this, the four of them.

=====

It's strange, what happens to your thought processes in new situations. You've never been there, exactly, but you take what you know, what you remember, and the skills you have, and apply some combination of them as best you can. Counterintuitively, sometimes experience is the absolute worst possible thing to bring the table; it prevents you from seeing the novel solutions.

---

Hannah and Grace are crouching, leaning against a building just around the corner from the two men they are following, listening to the conversation they are engaged in.

"Why the fuck am I doing this?" Grace whispers, half to herself, half to Hannah.

"Shh!" Hannah scolds.

"... First ships'll be in shortly, you should probably hurry up if you want to make it in time," a rough voice is telling their two men.

"We know- well, I know. This fogskull here-"

"I will fucking end you."

"Shut up, no you won't. Anyway, tell the missus I say hi, and I hope your son feels better."

"I will, and thank you. The doctor is coming by again tomorrow, so hopefully he has some good news."

"Well, I wish you the best. Take care, eh?."

Hannah can hear footsteps as the men around the corner part ways, and it takes her only a moment to realize that they are all getting fainter. She lets out a long slow breath before leaning around the corner to see where they are headed. A single long shadow slowly moves out into the street, meaning that their persons of interest went...

"They are keeping on down the alley," she turns and says to Grace.

"Well? We going to follow them?"

"After you miss long-legs."

Grace just rolls her eyes and makes her way around the corner, Hannah following her. The alley is without any additional lights, torches or otherwise, and is instead blessed with only the light from the impoverished moon and infant sun filtering through the haze of the City's air. Vague outlines of the two men in front of them are all they can make out, and even then only if they don't look directly at where they should be. Slowly, carefully, the two women make their way along the walls of the buildings lining the corridor, their footsteps are deliberate and precise; soundless.

"How big of a deal is it, you think, that we didn't find them?" they hear the shorter man ask.

"Well, considering they told us to find them, even though they knew we only managed to follow them for a little bit and really had no idea if we were even close, seems to me that they really wanted them found."

"Mmm," the shorter man hums disappointedly. "Thought you were gonna say that."

"Well, we'll see what happens."

"You're not exactly being reassuring."

"Wasn't my intent to assuage you like a child, idiot."

"Do you even know what the word means? I don't think you're using that-" A dull thud interrupts the sentence.

"The fuck, you hit me!"

"And you deserved it."

Hannah turns to Grace, the brunette's facial features invisible in the darkness but framed by the moonlight reflecting from her hair, and makes an exaggerated shrug that she hopes is visible. Hearing Grace exhale sharply, hiding her laughter, she knows it was and that her meaning got across. Hannah is actually confused though, these men tried to kill them, and seem to have the maturity of children.

Hannah doesn't get it.

The alley makes a slight jog ahead, and Hannah can see some sort of light source further down. It takes a sudden breeze from the end of their path that assaults her senses and lets her know that they are very close to the docks. The air felt thick and heavy with some putrid combination of fish, sweat, and grease. If she hadn’t grown up here, she would have vomited on the spot.

With the breeze came the filtered, muffled sounds of men working and cargo moving. Another dozen metres, and the sounds of waves and boats were distinguishable.

“Blast, it’s almost morning already,” the tall man says to himself. The light from the docks is enough to see by now, and Hannah and Grace have stopped, staying in the cover of the darkness. They see the tall man stoop down and sniff the shorter one before snapping his head back.

“Sweet shit you reek of alcohol. Just, brush up on one of the dock workers would you? Maybe run a fish on your shirt.Then as long as you keep your mouth shut and let me talk, they might not shoot you on the spot for showing up like this. We can try to pass it off as just something you picked up on the way in.”

They round the final corner, the loud squeal of an iron gate careening down the alley as they pass onto the docks, letting it close slowly behind them. Hannah takes this time to sprint up to the gate and peer through the bars. She arrives in time to watch them disappear into the throngs of workers and out of sight.

“Fuck.” she breathes, sliding down against the wall.

“Too many people?” Grace asks.

“Yeah.”

“Well, we know a lot more now than we did before?”

“Do we?” Hannah looks up slowly.

“Well, we know something.”

“Which is?”

"This isn't a coincidence."

"Yah..."

“And I left my shoes back at the bar, and my feet hurt, and I want food,” Grace smirks.

Hannah laughs despite herself and stands up.

“Yeah, me too,”

It’s a long walk back to the bar, and the sun is well and truly up by the time they come back to collect their things which Dave has kindly given to Mamrie to take home with her.

The walk wasn't nearly as settling as Hannah had hoped it would be.

---

Hannah’s head is throbbing, and she feels paralyzed.

“Uhhhnnnngghhhh…” she groans, rolling over slowly and trying to peel her eyes open.

“I warned you last night, crashing on my floor was a horrible idea you’d regret, but you did it anyway,” Hannah hears Mamrie from across the room, as the wheels in her head slowly start to grind into motion. Opening her eyes and propping herself into a sitting position against the wall helps.

“I didn’t even drink much…” she mumbles to herself as she looks around.

Grace is sitting in her spot at Mamrie’s workbench, hunched over something steaming - coffee probably - while the redhead tinkers away without pause.

“What-” Hannah starts.

“Not late enough,” Grace interrupts and takes a long gulp.

“Ugh.”

“You stumbled back in here at like seven in the morning, filthy and ridiculous as usual, Grace ate the last of the pie on the counter, and you two passed out half an hour later. It’s ten thirty now, Grace got up five minutes ago and almost kicked you in the face stumbling over here.”

Mamrie didn’t even look up from her work, and Hannah appreciates the matter-of-fact tone she used.

Guess she’s learned that scolding us wasn’t doing anything, Hannah muses and chuckles.

Hoisting herself onto her feet, she shuffles over and takes her seat at the bench, a cup of coffee already waiting. Hannah takes a bigger gulp than she should have, and almost scalds her mouth.

“Well that woke me up,” she mutters, rubbing the tip of her tongue against her teeth to see if she could still feel it.

Mamrie finally puts down her tools and lifts up her goggles so she can look at the two disheveled women that invaded her home.

“Are you two OK?” the redhead asks.

The question brings the previous night flooding back. The bar, the men, the fight, Mamrie… It dawns on both Grace and Hannah almost simultaneously resulting in an unintelligible onslaught of noise in Mamrie’s direction.

“Woah, slow down. What? Grace. Go.”

“Mamrie! We’re fine, are you OK?”

“Oh, shit, I’m fine,” she dismisses, waving the notion past with her hands. “You’re the crazy nutjobs that went after them. What were you thinking? You could have gotten yourselves hurt!”

It was Hannah’s turn to talk now, “They were the only chance we had of getting any information.”

“And did you?”

“Ehhh…..” Hannah just shrugs and drinks more of her coffee.

“Hannah… Yes, we did,” Grace scolds. “Found out those were the guys from the first night, and that there’s some kind of… I don’t know, office or something? I don’t know, but they went to the docks, and were talking like there was a meeting-slash-punch-in time they had to meet.”

“Hm. Well, that’s better than nothing,” Mamrie says a little absently. Hannah thinks it looks like she’s thinking about what she just heard… Or whatever gadget she was working on before, hell she doesn’t know.

She seems to snap out of it and look between the two other women. “Have you talked to Swike lately?” she asks.

“Uhh, no, actually. We haven’t seen her in a few days…” Hannah trails off.

“That would probably help, she might, at least, have money, but she tends to know a lot about a lot of things. I’d go talk to her. You’ve got plenty of daylight, and the walk would be good, maybe you’ll actually sleep tonight.”

“Yeah, that’s a goo-” Grace starts.

“And NOT on my floor again. And you’re damn right it’s a good idea, now shoo. I’ve got things to do, and you both smell like dead ferret. Come on, pound the coffee, and vamoose,” Mamrie gets up and starts ushering them out of her house.

Hannah hardly has time to down the last of her coffee before she’s standing out on the street in front of Mamrie’s closed front door.

“What was that all about?” Grace asks, still a little dazed.

“Eh, maybe she’s got someone coming over?” Hannah replies, wiggling her eyebrows. The two laugh at that and start the walk home to wash up and change.

---

Sarah doesn't live far away, but she also doesn't live close either, somewhere in the 'too far to be convenient, not far enough to be an excuse' grey area that meant Hannah and Grace were going for a trek.

The sun is hot and the air is still, not at all Hannah's preferred combination, but she hasn't perfected controlling the weather yet so there’s nothing she can do.

Except sweat.

"Ugh, this is gross," she says to Grace as she wipes her brow for the hundredth time. "Don't you sweat?"

"Hannah, I am a proper lady, I glow," Grace says in her best impression of dignity.

"Oh buzz off," she shoots back, going to wipe her hand on Grace's arm, causing the taller woman to squeak and take several steps away from Hannah.

"You are horrible!" Grace scolds as Hannah laughs.

They round the corner onto Swike's street which is half in shade thanks to the buildings on one side. They hug the cooler side of the street, grateful for the reprieve as they make their way down towards Swike's front door.

They are about ten metres away when her door is thrown open with a loud bang and a large, well dressed man storms out into the street, followed by Swike who is keeping her distance.

"I will give you one last chance to cooperate," he says aggressively, whirling around on his heel, his dark purple cloak whipping around behind him brings up a small cloud of dust from the gravel street. Bright brass and silver buttons, medallions, and pins adorning his collar and vest brilliantly reflect the sunlight.

"And I will give you one last chance to stop wasting my time. I have no information that is of use to you," Swike says coolly. Hannah notices that her distance from the man is carefully measured; she is outside of arms reach, but only just so.

"You harlot! Do you have any idea what I could do to you?!"

"I have a pretty good idea that you can't do anything, otherwise you would have done it already. And you know, better than anyone, that isn't what I do."

"Oh you will pay for that," he says through gritted teeth as he raises his hand and takes a step forward.

Hannah clears her throat loudly, and she can almost hear Grace's heartbeat rocket into double time in an instant. The man stops in his motion and turns his head towards them as he lowers his hand to side.

"This is none of your concern woman, move along... And you," he says turning back to Swike, "you haven't seen the last of me. You are lucky. I don't feel like dealing with witnesses today. Don't need the paperwork."

Hannah has no idea how she does it, but the leggy blonde just cocks an eyebrow and smirks at the furious man in front of her. This only seems to stoke the fire, and he grunts and storms down the street in the direction of Hannah and Grace.

"Move on wench," he spits at Hannah as he strides past.

The three women watch him until he turns and disappears down a side alley some distance down the street. Hannah and Grace run to Sarah who is starting to make her way back into her home.

