Moonlight lit the city of Vatan, ancient capital of the Telavingian Empire, and the remnants of a great storm marked its streets. Cobblestones were slick with puddles of rainwater in the more developed districts, and dirt paths were desperately muddied in the poorer areas of the city. It was late enough that even the dingiest of taverns had closed their doors and forced the city's drunks and addicts out onto the streets.

Jacob Richter stumbled away from the Flopping Fish - a tavern which was exactly as refined as it sounded - loudly reciting an off tune rendition of ‘The Elfin Maid And Her Ugly Bear’ a bawdy tale of a Parnian Elf and her capture at the hands of a Josuun raider. He was not the sort of drunk you usually saw down by the docks. He had a slight build, with auburn hair and handsome features that were only slightly marred by a bruised black eye a day or two old. His eyes were his most attractive feature, they were warm with a depth of feeling and a starkly bright ocean blue colour. Most interestingly, he wore an exquisitely expensive purple silk jacket accented with gold filigree that was only granted to the Emperor’s more distinguished courtiers.

The Richter family had been poor only two generations ago, they were raised up from peasantry and toil thanks to the mercantile efforts of the family's previous patriarch, Bendrik Richter. During the War of the Hand Bendrik had managed to break through a blockade on the River Vat and arrived in the city with enough supplies to survive an insurrectionist siege. His reward was a generous trading charter from the court of the Emperor, guaranteeing his family a monopoly on new world furs. A simple peasant gaining such a charter always made vicious rumours flare up amongst the gentry, and the family had never quite been accepted by the Emperor’s court at large.

Bendrik had borne three sons. The eldest had given up all claim to his family's riches and become a cleric of the Cult of Crows, helping to usher along the souls of the dead into the next realm. It had been quite the scandal at the time, with rumours he was attempting to escape his overbearing father’s clutches. The second had perished in a great fire that had swept through the city docks five years earlier, chained to a woman of the night’s bed while flame licked around him.

When Bendrick died his youngest son Jacob had been left as the sole inheritor of the vast estate and it seemed as though the young man was determined to return his family to poverty in a single generation. He was far more interested in holding raucous parties, sampling the most expensive of Chandthiran wines and losing himself to the mind bending dreams brought on by the finest of Muzdahir’s mistreed than keeping his numerous new commercial responsibilities profitable.

His reputation as a libertine had been cemented quite literally the moment his father passed, with the young Jacob arranging a funeral that had more in common with a travelling carnival than a solemn ceremony fit for a man often awarded the epithets of ‘miserly’, ‘tight fisted’ and ‘dour prick’. numas

As far as Jacob was concerned his father could be damned. He had hated the old man and the way he had hidden away behind the heavy pine doors of his study, scribbling at cheap parchment and losing his hair at the thought of even a single bronze numas slipping between his fingers. Bendrik had always looked down on his youngest son, always lamented the family's fortunes when his elder brother had died. Well, let him be right! Jacob would piss away the fortune out of spite for all he cared. It wasn’t like his father was about to pop out of his tomb and start chastising him any more. And there certainly wasn't anything wrong with trying to enjoy himself. He had tried his hand at all manner of trades and professions too, but inevitably he felt that anxious shaking wanderlust descend upon him and before the night was out he would be amongst the strange sights and sounds of the city's finest smoke houses and bordellos. About the only thing he hadn’t tried was carpentry, he despised the thought of splinters.

The day had started much as it always did for him. He had awoken after noon to a pounding headache with a bottle of empty liquor in hand and a burnt up stick of mistreed stifling the air with its smoky fumes. Awakening in familiar surroundings had become rarer for him these days, he hated his father's empty manor, and usually shared a bed elsewhere, not so tonight. He had fended off a short little manservant screeching about debts and resigning or something or other and visited his old university friend Merov Tyran, across the street. Merov was the only person left in the city who would extend him any credit, and they spent the afternoon discussing minor gossip and palace politicking. Something to do with tariffs and trade laws, he had been too busy sampling Merov’s wine cellar to pay much attention, he found all that sort of thing dreadfully boring.

