We had returned back to the barracks, ready to debrief on what we had seen, or rather, not seen, when Javier’s boss requested our presence.

I was sweating at the thought of the meeting, given she was the leader of the city guard, Amalaris. I couldn’t believe she wanted any time with us. We were just trainees, mere peons, unformed members of the city guard. There was a wide margin for our room for growth and what our current output was, and yet this was enough to summon us to her presence.

Her office was well lit, lanterns on either side of the chair behind her desk. Papers were strewn messily throughout the room, piles and stacks of papers lining the walls, no consistent height to any of them. It was a mausoleum to productivity— if there was a sorting system to the madness of the room, only Amalaris knew it.

We had filtered into the room, leaving me moving about ever so slightly, looking for an empty square of floor to stand on. How did Javier manage to stay abreast of the papers? I felt like my legs were split a little too wide in my quest to avoid harming the trail left by my superiors, strewn across the room, but no one else looked like they had the same trouble. Must be a skill reserved for those with a sufficient time spent in the city.

“I’m not mad, Javier,” Amalaris prefaced her argument.

“I didn’t think you were mad,” he replied, refusing to meet her gaze.

“Well maybe you should have,” she said, words insufferably dry. There was a subtle twitch of her eyebrow, eyes threatening to pop out. Repressed emotions seemingly surfaced easily for her, even if she managed to keep them under control.

“I thought you weren’t mad though?”

“Don’t change the subject with me. Why didn’t you manage to capture any of the rioters?” She demanded, rising from her seat and slamming her desk. Papers flew off it, fluttering about the room, but no one moved to grab them. We were all afraid of drawing her ire.

“Amalaris… you had commanded us to protect the protesters. Not to hunt down the rioters. What, did none of the other guards manage to catch them?”

“They didn’t know they should, but you should have known better, Javier. You’re the only team I can trust for this sort of thing?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He picked at his beard, waiting for her to fill the assumption that was still yet unsaid.

She sighed, sliding back into her seat. “Have you really fallen so far as to need compliments from me? Fine. You’re currently our most… reasonable guard. I expected you to realize that we would have liked to interrogate one of the troublemakers, especially given you have a prey beast soul.”

“What, I was supposed to have my team beat them up and then remind our victims that they also have prey beast souls to prey on their sympathy? Everyone was lobbing foul invectives as we went to the marketplace. Sympathy was not going to be a meaningful matter then.” While Javier had been prone to correcting us, I hadn’t seen him address anyone so passive aggressively before. Perhaps even he couldn’t go directly against his boss.

“Fine, fine. We’ll let that slide, even if you should have known better.” Javier’s eyes rolled at a rapid speed—I was afraid they were going to pop out of his head. Evidently only silent rebellion against Amalaris was allowable.

He drew his arms against his chest, foot tapping lightly on the ground. “Then why did you actually call for us then?”

“Given you failed at the first attempt, it’s time for the second attempt, Javier. We need more information on these protesters and rioters. I don’t know if they truly overlap or not, but we can’t be blind to further measures. It was only by their grace that they didn’t escalate matters further. You know we’d prefer not to harm the citizens. If we can get a head-start on their wants and origins, then we’d be able to survive the next riot.” She finished her words as though she had sprinted and was just coming to a halt, panting ever so slightly. She had sped through her words, the sounds tumbling out of her mouth faster than she could find the time to put in the cadences of rhetoric and ethos.

His lip shone with the light of his teeth nibbling against the soft flesh. “So you want us to spy on them. Do we have any leads yet?”

“You’re not going to argue against that?” Amalaris asked, confusion visible on her face.

“Of course not. You’re the boss. You make the rules. And your concerns were not unfounded. It’s not like we can work on our main mission yet, and this will provide additional training for my team. Something easier. Less prone to excessive violence and harm. Perfect for the recovering trainees to not suffer any other meaning wounds.” His voice was filled with tired resignation.

“Well, that was easier than I had expected. You bristled at the other suggestions I had before, and I would prefer not to put undue stress on some of my best workers,” she said, wiping her forehead with a cloth she pulled out of nowhere. It felt like they had forgotten that the rest of us were there, not that I was outright complaining about the outcome. A break from attacking spike feeders would do my body good. People were less likely to try and gouge out my flesh.