"Sarah are you Ok?" Grace asks, and Hannah realizes that this question is becoming far too commonplace in her life for her liking.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says over her shoulder.

"What just happened? Sarah he almost hit you!" Hannah tries as they walk into Sarah's kitchen and Grace shuts and locks the front door behind her.

"You mean he was about to try, and its nothing," she says dismissively as she leans against the counter. Hannah doesn't know what the blonde is playing at, but she had never seen Sarah so much as swat a fly, so she couldn't imagine her evading something that man threw at her.

“Who was he?” Hannah continues.

“An old business partner, wants some money is all, nothing important.”

Hannah finds something about the way the words tumble out unconvincing. “We’re here if you need anything, you know that right.”

“Absolutely Han, now why did you guys come to see me? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Grace and Hannah exchange a glance, something along the lines of ‘we’ll talk about this later, this is weird’, before Grace pipes into the conversation.

“We came because we haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Guys, it’s been, what, three days?”

“Yeah, but shit’s happened, and we wanted to make sure you were OK,” this seemed to get her attention.

“Oh? What kind of shit?”

“Well, like Mamrie almost getting into a fight at the bar, that you missed last night,” Hannah takes over.

“Because the guys were looking for us, so she distracted them, so we could get out.”

“And then we followed them to the docks-” Grace tries to interject.

“You what?! What guys?” Sarah almost yells, stunning them all, including herself, into silence.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled, but you did what now?”

“We… Uhh… We followed the guys… And they, uhh, they went to the docks,” Hannah stammers out, a little nervous now.

“I trust you were careful, no one saw you.”

“Of course we were careful. Of course no one saw us, what do you think we are, amateurs?”

“Well, they managed to find your bar, didn’t they…” Sarah reminds them with a carefully metered tone of concern and discipline.

“Yeah…” Hannah mumbles.

“Did you hear anything?”

Grace decides to tag in and give Hannah, who is sheepishly looking at her shoes, a break. “They were the same two guys from the first night, apparently. Someone… Some superior? I don’t know, wanted them to find us. No idea who, or what, or why, but they were making their way to some kind of meeting place at the docks. Apparently, someone’s going to be none too happy they didn’t find us.” Grace takes a deep breath upon finishing.

Inspecting Sarah’s face, Hannah can’t quite discern what is behind the expression, but she’s pretty sure it isn’t happy thoughts.

“Fuck,” she says after a few seconds of pause, and pushes away from the kitchen counter.

“What?” Hannah tries to clarify.

“Oh, nothing, I’ve just got a thing I need to do that I almost forg-”

“Fuck! Sarah!” Hannah yells at her, making Grace jump and the blonde stop moving, steadfastly looking at neither of her friends.

“That’s a load of bull, and I know it. We all know it. Somethings going on, we all know that too, and now is not the time for secrets. If you don’t want to talk…” Hannah pauses to slow down and control her breathing; this is escalating.

“Fine. But be safe, and please, if you know something, anything, that can help us, tell us. I can’t imagine that you’d hide something like that from us, but if you are… Please,” Hannah doesn’t want to plead, but that’s kind of what slipped out.

“I’m not…” Sarah says, not shifting her gaze.

“Ok, then I guess that’s that?”

“Yeah,” the blonde drops her gaze to the floor. “I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?”

“Ok.”

Grace’s silence through the exchange, cautiously looking between the two women, breaks when she makes the first move. Walking softly to the door, and tugging on Hannah’s arm to get her to follow, they step back out in the street, their exit marked by the creak of the old hinges.

Hannah closes her eyes against the bright sun and tries to calm her breathing.

“You OK?” Grace asks.

Three breaths, each less ragged than the last, pass before she answers.

“Yeah, just…”

“I know.”

“I’ve been thinking Grace,” Hannah looks up at her partner. “We should go and look.”

“Look at…”

“The factory.”

“Aw fuck.”

“What?”

“I was thinking the same thing. It’s what started this shitstorm, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Fine. Do we even know where it is?”

“Swike gave me some information, it’s back at the house.”

“Alright, let’s go home. I’m hungry.”

“Grace, you’re always hungry.”

“i’m a growing, active lady!”

“Grace, you haven’t gained a pound, or an inch since I’ve known you.”

“Whatever.”

The light hearted banter loosens things up a bit and the two giggle. Some time later, after the two had walked in silence, Grace spoke up again.

“You know I’m a little worried about me. I’m starting to think like you, and I’m not sure the world needs that.”

Hannah stuck her tongue out at Grace and checked her with her shoulder.

=====

Sacrifice is about values and evaluation. Sacrifice is what happens when you value one thing over another. You sacrifice your free time to help a friend, because you value their well-being, and you want to contribute how you can to it.

You sacrifice your own safety, and potentially your own well being, because you value the safety and well-being of someone else. You put yourself in harms way, knowingly, so that you can provide safety or security to someone you care about.

That is why sacrifice is so valued, so treasured, and so rare. It is the single greatest demonstration of how much someone means to you.

---

"What the fuck?!" Hannah says as she turns to Grace hoping for explanation, but finding only blank stare mimicking her own confusion.

"I don't know? Maybe it is actually just a saying, he's pretty old, and he hangs out with rich people. And seriously, no one could possibly know that, come on Hannah."

"Yeah, you're probably right, but still. That's a pretty crazy random happenstance, you've got to admit. That’s going to bug me."

"Yeah."

"Yeah..." Hannah sighs.

"Home time?" Grace asks.

"Home time," Hannah agrees, and starts walking away from the river.

"Uhh, Hannah? Boat?"

"Nuh uh. I'm not going through that again. I'll pay for a carriage, come on," Hannah says without stopping. Grace just shrugs to herself and follows the shorter woman out to the street.

---

The trip home is considerably longer than than the trip there, due to all of the backtracking added by having to cross the river at a bridge, and the nearest bridge is thirty minutes in the wrong direction. The advantage though is that Hannah is not subjected to the almost intolerable smell of the river itself, and that alone is worth any price. The enclosed carriage offers them a certain amount of privacy, and quiet, to talk, so it isn't as though the time goes to waste.

"Well, that didn't really help," Grace laments, the carriage bouncing along gently over the rocky and uneven roadway.

"It was the only lead we had, and if you hadn't remembered that, we would have had nothing. At least we tried," Hannah says, trying to sound as reassuring as she can. She too is disappointed that their trip wasn't more fruitful than it was, but they don't exactly have any other pieces of information to go on.

"Thanks, Han."

"And maybe it was all just a coincidence, and they were just trying to get rid of witnesses. It isn't as though they knew we were meeting that guy, we were just two people that happened to see them murder someone, and they probably just wanted to make sure no one could talk." Hannah is trying to reason through the events of the other night again, but from a less personal perspective. She has to admit, this new story sounds a lot more reasonable than the one where there's some secret society or something trying to kill them specifically, as opposed to just covering up a murder. The latter happens all the time in the City, given how much of its commerce happens under cover of darkness.

Hannah has to half-laugh to herself at the thought of calling the new idea ‘reasonable’.

"Now that you say that, I feel silly for thinking that we were somehow involved in some big, elaborate, scheme," Grace says nervously. It's the kind of nervousness that comes from admitting something potentially embarrassing, and Hannah can't help but laugh, because that was exactly what she had been thinking too.

"It feels so ridiculous, doesn't it? To be thinking that 'someone tried to kill me to cover up a murder' is a relief? I mean, it isn't as though that's rare here, but still," Hannah muses, feeling a little sheepish for thinking that their situation was anything more than a mundane case of murder cover up.

"This City is fucked. So completely fucked," Grace says, shaking her head.

"You know what would help?" Hannah asks leadingly, her mood all of a sudden much brighter.

"What..."

"I need a goddamned drink, and we should go barge in on Mamrie having sex again. That was fun, and that would help us clear our heads of this whole shitstorm, and get back to life." Her tongue almost trips over the word, but she needs to find something strong enough to adequately express herself.

Grace lets out a sharp burst of laughter, and Hannah can tell that her suggestion caught the other woman off guard, which makes her smile along.

"Yeah, I'd like that. Maybe Swike will be there, and we can see if she's managed to sell anything. Mama needs a new... Uh...", Grace looks around the small carriage quickly, as though it will help her come up with something to buy with her ill gotten gains.

"Hair colour?" Hannah prods.

"Hey, I like my hair colour thank you very much, smart ass. How about we just settle for some food and wine. I could really go for some skewers."

"'Skew'-er? I barely know 'er!" Hannah blurts out. Grace looks at her blankly, blinks once, and then just hangs her head.

Hannah grins, not even attempting to feign apology

---

As it turns out, Mamrie is company-less this evening, and is sitting at her work bench when Hannah and Grace arrive.

"Mamrie!" Grace shouts as they walk through the door, expecting her to not be sitting at her work bench ten feet from the door. Their entrance effectively startles the redhead, causing her to jump as something clatters loudly to the floor.

"Jesus fucking christ! Grace! I you just about- shit! You scared me," she says, reaching down to reclaim whatever it is she knocked onto the floor. "You're lucky I dropped my wrench, not my drink, or we'd have a much bigger problem, you and I."

Hannah looks around the room, with a fascination that never seems to diminish. Every time she comes here, there is always something new around: some new tool, or project, or substance that Mamrie cautions will inflict some lifelong disfiguring injury on her should she get too close. Hannah is never not blown away by the brilliant redhead, and everything she can do.

"How's it going Mames? We figured you'd be 'occupied'," Hannah air-quotes the word, "so we decided announcing ourselves loudly was the right thing to do," Hannah says, taking her normal seat on the opposite side of the work bench, Grace taking her own seat. Hannah really likes the attention to detail that Mamrie put into designing her workshop, and in particular the bench itself. She doesn't really care about the tools, or the surfaces, or the fact that apparently everything is made out of some new fangled material - Asberger? Absestus? Hannah doesn't remember the name - that is incredibly strong and fire resistant. The fire resistance was a big concern when building her new shop, considering what happened to her old one.

No, Hannah is more interested in the fact that Mamrie took care to arrange her bench to meet Hannah and Grace's requests: when sitting in their seats, they can see every entrance to the room, and their backs are to a wall. Hannah has always insisted that sitting with your back to the door is just a really bad idea, and apparently Mamrie took that to heart.

"Well ain't that just freaking kind of you. I'll have you know that we broke up. Yes, I am heart broken. Inconsolable. I don't know if I'll be able to recover," Mamrie says, playing the part of a distraught woman about as well as a wooden log plays the part of a singing toad. She puts down what she is working on and examines the new arrivals to get home. "Hey, you guys look stressed. Wanna go find us some sexy hunks? Oh, and a hunkette, don't want to leave you out you giant lesbian."