After that it grew a little hazy, that had been happening more often, little blocks of lost memory. The next thing he remembered was at the Gilded Tankard, he was downing some orange liquid that smelt like the lanterns that burned down at the city docks. His arm had been around a slender young thing, a woman with blonde locks who reminded him of Saethryd Bannois if he squinted hard enough. Saethryd had been his only hope in the city, she was the daughter of fabulously wealthy nobility, and a woman whom he had conducted a daring affair with before burly men with crooked teeth had started to take things from his manor on the orders of one bank or another. After that her once suspiciously unguarded back garden had a man with a pistol and a single hawkish eye patrolling it. Jacob had attempted to sneak past him, but had gained a black eye and lost a tooth from the attempt. He’d been told he was lucky that was all he lost.

The blonde had fallen out with him that evening when he revealed that he only had six silver numas in his pockets and couldn’t afford her favoured gin. Six silver numas wouldn’t buy you much at a place like the Gilded Tavern, but it was a fortune in a dive like the Flopping Fish. It was a risk to venture to an establishment so close to the crime riddled docks at that time, but the purple silk of his coat had marked him as one of the Emperor’s favoured and he was fairly certain that had saved him from being gang pressed into His Imperial Majesty's Navy by a beady eyed recruiter and the two broad shouldered sailors that flanked him.

It must have been about three o’clock in the morning when he reached the Richter manor, the sound of his singing dampened considerably when a pair of lockstepped guardsmen had come marching down Merchant’s Road opposite him. Fortunately the watchmen that patrolled the Merchants District were more professional than those at the docks. Whereas a guard at the dock would be on the lookout for a drunk with silver in his pocket to batter over the head, relieve of his valuables and throw into a cell for the night the pair he had passed were more interested in keeping rabble away from the more civilised parts of the city. Once again the purple of his finely stitched jacket had saved him from certain doom.

He took the chance to relieve himself on his hated neighbours - a pair of puritanical clerics - perfectly manicured hedges before passing through the once manned gate of the manor and fumbling for the key to the front door in his coin purse. It was with a near maniacal snort that he realised the purse was gone, probably pilfered by some pickpocket at the Flopping Fish, or by the wrinkled, half toothless prostitute he vaguely remembered sobbing against before he had been thrown out.

Shaking at the handle of the door seemed a foolish idea about the third time he tried it, and despite banging at the wood for ten minutes there was no answer from his useless man servant. Jacob was going to have to fire the toady little man for not being at his post, or at least make sure he was given a good talking to. The libertine debated ramming the door with his shoulder, but it was heavy and made of a fine wood harvested from the deepest reaches of the Geltwier forest. He was more likely to break a bone than force it open. His gaze had finally settled on the window to that room. To his father’s study. Jacob hadn’t been inside it since the funeral, and had been unable to force himself to face that darkened retreat ever since.

The crack of glass shattering echoed about the night as he cast a heavy stone through the window, wrapping the silk of his fine jacket around his arm and using the heavy fabric to push shards of glass out of the frame. When he was done the jacket had been ripped and torn to shreds, and the regal garment ended up discarded into the muck of the flowerbed beneath the window. With a huff he heaved himself up and over the frame, flailing as his world was darkened by jade curtains. The railing hanging the curtains tore free of the wall and thumped down onto his crumbled form with a crack.

It took Jacob a few minutes, in his inebriated state, to come to his senses from the blow. Coughing and wheezing like a sickly old man, he made his way to his feet and surveyed the room with a sneer. The bank’s men hadn’t entered this room. Maybe it had been on the bank manager's orders. Bendrik Richter had been a man of repute. A respected man. Unlike his good for nothing third son, who wouldn’t be extended a line of credit by even the most ruthless of loan sharks. The study was dominated by a massive desk, still covered in the accounts and records his father had been working on the night he had slumped over dead in the cushioned throne that sat behind it. Shelves lined the walls, filled with all sorts of papers and accoutrements of business, set up with the same sort of devoted care and precision his eldest brother must have carried out his rituals for the dead with. Another snort escaped Jacob, and he ran a finger across the mantelpiece above the room's fireplace. Not a speck of dust. Shabbiness seemed to be repelled by the very idea of his father.