“Sorry for being amenable. Sorry for being agreeable. Sorry for being receptive to your requests. Guess next time I’ll ignore them,” he said, turning away from Amalaris.

She stood up, and then sat down once again, before settling on hovering somewhere along the path of rising from her desk. “Don’t you speak in repetitions of three to me. I told you I don’t like that.”

“Don’t do anything that merits me needing to speak like that then,” he quickly retorted.

I could have watched them verbally spar the rest of the day, but something told me that wasn’t going to be a productive use of our time, let alone her time. “So where should we look for the protesters?” I prompted, trying to get the conversation back on track.

She raised an eyebrow, sitting down once more. “Is he the new one?”

“That’s right.”

“You get a pass, kiddo, due to your relative ignorance, but don’t interrupt our conversation again.” I felt the heat rush to my cheeks. Shame had never felt so hot.

A groan echoed from Javier’s chest. “Oh don’t you bully him. It sounds like you’re still avoiding answering that question.”

The room grew silent. Amalaris refused to look in our direction, rifling through the papers on her desk, until the refusal to acknowledge our presence became too much to ignore. “Fine. Fine, Javier, fine. We don’t have any suitable leads yet. You’re on your own.”

He bowed back to her, motioning for us to prepare to leave the room. “Very well then. We’ll scour the city looking for any leads. We’ll search high and low. We’ll talk to even the most insignificant person, until we find out some more information on the prey soul protesters. Come along, team. Time to head out.”

We nodded— I personally squeaked out a brief “as you say, boss”— and left her office, heading back to our room to inform Mia of our return and impending activity.

“We’re spies now?” she said. Evidently the person who was watching her left as soon as word of the riot ended, leaving her with mixed feelings on the matter.

“That’s one way to describe it, Mia,” Alain interjected. “The other way could be seen as fact finders, or truth seekers.”

“Or crusaders attacking the unrighteous,” Vera chimed in. We stared at her for a moment, uncertain how to proceed.

“Anyway, I figure if there’s somewhere that people love to gossip, there’s the tavern. Spirits tend to loosen lips. If you blend in, we could figure out what’s going on about the town. At least one of them should know about where they’re meeting up, or if someone’s organizing them, or whether anyone’s been recruiting,” Javier said, clearing the air.

“Are you expecting me to come?” Mia asked. Her eyebrow was raised high, even if it was hard to make her pale blond wispy hair out against her fair skin.

“Not yet. Sorry, Mia. Doctor still has you on bed rest for at least two more days.” Javier clasped his hands together, giving a brief pseudo-bow, body angling at 45 degrees.

“Hmph. As long as I’m kept in the loop, I suppose it matters not to me,” she said. I didn’t know if I bought her protest, but that didn’t mean I had to attack her dignity.

“Do you want me to stay with you? I don’t know if I’m too good at talking to others,” Vera replied, pointer fingers pressed together.

Mia shook her head rapidly, motioning with her hand for us to leave. “Go on. Get. I’ve got a book to finish and you’re obstructing my reading time.”

Unable to ignore her request, we departed, heading through the barracks and then the streets over to the second closest tavern. The first closest tavern was a mainstay of other members of the city guard. If people were saying anything in those walls that didn’t pertain to the guard, it certainly wasn’t going to be the location of the protesters.

Remnants of the rioters littered the streets. Broken tiles, graffiti on walls — “Evidently there are some merchants amongst them,” Alain had commented — broken glass in a few places. As damage went, the scope was light but wide-reaching. The rioters went lightly into the streets. If they had tried to cause more harm, the streets could have run red. We had to find them, lest they attacked once again, discontent with any changes made in response to their movement.

The tavern looked no worse for the wear from the riots. At least, I hoped that was the case. It had chipped paint, its sign was hanging half-off of the post, and it looked like the windows could do with a liberal amount of cleaning (if not perhaps being cleaned for the first time after their creation). It was named The Boot, as signified by the stylistic boot painted upon the sign. A very inventive name for what was presumably an inventive tavern.

