Chapter Text
"...who?"
Tel sighed, and stopped the revolver spinning by catching it with their palm.
"Her," they repeated, pointing the gun back towards where Marasi and MeLaan were still hiding. "You two. Out." They flicked the gun to the side slightly to emphasise the point.
"Reckon I can take 'em all out pretty quick from here," MeLaan murmured, far closer to Marasi's ear than she needed to be.
Marasi leant away, scowling. "Survivor, you really haven't changed at all, have you? No killing. If you're here to help, then follow my lead."
When she glanced back over her shoulder, MeLaan's face was open and guileless. "You're the boss, boss."
“You have until the count of five,” Tel called out dryly. “Five.”
At the sound of the hammer of the revolver (of her revolver) being cocked, Marasi hastily stepped out from behind the corner, holding her hands up.
“Huh,” one of the guards said. “T’be honest, I kinda thought you was running some kind of confidence game.”
“If I were running a con on you, you wouldn’t know it,” Tel said dryly. They flicked the gun again. “Milan too.”
Marasi heard MeLaan step out behind her. “You’re still saying that wrong, y’know,” she commented.
“Yeah, I know.”
"Last chance to let me kill 'em," MeLaan murmured cheerily.
"I'd like to see you try," Tel replied instantly.
"Try what?" one guard asked.
"She just-" Tel sighed. "Just rustin' come over here already. This," they explained as Marasi slowly approached, hands raised, "is a captain of the Elendel Constabulary."
That got a reaction: both guards's eyes went wide. “And you brought her here?!” one of them snapped.
Tel rolled their eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. She brought herself here, I just… managed the problem."
"...what?"
"Kill a constable, especially this constable, and all sorts of bad attention gets focused our way. Stonewall her, she tries to force her way in, maybe kills a few of you. Or, she gets past you, hears things you don't want her hearing. So now, she's here, no-one's dead, and you're not going to have the Sixth Precinct kicking down your doors and turning you into Seran cheese."
They paused for a moment.
"You're welcome."
“Who’s the other one, then?” the first guard asked. “She a conner as well?”
“Some people would argue,” MeLaan said, and just from her tone of voice alone Marasi braced herself, “that I’m the constable of a higher power.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Tel said. “She’s just a lackey.” Marasi blinked, caught off-guard. “Now, can one of you please lift your gun, my arm’s getting tired.”
Belatedly, both of them jerked their rifles upright, cocking the hammers back with dull, mechanical clicks.
Hm. The little delay between the motion combined with the shape of the forestocks probably meant that the rifles were cheap Swiths, which made sense1. Their tendency to pull hard to the left wasn’t some magic skeleton key to her situation, but it gave her a clear direction to move in when things went bad- If things went bad.
As soon as the rifles came up, Tel let the revolver drop, rolling a shoulder in exaggerated soreness.
“Took you long enough,” they noted dryly.
“You’re the one who led a conner right to the boss,” the second guard snapped. “Count yerself lucky we’re not pointin’ ‘em at you too.”
MeLaan snickered, and Tel shot her a dirty look.
“Ain’t you supposed to be holy?” they observed dryly.
“You may not believe me,” Marasi said before she could help herself, “but she’s actually worse like that.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.” She could hear the smirk in MeLaan’s voice.
“If you’re done with the vaudeville act,” the second guard snapped. “You, conner. Get out, and count yourself lucky for it.”
“Not happening,” Marasi said instantly. “I understand you’re suspicious, but it’s vitally important that I speak to your leader. For your sake as well as many others.”
“Lady, if you don’t leave, we’ll shoot you. How vitally important is not gettin’ shot?!”
“Don’t rustin’ shoot her!” Tel exclaimed. “I jus’ did that whole speech about- don’t!”
“You’re not making this easy on us, kid,” the second guard growled.
“I’m tryin’ to manage a delicate situation,” Tel shot back. “No shootin’. Not lethally, anyway.”
The first guard grinned. “Now we’re speakin’ my language.”