That's more like Mamrie, Hannah smiles.

"We were thinking about maybe meeting Swike and getting something to eat and drink. Have you eaten anything today?" Grace asks the redhead that has a tendency to get a little too invested in her work and, not infrequently, forget to eat.

"Yes mom," Mamrie draws out in a childish tone, mocking insult. "I will agree to go and eat and drink with you, on one condition."

"Oh no," Hannah knows what's coming next and shifts uncomfortably in her chair.

Mamrie jumps up and throws her arms in the air, "Oh yes! We need to get Hannah laid!"

"Mamrie, I do not need to get laid."

"Oh yes you do, my lady loving friend," she insists, walking around the bench to put her hand on Hannah's shoulder.

"It has been a while Han," Grace says, seemingly reluctant to take either side.

"It's a dry spell, so what, that happens-" Hannah tries to defend before getting cut off.

"And, as your sexual mentor-" Mamrie continues.

"You don't even like women," Hannah interrupts.

"Shut up while I'm interrupting Hannah. As your sexual mentor, it is my job to ensure that you're getting the tail you need- nay, deserve."

"Tell you what, you find me another woman that likes women, and we'll go from there," Hannah resigns.

"Success! Come on Grace, we've got some hunting to do."

"She is having way too much fun with this," Grace says to Hannah as Mamrie drags the brunette from her stool.

"As long as she doesn't get between me and eating something, I think we'll be OK," Hannah warns, the three of them filing out of Mamrie's front door and into the street.

---

As it turns out, Sarah is nowhere to be found at the tavern that night, leaving Grace without her extra coin, and Hannah without the chance to talk to her about what they didn't learn today.

"I was really looking forward to a shopping trip," the brunette pouts, looking into her glass. Hannah wouldn't say that Grace uses retail therapy to deal with stress, but she also wouldn't deny that buying things definitely improves her mood.

"We'll get a hold of her in the next couple days. She had a lot to move, so she might be off doing the cover-of-darkness commerce thing," Hannah says.

"Hannah, it's Swike we're talking about, remember?" Mamrie chimes in. "That woman could charm the locks open on a City prison cell, and might do that because convincing a guard to give her a key would be too easy. I bet she does all of her work in broad daylight, because she can."

Hannah has to agree that Sarah is perhaps the most charismatic, convincing, beautiful individual she has ever met. She's watched her use sex appeal to get her way with women that Hannah knows with absolute certainty to be absolutely straight.

Hannah was not happy watching that unused sexual tension go to waste either.

“Oh, hey! What about her?” Mamrie tries to whisper, but really ends up saying loud enough to cause a man at the table next to them to turn his head. Hannah tries to follow the redhead’s gaze across the room, but sees no obvious choices for whom Mamrie might be eyeing.

“Huh?” Hannah replies, confused, taking another gulp from her drink.

“Oh, you’re useless. I’ll be back,” Mamrie chides, getting up from the table and barreling across the room.

“She’s not subtle, that’s for sure,” Hannah says to Grace. The brunette just chuckles, and nods her head. “I’m going to go get another round before Mamrie brings another poor girl over. You need something?”

Grace tips her cup and peers into it before turning it upside down, letting a couple drops fall onto the table.

“You could have just said yes. Same thing?”

Grace just smiles and nods, leaving Hannah sighing and heading off towards the empty bar.

“Hahn!” Dave’s accent is thick, dragging the ‘a’ into more of an ‘aw’ sound that she never gets tired of hearing. Dave is the owner of the place; a tall, well built, handsome, dark-skinned man with hair that Hannah is more than a little bit jealous of. He’s a unique guy in her life, the only one who, sometimes, after a few extra drinks, Hannah’s imagination starts get invested in. She blames the accent, and the skin. Damn her penchant for the exotic.

“Hey Dave,” she shoots back, leaning her elbows on a clean part of the bar. “We need more.”

“A’ready? Didn’t ah jus pour you sometin’?” he asks, flashing a grin as he turns around and begins to collect the bottles to make their usual drinks. Hannah could listen to this man talk forever; something about his accent oozed calm, easy-going, and genuine.

“Yeah yeah, just pour the bloody drinks, booze wench!”

“That’s goin on yer tab,” he says over his shoulder with a wink.

“Fine, just give me my drinks. If I don’t get those back, you’ll have an out and out mutiny on your hands. Drunken sex and all.”

Hannah recalls one of her first conversations with Dave where she asked him about the “Absolutely No Fuckin Fuckin!” signs he had up around the bar. It turns out that one night he let someone else close down, and they left two men in a booth all night. When Dave came in the next morning, half of his bottles had been smashed and the two men were attempting to have very drunken sex on his bar. Ever since then Dave makes sure he works the last shift himself.

“‘Ere ya are!” Three fresh beverages are placed on the counter in front of her as Dave flips his towel over his shoulder with a job-well-done kind of finality.

“You’re the best dude,” Hannah says wryly, collecting the drinks and stepping back from the bar.

“An’ don’t ye forget it little lady!”

---

The tavern is close to Mamrie's shop, literally only a couple doors down, which Hannah is thankful for, because getting a drunken Mamrie home is going to be a monumental undertaking.

"Hey, hey, Hannehr, what abo-" the redhead asks, surprisingly intelligibly given her state of inebriation, but Hannah is getting tired of this game.

"You asked about her twenty minutes ago, and no, she keeps trying to pick up those two guys at the bar over there."

"What if she swings both ways?"

"Well, tonight, she seems to be pretty swung in the wrong direction, and I don't feel like butting in on her night. We’ve been here for a long time, and I’m tired.”

Mamrie huffs and takes another swig from her drink. She and Grace had struck out with the couple hot guys they had spotted, and now striking out for Hannah seems to have left their sex-party balloon of enthusiasm completely deflated. Hannah had hoped that maybe their optimism would materialize into something, but alas it just wasn't in the cards this time.

"Give it up guys, there's no one here tonight. I'm going to go pay our tab, Grace can you keep an eye on prowler here while I'm gone?"

"I'll keep her out of trouble," Grace affirms, raising her mostly empty mug, as the shorter woman gets up from their booth and begins to wind her way around the people still left. It is early - Hannah has decided that staying out until dawn means she has stayed out early - and many of the patrons have gone home. All that is left is a few vagrants, another group of gentlemen busy discussing something, a group of women consoling each other by the sounds of it, and a pair of men that have been sitting at the bar since shortly after Hannah arrived.

“Hey Dave, almost home time, eh?” Hannah asks taking a seat at the bar, watching as he idly polishes a large glass.

“Evening, how can I help you miss?” he replies, catching Hannah’s gaze before glancing, very deliberately,  to her right along the bar and looking back down to the glass in his hand.

What? Hannah shakes her head in confusion.

She sits there for several moments, attempting to process the interaction she was just involved in.

Dave doesn’t call her miss. Little Lady, Han, Hannah, sure. But not miss. When Dave’s eyes do the exact same thing - catch her gaze, hold it, then look down the bar and back at his glass - she knows that this is different, and that this is very deliberate.

“Oh, uh, I’d just like to pay my tab,” she tries to sound normal, and act normal, or at least what she thinks any other patron would say and do.

“Sure thing, let me go collect it,” he says before putting down his glass and walking to the other end of the bar on Hannah’s right. She takes this opportunity to watch him, her eyes passing over the two men that had been sitting at the bar all night-

What?!

Hannah has to exert conscious effort to keep from falling off of her stool.

There, sitting not two metres from her, are two men whose collars are adorned with the exact same pin she herself still has in her breast pocket.

The same two men that have been sitting at the bar the entire night. The same two men that kept rebuffing the advances of that gorgeous woman Hannah would have given her left arm to have been fucking right now.

The same two men that, now that she can see the bar in front of them, don’t have a single drink, or condensation ring on the surface. Two men that, from what she can tell, are having a very private discussion of whispers. The two men that seem to be inspecting every person that walks through the door.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

To hell with that woman, Hannah would give her left arm to be anywhere in the world that isn’t right here, right now.

Dave walks back with a small slip of paper, and hands it to Hannah.

“Here you go.”

Hannah looks down at the paper and, on it, written with what appears to be great haste, are five words.

They are looking for you.

Hannah’s mouth is instantly dry and her hands start to shake. She reaches down quickly to her coin purse and pulls out a random handful of coins, placing them on the countertop.

“Thanks,” is all she can manage to get out before turning and, as calmly as she can, walking back to the table. Hannah doesn’t remember this room feeling so large, or loud. She is acutely aware of all of her own movements, her footfalls feel like an elephant’s, as though her movements are intrusive and obvious to everyone there.

Reaching their table and being closer to her friends offers her a small amount of comfort. She places her hands on the surface, steadying herself.

“Grace. We have to leave.”

Grace looks up at Hannah, confusion turning to concern as she examines what she can tell is a clearly very shaken Hannah.

“Two men at the bar,” Hannah motions towards the bar by leaning her head. “Pins,” she hisses.

Now it is Grace’s turn to go pale while Mamrie just looks between them.

“What is going on, guys?” the redhead asks, seeming to detect that something isn't quite right.

“Mamrie, we need to leave, now,” Grace says, motioning with her hand between herself and Hannah.

“Uhhh, ok. Why the sudden rush?”

“We can’t explain right now, but we need to leave.”

The seriousness in Grace’s voice seems to have a sobering effect on the redhead.

“Problem,” Hannah starts. “We have to walk right past them to get to the door and they are watching it.”

“Distraction? Did someone say distraction?” Mamrie’s face contorts into a strange, mischievous, grin filtered through way too much alcohol.

“But Mamri-” Hannah hardly has time to start her sentence before the redhead is up from her seat and standing next to her.

“You girls wait here. Sit down, look natural. You’ll know when you’re clear to go.”

With that, all they can do is watch Mamrie stride over to the two men sitting at the bar, a distinctly provocative sway to her hips.

“Heyyyy boyyyysss,” Mamrie drags out loudly as she approaches the two men. The delivery is so over the top, Hannah never would have imagined two syllables could last so long.

Wedging herself between them, Mamrie leans her left arm on the bar, and looks up at the man to her right. Hannah can’t see from this angle, but she can only imagine the amount of cleavage shoved into that poor - lucky? - soul’s face right now.

“What you been having? Doesn’t matter. Barkeep! Two of whatever these guys’ve been drinking! No. Nevermind., she says, leaning further over the bar. She reaches over and grabs a large green bottle and takes a big gulp of whatever is inside.

“Whooo! Gin, mofuckah!”

At this point the two men are visibly annoyed, with the one that she has her back to having gotten out of his seat and standing behind Mamrie.