And then he saw it. Pride of place above the fireplace, a true work of art. A bust of a head. Of his father’s head. He couldn’t stop himself from laughing. It was perfect, the way it captured his father’s disappointed glare, his overbearing manner, and the very fact that his father had put a bust of his own head atop his mantlepiece. Like some sort of monument to his own vanity. The laughter twisted into a roar, he picked up the bust and then cast it across the room, smashing it against a massive floor to ceiling mirror and shattering the bust into chunks on the floor, along with a thousand pieces of glass. Jacob didn’t stop there, grabbing accounts and books from the shelves to scatter over the room, tearing a painting of his late brother from the wall and shoving it into the empty fireplace, wrecking the room with all the strength he could muster.

In the end he was sat in the dark, surrounded by the wreckage of his family's former greatness. It seemed to him a rather quaint metaphor. Even the moon had disappeared, those rays of light wrenched from the sky by darkened clouds. The rain had started up again, battering against the remaining windows in the room, and dampening the floor beneath the one he had broken. Jacob heaved a wracking, dreadful sob as he broke down into tears.

But something that night wasn’t right. The shadows were darker and deeper than they should have been, the rain outside was a torrent that should have passed with the earlier storm. The man’s reddened eyes opened as he felt a droplet of water fall onto the back of his neck and heard a weak, ragged huffing of breath, when he turned he was greeted by the figure of a pale, wobbling, bloated man in tattered, waterlogged rags dripping onto his carpet. His eyes went wide, but before he could make a move or a sound the figure had taken him into a grip of iron and forced him down to the floor.

“Time to pay your debts, Richter.”

A decaying hand clamped over his lips, and his mouth filled with fetid tasting sea water. His struggle turned to convulsions as the water flooded into his lungs, and darkness filled his vision. The last thing Jacob Richter thought before the darkness took him completely, the last thing he ever thought, was that he should have become a carpenter.

The Merchant’s Road ran through the city of Vatan like an artery, a pathway for the trade and commerce that was the lifeblood of the city. If one were to walk the whole road it would take them from the bustling East Gate, filled with the press of jostling peasantry, impatient pilgrims and pilfering sneak thieves pawing at unsecured coin purses. Through the shadowy Dock District that ran along the stinking miasma of the polluted river Vat, the creaking of ancient riverboats and the hollering of vicious foremen. Past the newly built townhouses of the Merchant District that almost rivalled the estates of the nobility and all the fashionable taverns with names like ‘The Blooming Rose’ or ‘The Royal Oak’ before finally reaching the soaring buttresses of Undine’s Cathedral and the looming gate of the Imperial Palace.

On that morning it had deposited a gaggle of peering bystanders outside the Richter Mansion, all competing for a better look over its stone walls in the hopes of seeing some gruesome vision to tell stories about. Only the watchmen garbed in their green tabards and swarming around the mansion held them back, though the halberds clutched in the hand of each didn’t hurt either. A preacher wearing a ragged black cloak and the symbols of no particular God or spirit stood at the head, preaching loudly to his morbidly curious flock.

“And ye! Let this be a lesson to all the fat and debauched creatures who suck at the blood of the people! The great spirits have smote the city's greatest lecher! Let this be a lesson to all philanderers, gamblers, and drunkards!”

Lieutenant Vespia Larue motioned to one of the watchmen in Bendrik Richter's old study, “Get that rambling mad man out of here before he makes a scene, the last thing we need is someone working the crowd up.”

The watchman shuffled off with a nod, and Vespia turned her attention back to the body lying face up in the middle of the room. She had been a part of the City Watch for almost a decade at this point, trading in the chance at marriage to an influential landholder to serve the city. Or in her fathers words, ‘to cavort around hitting drunks over the head with blackjacks’. He had been certain she would come crawling to the family bank in a few days, begging to be taken back in. She was just as stubborn as he was though, and had scraped her way up through the Watch with nothing more than grit and hard work. Unlike the common guardsmen outside she wore a dark green coat lined with silver buttons befitting her rank, matching deep green eyes and contrasting the short black locks she had gathered up into a stunted ponytail.

“So, whaddya think happened?” The question had been raised by Ulbert Green, a Sergeant so squat and hirsute that there were rumours that he had Dwarven blood somewhere in his family tree. The man certainly drank like a Dwarf, but Vespia knew he lacked their renowned stamina; even a short flight of stairs was a difficult hurdle for him.