Marasi didn’t think this was a particularly appropriate moment to bring up the fiction of ‘shooting to wound’.
“All I want is to talk,” she repeated instead. “At least ask your higher-ups. If they say no, then I will leave, I swear on my honour.”
“Oh, on your honour,” Tel muttered.
“Sure,” the first guard scoffed, “we’ll just leave you alone in here, huh? We ain’t thick.”
“Last I checked,” Marasi said lightly, “there are two of you.”
“Oi!”
“Two and a half,” she allowed. “Just ask. That's all I need." She could tell the second one, who she'd already pegged as the more sensible of the two, was wavering.
Tel met her eyes, and the corner of their mouth twitched up for just a second, before they leant over to one side and muttered something, too quiet to hear.
The guard grimaced, baring crooked teeth. "Rust and bloody ruin," he spat. Angry, but Marasi knew concession when she heard it.
"Yer kidding." The first guard lowered his gun slightly as he looked over at his comrade in disbelief. Marasi felt MeLaan go still beside her, and made a small gesture with her hand. Wait.
The second guard made a short, sharp noise, like a leaking boiler. "If you make us regret this," he said, "we'll make sure you do even worse."
"You won't," Marasi said instead of correcting his sloppy phrasing.
With both guns pointed at them, and Marasi's revolver still in Tel's loose grasp, they were directed through the set of doors the men had been guarding, one gun on either side. Neither of them passed through the door until Marasi, MeLaan and Tel has moved far enough away from the other side - which would have made it very easy for Marasi to slam the door in their faces, if she was acting in bad faith.
She decided it was best not to point this out.
Their new surrounds were obviously a waiting room of some kind, with a dust-covered secretary's desk on one side and a few half-destroyed chairs on the other, as well as the withered remnants of a long-dead plant in the corner.
“Stay here,” the first guard told them. “And don’t touch anything.”
“You’re holding us at gunpoint,” Marasi noted. “Why should we listen to anything you say once you leave the room?”
“Survivor,” the second guard said, “always with the smart ones. Just- rustin’ wait in here, alright?”
“Don’t worry,” Tel said. “That’s what I’m here for. Well, that and the money.”
“Money?” the first guard asked.
“I got them to pay me to lead me in here.”
“Oh. Nice.”
The second guard didn’t actually slap his colleague upside the head, but it was one of the more convincing attempts at communicating the emotion through a glare alone that Marasi had seen.
“…sorry,” the first guard said.
The second guard sighed. “Alright,” he said, pointing back the way they’d come. “You go back to the post. I’ll talk to the boss, you keep an eye out in case its a distraction or- somethin’, I dunno.”
“Right.”
They moved in opposite directions, not turning away from the three of them. Tel moved to follow them, but the second guard stopped them with an upraised hand.
“You too, Pener’s kid.”
“Hey!” Tel protested. “I have a name.”
“Sure, but you didn’t actually tell us it.”
“...oh. Right. Also, why am I stuck here with them?!”
“Because,” the second one responded, “we have no reason to trust you?”
Tel deflated. “...well, rusts.”
“But you’re letting them keep my gun,” Marasi observed.
“Because we trust you even less.”
“…fair enough.”
As they both stepped out, the faint murmur of conversation briefly came through the far door, but died down even before the door had fully closed. Two clicks rang out, slightly out-of-sync, as both doors were locked from the outside.
As soon as they heard it, Tel's posture immediately relaxed back into their habitual slouch, all traces of petulance gone. “Damn, I’m good,” they said to no-one in particular.
“You’re a rat, is what you are,” Marasi snapped at them. “And now you’ve gotten your comeuppance for it.”
They sighed. “I’d say you need to get rid of the stick up your ass, Colms, but that’d require you getting your head out of the way first.”
As Marasi spluttered indignantly and MeLaan chuckled, they tossed her revolver up into the air, where it tracked a lazy half-flip before the barrel landed in their hand, grip outstretched towards Marasi.