We filtered into the tavern, the evening sky contrasting our entrance against the dimly lit indoors. The tavern wasn’t all too active, filled with maybe ten people at most, a few clustering around the wooden tables, others resting up against the bar, a wooden mug resting firmly in their hands. We had taken the precaution of stripping of any clothing that would suggest our affiliation with the guard, leaving us all in our plain clothes. The others had much more to wear. I’m sure I looked like someone fresh from out of the city, a village yokel.

Javier motioned for the barkeep to attend to our table, ordering us a round of drinks. After he returned with our mugs, we took to talking and drinking, meaningless nonsense all for the purpose of overhearing others. I let the others take the lead. I was much less experienced at making up meaningless drivel.

“Feels like we’re due for rain anytime soon”

“Taxes keep rising, and yet my paycheck doesn’t get bigger.”

“Have you see anything good at the market lately?”

“I’m not looking forward to the cold months. I hate the cold.”

“When was the last time you stopped by your mother’s place?”

They kept talking to the air, putting on affectations, and yet the other conversations in the tavern were a mirror to our own. Trivial. Meaningless. Fixated on everything but the present events. We were there for nearly an hour and while others had come and gone, the words remained the same, which was to say, irrelevant to our purposes.

“This isn’t working,” I muttered beneath the other nonsense uttered at the table. “No one is saying anything important and I’ve already had three drinks. I don’t know if I can have more. My body’s starting to feel loose.”

“Maybe we should cut you off, and you’re right, we don’t seem to be having success here, Perry. I’ll close out our tab and we’ll leave. There was no guarantee we were going to be successful on our first outing. It wasn’t assured we would have found a lead. We may have needed to look in other places. Let’s go,” Javier said.

I rolled my eyes at Alain, who chuckled over his mug. “Guess you didn’t drink much in the village.”

“Didn’t really feel up to it. Didn’t have much to celebrate, being a fisherman,” I grunted, looking into my mostly-empty mug.

“I guess not. I guess not,” he mused, drinking deeply from his own mug. His eyes avoided my gaze, seemingly embarrassed. I wouldn’t know. Thinking was a bit out of reach at the moment. I was persisting on loose connections my mind flitted to.

Shortly thereafter, Javier returned and we upended from the table, leaving to go onto the streets once more. “Back to the barracks then?” Vera asked, staring at Javier.

“That’s right. No reason to prolong our activity on the street. Going aimlessly about won’t direct us to the protesters,” Javier replied.

We continued walking down the cobblestone roads, winding our way back, when Alain let out a startled noise. “What was that all about, Alain? Did you have too much?” I asked.

“I… I think that beggar called out to me,” he said, staring back at a woman on the side of the road, sitting up against a wall.

“Beggars tend to do that, Alain,” Javier said. There was no malice in his words. Just fact.

“Well yeah, but I think she said something about the protesters.” Javier’s ears perked up at the suggestion. He looked back at the beggar, and then off ahead to the road, mouth silently conjuring unsaid words.

“You know what? We can afford a brief detour. Won’t hurt us. Come on.” He led us back to the beggar, taking out a few coins from his pocket. The woman didn’t seem to notice our approach, brows furrowed, staring straight at the road. No matter how much closer we got, she remained still and unmoving. I was almost concerned that she was dead.

“You know something about the protesters?” Javier asked, unwilling to prolong the detour any long than necessary.

“The protesters?” the beggar croaked, slowly turning up towards our group. Her eyes were milky, unfocused, staring at something we couldn’t see.

“That’s right,” Javier said, dropping a coin into her cup. “Do you know where we can find them?”

“There’s a meeting coming up for those interested in the cause. I can tell you’re for it,” she crooned, pulling out a crumpled page from under her cloak, hand outstretched. Javier reached forwards, palming more coins into her hands and taking the paper in turn.

“Thank you for your time. I hope the night treats you well,” he said.

“Bless your generosity. May things be equal as in the way of the heavens,” she replied, making an odd motion with her hand. A strange look passed over Javier’s face at her words, and he fumbled with the page, appraising its contents quickly.

“Huh. Good call, Alain. It’s time to move. The meeting starts in thirty minutes, and I think we’re about twenty-five minutes away from the location.” He shoved the paper into his pocket and started running off, leaving us to trail after him.