IoaUM Chapter 2

The two Blues that had come to investigate this potential arson were, unfortunately, familiar to me. Silvara was a right bastard of a constable. He’d been a member of the Arcane Guard for a couple decades, and he had the attitude and tattoos to prove it. He stood maybe six foot two, a couple inches taller than me, and his face could be charitably called ruddy, though more accurately, it was a pockmarked travesty, and his splotchy complexion did him no favors. The light gray of his uniform hung tight across his barrel of a chest, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow to showcase the dark whorls of indigo ink that covered Silvara’s hands, forearms, and chest. A faint light pulsed within the ink to the beat of his heart.

As I looked at him and noticed his exposed chest, I couldn’t help but cock my head and laugh. His piggy eyes had been mostly closed in his wide, fake smile, but Silvara’s face fell and he audibly gritted his teeth before he asked, “You think arson is funny? I don’t. Explain the joke, Krollas.” 

“Nothing to do with someone else’s fire. Everything to do with how you don’t know how to button your shirt. I’ve seen streetwalkers showing less cleavage. I already knew you spend most of your days standing around on street corners, but I can tell you you won’t have much luck selling your overweight, balding human body. Maybe if you invested in–”

The back of Silvara’s closed fist didn’t wait for my mouth to complete the thought, and I couldn’t tell if it was the Arcane Brands on his arms that flashed or just my vision in general as he knocked me sprawling. I could taste blood in my mouth as I groaned and unsteadily rolled over to lean against the wall he’d nearly thrown me into. An additional shock of pain set me gasping as my broken middle finger brushed a cobblestone. My hair tickled my eyes, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Eloquent point there, Silvara.” I groaned. “What can I do for you?”

“How’s about you start by telling us why you decided to burn down the Greens’ market, and ‘fess up to any other crimes that’re still burning your conscience after that. If, by some miracle, we’ve still got time after that, I’m willing to play it by ear.”

He kept saying “we”. Who was with–Ash me. My blood, which still hadn’t decided on whether to boil or freeze, finally made the decision to chill as I locked eyes with the other Blue. Behind the squatting Silvara stood his sometime partner, Morg. She kept an eye on me as she asked the usual litany of questions to the wide-eyed crowd–”Where were you when the fires started? What did you see? Where do you live?” and so on. As diligent as always, she took concise notes in the small booklet she usually kept in her coat’s pocket.

Morg towered over the surrounding humans, a bit over seven feet tall. Even for a half-orc, Morg was statuesque, though I’d heard her father was a real specimen of a bull orc, so it probably had something to do with him. Her tusks curled out of the corners of her mouth before curving in front of and protecting most of her bottom row of teeth, though not so completely as a full orc’s tusks would. She kept her hair pulled back into a complicated braid, as most orcish women did, the shiny black mane obviously well cared for. Her shoulders were at least as broad as Silvara’s, though her comparative youth, genetics, and exercise regimen kept her frame powerful and without any of the excess weight that Silvara had packed on through years of hitting the bars instead of the barbells.

“I asked you a question, suspect. Why’d you light the market on fire? You lookin’ to set all the Greens up in smoke?”

“I didn’t answer your question because I didn’t light anything. Not even my pipe! I was hired by a family to look into the disappearance of a cousin of theirs.” I quickly leaned forward, my face as open and honest as I could manage with my left eye swelling shut from Silvara’s backhand. “You or any of the Arcane Guard know anything about Lydin Ragarr? Human, streetsweeper that works here in the Greens. I asked around in the Greens garrison yesterday, but they didn’t have anything for me.”

“I’ve got nothing for you, cause I’m asking the questions, Krollas! You think this is one of your stupid ‘personal investigations’? This isn’t some little thing you can shrug off with a large gold or even a two silver fine. This is tens of coppers worth of damage, to say nothing of the damage to a damned wardlamp!” In his anger, he drew strength from his Arcane Brands, and the tattoos began to pulse more rapidly and brightly as he leaned in close, the spit flying from his mouth with every word to fleck across my face. I was about to shout my own response when Morg’s voice cut in.