“Hate these rustin’ things,” they muttered, holding out the gun towards her.
Marasi blinked, then quickly stepped forward to grab it back. She was unsettled enough that she didn't even bother correcting for the fact that it was upside-down before snatching it back, meaning she ended up holding the gun in a bizarre, awkward grip, with her pinkie finger closest to the trigger.
She quickly stepped back and fixed the gun's orientation before thumbing the hammer back and pointing it at Tel.
"Explain," she snapped. "Now."
They stuck their hands in their pockets, seeming utterly calm. "You want to talk to the bigwigs - now you can. You're welcome, by the way."
“Correction,” MeLaan said. “I really like this one.”
“Unless that comes with a paycheck,” Tel replied immediately, “I still don’t care.”
“Hm.” MeLaan waggled her hand side to side in that way she did. “Not as snappy the second time around.”
The look Tel gave Marasi could not have more clearly been judging her taste in women if they’d given a numerical score.
“So you… what?” she asked them. “Planned that all along?”
“I had a couple of ideas. This one jus’ ended up being the one that worked out. Seemed safest, an’ all.”
“Safe? You call this safe?”
“You’ve got a shocking lack of bulletholes for someone in lethal danger,” they noted dryly. “I’m sorry for failing to account for the coddlin' of your fragile ego, but that costs extra.”
“What isn’t safe was pointing this at me," Marasi said coldly. "Don't ever aim a firearm at someone unless you're willing to pull the trigger.”
Tel glanced down at the revolver, then back up at her.
"Well," they said after a moment, "in that case, I should probably mention that it's not loaded."
Marasi didn't move an inch. "Nice try."
"No, seriously." They held up a hand, revealing five revolver shells. Marasi raised the gun to eye-level, and found that sure enough, all five chambers were completely empty.
"...hm," she said at last, lowering the gun. Keeping it pointed at the floor, she slowly depressed the trigger and pushed the hammer back into its uncocked state. “Why?”
"Wouldn't have made a very good fake hold-up if I couldn't point the gun at you, now would it?"
“Hm,” she said again.”…say I believe you intended to be genuinely helpful. You still got two other guns pointed at me, and if you say you stole the bullets out of them as well, we are going to have words.”
“If you can’t handle having guns pointed at you,” they said flippantly, “you picked the wrong job.”
“At least I have a job, you- feckless reprobate,” Marasi snapped, the leash on her temper slipping for a second.
Tel barked out a laugh. “Holy crap, you even swear like a noble.”
“You do,” MeLaan confirmed cheerily. “I think it’s cute, in a kind of prissy way.”
“I still fail to see why I shouldn’t arrest you for obstruction of justice.”
“Oh yeah? ‘N how exactly are y’gonna do that?”
Marasi reached her off hand inside her pocket. "Do you really think I only brought five rounds?"
Tel held up their other hand, and opened it to reveal two speedloaders. Her two speedloaders, the ones Ranette had made for her. The ones that, the last time she’d checked, had been in her pocket. "I really didn't."
"Yknow, you do have to admire the skill," MeLaan said.
"I don't have to do anything."2
“Except complain, apparently,” Tel noted. “Here’s a reason for not arrestin’ me; I haven’t done anything except help you. And before y'start up again on the gunpoint thing, they were never actually gonna shoot ya. S'bad attention nobody round here needs."
"And of course," Marasi said, "nobody has ever fired a gun because they were panicked or stressed without thinking it through."
Tel let out an exaggerated yawn into the back of one hand. "Is Dawnshot this gunshy too? Woulda expected better, 'specially from a Metalborn."
They made eye contact as they did, and the glint Marasi saw made it clear they knew exactly what they were doing.
“You are a deeply unpleasant person," she replied instead.
“Hm,” they replied, holding up a hand. “I know you are, but what am I. Takes one to know one. If I’m unpleasant, what does that make you. Only following the golden rule.” With each item, they raised another finger. “Are you getting the point yet?”
“And childish, to boot.”
