Silk and Snares

Hope is a hell of a thing to sneak up on a girl in a place like this.

We were standing in a piss-stained tenement that looked like it had been condemned back when the city was still carving streets out of the marsh. Wallpaper peeled like old regrets, and the floorboards sighed under every step like they were tired of holding people up. It stank of mold, desperation, and a half-hearted attempt at decay. And yet… I wasn’t in a foul mood.

That should’ve been my first warning.

See, I don’t trust places that feel like they’re falling apart and still manage to cradle something good. Don’t trust houses like this to hold their own weight, and definitely don’t trust moods like this to last. Felt like waiting for a smile to stab me in the back.

Probably had something to do with the man standing next to me. Steven, all fur-lined muscle and warm-summer grin, still smelled like soap and mead from our dinner two hours ago. A barbarian with actual manners. Someone the bards should be singing about if the world had any damn sense left in it.

Instead, he was here. Next to me. In a collapsing room with water spots on the ceiling, and a gagged gnome named Terry wriggling on the floor like a fish caught in a net.

And I was happy. Or close enough to it that my instincts started screaming at me like I’d stepped into a trap. Maybe I had.

Emotions like that, they’re distractions. They’re illusions worse than any magic glamor I’ve ever worn. I don’t get to be happy. I don’t get quiet nights or warm hands or someone to watch my six and mean it. That kind of peace belongs to other people, the ones who haven’t seen the way the world grinds up hope like gristle in a butcher’s block.

Still… I didn’t move. Didn’t bark an order. Just stood there watching Terry squirm and let the silence stretch long enough to feel the tension crackle in the plaster.

Yeah. Something was about to break. I just wasn’t sure if it’d be the case... or me.

I dragged the nearest chair across the warped floorboards, the legs screeching like a banshee with a grudge. The thing looked ready to collapse under the weight of a firm breeze, but I wasn’t planning to get too comfortable. I spun it around, straddled it backward, and planted my boots wide, elbows resting on the splintered backrest. The whole posture said I wasn’t here for small talk or pleasantries.

Across from me, tied up like a festival roast, sat one very nervous gnome in a suit. Silk lapels. Monogrammed cufflinks. A tasteful pocket square in crimson silk, like he wanted to be fashionable while bleeding out. And this sure as hell wasn’t his home. The air here reeked of mold, spoiled wine, and lives gone wrong. No man with shoes that polished chose to spend his evenings in a place like this.

Which made the whole scene stink of questions. The biggest one curled up behind my eyes like smoke: why the hell had Murk brought him here?

The little troll leaned against the wall nearby, pipe in one hand, the other twirling a dull dagger between stubby fingers like he was practicing a lullaby meant for jugulars. His grin hadn’t wavered since we walked in. That made me even more uneasy. When Murk smiled that long, something was always about to fall over and catch fire.

Still, I’d learned in the army not to rely too much on other people’s stories. Intel passed down secondhand had a way of getting you killed. The kind of officers who handed you a folder with a neat list of "key details" were the same ones who never left the war room. They didn’t have to dig through blood and bone to find out what someone really knew. I did.

I’d interrogated my fair share. Cultists with blood still wet on their hands. Smugglers caught with curses sewn into their seams. Enemy scouts who didn’t know when to shut up and when to beg. And what I learned was simple: you want the truth, you dig it out yourself.

I leaned forward and tilted my head, letting the lamplight catch the hard angle of my jaw.

“Well, Terry,” I said, calm as whiskey in a quiet room, “let’s have a chat.”

The name alone made him twitch. That was a good sign. Guilt always lives just under the skin.

I flicked two fingers at Murk, and without a word, he shuffled over and loosened the gag. Not completely, just enough to let the little bastard talk. Murk might have looked like a carnival act, but he tied a knot like a hangman and had the patience of a crocodile.

Terry coughed, spat a curse into the floorboards, and blinked up at me through eyes that had seen better days.

I gave him a tight smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Good. Now that your mouth’s free, let’s see if you’re smart enough to use it.”

Gnomes are a lot of things. Too many things, really. Sharp as broken glass, squirrel-nervous, and cursed with more manic energy than a kicked hornet’s nest. They’re brilliant, tireless, and just unhinged enough to think strapping a rocket to a soup cart is a fine way to solve traffic. But brave? No. Courage wasn’t a trait you found wired into their bones. Not like greed. Not like self-preservation. And that was exactly what I was counting on.

I leaned in close, letting my shadow fall across him like a stormcloud. The suit he wore was expensive, pressed, smelled faintly of cardamom and desperation. I could hear him breathing too fast through his nose.

