The Writ

The world inside the lounge did not match the world outside.

Out there, the fort was still cooling. Bodies, stone, rainwater, all settling into the same flat temperature. In here, the air was warm and heavy, thick with candle smoke, leather oil and paper that had drunk in too many secrets. It felt like stepping from a crime scene into an office that wanted to pretend crime was only a theory.

I curled on the crimson couch with the Embercrack teapot hugged tight to my chest. Steam rolled against my face in hot, sharp waves. Bitter mushroom and scorched pine and metal. Caffeine and whatever else the miners put in this stuff crawled through my blood like lightning on hands and knees.

Everything was too clear.

The grain in the wooden table ran in perfect lines, every knot a little eye. Candle flames licked the air in slow spirals. I could smell every person in the hall beyond the door, faded through the wood. Sweat, wet wool, ink, a smear of cheap cologne on someone who wanted to smell like better coin than they had.

Perception check, I thought, for no reason except that my brain had decided to turn the night into a game. d20 rolled somewhere behind my eyes. It came up high. It always did when I was like this.

My tail was wrapped around Master’s leg, fur brushing his boot in tiny, constant strokes that kept the bond humming. He sat beside me, one elbow on the back of the couch, cloak half open, posture loose in that very specific way that meant he was resting and thinking and ready for war all at the same time. The noir detective in his element. A bloody night behind him, a puzzle in front.

Tamsin stood at the job board with her arms folded, reading the pinned contracts like they had personally offended her. Hood down now, hair still damp, ears angled just enough to catch every sound behind her. Military tidy. Ranger precise. Her crossbow sat low in her hand. She had taken it apart and reassembled it once already, just to have something to do.

I breathed in the steam above the teapot like it was a drug and a prayer both. My pupils were too wide. UNBLINKING.

The Edges of the room glowed a little. My heartbeat sounded like a war drum under my ribs. Caffeine and mushroom tannin tangled in my system, dragging my nerves between hyper vigilance and giddy delight.

Perfect.

He is here.

The thought arrived before the sound. A subtle shift in the hall outside, the rhythm of boots on stone that did not belong to tired field hands. These steps were measured, neat, slightly too careful. A man who had practised his entrance until the floor itself knew the pattern.

The door swung inward on a controlled arc.

Marauder Vellan stepped into the lounge like he was walking into a boardroom instead of a den for people who came back with other people’s blood on their boots.

He looked like House Serrean had skinned one of their banners and tailored it around him. Light blue coat, high collared and finely stitched, crisp white shirt beneath without a single crease. Pale gloves. Trousers cut to the exact line of his boots. There was a faint glimmer of jewellery at his cuffs, understated and expensive, the sort that told you he had money without being vulgar enough to brag.

His hair was arranged. Not just combed. Arranged. A controlled wave over his forehead, not a strand truly free. His face was pale, composed, too smooth for this town. Only his eyes betrayed him. They were tight at the edges, pupils a little pinched, the way a man’s go when he has been shouted at for a long time by people he cannot afford to anger.

He shut the door behind him with a soft click.

The moment the latch settled, the noise from the hall dropped to a hush. The lounge shrank. My hearing sharpened again, senses jumping at the change. I could hear the tiny rasp of cloth as he straightened his coat. The faint stick of damp leather as he shifted his weight.

My tail tightened around Master’s leg. My ears pricked. The tea in my veins turned my focus into a blade.

Vellan’s gaze swept the room.

He found Tamsin first. Her stance, her weapon, her guild tag. He ticked her off in some private list. Then his eyes moved to Master. They caught. Held. There was recognition there. Not personal, but structural. Master looked like trouble even when he sat down.

Then Vellan saw me.

His gaze snagged on the teapot clutched to my chest, the way my tail was coiled round Master, the way my pupils were wide like full blue coins. His mouth tightened for a heartbeat before he smoothed it away.

Good. I liked being the stone in his shoe.

“Vanguard,” he said, trying for crisp and landing closer to frayed. “We need to speak. Immediately.”

Master did not get up.

He lifted his eyes. Slow. Calm. Noir gaze that evaluated and filed away.