They rolled their eyes. “Lady, I’m eighteen. What’s your excuse?”
MeLaan snapped her fingers. "Eighteen. I thought you looked familiar.”
Tel went completely still. “…scuse me?”
“Beeker and Third clinic, right?”
For the first time since she'd met them, Marasi thought Tel actually looked genuinely shocked. "…y-yeah," they said slowly, cautiously. A little fearful, even. "How do you- know about that?"
MeLaan shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, I help out from time to time," she said, overly casual. "Could say I have a… founding interest, so to speak."
At that, Tel's eyes went very wide, before quickly narrowing as they pulled their features back into neutrality.
“Do I want to know?” Marasi asked tiredly.
MeLaan dismissed the question with a wave of one hand. "Don’t you worry about it.”
“Are you trying to be as condescending as possible?” Marasi snapped at her.
“Nah,” MeLaan drawled. “I can be way more condescending if I try.”
"Gross," Tel said. "Save the flirtin’ til I’m gone, would ya? At least pretend to have decorum.” Having said that, they picked something out of one nostril with a finger, inspected it, then flicked it off to one side.
"You're one to talk!"
"I'm not the one with pretensions of nobility," they shot back.
"Yes," Marasi agreed, "that would be aiming far too high. You should start with pretensions of basic hygiene and work upwards from there."
“I didn’ come here to be lectured, not by anyone 'n' 'specially not by you, Captain Colms."
"Then why are you here? If you do hate me so much. "
“I don’t hate ya. Hate’s got way more emotion behind it than you’re worth."
Marasi pressed on past the evasion. "Why are you here? Because at this point, I don't find the money plausible enough on its own. Why say yes to any of this, if it's such an inconvenience?"
Tel stuck both hands in their pockets and rocked on their heels a few times. “I'm here because Art’s a good person and a good friend,” they said, lacking any of the reticence Marasi would have expected them to have around being sincere. “Without her, you wouldn’t even have a foot in the door. If it were up to me I’d get her to kick your ass to the curb, but that would require her to think with her brain for once.”
…as opposed to?
“Seeing as it’s not up to me,” they continued, “then the least I gotta do is try and avoid landing her in even deeper crud than the stuff she stepped in willingly.”
"Which is me, I presume?"
"Look at that. Y'can teach an old pig new tricks."
"Oh, please," Marasi scoffed. "I'm not even a decade older than you."3
“Aww,” MeLaan said, “you think thirty is old. That’s adorable.”
“You,” Marasi snapped, rounding on her, “know very well that I’m twen- this is irrelevant. I’ll admit, yes, that this is not exactly how I saw this da- this day, going.”
“Honestly," MeLaan commented, "that one's probably more on you than anything." She'd gotten a coin from… somewhere, and was now idly flipping it into the air and catching it over and over.
Tel sniffed dismissively. "It’s not hard, Colms. Let me guess, got the badge wedged so far up the ass it never comes out?”
Marasi folded her arms. “I hear a great degree of criticism and very little that’s actually productive.”
“Aww, d’you need a picturebook? Not usin’ a date as an excuse to do more work would be a good start.”
…she didn’t really have a good counter for that one.
“So it was a date,” MeLaan mused easily. “Wondered about that. Mixing professional and personal again, Mara?”
As if you’re one to talk.
Tel’s eyes had lit up like gaslamps, and so Marasi was almost relieved when the far door opened up and the second guard returned, forestalling further conversation.
"Colms," he said, forcing the word out like it was glued to his teeth. "You have five minutes."
Tel made a little showy gesture, self-satisfaction evident on their face.
“Excellent,” Marasi started, taking a step forward.
He held up a hand. “That means just you.”
“That’s fine. It’s what I’d expected.”
“You know,” MeLaan commented casually, “if we’re hangin’ around, any chance of some reading material? Gettin’ a bit dull, ‘n all.”
“You try anything,” the guard continued, “and we cap both of ‘em.”