“He was drowned, my good sir.” And the answer came from Doctor Alexander Tyghul, who in many ways was Ulbert’s opposite. Mature, thin and tall enough to loom over everyone else in a room with ease. He had an aquiline, almost hooked nose with a set of circular wireframe glasses perched upon it and an always prominent set of dark bags underneath his eyes. Tyghul had been convicted in relation to grave robbery offences a number of years earlier, and now assisted the Watch in medical matters in exchange for a more relaxed sentence. “And quite violently, too. A number of his ribs were broken during the act.”

“Around his lips, the foam.” Vespia motioned to the chapped, cracked lips of the dead man and the crust of foam that had settled in between them.

“Ah, yes, that’s the strange part. Sea water.” Tyghul placed a vial at the side of the body's lips, coaxing the back of its head so that some of the crust dribbled into the glass. “I don’t need to remind you that the ocean is at least a week away by riverboat.”

“Could be from the Vat, could it no? Not that much difference in ‘em is it?” Ulbert was leering at the few books that still remained on the room's ruined shelves, not that he could read them.

“If it had been from the Vat, it probably would have corroded his lungs.” Tyghul turned back to Vespia and shook the vial in his hand. “I’d have to analyse this further to be totally certain, but if I were a betting man I’d wager it’s not from the river.”

The Lieutenant made her way around the room, nodding in agreement with the Doctor. “The real question is why. The room is wrecked, but the majordomo told us nothing seems to be missing, so robbery wasn’t the motivation. Did he have many enemies?”

“The Richter’s were all cunts. Pardon my Chandthiran, ma’am.” The Sergeant rubbed a stubby thumb against his nose, “My ma’ told me about how they made their fortune. Smuggled a riverboat filled with freshwater and supplies past some blockade. Nobility ate like pigs and drank like fish, everyone else was charged thrice the mark up. During a siege!”

“He also had a large number of debts, Lieutenant Larue. Perhaps some of those were less than legitimate?” The Doctor packed his vials away into a black leather bag, before snapping his fingers. “Ah! That reminds me actually. I was speaking with the Captain this morning. Apparently one of the court wizards has requested her apprentice be attached to someone in the Watch for a few weeks. You’ve been chosen as their mentor.”

Vespia’s eyes flashed at that. Wizards were bad news; strange sorts who dabbled with spirits and the Wyrd. And unlike the clergy, the spirits they dabbled with were rarely good. “What interest would a Wizard’s apprentice have in taking part in Watch duties? There’s no reas-”

“The Captain asked me to remind you that, ahem, I’m quoting here 'Vespia owes me more than one favour'.” Tyghul’s interruption made Vespia seethe. It was true that the Captain had shielded her from the relatives of convicted nobility and important persons on a number of occasions, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“When are they supposed to arrive?” She asked.

“I've no idea. The Captain said they'd send them this way whenever they showed up at the station, to tell the truth I thought they would arrive with you.” Tyghul said.

“Ey, whossat’s carriage in the courtyard?” Ulbert nodded out of the shattered window, his chins wobbling too and fro.

The manor gates had been opened for a fine white coach led by a pair of equally white stallions with dangerously intelligent eyes. It lacked a coachman, and yet seemed to be quite competently led by the two horses, only stopping when the carriage was in front of the entrance to the mansion. Vespia had made her way to the front of the house by then, and was able to eye up the heraldry stamped onto the coach's door; a set of writhing winged serpents, chained to a kite shield with a luxuriously painted ‘S’ at its centre.

The coach door swung open and, to Vespia’s surprise, the man who fumbled his way out of it looked suspiciously mundane. He was a timid looking fellow somewhere in his late twenties with messy auburn hair, eyes hidden by the red lenses of his spectacles, and the rest of his form otherwise covered in a sea blue cloak that made his journey down the coach steps a tad difficult as it tangled around his ankles.

The Lieutenant watched as he fought his way free of the coach - and his own cloak - before offering a gloved hand out toward her with all the dignity he could muster. “Renard Voclain. I was asked to assist you with your investigations. I come under the authority of the Sorceress Svenja.”

