One of Clubs
Seventeenth Day of the Fourth Month 293 AC
To wake up early was nothing new to Anya, not even after a long night like the day before. Though even after a few months, it still felt strange to have the reasons for her early start in the day shifted so much. Back in Gulltown, it was paramount for her to come early to that one unremarkable warehouse in the middle of a unremarkable part of the docks. If you came early, all the easy jobs were still there and even if some other things paid better, she had always believed in earning only a bit of coin rather then dying while trying to get a lot of it. Others sometimes called it cowardice or the dainty sensibilities of woman-folk, though those same people were sometimes found with a slit throat in a random alley, so she never gave much though to these comments. Here in the deep though, she now was on the other side of it all.
The Lawmen the king had named them, though despite their other responsibilities, their daily life was not that different from any other city watch. Go out and find a few petty criminals to arrest or shake them down for some coin, though the latter option was getting a bit risky lately as the king had apparently taken a dim view of such acts. It was thus quite fortunate that Anya could rightfully claim to never have done such. Just as she had been a petty thief and then a petty thug with all her heart, she had wholly embraced her new role as aid to the Lawmen. She wasn't really that important though, just one of many hired people so that the few full lawmen could actually carry out all of the duties assigned to them, but it paid decently and it was nice to be the one to make arrests instead of fearing them.
Though the hours were just as grueling as before she came to the Deep, drawn by that strange urge to see the place that so many sailors spoke of in hushed tones. She had often considered to leave Westeros for other ports, most likely Braavos, but never quite had the heart for it. But this place somehow called to her, maybe for it's reputation of a gleaming city of nothing but rogues and purse-cutters, upwards from the gutter right to the king himself, or so the sailors said at least. It had been both less and more when she had glimpsed her new home for the first time. Far less strange and terrifying then the wilder tales implied, but also much more welcoming and peaceful then she had anticipated.
They didn't even pry all that much into her past when she decided to hire with the Lawmen, thinking it a strange name for a local band of thugs back then and being quite surprised when she stood before a sturdy building that reeked of a copper hide-out. Anya nearly turned tail and ran when she noticed her mistake, but some morbid fascination drew her in, trusting that her clean slate in the Deep would mean that it was not truly a risk. It brought her all the way to her future boss, who calmly questioned her about her skills and abilities to determine if he had a use for her. Not even that she was a woman raised any eyebrows, her proficiency with blades from daggers to greatswords nothing anyone scoffed at, just another bit written down in something they called her 'file'. Then again, the Lawmen also boasted a bull-man, a talking monkey and someone with webbed hands that looked as if his mother had a dalliance with a frog among their number. Having tits seemed pretty inconsequential among
that bunch.
On mornings like these though, she kind of regretted joining up with a bunch of people that
expected her to be up and about by the crack of dawn. She had learned early to function only on a whiff of sleep. A street urchin in Gulltown could either sleep in or find a way to stay fed for the day, not both. The nightmares did the rest, plaguing her sometimes for a weeks at a time, then staying quite for whole months, but whenever they struck, she could maybe properly sleep one night out of three. Right now they were going on in full strength, to the point that the other aids had joked about throwing sanctified water in her face to check if she had not joined the living dead, so pale and disheveled did she look.
After hauling herself out of her bed and getting some water to wash up, she briefly studied her face to check if it had gotten any better, but to no avail. Her usually light-brown skin looked like a piece of old parchment, her green eyes adorned with dark bags that made her look as if she had lost a fist-fight recently and her red hair stuck out at the oddest angles from twisting and turning all night again. With nothing that she truly could do about it, she just dunked her face into the bucket, trying to clear the last cobwebs from her mind. But when her face touched the cold water, the memory of the dream came slamming back. It was a cold rain on her face, as it was common in the Vale. Lightning high above. Cold, thick blood running down her neck. A man screaming.
The next she knew, Anya sat on the floor of her room, the water seeping into the floorboards all around her and the bucket lazily rolling under her bed. It was bad. She needed sleep, not to wake up in cold sweat each morning. But there was nothing that she could do about it. Alcohol just made it worse and even the attempt to get help from the snake-priests was futile. They couldn't find anything that would explain her nightmares, neither subtle works of magic, nor any signs of a sickness of her mind. It was cold comfort to know that she was not mad or at least not mad enough for an old man that worshiped a snake to consider it odd.
Routine helped somewhat though. Doing menial things made the memories fade and working long meant that her exhausted body would get a little bit more rest before her mind could dream up the images. In silence and with well practiced movements did she get her gear in order. Clean clothes, one of the things she still had not quite gotten used to, and before putting on the shirt a finely made chain-shirt that had been stuffed liberally with cotton to stop it from clinking to loudly. It also kept her warm. Far too warm for the southern climate, but it also meant that someone trying to stab her in the kidneys would be confused long enough by his dagger glancing off that she could draw her long-sword. Better uncomfortable then dead. The brown coat she wore above it all didn't help the matter that much, but it did conceal her weapon and had ample pockets. Whoever had decreed that a woman's clothes needed no pockets deserved to be hanged.
She made it all the way out to the street before her conscious mind took back over from habit. Slowly the sun was creeping up behind the mountains, wrapping the kings keep in strange shadows that seemed to move whenever you were not looking. Or maybe the tales about the weird things happening behind those walls made people see snarks and grumpkins in everything that even remotely related to the place. It was known that casting strange shadows were more the task of the Scholariums tower after all. A short snort made it's way past the exhaustion that still gripped Anya. Odd how you could get used to pretty much everything if you lived long enough in this city.