“Door is already closed,” he said. “So speak.”

Vellan drew in a breath through his nose. If anyone else had spoken to him that way, he would have snapped. With Master, he swallowed it. They had clearly been rewriting the script. 

Though the bond I felt satisfaction. I felt Master... "The script is never the script, it changes depending on peoples mood" 

Vellan walked to the centre of the room, boots leaving faint damp prints on the tile. Up close, I could see the strain more clearly. The skin at his collar was flushed. A bead of sweat sat at his temple, refusing to move. His gloved hands flexed once before he forced them still behind his back.

He looked, in short, like a man with House Serrean fingers pressed into the back of his neck. “First,” he began, in the tone of someone reciting a prepared line, “on behalf of the Oakwood Vanguard and its patrons, commendations are in order. The fort has fallen. The Retainers are destroyed. Their leader is dead. The situation has been… resolved.”

His voice almost cracked on that last word.

My ears flicked. The tea sharpened my feel for lies and truths. There was something under the tidy phrasing. Some jagged edge he was trying to wrap velvet round.

Tamsin turned from the board and faced him fully, shoulders square, feet set. “We did what was ordered,” she said. “Retainers were running an illegal fort under false authority. They are gone. The marsh road is clear.”

“False authority,” Vellan repeated quietly. He looked at her for a heartbeat too long. Then at Master. Then at me.

"What isn't false authority" Master said staring daggers into Vellan's eyes.

The room seemed to tilt, just a fraction, the way it does when someone opens a door you did not know was there. “They were Vanguard,” Vellan said.

The words dropped like a stone in deep water and did not make a ripple for a moment and the bond flared hot in my chest. I felt Master’s attention sharpen beside me, every thought focus to a point. My fingers tightened on the teapot handle until the ceramic bit. Tamsin’s jaw clenched.

Vellan did not stop.

“The men and women in that fort,” he said, voice low now, the polished veneer slipping, “were Vanguard operatives on detached assignment. The garrison commander, Captain Heller, held the rank of Guardian. Trainer. Instructor for this hall. He was my right hand in field affairs.”

Guardian. The word hit like a strike.

Guardians train operatives. Guardians sign off on our readiness. Guardians are the ones you send when you want something done properly. We had killed him in a muddy stone corridor while the rain beat on the roof and bodies slid in their own blood.

A slow, feral smile pricked behind my teeth and I began to show my fangs in a snarl amusement. 

Master’s voice came out completely neutrally.

“You did not tell us that.”

“No,” Vellan snapped, and this time the composure cracked. “Because I did not know until House Serrean waved his service file in my face and asked me why one of my Guardians was running a private fort like a bandit lord.”

He stared at us, hands curling into fists so tight the leather creaked.

“You killed the leader clean” he said. “You did the job we signed. You did everything right. And as far as the Baron is concerned, you also exposed that my own people were playing private games with his authority. That fort was a Vanguard outpost gone rotten, and he sees it as my mess.”

His laugh was short and humourless.

“They are not wrong.”

The tea made my head hum. I could almost see the invisible threads. Guardians in a fort. Writs signed on old trust. House Serrean discovering that their loyal private guild had at least one limb acting alone. Their response would be swift. Bright. Designed to be seen.

“House Serrean is breathing down your neck,” I said bluntly.

He gave me a look that would have flattened anyone without a master.

“I have had three riders from the upper quarter since your report went in,” he said. “I have had two summons to the council chamber and one from the vassaldom's own household. I have stood in front of a table filled with people whose clothing is worth more than this whole hall and listened to them explain to me how my failure reflects on their authority.”

He dragged a hand across his face, ruining the careful lines of his composed noble expression for a moment.

“They want heads,” he said. “They want a clean story. Vanguard discovers corruption, cleans house, proves loyalty, pats themselves on the back under Serrean banners.”

His eyes met Master’s.

“They want me to fix this. You will fix this.”

Master rose.

He did it slow. He always did. The couch creaked as I shifted with him, tail tightening, keeping contact. The bond hummed hot and steady, caffeine and adrenaline wrapped around our shared gravity. He walked to the table and leaned his hands on it, head slightly bowed, making Vellan look at him as if the Marauder were the one under inspection.