“What?!” Tel squawked over MeLaan’s laughter. “Are you kidding me? I’m on your side, you rustin’- blatherskites.”
The guard shot them a flat glare. “’Far as I’m concerned, you seem like you’re mainly on your own side.”
They deflated slightly at that. “I can be on multiple sides,” they muttered sourly.
“You,” the guard added, pointing his gun at MeLaan, “stop laughing.”
The kandra obeyed, the sound cutting out instantly like she’d thrown a lever. It would have been unnerving if Marasi hadn’t been expecting it; it had sounded nothing like her real laugh, full and throaty rather than a soft choked sound from the back of the throat-
-if that was her real laugh. Marasi wasn’t so sure anymore.
"I won't be long," Marasi said. One way or another.
"I just said five minutes."
"It's a courtesy," Marasi said dryly.
"...the thing you do instead of bowing?"
"You know," she said as she walked past him, "you would probably get along with a colleague of mine. That's not a compliment."
“Just rustin’ go.”
She went.
The click of the door shutting behind her probably sounded less like the hammer of a gun when she wasn’t on edge. As it was, it took composure not to flinch, as she stopped, halfway between the door and the large table ahead of her.
The room looked like it might have been used for conferences, once upon a time. A row of windows on one side looked out over the warehouse floor - empty of glass except for a few shards still lodged in the frames in a few places.
The table in question was old and battered, set in the centre of the room. It was made of solid, dark wood, but was heavily chipped and stained, with one leg missing entirely and poorly substituted with a night stand. Chairs of various makes were arranged around it, all in similar conditions to the table. Seated in the chairs were about a dozen people, only slightly more men than women. On average, they were older than the members of the gang that had been patrolling, which made sense for a leadership meeting. Marasi thought she could pinpoint two of the people based on descriptions, and three more she wouldn't put money on but had suspicions about. One chair, two down from the head, was empty.
At the very head of the table sat a woman-
…a strangely ordinary looking woman4. She had something of a portly build; not fat, but closer to it than skinny or muscular. If Marasi had to guess, she'd say she was on the far side of middle-aged, in that period that was far past young but not quite old5. Her skin was just dark enough that Marasi didn't feel confident guessing if she had Terris blood or if she just got far too much sun; the leathery, spotty quality to her skin certainly supported the latter interpretation. Her eyes were dark, wide-set and broad, with a slightly watery quality to them that belied the steel in her gaze. The high, blocky nose in between them had obviously been broken and poorly set on multiple occasions, and her lips were thin and a little chapped. An old, faded scar curved up from her throat and crossed over the corner of her mouth, exposing a sliver of teeth where the lips had been damaged. Marasi couldn't help but observe that it wasn't entirely dissimilar in shape to… well, to a fishhook, and wondered how intentional it was. Her hair was dark and scraggly, pulled back from face with a leather band and streaked with a few thin lines of grey at her left temple, revealing that the ear on the same side as the scar had been mangled beyond the point of recognition. It looked less like an ear and more like a crumpled piece of paper writ in flesh.
...which, in hindsight, was not exactly ordinary. Neither was the prominent scar, or the iron in her eyes, but still Marasi couldn't shake that initial impression. She looked less like she'd gotten her scars in a fight and more like she'd had a narrow miss with factory equipment. Considering who she'd come in with, though, Marasi needed no reminder that appearances could be deceiving.
"Well," the woman said slowly. "If it isn't Lady Marasi Colms."6Her voice was similarly bland, a faint outer-Octants accent draped over the rasp of a habitual smoker.
"Am I wearing a nametag?" Marasi asked, addressing no-one in particular. "Is my name stamped backwards on my forehead?"
The woman smiled humourlessly. "If you didn't want to be recognised, girl, you shouldn't have shacked up with Dawnshot Wax."
Marasi considered it a sign of personal growth that she saw the use of 'shacked up' for the bait that it was, and successfully ignored it. "It seems you have me at a disadvantage, then," she replied, drawing on her extremely-rusty formal etiquette as heavily as she could.