But for her, nothing strange or fantastical waited today. Just another day in the Lawmen and the closest she would ever get to sorcecery would be the petty tricks some of the students showed off in the taverns now and then. Yet life had been good ever since she came here, a strange feeling of belonging replacing the paranoia of the old days in Westeros. So she stood a while, soaking in the first rays of sunshine. If she took a bit of time to get used to the heat of her clothes in the morning, it wouldn't be as bad come mid-day. And besides, it was quite pleasant to enjoy the morning sun and the salty breeze of the island. If her comrades thought she looked like a walking corpse, they sure wouldn't mind her coming a bit late to her shift.
The clinking of metal told Anya that she was there a good bit before she actually entered the street. The layout of the city was quite orderly, the streets wide and straight, but you could still get lost among the neat rows of houses if you were not familiar with that particular section of the Deep. As she rounded the last corner, she stood among the many poles that made the noise. Broken slave collars were hung on every lantern, sometimes chains spanned across them to make room for more. Chain Street did they call the paved way in the westernmost part of the harbor. Clearly the work of a very creative bunch of sailors.
Here the raiders hung the collars of the galley slaves that they had freed for everyone to see. As the tales went, it had started in the first days of the kings rule here, as slaver ships sometimes came into port without knowing how the rules had changed. Now it was a bit of a tradition among the captains and a endless source of bragging and competition among them. It was quite the irony that the ship she was headed for had docked next to this specific street and that she was called for this so very specific crime.
She nearly missed a step as the thought had made it through her head and Anya had to silently scold herself for thinking up a pun this terrible, even if it was by accident. Then again, she wore a
copper badge hidden under the lapel of her coat. Whoever had come up with that idea had either the greatest or the most terrible sense of humor in the Narrow Sea. Which of the two dependent largely on if it was the king or just a random bureaucrat who had come up with it.
As she stepped up to the plank of the rather damaged looking ship she had been ordered to, one of the few crewmen on board came to her and tried to wave her away. "Sorry lady. The captain ain't having to chat right now. Come back later with whatever you want."
"From what I was told, he won't be speaking any time soon again." Putting on her most winning smile, which probably was not very winning with how she looked these days, she lifted her lapel to reveal the copper brooch of a three-headed dragon. "Could you show me where it happened?"
He paused for a moment, then turned around and waved her to follow. "No idea why you even come. He was alone last night and it's just warehouses here, so I'm betting nobody saw a thing."
They walked over the deck of the small galley, the few crew-members not sparing them a single glance. Oddly enough though, neither did they seem terribly interested in the matter at hand at all. "All alone? Not a single one from the crew was on the ship?"
"Huh? Oh. You think we are his crew?" He glanced backward while opening a door for Anya, receiving a questioning look in return. "We are shipwrights. He paid us to fix up this wreck and I'm glad he did in advance. I think the old crew bolted when he came in and he was all alone here for a while, trying to pawn off his cargo to get some coin for the repairs."
They reached another door, though this one was made a bit sturdier then the others and from a finer wood to boot. The captains quarters. Before she could say another word to him, the shipwright had already gone again, leaving her all alone, but at least having put the key to the room in before he left. Anya held her breath for a few moments, steeling herself for the view she was about to get. It had happened just last night and she was never on the squeamish side, but bodies had a way to turn disgusting in a hurry in the southern heat.
When the door swung open, she got a nose full of stale blood, but thankfully neither rot nor flies had yet taken hold of the departed captain. He lay there in the middle of his cabin just as it had been reported to the Lawmen, wearing simple clothes of local make instead of the garish frippery she would have expected from a Lyseni captain. His skull was oddly deformed, blood having leaked out of it and pooled beneath the body. Both arms and legs were broken, stretching away from the twisted torso as if not a single bone was still whole in them. Somebody had clearly taken great care of properly working over the poor sod from head to toe with a club or hammer.
It seemed all so clear. All so easy. A slave-rowed galley in the Deep? There was not a lot of guesswork needed to find the most likely reason for his death. Anya silently cursed that she hadn't learned her letter yet, for whatever the killer had carved into his victims back was most likely tantamount to a written confession that the captain had been killed for his hiring practices. Though sadly whoever had done it would probably not sign his handiwork, so the point was moot in the end.
Though all these easy explanations left a ashen taste in Anyas mouth. She had been told before departing here that the man had been acquitted in his trial for practicing slavery. That didn't happen very often and the people tended to respect that verdict. Sure, there was a chance that someone took exception to his freedom. Revenge killings were an all too common thing from freshly freed slaves she had been told. But two weeks after the trial? This was not the work of someone in trows of rage. The care with which the captain had been tortured to death made that even less likely.
While she had always considered herself a bit cleverer then many others, Anya didn't consider herself terribly smart, but she could smell a setup this blatant from the other side of town. What had her stumped though was the one thing that truly stuck out among it all. In his right hand, laid there, not grasped, for people are known to have a hard time to hold on things with their fingers turned into a bleeding mush, he held a small square made from paper. On one side of it, smeared liberally with dried blood, was a neatly drawn picture of a club. It was not even coal or something simple, but vibrant dye and complicated patterns surrounded the crude wooden club in the middle of it.
Anya sighed deeply as she studied the paper thing that was probably worth more then her monthly salary, if not even more then that. One of those killers that felt they were cleverer then everyone else and left a mark behind as if this was some cliched mummers play. The whole matter was mess waiting to happen, no matter what she did and while temptation was there to just go with the set-up and call it a revenge killing, she didn't want to let that smug bastard think she had actually fallen for his amateurish ploy. She could already feel the frustration that was surely waiting for her.
Maybe her boss
had minded that she came in late.
AN: This basic plot-line has been bouncing in my head for quite a while, but now I finally found the missing pieces to tie it all together. Needless to say, expect to read more from Anya.
