Chapter 11: Rain and Ghosts

Graywatch didn’t welcome you home. It watched you. The city squatted between mountain and sea, built of cold stone and colder ambition, and it didn’t care if you came back with medals or blood on your boots. It just opened its gates like a dealer opening a palm—clean on the outside, something sharp waiting underneath.

The rain hadn’t let up in three days. Not that it ever truly stopped here. It came in waves, in fits, in slow drizzles and sudden sheets. This time it was the kind that seeped into your bones and settled there like old memories. The kind that made the air taste like rust and old promises.

The carriage wheels splashed through the muck at the city’s edge, iron-shod and half-rotted. The cobbles were polished with rain, slick as ice and twice as treacherous. I sat inside the cramped wooden box with a crate wedged between my boots—the kind of crate you don’t let anyone else carry. Inside was my Smith-Weston hand crossbow, gifted by the Ghostwolves at the end. The last weapon I hadn’t surrendered. The last thing that still felt like mine.

On top of it sat a sealed envelope with my discharge papers. Fifteen years in the Queen’s army, wrapped up in three pages and a wax stamp. The driver called out something I didn’t catch as we neared the main gate—something about a crowd. I caught a glimpse of them as we passed under the great stone arch: townsfolk lining the walk, scattered guard units in full dress, a few merchants with raised brows and forced smiles.

Someone must’ve recognized the crest on the cart. A few even cheered. They called me hero. I didn’t wave. Didn’t smile. I just sat there, jaw clenched, watching the rain run down the inside of the window like it was trying to escape, too. They meant well. Maybe. But every cheer felt like a shovel digging deeper into the grave I carried inside. The ghosts stirred with the noise. Maren’s laugh. Tavor’s dry wit. Jaska’s terrible singing during rations. All of them just behind my eyes, closer now than they’d been all month. That’s what applause did. It turned memory into ache.

When the carriage finally came to a stop near the inner ring, I stepped down and let the rain find me. Let it soak into the shoulders of my coat and drip from the edge of my hood. Graywatch hadn’t changed. Same old soot-black walls, same squat dwarven stonework that looked like it had been carved by angry gods and braced for siege. Same smell of pipe smoke and horse piss and too many bodies moving too little cargo too far and for too cheap.

The city was alive. Grinding, stubborn, relentless. A trader’s dream. A soldier’s hell. I stood there for a long moment, crate under one arm, pack slung over the other. No one approached. The crowd had peeled off once the novelty faded. No one wanted a hero up close. Not one with dark circles under her eyes and a haunted look behind the medals. I wasn’t twelve anymore. That girl was long gone. This place? It wasn’t home. It was just where my story started.

And now, apparently, where it had decided to drag itself back. I adjusted the strap on my shoulder and started walking. Didn’t know where yet. Just knew I had to find a roof, a room, and maybe a bottle strong enough to drown a few ghosts for the night.

Retirement.

They made it sound like a reward. But I’d been trained to kill kings and ghosts and everything in between. So what was a war dog supposed to do once they’d locked up the battlefield? I had money, sure. A decent stipend. Enough to keep me fed and drunk and in bad habits for a while. But I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a squad. I didn’t have a war.

All I had was this city. And the rain, maybe that was enough.

****

I didn’t come to The Dusty Anchor by plan. It just sort of happened. Graywatch has a way of deciding for you when you’re too tired to argue. I turned left instead of right, followed a crooked alley that smelled like brine and forgotten stories, and ended up under a sagging sign shaped like an anchor, crusted with rust and flaking blue paint. It creaked in the wind, like it was complaining about still being attached to this place.

The building crouched at the edge of the pier like it was trying not to be noticed. Stone and warped timber slapped together in defiance of gravity. One of the windows was boarded. The other wept grime like the whole thing had been crying black tears for a decade straight.

It didn’t remind me of the war. Didn’t smell like barracks, or burnt oil, or the iron stink of blood soaked into tent canvas. It smelled like fish, spilled beer, old sweat, and salt. And right now, that was damn near perfume. I pushed the door open. It moaned like a wounded thing. The Anchor wasn’t lively, not in the usual sense—just breathing. Quietly. Like a creature hibernating through its own failure. Inside, the air was thick with pipe smoke and the kind of low laughter that never meant joy. Just noise to fill the void.

Sailors hunched over mugs, their shoulders hunched from long hours and longer voyages. Locals too broke to leave and too mean to die nursed watered ale at scarred tables. The hearth was burning low, more ash than flame, and the walls were tattooed with knife scars and years of spilled stories no one asked to hear.

Perfect.

I found a booth near the back, the kind with a view of the door and a wall to my back—old habits die hard, especially when they’re the reason you’re still breathing. The bench creaked under my weight, nearly seven feet of hill-giant bones and elf-born posture squeezed into a space meant for lesser creatures. I set my box down next to me—my Smith-Weston nestled inside like a sleeping dog—and leaned back as the Anchor swallowed me whole. That’s when she slid in across from me.

Kathy.

Too pretty for this place by half, but with eyes like a woman who knew exactly how far pretty got you in Graywatch. She smiled like she was amused by the world and pissed off at it all the same.

