Work Text:
It was well after three by the time Clara got home. Tomlan had long since gone to sleep, clothes discarded on the floor as usual. He had a delivery due early in the morning and didn’t trust the apprentices to be suitably careful with the delicate imported wood. Luckily, he still slept like Ganiel’s own pet and Clara could easily slip under their quilt without fear of disturbing him. She peeled off her tunic and breeches, found her shift and curled up next to her faintly snoring man. He was warm as the hearth and she felt the cold seep slowly out of her weary limbs. She sighed in relief to be home and off duty for another night.
Most days she enjoyed her work as Watch Sergeant. It was easier on her bones, and she knew she was good at keeping order. She wasn’t up to Ahuda’s level of instant obedience yet, but she had time. It was a new challenge, and she needed all her wits about her to manage it.
Nights like this one, when the cages were full with overflow from Unicorn District and Ersken carried Birch in with a broken leg and arm, she could wish to be back on the street, bashing heads in with Cooper and Tunstall. Cooper was off with her new man on another mission for the crown. Sir Acton had assured her that they would be back before Midwinter, but she had learned by now to ferret out his half-truths when it came to her dogs. And Tunstall... Ah, Tunstall. It was difficult to think on him without her heart aching. Try as she might, she could not reconcile the excellent friend and partner of fourteen years with the traitor he had become.
***
She’d first met Matthias a few months after Myaral Fane had chucked him off for good. He’d been a sad, brown dog at the time and their old Watch Sergeant had thrown Clara at him to kick him out of his doldrums. Old Fetherhes knew that Clara, young as she was, would take no guff from a mopey new partner. Less than a fortnight later, they were Goodwin and Tunstall, scourge of the Cesspool rats.
Tunstall let everyone believe that he’d thrown off Myaral since she’d wanted to settle down where he’d wanted a life of fun, but Clara new the truth. Myaral had longed for babies and a home, and Matthias had been ready to try when he was promptly dumped in the gutter. Myaral had found a cove she didn’t have to wait up nights for, and that was the end of it. She might have taken up with him herself if Tomlan hadn’t come back around the same time. They were better partners than they would have been lovers, and so Clara left it to the Goddess’s hand that she went home alone the night of the Pebblestreet fires. And great partners they had been, much to the dismay of the rushers and foists they encountered. It had been a good life while it lasted.
***
Tomlan turned in his sleep and threw his arm over Clara’s waist, breaking her melancholy reverie. His snoring was louder now, with him on his back, but Clara didn’t mind. It was a sad state of affairs, but she never could sleep soundly without him snoring beside her. His last trip to Port Caynn had seen her up nights sewing by candlelight, wondering how she’d gotten herself into such a mess.
***
She’d known Tomlan as an apprentice in her father’s shop. He’d been a comely lad with a big mop of unruly brown hair and two of the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. When she came in from the puppy barracks for her one decent meal each week, she’d catch him watching her when he thought her attention was elsewhere. He’d been a gangly lad, a mite shorter than her, though strong and wiry from his work in the shop. Her mind had been on her training then, and she’d not given it much thought. The attention was nice, but Clara had no time for boys as a puppy. She’d barely had time for them when she finally made dog.
It was Matthias who’d made her take a second look, when she’d brought him home to meet her Ma and Da. Clara hadn’t noticed anything special about Tomlan’s friendly helpfulness. That was the way he’d always treated her. Matthias thought differently. He’d mocked her ceaselessly on the walk home to the Lower City over the “blue eyes that followed her as she were a princess and not a dog more like to sit in the gutter than on a throne.”
A sennight later, she had peered with fresh eyes at the journeyman carpenter across her father’s table, no longer the gangly lad she’d first met. He was several hands taller than when he’d first arrived and strong across the chest and arms. Clara looked up to meet a pair of blue eyes that were much more knowing and full of mischief than she remembered. She felt her cheeks flame with a new, unaccountable desire to brush the hair out of his face as he winked in acknowledgment of her frank appraisal.
When the meal was over, Tomlan had offered to walk her home. He had offered to escort her on more than one occasion, but that was the first time she had agreed. They walked in silence until she could bear the tension no longer. She had pulled him into a shadowed recess between two buildings, brushed the temping locks from his face, and kissed him soundly. When they resumed their stroll back to her lodgings, it was arm in arm.
***
Clara held that arm against her now, reveling in the heat it gave off. Her job might change, her friends might change, but Tomlan would be there. It was a great comfort knowing that, even at her worst, she’d never quite managed to drive him off. She had found a good man, and he had supported her efforts to become a better woman. The day she was anointed a magistrate of the Goddess, he’d wasted a full silver noble on fine fabric and thread. She grumbled at the extravagance, but had been filled with both their pride.
She sighed and felt herself begin to drift off to the whuffles from the other side of the mattress. The sound let her relax more than it had any right to. In their home, to the sound of her lovely man, Sergeant Goodwin became Clara. Clara could fall asleep without the weight of the Lower City on her shoulders, and so she did.