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Chapter 6. Family Ties |
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heavy rain descended upon Lion’s Arch as the gray and gloomy afternoon slouched into night. It was a tropical downpour, warm as spit, and the moisture only served to amplify the pungent leavings of humanity strewn on the cobbles outside the Mermaid, one of the city’s rougher ale houses. Belenus did not leave the establishment by the usual means. His lanky body struck the cobbles with a damp thud, his once fine clothes already soaked with spirits and blood. “And don’t go showin’ yer face ‘round here ‘til you have the coin!” roared a voice with teeth in it. Dazed though he was, Belenus winced before scrambling to his feet like a drunken spider. Wobbling, he fell over again when his pack struck him full on the chest. He gathered it under one arm like a recalcitrant child and crawled into the shadows. Once he was clear of the tavern’s sepulchral light, he propped himself back to his feet with the help of a door frame and sought instinctively for the coin pouch stashed in the pack’s depths. As expected, there was not so much as a pinch of lint. “Lyssa be damned,” he muttered angrily. He should have stopped when he was ahead. Double or nothing, and here he was with double the nothing. Ugh, he needed to find a way to pay Pounder Figgins or find a fast boat out of Kryta. Sadly, he had debts in every port, and with them, angry loan sharks. He was running out of places to run, and that meant he would have to knuckle down and work again. The rain hammered his dark unruly hair down around his prominent nose, etching lines through the accumulated blood and filth that marred his features. Once he might have been considered handsome, but hard drink and fighting had given his angular visage a predatory harshness. Life may have been cruel to him, but the angle of his jaw suggested he was more than willing to give it all back and then some. Swearing, he lurched into the open plaza of Lion’s Arch. There were few about at this time of the evening and most of them were drunk or planning on it. The city guards did little more than kick the ones that had already succumbed, and a few stooped to take coin pouches. Ah yes, Kryta, crooked whore of the Tyrian continent. He hated her to the same degree that he used her. People came here to disappear. Slicking back his lank mane, he made a conscious effort to straighten his back as he headed toward the Lion Guard barracks. Lucky for him, the people who wanted to find the disappeared had the presence of mind to file their wanted posters with the local constabulary. A warm lantern glow flowed over the half door entrance. A pair of watchmen stood nearby chatting under the shelter of the portico eaves, pausing briefly to smirk at him as he approached. Belenus nodded deferentially to them before approaching the door, grateful to be out of the rain if only for a moment. “Ah, Master Belenus, fancy seeing you again,” said Ugras. He was the local bailiff in charge of serving warrants and paying bounties. Plump and balding, Belenus had yet to see the man leave the small building. He rumbled stiffly to his feet and trundled toward a large familiar tome that rested on a dusty shelf, “Looking to hunt a bigger scum than yourself? You’re nothing if not predictable.” Somehow Belenus managed to stay standing while he flicked through the pages of notices. Many of the names were familiar to him now. He even knew a few of them personally. To demonstrate progress had been made, a few had been stamped in red with the Lion Guard seal to indicate the perpetrator had been brought to ground. “It’s a wonder you haven’t showed up in there,” Ugras snorted, “You want to stay away from Pounder’s lot or you’ll end up dead, or good as. Gods help you if you owe him money.” Belenus kept his face down but his hand trembled slightly as he scanned the pages. “Some of these are a year or more old.” “Most likely dead or they’s got friends hiding ’em. Though I don’t fancy the kind of friends your lot keeps. Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas, my mam always said.” Friends. Belenus had pretty much exhausted that possibility. The trouble with friends is they put a price on things. So he’d borrowed a little money here and there, they need not treat him like a pariah. The only thing better than friends was family and these days, thanks to the Searing, he had little enough of that to go around. Still, he had no where to go that night and he was not about to bed down while it was still raining. He might as well peruse the guild rosters and see if any familiar names cropped up. If nothing else, at least he’d be able to dry off. The guild registrar scowled at him as he entered the snug little building and stood dripping near the heavy iron brazier. “Let me guess, still looking for a guild? What a surprise,” the bespectacled figure cracked snidely. “Why yes, as a matter of fact I am,” Belenus said, a dangerous edge to his voice, “Ye’d be wise not to toy with a mesmer.” “Mesmer,” the man laughed wheezily, “Drunk bum is more your class. You couldn’t menace a fly off a pile of dung.” “I’d like to see the most recent guild charters, please,” Belenus muttered. The registrar threw a dirty rag at him and gestured toward a low wooden lectern upon which a book was currently spread open. “It’s where it usually is. Dry off your hands before you touch anything. And no ripping pages out or I’ll have you thrown in the slammer.” Belenus rolled his eyes and sat on the rickety stool before the lectern, working backwards through the most recent entries. It always amazed him how quickly some guilds rose and collapsed like sandcastles before the tide. He expected to find no more than he usually did, names that had no faces, guilds with titles both preposterous and vain. And then he nearly fell off the stool. He picked up the registrar’s pen and scrawled the name of the guild leader across his heavily lined palm. “Moggie, my dear brother, what a surprise for us both,” he thought grimly, “and Lyssa owes me a turn of good luck.” |