“Buy me a drink, soldier?” she asked, voice honey-thick with just a touch of boredom.

I raised a brow. “You looking for work or company?”

“Tonight?” She shrugged. “Neither. Just thirsty. You look like you’ve seen things. I figured maybe you’d like someone to talk to who won’t salute or cry.”

I let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh.

“Fair enough. Sit.”

She was already sitting, of course, but the gesture mattered. I flagged down a barmaid with arms like ship ropes and a frown that looked permanent. That was Fessy, though I didn’t know it yet. Her sister Penny would come in later—wide-eyed, with a smile that hadn’t been entirely killed by the work. I ordered a bottle and two glasses. No use pretending I wasn’t going to need more than one.

Kathy leaned back, crossing one leg over the other like she owned the booth. “First time in the Anchor?”

“First time in Graywatch in twenty years,” I said. “Last time I was here I was twelve, and my biggest concern was whether the butcher's boy would pull my braid or throw mud.”

She tilted her head.

“And now?”

“Now I bury people,” I said. “And drink.”

She didn’t flinch. Just nodded like that made perfect sense.

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“You’ll fit in fine,” she said. “Nobody here makes it without ghosts.”

The whiskey came, brown and angry in the glass. I drank. She drank. We sat for a while, not speaking, not needing to. Eventually, Fessy returned, wiping her hands on a towel that had probably once been white. She gave me a look—measured, guarded, tired.

“You pay your tab, you mind your mess, you don’t hit my sister,” she said. “You’re welcome here.”

It wasn’t a greeting. It was a law. I nodded once. That was enough. The Dusty Anchor didn’t know it yet, but I’d found something I didn’t expect in that battered little dockside tavern. Not peace. Not healing. But space. And sometimes, for a woman like me, that’s the closest thing to salvation you get.

****

Two months passed like a whisper in the fog—too fast to hold, too slow to forget. I settled into something that resembled a routine, though I’d never call it comfort. Habit, maybe. The kind of rhythm you find after a long march when the world stops shouting and all you’re left with is the sound of your own boots on stone. Most mornings I rose late enough to miss the working crowd, but early enough to avoid the drunks still trying to sleep off the night. Just after dawn, usually. The city would be steaming then—rain clinging to the eaves like lazy ghosts, smoke curling from chimneys like sighs. Graywatch never really dried out. It just went from wet to wetter.

After I took care of my morning needs and the ghosts decided whether they’d follow me for the day, I made my way down to the common room at The Dusty Anchor. It always smelled like old wood, burnt grease, and pipe ash—like the past had decided to stick around for breakfast.

Fessy was always up by then.

The other girls—Kathy and Penny—worked later hours, but Fessy, she ran on spite and duty. She’d meet me at the table with a mug of Graywatch’s idea of coffee—bitter, weak, and stubbornly hot—and a plate of eggs and whatever meat hadn't gone green overnight. She never asked if I wanted it. Just set it down and watched me eat like a mother hen with a bad attitude and a sharper knife.

“It’s paid for,” she’d say every time I raised an eyebrow at the food. “So shut up and chew.”

I never argued. Mostly because I liked my coffee like I liked my people—honest and mean. And Fessy fit both. After breakfast, I’d throw on my coat. The only thing I kept from my service, besides scars and nightmares. Long, thick leather. Worn at the edges, patched twice, heavy as guilt and just as reliable. In Graywatch, a good coat was more important than a good sword. You could get stabbed and still walk. You couldn’t survive soaked and cold for long.

Then I’d walk.

That was it. No destination. No orders. No schedule. I didn’t need a map—I remembered the city from when I was a girl. Before the war. Before the world twisted me into something sharp and sad. I walked every street, every alley, every broken stair and flooded gutter. Through dockside shanties and merchant lanes, temple districts and gang-run tenements. Some days I passed through four different turf wars and got offered a knife fight in two languages before noon.

Those were the good days. Because when you’re fighting, you’re not thinking. And I’ve got a hell of a lot I don’t want to think about. Sometimes, some young idiot—barely grown and carrying more bravado than brains—would step out of the shadows and try to posture. Ask what I thought I was doing on his street. That’s when I smiled. And then taught him something he didn’t know he needed to learn.

I didn’t kill them. Not anymore. It wasn’t a vow. Not some sacred promise I’d made in front of a god or a gravestone. I just got tired of taking lives. Fifteen years of blood-soaked orders will do that to a person. Doesn’t mean I’ve gone soft. If someone needed killing, I’d still do it. But these days, it wasn’t my first answer. I started leaving the Smith-Weston in the room. My beautiful automatic hand crossbow—sleek, dwarven-made, a gift from the Ghostwolves at my retirement. I still oiled it. Still whispered to it sometimes when the ghosts were too loud. But I didn’t carry it unless I knew I needed it.

I carried the long knife, of course—tucked against the small of my back like a promise I might still need to keep. A pair of throwing blades in my boots, too. Graywatch is full of alleys that don’t care if you’ve turned over a new leaf. And through all of it—every step, every street, every stare—I was never really alone. The ghosts never left. Not truly.