“So,” I said, voice low and razor-smooth, “I hear you’ve been driving one of those sweet black cabs I keep hearing whispers about.”

His eyes darted from me to Murk to Steven and back again, looking for an escape that didn’t exist. His lips worked for a second, then he huffed and shouted, “Help! Somebody…”

Before the second word made it out, Murk stepped forward, one hand outstretched in a theatrical bow, the other lazily tamping his pipe.

“Oh, do yell louder,” the pygmy troll said with a lopsided grin. “Maybe the mold’ll come to your rescue. Or the rats. Or maybe the fine folks down the hall selling dreams and liver rot by the vial.” He leaned in a little closer, voice dropping to a whisper as rich and cold as grave dirt. “But no one in this part of town’s gonna lift a finger for a well-dressed gnome trussed up in a squat that smells like rotgut and failed dreams.”

Terry blinked, mouth still open. Then his face folded into that all-too-familiar gnomish scowl. The one that meant stubborn pride was digging in like a tick. He crossed his arms as much as the rope allowed and glared at me like I’d insulted his ancestors. Which, if I’m honest, I probably had at some point.

“Not talking, huh?” I said, cocking my head. “That’s cute. Real brave, for your kind.”

He sniffed. “I know my rights.”

Murk cackled. “Oh, wrong neighborhood for that, my tiny friend.”

The silence stretched for a moment. Long enough to make me wonder if I’d need to start removing teeth with the heel of my boot.

That’s when Steven stepped forward.

I hadn’t asked him to. Hadn’t even looked his way. But he was already there, looming like a thundercloud in a wool coat. He cracked his knuckles, not in menace, but with the weary air of a man who’s done this dance before and really hoped the music would change.

Then he shifted. I saw it happen. The steel behind the charm, the soldier behind the smile. He dropped into the role like a blade falling into its sheath: clean, heavy, and inevitable.

“The lady asked you a question,” he said, voice slow and stupid-thick, like molasses poured over broken bones. “You’re gonna answer her.”

Terry squinted up, puffing his chest like he might actually protest. “Why would I?”

Steven didn’t flinch. Just smiled, all teeth and boredom.

“Because right now you’ve got ten fingers,” he said, holding up both hands, flexing his thick digits like he was counting prayers. “And ten toes, probably. That’s a lot of symmetry.” Then he reached out, calm as you like, and snapped the leg off the rickety end table with two fingers. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.

“You want to keep that trend going?” he asked.

Terry’s eyes went wide.

“Speak.”

And when the gnome still didn’t, Steven reached down, took hold of one of Terry’s hands, and without changing expression, bent his pinky back until it snapped.

“Guess we’re down to nine.”

Terry screamed through clenched teeth, sweat breaking on his brow like someone had uncorked his skull. I didn’t feel bad. Not even a little. Not when kids were vanishing into the night, cabbed off to gods know where, and not when this smug little bastard was sitting in the middle of it wearing a silk tie and a guilty conscience.

But I wasn’t smiling, either.

That’d come later. When he talked. And he would. They always do.

“So let’s get to it then,” I said, my voice low, steady, and absent of anything close to mercy.

The little bastard was trying to cradle his broken pinky like a sacred relic. Good. That meant we’d started the conversation on the right foot. I leaned in, slow and deliberate, letting the chair creak beneath me as I shifted.

“I’ve got nowhere to be, Terry. All night if I have to. And I’ll make damn sure you’re wide awake for the whole thing. Because here’s the truth, and I need you to understand this deep in your marrow: the longer it takes you to talk, the more bones we break. The more pain you feel. And I’m not particularly fussy about what part of you snaps first. The pinky was just a warm-up.”

His eyes darted from me to Steven, still looming like a thundercloud with that bored, cold look of a man who didn’t mind making a mess. Murk was leaning against the wall, humming something off-key with his pipe smoke curling in lazy loops around his head, like he was waiting for a kettle to boil.

I held up four fingers.

“One. Who’s pulling your strings.”

He swallowed.

“Two. What’s the schedule.”

His knuckles tightened.

“Three. Where do you drop your passengers.”

A tremor rolled through his throat.

“And four. When’s the next pickup.”

I folded my hands and waited.

He lasted all of eight seconds.

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“Mornvale,” he spat, eyes narrowed like he expected the name alone to end this. “The Mornvale family. You don’t want to screw with them. You know what’s good for you, you’ll let me go right now…”

My palm met his cheek like thunder kissing the cobblestones. The crack echoed off the warped walls. He reeled sideways and when his eyes found mine again, they were glassy and shocked.