“Ey, you want some?” Mamrie offers the bottle to the still-sitting man in front of her a little too vigorously, sending a good amount of the liquid sloshing out and over the man’s chest, soaking his jacket. That seems to have been the last straw, as the now liquor-scented man is also standing and the two seem to be visibly unhappy with the situation.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry! Let me go get a handkerchief!” Mamrie says, playing the apologetic damsel surprisingly well given that it is an abrupt about-face on her persona. She quickly spins around, presumably to go get a towel from the other end of the bar, and runs straight into the other man standing behind her. She’s still holding the bottle though, and the collision is enough to send another jet of liquid out, covering the second man and parts of Mamrie’s own top. From leaving the table to this point, only seconds have elapsed, and Hannah is awestruck with how the situation has escalated.

“Woman! What is your problem?!” the freshly soaked man yells.

“Please, let me make it up to you I’ll go get a towel!” She quickly dodges around him and makes her way to the far end of the bar, the two men following closely behind her.

“Grace,” Hannah whispers, the brunette nodding in response. The two women get up and deftly, silently, move across the room, past the seats the two men had been occupying only moments before, and out the door of the tavern. The nighttime is dark and warm, the only useful light nearby spilling out from the windows of the tavern.

The front of the tavern has several windows, including one with a good view of the end of the bar that Mamrie had been heading towards, so the two women make their way to it and peer in over the sill. They can see Mamrie trying, futilely, to clean the gin from their jackets, fumbling and making very apologetic expressions underscored by far more cleavage than Hannah remembers her ever having. The expressions of the men are furious, the shorter one, now that they are standing Hannah notices their height difference, is visibly red in the face and is yelling.

“This is going real bad,” Hannah says to Grace.

Almost as though reading Hannah’s mind, the taller man throws the towel at Mamrie, grabs the shorter man by the shoulder, and starts walking him back towards their original end of the bar. Not taking chances, Hannah and Grace slip around corner of an outcropping from the building to hide in the shadows. Just as they get into their spot, they hear the door burst open.

“Fucking whore! Someone oughta teach her some manners!”

“Well it ain’t gonna be you, that’s for sure. You’re already on probation, and starting fights in front of a barkeep is a great way to pull the Watch down on your, and our, heads.”

“I could take him too. Scrawny bastard.”

“You try that, and order’ll see you don’t make it to see your next shift. You remember what happened to-”

“Fuck off. Go fuck yourself. I remember perfectly well. I’m just talkin’ is all.”

“Didn’t look like it, while we were in there, that’s why I dragged you out. I swear, if it weren’t for me-”

“Weren’t for you what? Fuck it, nevermind. Fucking hell, it’s almost light, we should head back.”

“Yes, we should, you need to cool off, and if you’re not cool by then I’ll boot you into the river.”

“Piss off… They won’t be happy to hear we didn’t find ‘em.”

“Well, what did they expect would happen with so little to go on? ‘Hi, we’re looking for two people, maybe women, maybe not, one of ‘em short, one tall, and they sometimes dress in all black maybe? Know of anyone like that?’ ‘Oh yeah! Right over there, their names are Marvin and Sally, and they live upstairs!’ Fucking useless.”

“Something tells me they won’t be so understanding.”

“Well, they can be as understanding as they want. If they want to find them, we’ll need more people. Come on, this way.”

The two men seem to have gotten their argument out of their system, and begin walking down the street, thankfully away from Hannah and Grace.

Hannah turns to Grace, meeting eyes that look black in the night.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yes, and I kind of hate myself for it.”

Hannah has to smile, and she gives her partner a one-armed hug, squeezing her briefly. They aren’t dressed, or equipped for this, but at this point that doesn’t matter.

“Alright. Let’s go see where they’re going.”

===

Author: I’m sorry this is late. To make up for it, here’s a quick blurb from Mamrie’s perspective while she’s doing the diversion thing. I will often scaffold scenes from multiple perspectives, so that I understand how it would play out from a particular viewpoint so here's one of those that I fleshed out for you.

Because I like you, because you read what I write.

She eyes up the two men as she sashays over to them. They’re both pretty fuckable, she estimates, underneath that trench coat exterior, or at least the one on the right is. He’s taller, with some facial scruff, and doesn’t have the scowl the little one on the left does.

She goes for the one on the right.

“Heyyyy boyyyysss,” she drags out, laying it on thick as she leans on the counter, and does her best to shove her chest into the taller guy while ignoring the other one. She knows she smells like alcohol, and she makes no attempt to hide it.

“What you been having? Doesn’t matter. Barkeep! Two of whatever these guys’ve been drinking!” she starts yelling, as obnoxiously as she can muster, before her eye catches a mostly full, just uncorked, bottle on the other side of the counter. Perfect.

“No. Nevermind,” she calls out, reaching out to grab the bottle and bringing it to her lips to take a sip. Sure hope it’s not turpentine… she thinks to herself, half smiling. Gin!

“Whooo! Gin, mofuckah!” she yells, startling the man behind her from his stool, and she imagines he is now standing a little bit behind her.

Now this part is easy.

“Ey, you want some?” she asks the still seated man, jerking the bottle in his direction. She makes sure to land as much as she can on his neck and coat. Getting him in the face would just make everyone too angry, aim is important.

Score. A perfect slosh of liquid covers the first man. Next.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry! Let me go get a handkerchief!” She turns around, readying another salvo. The man behind her is closer than she expects though, and she bumps into him early, sending liquid out of the bottle over both of them.

“Woman! What is your problem?!”

“Please, let me make it up to you I’ll go get a towel!” She can see the short little weasel starting to lose his cool, so she quickly sidesteps him, taking a few steps along the bar before glancing over at the table that Hannah and Grace are already slipping away from.

Thank god, she sighs, feeling as though a weight was lifted from her chest. It’s just her and two gin-soaked guys now.

=====

Some people garner trust by their very nature. They are warm, and positive, and trusting them feels as natural as anything, but should you? What are the requirements of trust, what conditions does someone need to satisfy to be called trustworthy? Trust is something that is built, constructed and erected against the gravity of vulnerability.

But what is it made of? What are its building blocks?

---

Grace and Hannah manage to brainstorm the Professor’s place of work while they eat, after all there are only so many places a professor can find work in the City. They went through options and ideas, factoring in where Grace lived at the time, and eventually landed on an ‘a ha!’ moment. His office is, or at least was, at a library in the western district, thankfully on the river which will make travel a whole lot easier.

The trip by boat is short enough, but still generally unpleasant. The City’s recent sunshine has been completely out of character for it, and today it is wrapped back in the haze that is typical for this time of year. The rain a couple days ago helped, but it can only do so much when they’ve been receiving so little. The water level  is lower than normal, by a lot, exposing large tracts of river bed along the banks to the elements, and generally turning the water a slightly richer shade of disgusting than Hannah remembers.

All taken together, this means that the smell has only gotten more… fragrant. Hannah is convinced this is the worst boat ride she has ever been on, and that includes that one time with all of the crocodiles. The thought of taking the same route back home later makes her stomach do an extra flip.

Finally arriving at the library courtyard is a blessing. There is no way for her to drop the coins into the captain’s hand and get off that rickety vessel fast enough, so as fast as she can will have to do.

The courtyard itself is lush, and green, and completely misplaced in the otherwise clobbered and manhandled nature of the City. There isn’t a tree for blocks around Hannah and Grace’s house, and yet she counts at least ten right here. The grass beneath her feet is soft, and smells fresh and clean, and light, and not at all in the way that soap does.

“You’d think you’d never seen a tree before,” Grace says, striding past her.

“... It’s been a while,” she replies, somewhat absently.

“Come on, we don’t have all day.”

Hannah can’t help but notice that the air of the city feels different here. She feels somehow more awake, more energetic, here than she usually does during the day. She continues to muse to herself as she walks behind the tall brunette in front of her. They pass by several trees on their way toward the large building and Hannah runs her hand over the bark of each. The smoothness of one, and the rough, harsh bark of another, leave Hannah dumbfounded. She’s seen, and touched, and climbed, trees before, absolutely, but she’s never seen any so very alive inside the confines of the City. She can’t imagine what they must do to keep them like this.

The library itself is different yet again. The air is thick, and musty, and if the air of the City is the opposite of the air of the courtyard, then this air is the opposite of both of those two. Hannah isn’t sure that makes sense, but she’s rolling with it anyway. She follows Grace through the building, walls lined with books, some arranged meticulously and some piled haphazardly. Hannah notices that Grace’s hair blends in perfectly here, almost like her hair absorbed the colours of the wood itself.

Grace pauses at an intersection, peering to her right, then to her left, down two long hallways.

“You’re lost,” Hannah says matter-of-factly.

“I am not!” Grace huffs, turning around. Hannah just cocks an eyebrow and looks at the taller woman. “Shut up shorty,” she says to Hannah, who just laughs.

“Look, someone’s coming, maybe they can help,” Hannah says, pointing down the hallway to their right where a young woman is emerging from an office. Knowing Grace is never going to ask, Hannah steps around the corner and approaches the woman.

“Excuse me, do you know where we can find Professor… Uh…” Hannah trails off, looking back at Grace. This is a shitty fucking time to forget his name, nice going Hannah, she thinks to herself.

“Professor Crane? He’s the only professor that works here right now,” the young woman clarifies.

“Yes, exactly, him,” Hannah says, looking back to the woman in front of her who is now pointing down the hall behind them.

“End of the hall, there will be a large pair of double-doors. Do you have an appointment?”

“Uh. Yes. We do. Thank you,” Hannah lies. She’s terrible at lying, and hates it, but this time it seemed like the right - does that word makes sense here? - thing to do. She turns on her heel and walks quickly back the other way, grabbing Grace’s arm as she passes by and drags her up to speed.

“Hannah, you lied,” Grace hisses.

“I know.”

“We don’t have an appointment, what if this goes terribly?”

“Well, we’ll figure that out as we go.”

“We always do,” Grace sighs in resignation.

They reach the large doors that they were directed to, and Hannah stops in front of them.

“Well?” Grace prods.

“You’re the one who knew him, not me.”

“You are not going to do this to me. Are you going to do this to me? Hannah, you know how much I hate this. I don’t do  people.”

“Well, you are going to have to this time, otherwise it’s just a strange girl barging into his office, asking if she can can get a better grade, and batting her eyelashes, or something,” Hannah chides.

Grace laughs, and Hannah can’t keep a straight face either. The idea of trying to manipulate better grades out of a professor through sex is so foreign to her that it seems ridiculous.