“So,” Master said. “Let me see if I have the case notes right.” His voice slipped into that dry noir cadence that made everything sound like a confession waiting to happen.

“Your Guardian went rogue. He turned a border fort into a private racket. He kept the Fighters Guild in his pocket to enforce it. House Serrean found out the hard way. They are angry. They cannot shout at the dead. So they shout at you.”

Vellan’s mouth pressed into a hard line.

Master’s eyes were calm and cold.

“And now,” he continued, “You want me ? The Lord Protector of Bogclutch to fix your mess ?". He then paused for an unholy amount of seconds before continuing, "You upper-class types are always the same. Treating the working class as nothing and expecting them to save you over and over again". 

I Barely held in a laugh, he said it with such distain and then he continued.

"How quaint they want us to make the Fighters Guild disappear so you can walk back into that chamber and tell them everything is under control again. Their conspiracy wrapped up with a bow, their mess wiped off the map. We take the risk. You get to keep your chair and you so called authority”

Vellan flinched once at the word conspiracy.

“I prefer the term systemic failure,” he muttered.

“Call it what you like,” Master said. “It still stinks of typical Alderian rot.”

I watched him, my master. Cloak shadowing his jaw, eyes like two pale knives in the lantern light. The tea amplified everything. He looked like the only real thing in the room.

“I clean up other people’s messes for a living,” he went on, voice low, steady. “City councils. petty nobles. Guild masters who cannot control their own. I am good at it. That is why you send us into forts like that.”

He straightened, gaze never leaving Vellan.

“But if I am going to take on a whole Fighters Guild cell for you because your Guardian got greedy, then you and your Baron better be paying in more than polite words and wounded pride.”

The corner of my mouth curled. There it was. That line, the kind smoke should have followed if we had such things.

Vellan stared at him for a long moment, breathing just a little too fast.

Then he reached inside his immaculate coat and pulled out a folded leather folder, the rich kind that smells like old money and new ink. He set it on the table and pushed it forward.

“House Serrean has authorised writs,” he said. “On all local Fighters Guild members. Every badge. Every cell. Every enforcer and captain and bookkeeper in Grey Hollow jurisdiction.”

The room went very still.

My heart gave a delighted little jump.

“Writs,” I repeated, tasting the word. “Plural.”

He nodded once.

“A stack of them,” he said hoarsely. “Names and descriptions where we have them. Blank ones for unknowns. Every registered Fighters Guild operative inside this town is now formally declared an enemy of the settlement. Kill on sight if they resist, capture alive if they do not. Payment per head.”

My tail lashed once, sharp and pleased.

“That,” I said, “is a bounty.”

Tamsin’s jaw clenched. “You have just turned the entire Fighters Guild into open season.”

Vellan threw his hands up.

“I did not decide this,” he snapped. “I am delivering it. House Serrean wants to send a message. They want people to see what happens when a guild lets its people play at private war. They could have sent their own soldiers to do it with banners and drums. They chose not to.”

“Because that would look like a civil war,” Tamsin said. “And people panic when noble flags march on guildhouses.”

“Exactly,” Vellan said. “So they send us. The Vanguard. Field specialists. Contract agents. We are deniable muscle with paperwork. If it goes badly, they can blame it on bad information and overzealous operatives. If it goes well, they claim it as proof of their wise management.”

His shoulders slumped a fraction.

“And I am the one who has to make that machine move without tearing this hall apart.”

The tea sang in my veins. I could feel his fear twisting under his words. Not fear of us. Fear of being made the scapegoat if this went wrong. Marauder Vellan in light blue and white, dragged in front of a noble court and stripped of rank because he lost control twice: first of his Guardian, now of the response.

“Vanguard is not a standing army,” Master said. “You are one hall, some field teams, a handful of rangers. You do not have the numbers to occupy the Guild by force.”

“I know,” Vellan bit out. “But Serrean does not want occupation. They want rupture. They want the Guild fractured and discredited. They want bodies on hooks where people can see them and contracts torn off walls and the survivors scattering to other towns with stories that begin with ‘we should never have crossed House Serrean.”