“Svenja.” Vespia clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she took his hand tentatively, as if the glove might be hot to the touch. When it was not, she gave him a firm shake of the hand. “I think I’ve heard of her. She’s the one who can see the future, isn’t she?”

“She can do many things. But yes, divination is amongst her specialties.” He shook her hand with less enthusiasm, fingers slipping back into the folds of his cloak afterwards.

“I think I’ve heard of you, actually.” Vespia said, “You’re the one they wrote about in the Evening Standard, right? Some sort of magical prodigy, I thought you’d be busy educating the Emperor’s heir.”

He answered her with the practised politeness of someone who heard that often. “I think you’ve mistaken me for my brother, you’re thinking of Sigismund Voclain.” Renard offered the pair of horses a nod, and with a snort and a haughty shake of their manes they started to trot off away from the mansion. “I was told there was some sort of break in?”

“Maybe. A murder. That’s a neat trick with the horses, how long did it take to train them up like that?” Vespia beckoned him to follow, leading him through the bare corridors of the manse.

Renard titled his head at the woman, before releasing a small ‘ah’.“They’re not horses. Well, not really. They are spirits that are in the employment of Svenja, they serve at her pleasure. Is this the fashion now? Minimalism?”

The Lieutenant suppressed a shudder, no wonder the horses had seemed so intelligent. “What? Oh, the lack of furnishing. No, the victim was in a great deal of debt. His belongings were being repossessed before he died.” They came to stop at the double doors into the study, and Vespia arched a brow. “Have you ever seen a dead body before?”

“No, but I’m certain it will be fine. I’ve a strong constitution.” The Apprentice opened the door with a gloved hand, stepping forward with confidence. Instantly the smell of decaying, waterlogged flesh assaulted his nostrils, forcing him out of the room and into dry heaving at the side of the doors. Vespia smirked at the humbling, before patting him on the back.

“You get used to it. You should have seen Ulbert this morning. Nearly lost his breakfast, and he has big breakfasts.” She beckoned him back into the room, guiding him over toward the shattered window where he could get some fresh air. Ulbert eyed him up warily as he entered the room, likely afraid of being transmuted into a toad or some other superstition. Vespia doubted it would have been much of a transformation.

“Ah! This must be our overdue magus. In other circumstances I would shake your hand, but I’m otherwise engaged.” The Doctor retained as much poise as ever, even as he had a gloved hand rooting around the back of a cadaver’s throat. “Doctor Alexander Tyghul, a pleasure.”

Renard waved vaguely in his direction, keeping his face pointed toward the window. “Renard Voclain. So they broke in through the window frame I presume?”

“That’s what we thought at first, maybe someone was looking to steal whatever was left in the manor, and was unlucky enough to do it while the victim was home.” Vespia motioned to the body. “But we found his court silks out below the window, and the Doctor noted a number of cuts around his arm. It looks like he was the one who broke in, and whoever was in here was waiting for him. The neighbours didn’t report seeing anyone leave once he returned in the evening either, apparently they had noted him uh, ‘watering’ their ferns.”

“I bet it was one of the Sharks. Bad lot down at the Dock District.” Ulbert leaned in to speak conspiratorially, as if others might be listening in. “He was probably in debt to them. We found a stash of mistreed in his room. Bloody reedpuffers.” If Renard was listening he showed no sign of it, still unable to look at the way the Doctor worked with the remains.

“I don’t think so, Ulbert. This doesn’t look like the Sharks coming to collect on a debt. Nothing of value in the room was taken, even if it was trashed. Still though, we should look into any connections he has to any scum down in the docks.” Vespia said. “Doctor, what are you doing?”

“I’m looking for his tongue, Lieutenant Larue. A strange thing, it seems to have been removed.” Alexander finally pulled his hand free from the body's mouth, peeling off his elbow length glove and discarding it to the side. “Do you know any criminal organisations that do this kind of thing? One rarely removes a man’s tongue without it having some deeper meaning.”

“This wasn’t done by criminals.” Renard had managed to speak again, finally over his dry heaving and actually able to glance at the body. “It’s obvious, isn't it? A spirit killed this man.”

Three heads simultaneously turned in his direction.