“Enough.” Morg had finished her questions nearby and stepped in after pulling her partner back enough that I could breathe air that didn’t come out of his mouth. “Krollas. You have a history, especially with fire. You’ve given Silvara the beginning of an alibi, and I appreciate that. Now shut up and only answer his questions.”

I wanted to grind my teeth, but instead merely nodded tersely. Morg leaned in to quietly whisper something to Silvara, and he sighed but stood tall, no longer looming so threateningly over me as I leaned back into the wall. The human crossed his thick arms over his chest, the Brands fading to a deep, inert indigo as he resumed his questioning. “Look, you say you’re looking for this streetsweep, Lydin? I haven’t heard anything about him, I’m not usually in the Greens. Why were you looking around here specifically?”

“He was sent on a routine patrol in the alleys here in the Greens four days ago. He reported back to his foreman after his shift, but never got back home. I haven’t been able to find any trace of him after he saw the foreman, so I decided to come back here to the Greens to see what I could find. I was poking around and seeing what I could see.” I sighed, letting my frustration show as I again pushed my hair back, my sweat serving to paste the disobedient locks back. Time for the small lie that all this truth concealed. “I’m not sure how the fires started. Seems like it started in the sewers, but I wasn’t too worried about how it started, since I was focused on making sure nobody died.”

“Why do you think it started in the sewers?”  Silvara narrowed his eyes at me, suspicious. Maybe rightly so.

“Smoke and ashes, man! I saved a kid from being flattened by a manhole cover because the sewers exploded. I’m an elemental Unbound Mage, yes. I’ve had some pyromantic run-ins with the Guard, and the Blues all know my face. You know this. But come on, Silvara. I’ll be the first to say that I’ve never been one to love the rules, but I don’t break laws, and I don’t burn down random stalls! I keep my nose clean, and you can check with whatever the newest artifice is to see that I didn’t do it. All the magic I’ve used here is to protect a random kid and help put the flames out. There isn’t much else to say.”

“We’ll be the ones who can decide that, not you.” Morg cut in again, but she looked at her partner and grunted. “Give him some space. If he tries to run, we’ll catch ‘im, and if he gets away, we know where he lives. He may be Unbound, but he is a registered Mage.” She then turned away and pulled a vaguely familiar fist-sized artifice from one of the pockets in her large coat before tinkering with it until it began to let out a small whir and a beep. Silvara watched her, studiously ignoring me. Giving me an opportunity to run, I was sure. Nothing like another chance to hit me. Even so, I pushed myself to my feet and stretched my back and legs, suppressing a chuckle as I noticed Silvara attempting to “subtly” draw on the power of his Brands as his right hand drifted towards the military issue blade on his side.

Morg paced back and forth, the artifice making noises that meant nothing to me as she stepped past the burned-out stalls and nearly-toppled wardlamp. She paused over the sewer entrance that had lost its manhole cover, and the artifice’s chirps surged and changed. I forced my face into impassivity and continued moving gently to try to force my body back into its normal equilibrium. Unfortunately, my shirt was filthy, my sweat had mixed with the ash trailing from the sky and the white was splotched with yellow sweat stains and gray smudges. The red vest was mostly undamaged, though, the ash having mostly slid off the slightly magical silk. 

“Another shirt ruined. This happen to you often? Or do you just pop buttons off?” I asked Silvara, who stayed unresponsive, but when Morg locked eyes with him, she shrugged a little. The cruel smile returned to Silvara’s face, and the tension I’d slowly worked out of my system nearly immediately returned. 