There was a flicker of teeth at the corner of the woman's mouth.
"You better watch your mouth, girl," the man at her right hand snarled, hand dropping below the table, but the woman tapped the table with a fingernail and he stopped cold.
"You know," she said, not breaking eye contact, "I find I don't believe that's actually true."
So, no common street thug, then. Not that Marasi had expected otherwise.
"A half-truth," she replied. "But seeing as you're not Ked Garder," she pointed at the man who'd spoken, "and you're not Edrei Rust," at the woman with the pockmarked face and large, rodent-like front teeth on the other side of the table, "and you're definitely not Icepick Irn, it only stands to reason that you must be Neiv Chatelier."
An ugly ripple went through the room at the mention of Irn's name, and only redoubled when she said that final name.
The woman tapped on the table again, and while the chatter didn't instantly cease, it still died away remarkably quickly.
"Say you're right," she said casually, "and I am who you say I am. You're not making a particularly strong case for you walking out of this room."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop at her words. Marasi did her best not to show the way she’d tensed up.
"I’m not,” she agreed carefully. “Because I don’t need to, and I don’t believe you stupid enough to not already know that."
Chatelier - and it was Chatelier, Marasi was sure of it - let out a long, low whistle. "Well, ain't I flattered. 'Not stupid enough', huh."
"I also don't believe you would get to be where you are if you were that bothered by faint praise."
“Oh?” she asked, dangerously calm. “Where, exactly, am I? If you’ll indulge my curiousity.”
In a warehouse at the head of a table, a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like a blend of Wayne and MeLaan suggested.
"At a crossroads," Marasi said.
There was at least one scoff at that, as well as a few laughs with varying degrees of disbelief and scorn.
Chatelier held up a hand, and the noise cut out. Not fear, Marasi saw, but respect. Or- camaraderie?
"You have a lot of nerve," she said. It felt like the beginning of a sentence, but the lack of followup left Marasi slightly off-balance, like a step slightly too tall.
"I do," she agreed. "and I appreciate you not, well. Shooting me, for it."
"Nothing's off the table yet," Rust muttered, dropping one hand off the table and out of sight.
"You don't want to do that," Marasi stated as calmly as she could. Between herself and MeLaan, she was confident in their ability to get themselves out safely, but inciting the ire of one of Elendel's major gangs like that was something to be avoided at all costs.
Thankfully, Chatelier gave the other woman a calm glance, and she immediately settled.
"Oh," she said dryly, "we're well aware that Dawnshot would pulp us like grapes. Believe me, Captain, I'm not letting you walk out of here because I like you."
Marasi forced down her rising ire. As much as it stung that they'd assumed she'd have to rely on Wax's favour, it was neither the time nor place to try and argue that point. No matter how badly she wanted to.
"Now," she continued, "d'you want to get to your point, or keep playing word games until I change my mind?"
Marasi inclined her head, acknowledging the point. "First of all," she said slowly, "I'm sorry for being- flippant, just before. About Irn. I'm sorry for your loss."
The look Chatelier gave her at that was utterly unreadable.
"...hm,” she said at last. “Shockingly, I don’t believe you.”
“Well, I do. Just because I-” haven’t got a good way to finish this sentence? “A death is always regrettable,” she quickly amended instead. “No matter who or how.”
"That's a pretty rustin' picture, comin' from a conner," a man rumbled.
Marasi ignored him. “Secondly, I’m here with a request.”
“A request,” Garder spat.
Chatelier’s eyes narrowed slightly. “As a constable, or as yourself?”
“I fail to see the difference.”
“‘Fail’ is the right word. Spit it out, then.”
Marasi straightened her shoulders. Took a breath, discreetly double-checked her exits. “I know that by now, you’re most likely organising to extract rev- retribution, from the Vedarans. For the deaths of your people.”
“Are we supposed to be impressed by the deduction?”
“No. I was simply hoping to request that you… not, do that?”
