#selsing

🍺KNEE

The Boss was here. He visited once or twice a year, but Mama’s birthday was always one of them. The first years Riela had worked at the Tom, she hadn’t recognized him, which was the point. Then one day, Riela asked Mama point-blank if that was him and Mama confirmed it. The next time he’d visited, Riela’d been formally introduced. He was nice and unassuming. He also had a bit of an ego, if Riela allowed herself to think as much of a god. He walked in the front doors, dressed in a loose white shirt tucked into black pants with black boots that came up to his knees. He had messy brown curls and his beard looked intentionally scruffy. He already had a frothing mug in his hand.

🎶FAITH

“But think of what it could…” “Get out,” Mama hissed. “I told you five years ago that if you continued this walk of life, you weren’t welcome here. I let you play tonight as a gesture of good faith, which you have spurned. Leave.” He gave her a flippant salute and gathered his things.

🌊INCLUDE

In the end, she needn’t have worried. He’d gone to the docks to potentially warn George, but had found an unconscious Rinnie and a stoically protective Taryn instead. Selsing pointedly did not ask questions about the Edans’ presence. Probably because the body of the tugboat captain was found shortly thereafter, and he had half a dozen warrants out for his arrest. It got written off as gang warfare. Evidence of Nidtrin presence was tossed into the ocean. Riela’d been hopeful for a second that the cleric would be included in that, but she was not so lucky. She wasn’t sure how the Guards were going to reconcile “Nidtrin cleric” with “gang war,” but it probably involved the cleric disappearing and she hoped it was in the dead way.

💥RUIN

“I find that hard to believe, Captain Cass.”

Em narrowed her eyebrows. She hadn’t thought Mama Cass had served in the Guards.

“That’s not the threat you think it is,” Mama Cass told him. “Everything I did was legal then. State-sanctioned even.”

“She’s not lying,” the priest said. “She can’t be.”

“So, you’re telling me that you have no idea who stole it or how it otherwise went missing?” Selsing asked, his voice now sounding strained.

“I don’t have the slightest idea who might have lifted it,” Cass said sternly. “But I’ll let you know that such requisitions were probably warranted since Shierdi wasn’t supposed to be keeping it.”