Steven stepped forward, cracking the knuckles on his good hand, reaching for the gnome’s other pinky.

Terry shrieked before contact.

“Alric!” he shouted. “Alric Mornvale! He’s the one I talk to now! He’s the favored son, the one who calls the shots. I haven’t seen the old lord in months, and the others don’t talk much. It’s Alric.”

I froze. Alric Mornvale. That name wasn’t new. It scratched something raw in the back of my mind. The girl, Elira, she'd cried out that name when they dragged her into the black cab, like she knew him, like she trusted him. That made the whole thing curdle in my gut. If she’d known her captor… This was personal. Intimate. Whoever this Alric was, he just moved to the center of my board.

I filed the name away. Alric Mornvale. I didn’t know much of high society, but I knew someone who could turn the whole gossip chain of Graywatch into a ten-minute play complete with musical numbers.

Trixie.

The gnome saw the glint in my eye and started to sing.

He gave us drop points. Back entrance of the Mornvale manor, on the edge of the city where the wall thins out and the noble manors mix with swampy nothing. Said the place had been quiet during the day, but came alive at night like a corpse waking up to dance.

Times. Routes. Names. He rattled them off like a child reciting multiplication tables under threat of a belt.

And then he hit the sweet spot.

“Tomorrow night,” he said, licking his lips between words. “Big one. Real big. Lotta nobles, all masked, some kind of... event. I was gonna get a bonus just for driving in clean.”

His breath was coming faster now, either from fear or relief. He had emptied his pockets and was hoping we’d be kind with what we found.

That was when Murk straightened and hummed a low note I barely caught.

The tune was soft, but it wrapped around Terry like silk spun from shadow. His eyes rolled up and his body went slack, still tied but no longer in the room, not really.

I raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you do lullabies?”

Murk just grinned and tapped ash into an old teacup he’d found from gods-know-where.

“Since you started liking people,” he said.

I didn’t dignify that with a reply. The room was quiet now, but the fire in my gut was just getting started.

“So now what, Tallboots?”

I shot Murk a look sharp enough to skin a rabbit. “You’re losing your touch with the nicknames.”

He just grinned and leaned back like the king of bad timing. I turned to Steven, who was still looming over the unconscious gnome like he was looking at a sack of potatoes that had personally offended him.

“I don’t normally invite clients to help on a case,” I said, voice low, half-expecting him to argue.

Steven didn’t disappoint. “How many cases have you had to develop a ‘normally’ attitude?”

He said it with that crooked grin of his, the one that made it hard to tell if he was teasing or testing me. Maybe both.

“Fair point,” I muttered. “This is my first real case, officially. Still, you're the client. Wouldn't do me much good to have you wind up dead before you pay me.”

That grin of his widened, but something in it softened. “Think of me as a helpful servant, nothing more. I just want a front-row seat to the legend of Lena Blackthorn.”

I stared at him for a beat longer than I meant to. Damn fool meant it.

“Fine,” I said, jerking a thumb toward the still-snoring gnome. “Then we need to deliver this twitchy little meat parcel to the Drayman’s Registry. The cab guild will want a few words with him.”

I pulled on my coat and fixed my hat low across my brow. The rain had started again, of course it had, and the wind carried the stink of city grime and rich secrets fermenting too long in cellars.

“And me?” I said as we stepped out into the damp Graywatch night. “I’ve got to see a girl about some gossip.”

****

The cab ride to Guild Square was short, just long enough for the silence to settle in thick. Nobody said much, and the gnome snored softly where Steven had him draped over one shoulder like an old rug that talked too much.

I wasn’t expecting much activity this late. The Guild Square went quiet after midnight, most of the legitimate business types asleep in their tidy beds, dreaming of coin and contracts. But I knew Trixie would be here. The girl always picked jobs that came with lodging, and last time we spoke she mentioned her little apartment above the office, like it was just another perk of being half dryad. Maybe it was. Or maybe she just liked to keep her roots close to the paperwork.

Either way, it meant I didn’t have to knock twice.

Steven dropped the gnome onto the cobbles with a grunt and flexed his shoulder. I gave the door a good solid rap, maybe too much muscle behind it, but I figured waking up an apprentice or two was part of the job. Builds character.

The bolt slid back, and there she was.

Trixie looked like she’d stepped out of a perfume ad in the broadsheets. Soft curls. Bright eyes. Smile like a secret you’d enjoy breaking. She didn’t look sleepy. She looked fresh. Which made me suspicious. Nothing good smells like a blooming meadow at two in the morning unless it’s selling something.