“Ok, fine,” Grace says, composing herself and moving forward to rap her knuckles on the solid door. She knocks three times, shaking her hand after the last and gently kissing her knuckles that are left stinging.

“Come in!” a man’s deep voice hollers from inside. The two women oblige, Grace turning the handle and stepping into what Hannah thinks is perhaps the most beautiful room she’s ever been in. Words fail Hannah when attempting to detail the room. It is grand, and rich, and so beyond her description that it leaves her utterly, and completely speechless.

Hannah looks over at Grace who appears to be considerably less dumbstruck, and has continued walking towards the large dark wood desk. Behind the desk a shorter, wider man, with a rough beard is reading a collection of papers intently. He looks up when Grace is only a couple paces from the piece of furniture. His expression changes from the one of contemplation that he had while reading to one of confusion. For several moments, he seems to study the tall, lanky, brunette in front of him, and Hannah takes a few steps forward. His gaze doesn’t even waver, the man paying her as much attention as she would expect to receive if she weren’t even in the room.

“Hi, my-” Grace begins.

“Grace!” the man exclaims exuberantly, a large smile exploding across his face as he almost springs out of his chair. “My my, Grace!” he says her name again. Everyone always seems to be unnaturally happy to see Grace, and Hannah can’t quite figure out why. She can’t blame them though, not in the least, because Hannah reacts the exact same way.

Hannah relaxes slightly. I knew she should have gone in first, she thinks to herself. Being right helps put her at ease, and allows her to direct her visual attention back to exploring the room. Her ears, however, are still carefully listening to what was going on.

“My goodness Grace, I haven’t seen you in, oh, it must be ten years. You’ve grown so much! You’re so tall!” His voice is loud, but warm and gentle, like a fire on a cold night, he seems to radiate a jovial nature. He is not tall, somewhere between Hannah and Grace’s heights, with a full, rough, beard that varies from black to grey. He is wearing a large robe that has obviously seen years of wear and much better days.

Looking around the room, she is beginning to get used to the scale of the initial impact and adjust. The walls are lined with book shelves, not unexpected given the rest of the building and where she is standing. What blows her away is that not only is every shelf full, there are piles, and wheeled carts covered in more books, in every corner and every space that wouldn’t obstruct the path to reach some other collection of books.

“And who have you brought with you? Another lovely lady I see.” His voice brings Hannah’s gaze back to what is in front of her.

“This is my friend, Hannah,” Grace introduces her, gesturing with her hand.

“Hi, a pleasure to meet you,” Hannah says to the Professor.

“My my, you haven’t changed, have you Grace. You never were a typical girl, and it seems you’ve found made friends just like you,” he says, briefly inspecting Hannah before turning and walking back to his desk. “I suspect that you haven’t looked me up, after all these years, just to reminisce and catch up. You want something, yes?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to bother you, do you have time now, or-” Grace begins to ask.

“No, no, stay. Now is as good a time as any, but please be direct.” Hannah likes this man more and more the longer she listens to him.

“We were wondering if you knew anything about this,” Grace says, pulling out her golden pin - Hannah had the second one tucked carefully away in her own pocket - and placing it near the middle of the desk.

“My that’s small, excuse me a moment,” he says as he pulls open a drawer in his desk and extracts a large magnifying glass. “My eyes aren’t what the used to be, but I’m sure that’s no surprise,” he says, smiling before holding the small pin up for inspection.

For several moments, everyone in the room is silent while the man turns the small metal object over in his hand. Hannah notes that he makes no noise, no mumbles or sounds of thought as on might expect. He is absolutely intent on it, paying no attention to her as she takes several steps forward in the room, bringing herself closer to the interaction. He appears lost in his own world of inspection, and it is strange to watch.

"We came to you, because it reminded me of something that I remembered seeing in your office when I was a kid," Grace says in a voice softer than normal. The Professor looks up at Grace over his magnifying glass with an expression that Hannah can't quite put her finger on.

"It had your model of the earth in it," she continues.

"Oh! Yes!" he says, the realization of what she was getting at hitting him. He looks quickly back through the magnifying glass at the pin in his hand and nods vigorously. "Yes, yes, I see it now. A three-axis gimbal could absolutely look like this from the right angle."

"Could you show us?" Hannah asks.

"But of course my dear, as long as you don’t mind a short walk. The library apparently has rules against me having that in my office, for some unfathomable reason, so it is down the hall. Apparently it needs to be kept under the personal supervision of Doctor Sylvester, again for reasons that are beyond me.”

He leans forward, and looks between them at the door.

“Between you two and I, there is not much that is beyond me, and I think Sylvester, the old fart, is just jealous,” he says more quietly than he had been speaking so far, smiling like a child. Hannah thinks he is... joking? She can't help but smile with him though.

“Let’s go take a look, shall we!” He looks excited as he gets up from his chair. He is old, definitely, but he shows no signs of age in his movement. His motions are fluid and quick, and his pace is fast and natural.

Natural for Grace that is, which means Hannah is borderline jogging to keep up as the other two stride down the large hallway, following him as he turns into the office that the woman - the one that helped them find his office originally - had come out of. Hannah notes that he doesn’t bother knocking before entering.

This office is very, very, different from the one they just left. It is darker, with the blinds drawn down tightly where Professor Crane’s windows were wide open with bright light flooding the room. There is a distinctly damp odour, musty, smelling of moisture and, somehow, neglect.

Hannah does not like this place, and she is not at all looking forward to meeting its owner. Glancing around quickly, she observes that the room is empty except for them, and she hopes with all her might that it stays that way until they leave.

“I don’t understand why he keeps these blinds closed, it is so bloody dark in here,” the Professor says, walking over to the nearest window and throwing open the floodgates to allow the room to fill with light. Much better, Hannah thinks to herself before realizing that was a highly uncharacteristic thought for her.

“What a mess,” the Professor scoffs, rolling a trolley of books out of the way, to reveal a large… something.

"Voila!" the Professor boasts, throwing his arms open and turning to the two women, revealing a smile almost as wide as his hands. He turns to look at it briefly, seeming to marvel at his own possession in a way someone would look at their home after returning from a journey that has taken them far from it and brought them back. Hannah notices this and thinks it odd, but discounts it as simply a professor being eccentric. This is what they are paid to do, right? Be eccentric and smart?

Standing in front of the object of her quest, if one could call it that, the realization hits her like a freight train.

What am I doing here? What is the point? she thinks to herself.

She is realizing that she has been following the first paft left open to her, without thinking about where she wanted it to take her. At this point she is standing in front of a device for no reason other than Grace said she remembered something looking like the pin they found on men trying to kill them.

Hannah has never needed any other reason than Grace's word, but she should focus on what originally brought them here.

"Can you think of any reason why someone would make a pin, like what we showed you, with a symbol of this on it?" Hannah asks. At the moment she can't see the resemblance in the slightest, between the pin and what the Professor has just shown them.

He seems to think for several moments, reaching into his robe pocket to extract the small piece of metal for comparison. "The rings on the pin are aligned in orthogonal positions, which means that the gimbals will have maximum degrees of freedom..." he trails off as he seems to lose himself in his own thoughts again. Still holding the pin in his hand, he begins to slowly turn the rings on the device, with the rings moving in a way that seems to convey weight to Hannah. The Professor is not using a light touch, and the movement seems to involve his whole body, and yet it still takes several seconds to move each into place.

When he finally steps back, Hannah has a clearer view of the device and what it seems to do. In the centre of the three rings is a model of the earth itself, about a half metre across, and intricately painted. She doesn't know enough to know whether it is accurate, but it seems extremely detailed, and she imagines that one would hardly go to the trouble to paint something like that if it weren't accurate. The three rings around it seem interconnected in a way that allows the centre to rotate in any direction and stay in that new position.

The door behind them opening breaks the muted silence of the room and causes a lightning reaction from both Hannah and Grace. It is a tall, thin man walking briskly into the room with an expression that conveys many things, but enjoyment and a pleasant demeanor are far from any of them.

"Professor Crane! You can't be in here without express-" the man begins, speaking with authority and conviction

"Oh shut it, Conrad," the Professor says dismissively, his smile evaporating. These two men clearly do not like each other, Hannah observes with only the smallest amount of effort.

"Doctor Sylvester will hear about this! And you two, who are you? What are you doing in here?!" the new man says, turning toward the women, his mood leaving contempt behind and barreling towards irate.

"Conrad, they are friends of mine. Your issue is with me, not with them," the Professor says, still calmly and quietly.

"You will hear about this from Doctor Sylvester," Conrad huffs and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Hannah thinks she hears a book fall to the floor, but she isn't sure.

"Impotent buffoon," the Professor mutters, not quite under his breath. "I'm sorry to cut this short ladies, but we should probably get you out of here before the Doctor himself comes by. A thoroughly unpleasant fellow, and I wouldn't wish him upon himself, let alone two delightful young women such as yourselves. Come on, I'll show you out."

Hannah and Grace follow the Professor in silence, stopping just before the doors leading back outside when he stops and turns around to hand Grace the pin.

"I am very sorry I couldn't be of more help," he says to Hannah directly. Hannah feels out of place under his gaze. "Grace, Gracie my girl, it is so good to see you again, and see that you are OK. Thank you so much for coming by, and I do hope you do not wait another ten years before coming by again," he says as a sad smile comes across his face, looking at Grace with an almost fatherly expression.

Looking back to Hannah, and addressing both of them, "You are welcome here in my office any time, so please, do come by if you have any questions about anything, or even if you just want to talk. My door is open for you."

"Thank you Professor," Hannah says quietly, at a loss for more words that feel appropriate. Grace opens the door and the two step outside, back under the grey-yellow haze of sunlight filtering through to the City.

They are hardly ten paces away when they hear the Professor again.

"Oh, and Hannah?"

She turns to look back at the doorway.

"The best china is always in the wine cellar, not the spare dining room," he says.

"...What?" she manages to get out, her mind reeling.

"Oh, just an old saying, that's all. Stay safe, my friends," he says, moving back into the building and closing the door behind him.

Mobile users click here ( http://goo.gl/ky5G2R ) to listen to the optional mood-setting music.

=====

Safety is a first need: without safety, nothing can develop and nothing will grow. Some find safety in places: castles, fortresses, and walls keep the danger away; physically separated. In this you can point to your safety, quantify and analyze it: the thickness of your walls, the height of your towers, and the depth of your moat. You can inspect for weakness or damage, and repair as necessary, but you cannot take your safety with you. Now what if your safety lies in a person? What if your safety is inextricably connected to the safety of another? There is nowhere that your safety cannot follow. But how do you qualify that? How do you know what you are, and are not, safe from?