A foghorn blew in the background, easily audible over the complete silence that filled the room.
"...holy shit," Edrei said after a second. "Boss, I think she's proper crazy."
“You can’t be serious,” Chatelier said slowly.
“I’d hardly do all this for a joke,” Marasi replied in the same manner. That’s more Wayne’s province, anyway. “Sometimes, it’s better to cut to the quick. If I risk my own person in doing so, well, is that not the basic idea of law enforcement? I’d rather do that than let things be and endanger others.”
“Believe you me,” Chatelier said to a chorus of low chuckles, “risk to your own person is absolutely still on the table. Hell, I’m tempted to shoot you in the foot just on principle.”
In through the nose, out through the mouth. Calm face, calm mind. “If that’s what it’ll take to get you to listen.”
“Boss,” Edrei said, leaning forward. “Ten boxings and I get to be the one to shoot her?”
“I’ll raise you twenty,” another voice rumbled.
Chatelier waved a hand. “None of that, now,” she said airily, not managing or not bothering to hide her amusement. “None of you could outbid me anyway.” That got a round of laughter, disconcerting in its sincerity. "Talk, Colms. Before the bidding gets too high."
Marasi was… sixty percent confident the other woman wouldn't actually shoot her in the foot.
Her eyes, when Marasi looked, had the utter unreadable placidity of a muddy puddle.
...so maybe fifty-five percent.
"You're not stupid, as has been established already. You know that conflict in the streets, no matter the initial reason, will only raise tensions. Violence only begets violence."
"Spoken like someone who's injudicious with their violence."
Whatever that meant, Marasi had no interest in unpacking. “At a bare minimum, the Vederens will not simply let you walk all over them. Some of you will die. Statistically, it’s as good as a guarantee.”
“Would have thought you’d be happy about that, eh?”
“What? No, of course not! Why would you even think- death is always a waste. Always.”
The laughter this time was ugly and mean, and interspersed with noises or language that did away with the pretence of humour entirely.
“Pure rustin’ metal, coming from a conner,” Garder snarled.
“For the Survivor’s sake, stop acting like we’re the bloody Steel Ministry,” Marasi snapped.
“Oh, no,” Chatelier agreed. “The Steel Ministry by all accounts was upfront about what they were.”
“And what exactly is that-” Marasi caught herself, took a deep breath. Rattled off election dates in her head until she felt a bit more steady. “None of this is important right now.”
“To you.”
“To either of us, any of us. I understand your loss, I do, but if the wrong bullet goes astray right now, your losses will be far, far worse.”
“Is that a threat?” Chatelier asked calmly.
“A warning.”
“A warning that would have us rolling over and presenting our throats like a tame dog to the largest crime syndicate in the city. We’ve been done wrong by the Vederens, and we intend to extract recompense. It’s called justice - you probably wouldn’t be familiar, in your line of work.”
Marasi ignored the barb - she was getting quite used to it by now. "You may have been done wrong by the Vederen family. The circumstances are… extenuating. Suspicious."
Chatelier's eyes narrowed slightly. "You're saying we're being manipulated."
Was she saying that? It was a possibility she hadn't fully considered until that moment, but she found it didn't hold up to closer inspection. "Not. Not necessarily. I won't rule it out, but there's not much to suggest it at this point. But there is something afoot, beyond the surface facts, and until that's known, acting hastily might spark a feud where one might not have formed on its own.”
"Convenient, how the best course of action just so happens to be us sittin' pretty on our hands and doing nothing. You're not exactly a neutral party here, Captain."
"...no," Marasi agreed, "I'm not. You're right that it does benefit me, but that doesn't discount the advantage it gains you. But… haven’t they paid, too? As many of their people died that night as yours. If there are scales, surely that would balance them?”
“How easy it must be to be you, thinking you know how red anyone’s blood is from on high.”
“How red will the blood of your families and friends on the streets be?” Marasi countered, then immediately held up a hand. “Not a threat.”