He dragged a glove palm across his mouth.

“And they want it done quickly. Before the Guild can gather itself. Before anyone with a brain can spin this as noble tyranny.”

“Which it is,” Tamsin muttered.

“Of course it is,” Vellan snapped. “Everything they do is. We swim in tyrannies here. I am only trying to pick the one that does not drown us.”

He looked at Master again. Then at me. Then at the teapot.

His eyes lingered on the teapot a second too long. He finally seemed to realise how wide my pupils were, how my ears kept twitching at every tiny sound.

“Is the pet high on caffeine ?” he asked flatly. "Who's idea was it to give a cat girl tea ? they get intoxicated on a drop of anything other than water!"

“Tea,” I purred. “Mushroom tea. Caffeine. Bad decisions.” I grinned wide enough to show teeth. snarling. “Keep talking, Marauder. I am listening to all the ways you are desperate.”

He closed his eyes for a beat.

“I need you three,” he said quietly. “That is the short of it. The House can throw writs around like confetti. They can stamp seals until their signet rings crack. None of it matters if no one on the ground enforces it. I can give these writs to ten different squads and they will all trip over each other chasing coins. You three… you might actually think.”

“That is your plan?” Tamsin said. “Hand us a stack of kill orders and hope we accidentally do something sensible with them before the city burns?”

“Yes,” Vellan said, with the exhausted honesty of a man who had run out of better lies. “That is precisely my plan. Because I am out of time and out of margin. I need to walk back into a room full of nobles and say I have my best operatives on this, and for once I need that sentence to be true.”

He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“I have to find a way for this guild hall to recover after this,” he went on. “For the Vanguard, I mean. House Serrean will survive anything. They always do. But if we are seen as the ones who trained a rogue Guardian and then botched the clean up, we become the example other baronies quote when they do not want local guilds to have power.”

“You are trying to keep yourself frm being declawed,” I said.

His eyes flicked to my tail, wrapped tight around Master’s calf.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Exactly that.”

The bond pulsed between me and Master, warm and sharp. I felt his decision crystallising even before he spoke. “We will take the writs,” he said and Vellan’s shoulders sagged in visible relief. It looked like someone had cut loose a stone from his chest.

“On conditions,” Master added.

The stone swung back a little.

“Of course there are conditions,” Vellan muttered. “Say them.”

“We choose targets.” Master’s voice was soft but implacable. "I am not running around like a wild thing hoping to score tonight."

Vellan nodded quickly. “Yes. Yes. Of couse”

“We decide the timing and the approach,” Master continued. “If we take someone alive instead of putting a bolt through their skull, that is our call. If you want to argue, do it after we have brought you results.”

“Fine.” Vellan nodded quickly.

“And we get paid,” Master finished. “Properly. Per writ. Per head. Per risk. And I mean per every single head”

Vellan let out a sharp laugh.

“You think I did not argue that already?” he said. “There is a purse. You will have shares. Enough that it will make a difference even to you.” His gaze flicked round the room. “The Vanguard understands one thing very clearly. If you want killers to do inconvenient work, you pay them.”

My tail thumped once against Master’s boot. The idea of paid permission to carve through the Fighters Guild’s worst examples lit something bright and giddy inside me.

Tamsin still looked sceptical.

“Even if we do this perfectly,” she said, “we will be wearing the stink of it for years. Fighters Guild veterans talk. Other guilds listen. This could make us pariahs in half the trade roads.”

“It could,” Vellan agreed. “Or it could make us the people nobles call when things have gone so bad they cannot afford to trust their own. There is power in that. Ugly power, but real.”

He touched the folder again, fingers lingering on the leather.

“I cannot promise you clean outcomes,” he said.

He looked at Master with the tired intensity of a gambler putting his last coin on the table. “I am asking you to help me make sure this Vanguard hall survives its own scandal.”

The tea buzzed inside my skull. Every word seemed to leave a visible trail in the air. I watched them, bright and twisting, connecting choices to consequences. Dead Guardian. Angry House. Writs on Fighters Guild heads. Streets full of fear and opportunity.