---

  // <![CDATA[ document.write("<audio controls><source src=\"https://www.riebart.ca/files/public/music/reading_the_leaves.mp3\" type=\"audio/mpeg\"/>"); // ]]>

  Strange things happen when your body falls off the cliff of adrenaline. Your muscles grow weak, less responsive, and your mind dulls.

Twice, on the way home, Grace trips, and one of the times Hannah has to catch her before she falls off the edge.

When they arrive home, it is all Hannah can do to open the window and collapse on the floor. She is cold, and sweating, and her breathing is ragged. She is shaking and she can’t stop. She brings her knee to her chest and attempts to loosen the buckles around her ankle and calf, but her hands won’t work; her fingers are numb and she can’t do it.

She looks over at Grace sitting on the edge of her bed; she has ripped her hood back and thrown her scarf on the floor with her face buried in her hands. Her brown hair is black at this time of night as it falls around her, but Hannah can clearly make out the silent sobs.

She tries to sit up, her hand shaking uncontrollably as she reaches to rest it on Grace’s knee. Something about the touch helps and her hand calms. Grace looks up at her, cheeks shining in the pale moonlight.

Without a word, Grace kneels on the floor next to Hannah, and Hannah wraps her arms around her. The additional weight is more than Grace can hold right now, and she collapses on top of the younger girl. Hannah feels the weight, the warmth, on top of her, and she squeezes Grace tightly. The additional pressure is holding her still, and Hannah finally starts to calm. The woman on top responds in kind, finding a position to lay next to Hannah and holds her close, Grace’s chest heaving against Hannah's.

Hannah feels safe here, like this. She holds the taller woman, as tight as she dares, as though something might try to tear her away, and Hannah must be ready to stay fast against it. Judging by the way that Grace is holding her just as tightly, she knows the other woman feels the same.

Hannah can feel Grace’s heart on her chest, beating inches from her own, and the steady rhythm gives her something to focus on. She closes her eyes and counts the beats, imagining that they are alone, and safe.

The women are still now. The sobs have stopped, and the shaking has subsided, and all that is left is the safety of each other and the gentle rhythm of heartbeats to remind them they aren’t alone.

---

Hannah must have fallen asleep at some point, because she doesn’t remember a sunrise but the sun is definitely up. Neither of them closed the window then they got home, so the room grew cold as the night progressed. She slowly reaches to pull the blanket from her bed, careful not to disturb the sleeping woman on top of her, and drape it over them. Hannah is not cold, but she had Grace where Grace had no one to keep her warm.

Hannah makes sure Grace is covered, adjusting the blanket with her feet to make sure the taller woman’s stay warm. She feels the other woman shift slightly, but the shallow breathing and gentle heartbeat tell her that she hasn't woken up.

Hannah holds Grace tightly again, closing her eyes and resting her head on the brunette’s shoulder.

---

Hannah wakes up again, the hot early-afternoon air pouring into the room through the open window has heated it up considerably from the last time she woke up. The blanket she pulled from the bed is resting on her chest-

“Grace?!” Hannah says aloud, her eyes immediately open as she sits up with a start.

The sound of the shower pump filters through the floor up to Hannah’s ears, allowing her to relax.

She’s in the shower.

Hannah can’t blame her, she feels disgusting. Between sweating on the way there, and then the…

Hannah shakes her head. She isn’t ready to think about that, not quite yet. Standing up, she lets the blanket fall into a pile on the floor around her feet. Piece by piece, she strips out of her gear, turning them inside out as she goes so that they can air out, and be cleaned. Looking around, she notices that Grace’s equipment has been removed and placed carefully throughout the room. Her vest rests at the foot of her bed while her leggings are draped, inside out, over the back of a chair. Hannah does the same, carefully removing her clothing from the night before, and placing it around the room where it can dry.

It takes time to undress, peeling the leather from her like a mask and exposing her bare skin to the air. Even though the air is warm, the tiny hairs over her body stand on end as a gentle breeze falls over them. One piece at a time, more skin is exposed and let to breath, and Hannah feels something flowing out of her; a catharsis brought about by removing the layers of armour. When she is finished, she opens a small pouch in her vest and removes the two pins she took from the men and places them on her dresser.

She hears the distinct sounds of Grace finishing in the shower, the pulling of the shower curtain and the clatter of a hair brush in the sink, so she grabs her towel from the back of the door, wrapping herself in it before walking downstairs. She steps into the washroom as the brunette is running a brush through her hair, wrapped in her damp towel.

“Hey Han,” Grace says, turning and smiling with her head tilted to the side, wincing as the brush catches on a knot.

“Hey Grace. There enough water left?” Hannah asks, concerned that she really does not want to have to carry buckets of water.

“Plenty, you filled it up yesterday, remember?”

“I meant, did you use it all,” Hannah replies, smiling as she unwraps the towel from around her and hangs it up.

“Oh come on, I’m not that bad,” Grace replies, continuing to struggle with her hair. Grace’s hair is gorgeous, and fantastic, and many great things, but watching what she goes through for it makes Hannah happy for her shorter hair. It isn’t common, and it gets her weird looks, but she’s used to it now and really likes the comparative lack of maintenance.

Hannah steps into the shower alcove and stands under the water head. The pump is already primed, so pushing the lever down sends a deluge of cold water pouring over down over her head and back. The water is cold, and she gasps at the flood, but it feels good. She grabs the soap and begins to wash.

“Didn't Swike say she was coming by today?” Hannah asks as she scrubs away last night.

“Something about early afternoon, so either we missed her, or any moment now. Watch her walk in right now to find us both basically naked and washing,” Grace laughs.

Hannah chuckles too. If wouldn’t be the first time Sarah walked into their house without knocking to find herself the unwitting spectator to something awkward. The situations themselves are always benign, but it’s the lack of context that changes things. Like the time Hannah had her hand up Grace’s shirt in the kitchen. In reality, it was because a bug had flown in there, and Grace’s hands were covered in raw chicken so she couldn’t do anything about it. That was definitely not the first thing Sarah thought, given how quickly she spun around and walked right back out the door.

Hannah gives the pump handle and another firm push, sending more water cascading down her body, taking the last vestiges of what could have happened with it. It leaves her feeling refreshed, and clean, and all of the things that Hannah loves to feel. Stepping out of the alcove, she grabs her towel and wraps it around her body.

“I’m going to go dry off upstairs, there’s not enough room for the two of us, and at least one of us should be dressed if Swike shows up," Hannah says to Grace.

"Yeah go nuu-ahts!" Grace says as her brush snags her hair again. "Stupid brush I thought we had an agreement." Hannah just laughs and heads back upstairs.

She is drying off in their room, the rough towel scouring her skin back to life after the frigid shower, when she hears three loud knocks on their door.

"Hey you two! Open up!" she hears Sarah calling from outside their door.

“Aw fuck,” Hannah says to herself. She hurriedly grabs a pair of pants and tries to put them on, but ends up with one still slightly damp foot stuck halfway into the second leg, hopping around the room on one foot. Of course that is when Grace runs into the room, clutching her towel to her chest.

"Come on!" Hannah hears Swike yell again.

“Swike’s here!” the brunette says, flying past Hannah almost knocking her over.

“I heard,” Hannah says as she manages to get the second leg of her pants on, and grabs a random shirt from her dresser. “You do your thing, I’ll go say hi,” Hannah tells Grace as she pulls her shirt over her head and snatches the two pins from her dresser, tucking them into her pocket as she heads downstairs.

Opening the door, a wave of noise floods in around the blonde woman standing on the other side.

“What the fuck happened?!” Sarah almost yells, barging past Hannah into their house.

“Come on in,” Hannah says to herself under her breath as she closes the door, sending the noise back outside.

“I heard that, but I’m going to ignore it, because we have more important things to talk about…”

“Yeah we do.” Hannah says to herself, less quietly now, eliciting a scowl from the blonde woman that could ignite coal.

Sarah’s head whips around as Grace walks down the stairs, still pulling her shirt down which leaves a large, purple, bruise on the right side of her ribs in plain sight. Hannah’s stomach does a backflip at the sight. She must not have seen it earlier because Grace had her towel wrapped around that part.

“Grace!? … The fuck!” Sarah flings her hands at Grace, Hannah would be musing that it looked like the blonde was trying to flip a table with that motion, but Sarah is actually yelling now and now is not the time for musing.

“Sarah, we need to talk about last night,” Hannah says, steeling herself for this conversation. She glances at Grace who nods gently in her direction.

“You’re fucking right we do. What am I hearing about explosions? One guy dead, and two people spending the night in the hospital? And running from Watchmen?” Sarah isn’t yelling anymore, but this might have been easier if she were as opposed to this quiet seething she is doing.

“Alex is dead, Sarah,” Hannah says quietly. Sarah stops, her mouth hanging open, about to continue with what sounds like a practiced speech.

“What?” she says instead. Hannah thinks this wasn’t part of what Sarah had practiced.

“I wasn’t sure until you said that just now, but someone put an arrow into his back. Then they tried to kill us. There were two of them, and if it weren’t for Grace…” Hannah looks over at the tall brunette leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Grace is quiet, looking at the ground, or the ceiling, or anywhere to avoid looking at either of the other women in the room. “Neither of us would be here. She managed to use Mamrie’s new arrow, an exploding one. Some guards probably heard the noise, and caught us looking for some kind of ID on the two that killed Alex, and tried to do the same to us. Handcuffs didn't seem to be on their agenda, just swords. Basically, if we hadn’t gone to visit Mamrie the other night, we would probably both be dead.” Hannah’s could feel her heart rate climbing as she spoke, her hands starting to shake as the last word leaves her mouth. She closes her eyes focuses on her breathing, her hands and heart rate returning to normal.

Sarah swallows visibly. “I… I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” she gets out quietly. “Did you find anything? Any ID?”

“Only this,” the shorter woman replies, fishing the two pins out of her pocket and handing them to the taller blonde that now looks significantly paler than when she arrived. Hannah isn’t sure if that’s because it is cooler in here than outside, or for some other reason. “I haven’t had time to look at them closely, but they don’t look familiar at all to me.”

“Can I see one?” Grace asks, pushing away from the wall and walking towards the blonde in the centre of the room. Sarah quickly looks at the two small pieces of metal in her hand and, seeming to decide that they are identical, hands one to Grace who holds it up for closer inspection..

“I’ve never seen this before,” Sarah says, examining it carefully and turning it over between her fingers. “It is intricate, and finely crafted, and why someone trying to kill you would be wearing this is beyond me. What do you think, Grace?”