Some days it was Maren, leaning against a wall just out of reach, eyes full of that half-smile she wore the night she died. Other times it was Tavor, muttering observations under his breath that no one else could hear. Jaska, humming old songs I thought I’d forgotten. Their faces came and went like bad dreams. Soft. Cold. Always just behind me.

And when they got too close, too sharp? That’s what the whiskey was for. A shot before sleep. Sometimes a bottle. Not to forget—just to dull the edge. Make the silence deep enough to drown them for a few hours. So yeah. Two months passed in a blink. I wasn’t healing. But I was still here. And in Graywatch, that’s about the best anyone can hope for.

****

Most nights passed like fog in a gutter—slow, quiet, and damp with old memories. That night was no different. I was halfway through a bottle of Dwarfhammer whiskey that tasted like it had been distilled from coal smoke and remorse. It was just past midnight, the kind of hour when the city falls into its guilty silence and even the rats try to keep it down. I drank alone, same as usual. Not because I was hiding. Just because I didn’t trust the kind of people who liked company that late unless they were selling something or trying to rob you.

The room I’d rented above The Dusty Anchor was modest, if you were feeling generous. A cot built for someone shorter, a washbasin with a cracked lip, and a wardrobe that looked like it used to be a coffin. The walls held the chill like a jealous lover, but I didn’t mind. I’d slept in worse.

The one thing that kept me in that room was the window.

It looked out over the docks—fog-laced, lamp-lit, full of the low groans of ships being loaded and men unloading their souls for silver. From that little wooden chair and the table beside it, I could watch the city move without having to touch it. Just me, the dark, and the slow churn of the tide. I was sitting there, legs kicked out, the bottle resting like an old friend in my hand, when the knock came.

Soft. Uneven.

Not the confident pound of someone with orders or muscle. More like a question wrapped in fear. At first, I thought it might be one of the ghosts finally getting mouthy. Wouldn’t have surprised me. Some nights, I could damn near hear Maren clearing her throat or Tavor pacing the floor just behind my shoulder. But then it came again. A little louder. I rose slow, the whiskey still in me but fading fast. That kind of knock has a way of burning the fog off your mind. Something about it felt wrong. I opened the door—and there she was.

Kathy. Bleeding.

Her face was pale, smeared with a streak of blood that ran from just below her eye to her jawline. Her lip was split, and one shoulder was bare, torn from her dress like she’d fought to get away from something mean. Her eyes met mine—and that was all it took. The rage didn’t explode. It wasn’t a wildfire. It was something quieter, meaner. A hot coal buried in the gut, flaring back to life. It didn’t scream. It hissed. I stepped aside and pulled her in. The door clicked shut behind us, muffling the city.

I led her to the table and pulled the little chair around, lowering her into it gently. Her hands trembled. Her breath came in shallow drags. But she was upright, which meant she was tougher than she looked. Most girls in her line had to be. I grabbed my kit from under the bed. I hadn’t worn a uniform in two months, but I still kept the habit. You don’t spend fifteen years patching up bloody recruits without learning to keep bandages and salve in reach. Even here, in the quiet life I was trying to fake, I’d never let myself forget how to stop a wound from bleeding out.

She hissed as I cleaned the cut along her cheek—long, deep, but not ruinous. She’d scar. But scars are the only honest thing some of us wear.

“Talk to me,” I said, voice low. “Who did this?”

She shook her head. “Don’t know his name. Merchant type. New to the docks. Entitled, drunk, thought he paid for more than he got.”

I paused. “What do you mean?”

She looked up, eyes glassy. “He... wanted me scared. Said ‘your kind ought to be grateful for clean silver.’ I asked him to be gentle. He smiled like I’d told a joke. Then he cut me.”

I steadied my hands, but the coal in my belly flared hotter.

“First time he’s come to you?”

“Third,” she said. “Only time he paid. First two, he watched. Stood in the corner with his friends while Penny worked.”

That gave me pause.

“He didn’t come alone?”

“No. Two friends. One big, bald. The other short, twitchy. Talked in some western dialect—probably from Tidewatch. Didn't wear guild pins, but the big one had a knife that looked like a fisher’s gutting blade.”

Details. Bits and pieces. Enough to start pulling threads. I finished wrapping her wound, then wiped her hands clean.

“Where’d they go?”

“Out the back. Penny helped me up here. Didn’t want the guards. You were the only one I could think of.”

That sat heavy in my chest. The kind of weight you get when someone trusts you with their last good option.

I nodded. “Good instincts.”

She gave me a look. “You gonna kill him?”

I shook my head once. “Not unless he gives me a reason. But I’ll make sure he learns something.”

I stepped out into the hallway, dropped a few silver into Fessy’s hand when she appeared, tight-lipped and furious. “Get a doc. One who won’t ask questions.”

She nodded. No words. Just action. I didn’t take the crossbow. Didn’t need it. I had the long knife at my back, a fire in my gut, and years of experience rooting out men who thought money bought silence. I’d buried better men for less. That night, I didn’t have orders. But I had something close. I had a mission. And I was going hunting.