Chapter 10: A Friend

Fen went back to Regis’s house, quietly letting himself in with the key he had been given. Regis was perched in his overstuffed chair, a massive ledger open in his lap.

Surprisingly, Regis didn’t react beyond a glance up and a nod at Fen’s entry, returning straight to his book. “You’re tracking me.” Fen concluded.

“Yup.” Regis said, not looking up. “That key I gave you lets me know if it’s you when you enter the alley.”

“I don’t like that.” Fen said.

“I could have gone much further. I chose to trust you with that key, but I still need to know who’s approaching my door. This was the easiest way.”

Fen sighed. He knew he’d lost the argument, but he was very annoyed with the idea of being tracked, even if it was only a little bit.

“I need to see the ledger again.”

Regis gestured to a nearby shelf and Fen grabbed the black leather book. He sat down on the sofa to read it, but the room was so warm, and the couch so soft. Fen was overtired, and he couldn’t do this kind of brain work right now.

But time was of the essence, so he felt uncomfortable allowing himself to sleep just yet. He turned back to Regis. “I assume you read this whole thing.”

“Yup.”

“Did it have any mention of what the cult was specifically paid to do?”

“Not really.” Regis said. “It says they were messing with Kheltirm, but it doesn’t give any specifics. If you skip past the first few pages, there’s a list of payments and the dates they were made on, but that’s all we’ve got.”

Fen nodded. “I can work with that.”

Regis turned back to his book, and Fen parsed quickly through the dates. None of them jumped out to him, but it did give him an idea. He pulled a blank sheet of paper from one of the random stacks strewn about the room and wrote down the dates on it before leaving the comfort of the sofa once more for the streets of Unger.

Fen went to the nearby guard post. There were mixed greetings upon his entry. He had worked with many of these guards before, earning some of their respect. Some of them still felt like he was trying to do their job for them, and resented him for it. It didn’t matter though, they let him in because they understood that he only visited for important things.

Goran was in his office, surrounded by disheveled piles of reports. The captain looked up when Fen entered and sighed heavily. “Thunderblade, I assume you’re about to ask me to do more work?”

“Of course.” Fen said, closing the office door behind himself. “I’ve got this list of dates. I need to know if anything dramatic happened on or around these days.”

Captain Goran shook his head. “We’ve worked together, what, a hundred times now? When are you going to cut it with the clerical stuff and ask me to bash some heads with you?”

“Maybe soon, depending on what we find.”

“Alright, alright, let’s check the records.” Goran glanced at the clock that was hung near his door. “Maybe this will get me to the end of my shift.”

Goran led the way to the archives at the back of the guardhouse, unlocking the heavy door with a key from his overfull keyring. The captain pulled a light sphere from the wall, igniting the flameless lamp with a touch before walking back to the shelves that housed the more recent records.

“Before we start digging, it’ll save us a lot of time if you can tell me what we’re looking for.” Goran said.

Fen thought about it for a moment, but he eventually decided that Goran would already have had him killed if the captain had anything to do with the plot. “I’m looking for incidents relating to Kheltirm. Some out of town group seems to be stirring things up.”

Goran broke out in a huge smile. “I’m very glad you said that.” He pulled out a box and slid it over to Fen. “Right there’s our box of growing tension, as we call it. There have been quite a few incidents relating to Kheltirm lately that have messed things up, but we haven’t been able to find any sort of connection.”

Fen opened the box and began parsing through the folders. Four of the incidents took place one day after a date from his list, and another two corresponded with a different day. Still others corresponded to each of the other days on his list. “It might bigger than I thought.” Fen said after a while.

“If you could give me some context here, I’d be very grateful.” Goran said. “We’ve been looking into these events for weeks and haven’t found anything.”

“Can I trust you?” Fen asked.

Goran’s brow furrowed, first in anger, and then in concern. “It’s that bad? You don’t even trust me?”

Fen nodded. “I’ll be honest, I’m a little shaken by this whole thing. It started as a normal job, but now it’s looking like the beginning of something bad.”

Goran glanced over the incidents laid out on the table between them. “War?” He asked.

“I think so.” Fen’s exhaustion finally overwhelmed the indecision that was paralyzing him, and he told Goran the whole story, right from the beginning. It was the first time he’d laid it all out in one go, and it made him realize just how strange everything was getting.

Luckily, Goran responded well, eyes going wider and wider through the whole telling before numbly nodding at the end of it all. “I can have the warehouse watched, and I’ll get some of our analysts look into all of these incidents. I’ll also get you paid a consultant’s fee for bringing me all this.”

“Are you sure you can trust your guys?” Fen asked.

“We’re both soldiers, you and I,” Goran said, “so you understand that when you’ve fought alongside someone you learn to trust them with your life. That’s how I feel about every guard in this house. We’re working together to fight against injustice in the city.”

“What about the implications about the King?” Fen asked.

“That is more troublesome.” Goran said. “I’ll do my best to keep our investigation quiet while we start out, but if I find anything noteworthy it’ll inevitably make it back to the King.”

“What do we do then?”

“We’ll figure it out. My main priority is the safety of the people of Unger. Sometimes that ruffles some royal feathers, but I’ll never change my mind on that.”

“I knew I came to you for a reason.”

“It’s ‘cuz you’re smart.” Goran eyed Fen, his gaze piercing with the weight of years of friendship. “Now, go get some sleep. You’re wrung out.”

Fen was surprised to step outside and find that the sun had long since set, hours having passed unmarked in the records room. He complied with Goran’s command and went straight back to Regis’s house where he collapsed into the couch. He slept well for the first time since the job had begun, glad to have a friend on his side.