“I’ve never seen this symbol before, but I’ve seen something that looks like this… kind of. My parents used to be friends with this Professor, and I remember seeing something that looks like this in his study. I didn’t know what it was then, and I still don’t, and like I said, it isn’t this but it looked like this. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Could we go visit him?” Hannah asks, surprising Grace enough that she looks up from the small object she is holding in front of her.

“Oh. Uh. Sure? I guess? I haven’t seen him in years, and I don’t remember his name, or where he works, and he probably doesn’t remember me, and I have no idea how we’d do this without it being really weird, but… I don’t know. Sure?”

“This is the only thing we have to go on, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t let this just drop. My gut is telling me that wasn’t a coincidence, and who knows if it’ll happen again,” Hannah says. At this point the conversation is with Grace - Sarah might as well not be in the room - and much of it doesn’t involve words. Hannah’s posture is tall, but close: with her back against the wall and her arms close to her sides, she is far from relaxed. Her eyes, bright and blue even in the haze of light available in the poorly lit room with only one window, connect with Grace’s in a way that that doesn’t seem to let go. Hannah is scared, and she knows this is perfectly evident to Grace.

Grace, on the other hand, has been stubbornly standing in the middle of the room, despite shifting her weight from one foot to the other with almost every second breath. She holds the pin in her right hand but her left hand is fidgeting, clenching and unclenching around a handful of fabric from her shirt. Grace is nervous and unsettled, and this is obvious to Hannah.

“Ok,” the brunette says after several moments’ silence.

Sarah is looking back and forth between the two of them with a moderately confused expression. “Did I miss something?”

“No. Not at all, Swike,” Hannah says.

=====

The morning - no, afternoon? - sun blazes through the window across Hannah’s head.

Straight into her face.

This is not the way to wake up.

“I am too bleedin’ old for this,” she says, rolling over and pulling the blankets over her head. She hears Grace groan a short distance away from her in her own bed, likely disturbed by Hannah's rustling.

They’d stayed out drinking far too much wine, until far too late. Or was it early? Hannah really needs to decide on whether staying out until dawn means she’s stayed up later or earlier. You’d imagine that someone who’s living is spent being away at night and sleeping during the day would have figured that out by now. Eventually Mamrie came by the tavern, her man nowhere to be seen, to drink with them, and the four ladies had a most inappropriately fun evening.

As Hannah recalls, Grace tried to dance on the table resulting in only the best entertainment this side of the docks.

“What time is it?” Grace grumbles.

“Too bright,” is the only sensible answer Hannah can come up with.

“Fuck me sideways,” Grace hoarsely lets out before a prolonged rustling of blankets causing Hannah to look over. Grace is much taller than her so when she stretches out her feet hang off the end of the bed, and now is one of those times. Hannah spots the bare feet as the only parts of the other woman sticking out from under her blankets and smiles. They’re cute feet.

“You’ve got cute feet Grace,” Hannah says.

Out of nowhere, a heavy pillow comes flying across the room and hits Hannah squarely in the face.

“You stay away from my feet,” Grace says, over Hannah’s laughing.

“Ok, fine, maybe we should get up. I need some food, and we should go for a walk, there’s some things we should pick up at the market.”

“You sure know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you. How about breakfast in bed?” Grace asks, peeking out of the blankets.

The pillow makes a second swift trip across the bedroom.

---

After putting some food into their stomachs and dressing in something a little less conspicuous than black leather, the two stepped out into the crowded streets of the City. Hannah has lost track of days, but it must be a Saturday, because the market is packed full of people, and animals, and smells. She grimaces in Graces’ direction who returns the expression.

They are looking for a few simple items, some food stuffs, some burlap, some rope, a litre or so of heating oil…

Ok, the list was simple for them, and if they didn’t already have a relationship with a few of the vendors here, their purchases would undoubtedly raise every eyebrow for a block around. Women don’t go around buying what they buy.

“Fred!” Grace yells over the din of the crowd at a short, portly, man a few dozen paces ahead of them. Sitting behind a table covered in a variety of wares, his mule dozing behind him, the man beams and waves back.

“Gracie! Han! Well I’ll be damned. I ‘aven’t seen y’two in weeks! I thought y’fell off of something, er worse, gave up the family business! You’re puttin’ m’son through school y’know,” he says, giving them a stern look that couldn’t possibly hide his enormous smile.

Fred has been selling them equipment and supplies for years, ever since Hannah bumped into him one evening when she first started in the ‘unused property liberation business’ as Fred likes to call it.

“Grace fell out of bed this morning, then tripped over a gust of wind, but that’s about it,” Hannah replies, now that they are close enough to talk normally. Grace swats her in the shoulder.

“And don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about your son, you remind us every time. How’s he doing, anyway?” Grace asks.

Fred just grumbles and shakes his head. “That boy, I swear. If his head weren’ attached to his shoulders, he’d lose it!”

The two women chuckle. Charles, Fred’s son, was perhaps the most forgetful person they had ever met. They had watched him lose his own trousers one time when Fred invited them to his home for dinner with his wife. Hannah still isn’t convinced Grace didn’t steal them for fun - she likes her pranks - but everyone found it hilarious regardless.

“Anyway, whaddya pretty ladies need?”

“We’ll need something for light, something to climb, and something short-round here can use to make smoke,” Grace said. They’d found that asking, by name, for the items they wanted, caused people nearby to look at them funny, and when one of those is a Watchman, things get kind of hairy right quick. They found it better to obfuscate and be a little more indirect.

“I’m all outta rope like what you want, but you can talk t’ Edgar. Should ‘ave th’rest of whatcha need though,” Fred says, turning around to rummage through his various bags of goods.

“Where is Edgar these days? I haven’t heard from him,” Hannah asks.

“He’s been busy down at th’ docks with ‘is… boat… If y’know what I mean,” he says, turning around and winking at the ladies and smiling.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Grace says, and Hannah laughs. Edgar likes his ladies, and wasn’t going to let a little thing like money for food get in his way of satiating his other appetites.

“So we’ll find him at the docks? Anything we should be looking for in particular?” Hannah asks, rummaging through her pack to pull out payment. She likes dealing with Fred, he nevers wants gold, he wants the items themselves. Today’s payment is a beautiful set of cutlery they liberated from the spare dining room - who has a spare dining room? - during last night’s adventure. It was only one place setting, but the handles had rubies in them, and the utensils themselves were gold plated so they wouldn’t tarnish. Hannah pulls out a small linen bundle, and hands it to Fred. They were worth a lot more than what they were buying today, but Fred does well by them, and he occasionally throws in some new things he gets, so it all works out in the end.

Fred shrugs. “Oh, I think he was lookin’ fer Rosie last I saw. Poor sod doesn’ stand a chance with her, but he likes the chase.” He looks at the bundle, and feels through the linen for a moment before smiling looking back at Hannah. “The missus gonna like these, aye?”

“I think so. You’re lucky, Grace almost didn’t let me give them to you,” Hannah says as Grace, who is busy filling their rucksacks with their materials, looks over and nods in agreement.

“If they ever go missing, it wasn’t me, I promise,” she says as she goes back to collecting their materials.

Hannah and Fred exchange mildly concerned glances as Fred shoves the bundle down the front of his pants.

“Put those away n safe keepin’!” he says, sitting back down on his stool.

“There, all packed. We going to go visit the lech? We’re close to the docks, might as well,” Grace says, hoisting her pack onto her back.

Hannah does the same. “Might as well.”

Grace turns to Fed, “Thanks Fred! We’ll see you again soon, I’m running out of wood and ends, so if you can keep your eyes open for some good stuff, I’ll make sure Hannah finds you something nice.”

“Anytin’ fer you Gracie. We’ll ‘ave t’do dinner again, I’ll glue Charles’ pants on this time! Take care you two!”

The two women wave to the man and make their way through the crowd towards the docks.

---

Edgar was about as hard to find as a horse in a chicken coop, all they had to do was look for the man dressed in a loin cloth and button down shirt talking to a woman.

It took less than five minutes.

It took thrice that to convince him that they wanted to buy something from him, and then another ten minutes to get back to his shop.

“Lilly! Ah need the stuff!” Edgar bellows as they step into his shop.

“Go bugger a horse!” a woman yells from a back room somewhere. Grace and Hannah stifle laughter, but Edgar is so drunk they could be rolling on the floor laughing and he wouldn’t notice.

“Edgar, why don’t we go get it. We’ll leave payment on the counter. The usual ten gold?” Hannah asks, trying to speed this along. It is mid afternoon, and the heat is starting to get to her, not to mention how bright it is.

“Oh, yeah, sure, good idearrl…” Edgar slurs, trailing off as he stumbles down the hall towards a chair.

Grace rolls her eyes at Hannah and they walk into the back room to collect their materials. Hannah’s ropes keep breaking, might be due to the drought they’ve been having. Not enough moisture makes them brittle? She’s not quite sure, but all she knows is that she’s started carrying two with her instead of one.

She walks around the blissfully cool, dark, room and runs her hands over the varying cords. Thick, thin, coarse, fine, Edgar was a useless human being but Hannah couldn’t believe his skill in producing ropes. She had it on good authority - that is the three women had a conversation on the topic last time they were here - that the only reason Lilly hadn’t left him was because he supplies three of the larger shipping captains. There’s more than enough money coming in to make sure that food gets on the table and to keep his vices sated.

Lilly saw it as an investment, paying for the dock girls, not an expense. It meant she didn’t have to sleep with him and Hannah couldn’t agree more.

Hannah selects three coils of rope, passing them to Grace and turning her back to the taller woman so she can stuff them into her pack. On their way out, Hannah drops ten gold coins into Edgar’s lap as they walk by. The clanking of the metal pieces causes him to stir, but his grating snore doesn't so much as skip a beat.

“Alright, let’s go home. I need some more food, and a bloody nap,” Hannah says to Grace.

Grace chuckles, “Then you shouldn’t have started a pillow fight so early.”

“Move your scrawny ass woman before I smack it.”

The two women step back into the street under the rare blazing sun of the City, and make their way back home.

---

It is considerably darker when Hannah wakes up from her nap, perhaps an hour before sunset? The long shadows cast by the window slats tell her she is about right. Opening her eyes more, she sees Grace sitting at the foot of her own bed, working on her bow.

The heat from the sun earlier has left the City hot, the stonework holding the heat of the day to be given back to the evening, and their room is hot; too hot to wear a shirt without sweating sitting down. Grace has her bare back turned towards Hannah, and she can do nothing but admire it.

Grace has been an archer since she was young, and the sport encourages the development of musculature unlike any other. The sculpting and carves through her upper back seem almost artificial, the rounding over her shoulders, all symmetric about the delicate crease down the centre of her back. Powerful, delicate, graceful. Hannah couldn’t help but marvel at the perfect choice Grace’s parents’ had made when naming her.