"You can leave us now" Master said as detached as always.

"But this is my hall, I am the charge here" Vellan barked. Master just stared daggers into him before continuing "leave or find someone else, I need to think" and with that Vellan left. Just like that of course he did and with that I burst out laughing wrapping my tail around Masters leg.

His jaw tightened. His hands flexed. He swallowed whatever noble outrage was trying to claw its way up his throat. He gave a short, stiff nod that tried to be dignified and failed.

“Very well,” he said. “I expect decisions by morning.” The door shut behind him with a soft click that sounded an awful lot like retreat.

“Did you see his face,” I gasped, purring and laughing at the same time. “Like someone told him the world was not arranged in neat little ledgers after all.”

Tamsin let out a slow breath and scrubbed a hand over her face. “I am in over my head,” she muttered, half to herself. “Again.”

I shifted instantly, sliding along the couch until my shoulder pressed against Master’s side. My tail wound higher, wrapping his calf, then his knee. The bond hummed hot and bright, full of caffeine static and his steady thought patterns.

I tilted my head, ears twitching as I tried to read the texture of his mind through the link. “You are thinking,” I said, voice low. Master did not look at me.

“But you,” I continued, pupils wide, claws tracing idle patterns in the couch fabric, “you are not thinking about cracks. You are thinking about floodgates. About whether it is easier to chase a hundred little streams through the city or smash the main lock and let the river sort itself.”

Tamsin raised her head, eyes narrowing. “She is not wrong,” she said.

“I rarely am, I know my master” I sang, purr rumbling.

The tea made everything too sharp. I could hear the faint drip of wax from the candle onto the dish. I could feel Tamsin’s pulse speeding up from across the room, fast for an elf. I could smell the remains of Vellan’s expensive cologne on the air, sour with stress.

My tail thumped lightly against his boot, purring through the contact. “You are thinking,” I said, grinning, “why chase them through alleys when you know exactly where they all sleep.”

Tamsin stared at him.

“You cannot be serious,” she said.

His eyes flicked to her. Calm. Measuring.

“Gresha and a detachment of Bogclutch Black Fang are staying at the inn,” he said. “We will use them.”

Of course. Gresha. Goblin captain. Loyal to Master because he had given her clan something like a future when no one else would. Black Fang wolves. Goblins who knew how to hit first and hardest. They were in town because that is what happens when the world starts treating you like a small power instead of a problem.

Tamsin sat back as if the air had shoved her.

“You want to take goblins,” she said carefully, “march them to the Fighters Guild headquarters, and kick the front door in.”

“Yes,” Master said simply.

“Why!?” she demanded, “in the name of every god this town pretends to believe in, would we do that instead of using the writs like civilised people.”

“Because,” he replied, “I do not feel like running around the city chasing every rabid dog in their pack when I can walk into their kennel, shoot the breeder and burn the books. And because there is a bounty on every head,” he added. “We are not being paid per frightened citizen reassured. We are being paid per corpse.”

I laughed, a bright sharp sound.

“There it is,” I purred. “The noir heart of it. Their mess. Their conspiracy. Their scandal. We clean it up in one night because we do not have the patience to play politics at their speed.”

“Exactly,” he said.

Tamsin pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.

“This will look,” she said slowly, “like the Vanguard hired goblins to massacre a guildhall on Serrean territory.”

“Not my problem" Master said.

I bared my teeth.

“Besides,” I added, “you have seen Gresha’s unit when they are bored. It is cruel to deny them enrichment.”

Tamsin looked between us like she was watching a slow motion carriage crash. “You are both insane,” she said.

Master watched her.

“You said yourself,” he reminded her, “we are in over our heads. Vellan admits he has no plan beyond handing us writs and hoping. Serrean thinks we will play neat little games with legal paper while they practise speeches.”

He tapped the folder again.

“What they are not expecting,” he continued, “is for us to take them literally. They said every Fighters Guild member in Grey Hollow is an enemy of the settlement. They said heads are worth coin. They did not say we had to collect them politely.”