“How red’s yours?” Edrei said. “Why don’t we find out? Oh, but it’s not a threat, ‘course.”
“Just as red as anyone else’s,” Marasi replied, having thoroughly lost track of the euphemism and in all honesty not being familiar with it in the first place. “No more and no less.”
“Well if yer so sure, won’t be a problem if we check, eh?”
“Enough,” Chatelier said. “Colms. Do you have anything other than a dubious claim and some fearmongering?”
"So let's talk straight." At the edge of her hearing, Marasi thought she heard a poorly-suppressed snort from the next room.
"Fine by me," she replied.
Chatelier straightened her posture, folding her hands on the table.
"You're going to walk out of that door with all your fingers and toes still attached, and you're going to be grateful for it. So grateful, in fact, that you're not going to step foot anywhere near here ever again.”
“...when you say ‘here’-”
“If you have to ask, you’re not far enough away. And if we see a single upperside nose being poked in, we will be returning it via post.”
Marasi sighed. She’d done all she could. “Fine, then.”
Chatelier clicked her tongue, loud and sharp. Marasi froze halfway through turning around, the temperature in the room seeming to drop. For a moment, she was sure that the other woman was about to change her mind and shoot her, have her shot.
“You have five days,” was all Chatelier said.
Huh. “That’s awfully generous,” she said cautiously. “Why give me anything at all, after all that?”
“Boss-” Edrei Rust started uncertainly, but Chatelier held up a hand to forestall her.
“I’m not giving you anything, Colms. But whatever it is you think you can do, you’d better be able to do it within five days. Maybe you’ll actually be able to achieve something; maybe it’ll rain atium. But if you want to get yourself killed by the Vederens, that’s your deadline to get it done.”
“...thank you-”
“I’m not done. You thought you could walk in here and start handing out advice? Here’s some advice in return. Run back to your mansion and hide, Lady Colms. Leave the jackbooting to your colleagues, leave actually solving problems to people like us, and go back to pressing butterflies into books or thinking about getting your hands on Dawnshot’s trigger.”
That gained another round of ugly snickers, and shamefully, Marasi could feel her cheeks burning. “Thank you,” she managed to say. “I appreciate you taking the time to hear me out.”
Chatelier snorted, leaning back in her chair. “You can appreciate having all your digits still attached, and thank me by getting out of my sight before I change my mind.”
Marasi nodded once, then turned and walked back towards the doors where she’d entered. She paused, hand halfway to the knob, and looked back at the tableau behind her, all arranged around the table, and the woman at their head.
“All I want is to avoid bloodshed,” Marasi said. “That’s it.”
Chatelier's smile was absolutely humourless, colder than the Pits themselves.
"Then, Captain, you are in the wrong line of work."
1. Manufactured out in Feltrel, on the other side of the Channerel Range, Swith arms were cheaply produced in large quantities; Wax had noted in an aside once that the vast majority of guns he’d had shot at it him in his life had been Swiths. With the advances in shipping craft, they had flooded into Elendel in recent years through the Bay and up the Ironspine, mostly facilitated by the Fishhook Gang. Marasi had been under the impression that they used arms trading as a source of profit, but seeing members of the gang wielding the firearms seemed to suggest otherwise.[back]
2. She was grudgingly impressed, she just hated being told what to feel. Hated MeLaan telling her what to feel.[back]
3. Technically true, but getting alarmingly close to not being so.[back]
4. Not in the way MeLaan's newest face was, so nonspecific and average as to become unique in itself, but merely… unexceptional. Unremarkable.[back]
5. Which is to say, probably somewhere between fifty-five and sixty.[back]
6. This was technically untrue. While Marasi was the last living member of House Colms, she had not inherited the title - and in fact, no-one ever would again. Upon the death of Marasi's "mother" (who was in truth her great-aunt), House Colms had been quietly folded back into House Harms, where it had originated. The small townhouse that along with its contents was the sole estate of the House was currently occupied by one of her aunts and her family. As far as Marasi was concerned, they were welcome to it.[back]