Grace sat up straight, her bow in her left hand and string in her right, she drew her arm back.

“You enjoying the view?” Grace asks, still examining her handiwork on her instrument.

It is now that Hannah realized she was holding her breath, staring at the goddess in front of her.

Of course Grace would pick up on that, she thinks to herself.

“You know it. You are amazing, Grace,” Hannah replies, sitting up on her bed. Brown tresses slide over a bare shoulder as Grace turns her head to Hannah.

“Uh huh, now why don’t we start getting ready. We’re supposed to meet that guy in three hours,” Grace says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Hannah replies, swinging her feet to the floor and reaching under her bed to pull out the trunk with her gear in it.

Sarah had told them of an man, Alex, that was supposed to have information about this factory she wanted them to investigate. The factory itself was a fair ways out of town, so travelling on foot is out since neither of them feel like wasting a multi-day trip just to discover that it is swarming in a small army of guards. No, better to see what Alex has to say first.

---

The meeting place is close to their house, which is nice because even though the sun has set the air of the City is still hot. It is a little better on the roof tops where the breeze can move more freely, but even still.

Hannah is sweating in all of her unmentionable places and she does not like it, not one bit.

She has slipped her new hook from Mamrie into the loop her blackjack normally would be in, since she doesn’t anticipate needing to knock anyone out tonight.

“If I my thighs start chafing because I’m sweating going to meet this guy, I am going to kill Swike,” Hannah hears Grace say, somewhere off to her right.

Hannah lets out a single exhale of laughter in agreement. It is dark, but it isn’t late; people are still milling about and people running around on rooftops isn’t exactly what they expect to see on an evening stroll.

Hannah can see the steeple of the church they are meeting in front of, rising well above the surrounding houses. She always wondered how such beautiful churches are built in the poorest neighbourhoods of the City. Where does the money come from? Why couldn’t they use the money, instead, to feed and shelter the people instead of building an unnecessarily huge building? She doubts she’ll ever get a proper answer, but it still bothers her.

“Almotht there Grath, jutht hang in,” she lisps intentionally. They are close to their destination now, and the sound of an ‘s’ in speech is easily picked up surprisingly far away. Long ago Hannah adopted a habit of accentuating her natural lisp in order to make her speech more difficult to overhear.

Coming to the edge of a two story home on the other side of the street from the front of the church, the two women pause. There is a breeze here and very few lamp lights, so they take the opportunity to cool down and survey the area.

“There,” Grace whispers, pointing to a small cluster of shadow just to the side of the church.

Hannah shelters her eyes from the light below, and can see a man standing there in the darkness shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other, turning his head like it is on a swivel.

“Well, we shouldn’t keep the man waiting,” Hannah replies.

The two women make their way to the left and down the side of the house, moving from the rooftop to the second floor window sill, then across the small gap to the adjacent building’s drain pipe. All of this done as silently as a whisper before landing softly on the loose gravel that covers the broken cobblestone ground. A couple weeds poke through here and there, but only the hardiest of plants can grow in the City.

Continuing left, they find a portion of the street between lamp lights to cross in darkness, making their way back towards the church. From past experience, they have found that sneaking up on people, even if they are expecting them, has disastrous consequences. Hannah has had a man faint in front of her before and, as hilarious as that was at the time, she’d rather not repeat that particular inconvenience tonight.

Hannah pauses, Grace stopping stopping behind her, and picks up two larger piece of gravel from the ground before motioning for Grace to follow her into the entryway alcove nearby. The two women crouch in the alcove, now protected from the light on the street and just around the corner from who she assumes to be Alex. Hannah presses her back against the wall of the alcove, near to its entrance.

Hannah throws one piece of gravel around the corner, landing it a short distance from where she remembers the man to be standing. She hears the rock hit the ground followed by a sharp gasp.

  // <![CDATA[ document.write("<audio controls><source src=\"https://www.riebart.ca/files/public/music/no_regrets.mp3\" type=\"audio/mpeg\"/>"); // ]]>

  Hannah throws the second rock. This time the rock’s landing is followed by silence.

“Alex?” Hannah asks the night, just loud enough to reach the man around the corner.

“Yes, where are you?!” he says, far louder than he should have.

Hannah hears foot steps. He is walking around the corner.

Then Hannah registers another sound. It is quiet, soft, and distant; a small thwip.

It is a fifth of a second, maybe less, before the arrow impacts the back of the man less than an arms-length away. Another second passes before he collapses to the ground with a heavy thud, but no other sound. It takes Hannah a moment to process what just happened.

“Oh fuck!” Hannah says, stumbling back away from the opening of the alcove.

“Fuckfuckfuck,” she hears Grace muttering behind her.

“We have to get out of here. Now,” Hannah says, turning to Grace.

The two women are beginning to steel, their instincts starting to take over, pushing the fear out of the way. For now.

Hannah slides back to the entrance of the alcove and looks around the corner towards the rooftops.

thwip

Hannah snaps her head back behind cover as another arrow flies by, skittering past them along the stone walkway.

“I can’t see anything, that lamp is in the way. Grace, you need to deal with that, it’ll buy us some cover too.”

The tall woman slides to her right, deftly drawing and nocking an arrow in her bow. Taking aim at the flame across the street she lets loose an arrow of her own, dousing the lamp and plunging them into additional, welcome, darkness.

Again, Hannah leans around the corner and scans the rooftops. She spots two men, about fifty metres away, both armed with bows.

“Two archers, fifty metres, four houses down, on the roof,” Hannah says to Grace.

“Roof of what?” Grace asks. Hannah peeks around the corner again and examines the structure. There’s no lights on, and the windows are smashed. It looks like it used to be a shop of some kind, probably abandoned now.

“I don’t know, but doesn’t look inhabited… Why?” Hannah replies.

“Let’s see if Mamrie’s thing works,” she says, pulling another arrow from her quiver.

“Grace, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Hannah asks, moderately concerned. They have no idea how powerful the device is.

“Do you have another option?”

Hannah responds by stepping out of the way, allowing Grace into the position near the entrance.

This is taking too long. What if more are coming, Hannah begins to worry to herself.

Grace looks at her, eyes of steel boring into Hannah's own eyes of blue. “You’re going to need to drag me a bit,” she says.

The tall, lithe, woman dressed in black leans around the corner.

thwip

Hannah watches her partner snap back behind the concrete wall as another arrow skitters past.

“What?” Hannah barely has time to get out before it happens.

Grace stands up and steps out into the street, loosing her arrow towards the two armed men that have been pinning them down as she dives out into the street. The whole thing takes only moments, and Hannah is already on her feet running towards her partner. Before she clears the alcove, a large bang goes off in the direction of where the two men are standing.

Her only focus is her partner right now. Hannah reaches Grace, grabs her vest, and drags her across the street between the two houses where they arrived. The sound of Grace’s boot buckles echoes, clanging across the stone and gravel roadway.

“Grace!” Hannah yells at the woman on the ground.

“I’m fine, just knocked the wind out of me,” she replies. “Did it work?”

Hannah looks around the corner of the house to see smoke, plenty of wooden debris, and two men slowly rolling on the street.

“Looks like it. They’ll be back up in a few minutes though, we need to move. Can you walk? We should go say hi.”

Grace stands up and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah, I’m good.” Grace says as she pulls her scarf to cover her face and nocks an arrow. Hannah does the same as she draws her dagger.

Hannah inspects the building: the wall and the part of the roof the men were standing on is completely obliterated, offering a clear view inside.

No fire, just debris and smoke, and no one inside. Good. Hannah is relieved.

Reaching the guards, Hannah liberates them of any equipment and searches for identification of any kind. She finds only a small pin on each of their collars. Curious; she’ll inspect them later.

She hands the arrows and bows to Grace who loops the two bows over her shoulder and tucks the arrows in her quiver, while she secures the rest of their equipment into the pouches of her pants and vest.

“Hey! Hey you two! Stop!”

Oh fuck, Hannah thinks. They’d stopped paying attention and now three City Watch are staring at them.

“At least they only have swords,” Grace says.

Hannah starts running towards Grace, away from the guards. “You know I hate swords. Come on!”

“Stop!” She hears the guards behind them start running too.

The drain they used to get down wasn’t going to work going back up, not in a hurry, they’d need to find another way to buy time.

“The church!” Grace hisses. Hannah makes a sharp right, her left foot slipping over the loose gravel before finding purchase again. She really hopes those doors are unlocked, otherwise they’re going to have a massive problem on their hands.

Graces’ long legs mean she runs much faster. Seeing where Hannah was going, she passes the shorter woman and makes it to the doors first. Slamming her shoulder into the heavy wood, it gives way and swings open revealing the unlit church interior. Hannah is moments behind her faster partner, kicking the door closed behind her.

Hannah motions for Grace to go to the far left wall and hide in a row of pews. Hannah does the same on the right side, grabbing her hook along the way.

Hannah is only barely in place before the large doors burst open again and three armed, angry men are standing backlit in the doorway.

“I hope you work,” Hannah mouths silently to the tool in her hand.

She throws the hook down the walkway along the wall of the church, the sharp teeth skittering along the stone floor and biting into a pew leg almost ten rows up.

“Hey! You hear that?! Near the front, on the right!” she hears one of the guards say. A flurry of footsteps tells her it worked.

Hannah pulls the cable taut and waits.

1…

2…

Now… Hannah braces and pulls as hard as she can on the cable, causing the pew to scrape loudly across the floor and the hook to break free.

“Gotcha!” one of the guards yells, running towards her diversion.

Hannah is running the other way though, the hook bouncing along behind her, she sees Grace also bolting for the door. The two women are outside, Hannah giving the cable a strong whip to send the hook flinging out into the street, and slamming the doors shut before the guards had registered what was going on.

“Give me that bow!” Hannah yells to Grace, who hands her one of the new bows. Hannah grabs the bow and shoves it through the large metal handles on the doors, jamming them shut.

Turning and running back to the drain pipe, Hannah hears three dulled thuds as the men on the other side slam into the barricaded door. She glances at the two men as she coils her hook and locks it back into place. They are still on the road just now getting to their knees, oblivious to the two thieves disappearing from sight as they slip between the houses.

Grace is first up the drain, able to reach the ledge much more easily she reaches down and helps Hannah up to the sill. Grace again pulls herself to the roof, then extends an arm down to Hannah to help her grab the roof and pull herself to safety.

The two women lay back on the roof, invisible from the street, listening to the guards search for them, waiting for any clues that they might have seen where they’d gone.

They take the long way home anyway, making sure they aren’t being followed.