The tea made his words glow. Each sentence a bright line connecting fort to hall to guild.

Tamsin shook her head slowly. “Goblins,” she said.

“We march tomorrow night,” Master said. “Fast. Focused. No parading. No torch lined procession. We kick the door in and deal with it. 11 Black fang and us 3.” 

She hesitated. I watched the struggle play across her face. Duty. Fear. Excitement. The tea made it easy to read. The elf inside her hated chaos. The hunter inside her respected bold strikes.

“This is a terrible idea,” she said finally. “It will get us killed,” she added. Tamsin looked away first. Not in surrender. In reluctant acceptance. “If we do this,” she said, “we go for the head and the hands. Guildmaster and enforcers. We leave gaps. We cannot vacuum the whole structure in one night or the city will tear itself to pieces.”

“We avoid collateral,” she continued. “Staff. Healers. Apprentices. Anyone who drops their weapon and keeps it down.”

“The bounty is per head so that's a no” he said. "every one is fair game. If you want the coin you'll listen".

She nodded once.

“Fine,” she said. She grimaced. “I am going to regret this for the rest of my life.”

“People regret, trauma builts, welcome to reality” Master replied.

I stretched, vertebrae popping pleasantly, energy sparking along my spine. My tail uncoiled then curled back round him again, tighter, instinctive.

“Gresha will love it,” I said. “She gets to make a point. Clan Bogclutch Black Fang, officially hired by Vanguard to clean out a corrupted guildhall. Do you know what that will do to goblin morale out in the marshes.”

“Terrify everyone else,” Tamsin muttered.

“Also that,” I said cheerfully.

Master leaned back slightly, one hand resting on his knee, the other still on the folder.

“The bounty,” he said, almost lazily now. “Per head. Per badge. Per writ.”

He looked to Tamsin.

“I will take those,” he said.

Her brows shot up. “You want all the bounties?”

“Yes,” he said. “I will claim the writ payments. You can have the loot.” She stared.

“All of it,” he added calmly. “Weapons, armour, coin, trinkets. Whatever we find in the headquarters. You know guild treasuries better than I do. You know where they hide their reserves. You can strip them down to their underfloor boards. In exchange, I take the official coin and the blame.”

The tea made the moment stretch, every second outlined. I watched the calculations flicker behind her eyes. Loot meant independence. Stocking her gear. Funding her paths. Bounties meant records, questions, scrutiny.

“You are serious,” she said.

“Always,” he replied.

“And the goblins,” she asked. “What do they get.”

“Oh please” he said. "I'm already Lord Protector, they're already on service" 

I purred louder at that. The sound vibrated through the couch, through my ribs, into the bond. “See,” I murmured, “you are not entirely heartless. Just very organised about where you place it.”

Tamsin looked down at her hands, flexed her fingers once, then lifted her head. She exhaled. “In that case,” she said quietly, “I am in. Soldier in over her head or not.”

“You are not a soldier,” I reminded her. “You are a hunter with a very large city to stalk. Think of it as a forest built from stone.”

Her mouth almost twitched. “Forest does not yell at you in council halls,” she said.

“Only because trees lack the imagination nobles have,” I replied.

Master stood fully.

“We move at dawn plus one night,” he said. “Tonight we rest and plan. Tomorrow we talk to Gresha. The night after that, we knock.”

He looked down at me, eyes faintly amused.

“Try to sleep,” he added. “You are vibrating.”

“I am perfectly still,” I protested, tail coiling even tighter round his leg, purr roaring. “Inside.”

The tea disagreed. My thoughts raced with images of goblins slipping through alleys, of Fighters Guild banners torn from walls, of Gresha baring her teeth in that sharp goblin grin when she realised she had been given permission to hit a guildhall and get paid for it.

Writs. Bounties. Goblins. Nobles at windows watching the world they thought they controlled fold sideways for one glorious, horrifying night.

I leaned my head against Master’s arm and let the bond flood with my delight.

“Let them think they gave us a game,” I purred. “We will show them what happens when the pieces start playing back.”

@Senar2020 02:48:51 AM 15/11/2025