Silvara sighed before deliberately raising his voice so that it would carry to the nearby, faux distracted eavesdropping crowd. “Your magic’s all over this, Kroll. I’m so disappointed in you! How could you do this to all these poor innocents? Why would you start this fire?” Whispers burst into life as the nosy neighbors clung to every word the sadistic Blue said.

I scrambled to justify, to respond, but my thoughts struggled to find purchase as they fought through the thick porridge that was my brain. “Of course my magic’s all over this. I was trying to put it out. We already talked about this.”

“You said that the fire didn’t have anything to do with you, but your magic is all over it! You must have felt responsible, right? After you messed up, you didn’t want to hurt anybody, huh?”

“Of course I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I’m not some twisted sadist. But like I said, I didn’t mess up, since the fire wasn’t my fault. I happened to be nearby on a job, and I wanted to help make sure nobody got hurt, that’s why my magic’s in all of it. All these people saw me take that heat into me, I was working to put it out! That’s all.”

“You still sticking to that story?” Morg continued to allow Silvara to question me, and the longer it went on, the more likely he’d be able to trump up something against me.

“I don’t lie to Blues. Good way to end up in cuffs.” I smiled as genuinely as I could manage, and Silvara’s grin became more wolfish as he responded.

“Then you wouldn’t mind if we escorted you down to the nearest Arcane garrison for some more questions?”

I did mind, greatly, but if I was stupid enough to say as much, it would only be taken as proof of my guilt. “I suppose I can come by later today or tomorrow, but I want at least some news to give the Ragarr family. Would it be alright if I came by in the morning? Or maybe even just before half-lamp time?”

“We wouldn’t want you to ‘misplace’ anything before we see you later, so we’ll go ahead and conduct a quick body search if you don’t mind. Then, if we don’t find anything, we’ll be happy to see you later.” It wasn’t a question. I rubbed my face with my right hand, the stubble growing above my lip scratching as I did so. With a sigh, I spread my arms and with my faintly glowing spectral hand on the left, gestured for him to get on with it. Silvara didn’t hesitate to begin his search of me from toes to head. He didn't find anything under my slacks other than my socks and legs, but moved upward without hesitation.

There was nothing up my right sleeve other than my arm, bracelet, and armband, and though the bracelet and armband were lined with magical copper, they weren’t at all suspicious, given my status as a full Mage. Silvara made sure to reinforce his position as a bastard by deliberately pinching my broken middle finger and eliciting a pained groan from me as he “investigated” the ring. My left sleeve was filled with my arm that ended in a thickly scarred stump halfway down my forearm, where I usually kept my partially transparent spectral hand floating to give the appearance of a full arm. Anyone could tell that the glowing, blue hand wasn’t the one I was born with, but so long as I kept up appearances of normalcy, people seemed to think it was like an Arcane Brand, a misunderstanding I didn’t feel the need to disabuse them of.

Finally, Silvara reached my torso, and began to roughly paw at my sides, back, and finally my chest, where he touched something long and hard. A moment of clarity sent a jolt of tension through me–I’d forgotten about my most recent addition to the ashen rod. I couldn’t help but twitch nervously as the Blue pulled my ashwood rod out of its pocket in my vest. Carrying any sort of arcane focus was normal for someone who could cast even petty magics. The problem was–

“And what’s this? Coburite? Seems to be military grade too! What kinds of nefarious magics have you got stored in here?” Silvara crowed as he looked at the ring of the precious alloy that I’d only been able to afford to buy last week. 

“Just clarity of mind and general purpose magic, nothing dangerous, I swear.”

“Oh, sure! You know that won’t–”

“With a military-grade alloy in your possession, we’ll have to take you in.” Morg cut in on Silvara’s gloating, her face severe. “You didn’t run, so you will not be imprisoned behind obscuramite, but you must now accompany us to the nearest garrison. Submit to our custody, and we will ensure that the demands of justice are met.”

I cursed my forgetfulness twelve times over as I raised my right and spectral hands together. “Don’t think you can cuff me, but I’ll come with you.”