“Lena,” she purred, eyes flicking from me to the barbarian and the bundled gnome. “You always bring the best kind of trouble.”

She stepped aside and let us in. The office smelled of ink, wood polish, and flowers. All hers. Some dryad trait, I figured. Half of Graywatch would probably follow her into fire just to catch another whiff.

Steven ducked under the doorframe with his usual good-natured quiet, dropped the gnome in the corner like a sack of dirty laundry, then smiled at Trixie. “Good to see you again.”

She winked.

I didn’t like that. Couldn’t say why. Didn’t have to. I just didn’t.

A young dwarven girl, maybe fourteen winters if that, sat up from a cot behind the counter, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and blinking at us like we were ghosts. No beard yet. Probably still working on her first cup of real coffee.

Trixie snapped her fingers gently. “Runa, sweetie, go wake the Guildmaster. Tell him it’s urgent.”

The girl blinked again, nodded, and disappeared through a door like a shadow on short legs.

Steven eased down into one of the chairs, careful not to break it. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching the sleeping gnome like he might try to chew his way out of those ropes.

Not two minutes later, the back door slammed open like thunder, and in stormed a dwarf who looked like he'd been woken from the middle of the best dream of his life and wanted everyone in the room to pay for it.

He had a chest like a barrel and arms like cinder blocks. His nightshirt was crooked, and his cap was hanging by a thread. A thick accent rolled out of him like bricks down a stairwell.

“By Kothar’s flamin’ forge, what’s the meanin’ o’ this, Trixie? You know what time it is?” He squinted around the room. “An’ who in the nine soddin’ hells dumped a gnome corpse in my office?”

“He’s not dead,” I said. “Just resting. Bad night at the tables.”

The Guildmaster narrowed one eye at me, the other still focused on Steven. “You. You look like the kind o’ lad who could break a door just by sneezin’. That yours?”

Steven smiled, all friendly. “He fell.”

“On what, a boulder?”

I raised a hand. “You’ll want to hear what he has to say, Master…?”

He grunted. “Burlen. Guildmaster Burlen, an’ unless this is about cab licenses or fare violations, you’re all trespassin’ on my good temper.”

Trixie stepped between us with her usual grace and rested a hand on his forearm. “It’s about the black cabs, Master Burlen.”

That stopped him cold.

He turned his head slowly, like his neck was stiff from years behind a reins bench. His gaze dropped to the unconscious gnome, then back to me.

“Well then,” he muttered, voice suddenly gravel soft. “Guess I’m awake now. Let’s get to it.”

Burlen paced back and forth like a squat, bearded thundercloud in a nightshirt. His bare feet slapped the stone with every impatient step, and his wild eyes darted between the unconscious gnome in the corner and me, like he was trying to figure out which of us he was more annoyed at.

Burlen paused his pacing and pulled a pipe from somewhere in the folds of his nightshirt and started packing it like he meant to light a fire under the gods themselves. His thick fingers moved with the precision of a man who’d driven too many cold mornings and knew the only thing that kept frostbite off your bones was flame and fury.

“You better have a damned good reason for rousin’ me at this hour,” he growled, his voice thick and gravelly, the kind of accent that made every word sound like it had dirt under its nails. “Some of us work for a livin’. You know, drivin’ cabs, runnin’ a Guild, sleepin’.”

I didn’t stand. I didn’t flinch. I just sipped from my flask.

“That,” I said, “is Terry Tincturebottom. Gnome. Drives one of those black cabs, unlicensed. And not just dodging fees. People get into his rig and don’t come back out.”

Burlen’s brow furrowed like a plowed field. “He ain’t one o’ mine.”

“I know.”

“Then why the bleeding Abyss did you bring him here?”

“Because the city doesn’t care about nuance, Master Burlen. The people see a black cab snatch a daughter of the city and suddenly every coach with a lantern on the back looks guilty. And when that panic hits the broadsheets, you think they’re gonna explain the difference between your Guild and some rogue outfit working out of Mornvale Manor? And who knows what they are doing with them…”

He stared at me. Didn’t say a word. Just chewed on the stem of his pipe like it might be the last calm moment of his life.

That got his attention. The pipe froze mid-light. “You accusing my Guild o’ traffickin’, girl?”

I met his gaze like a wall meets rain. “I’m saying people are disappearing. They get into those cabs and don’t come back. I’ve got two names. Two lives. Both gone. I’m going into Mornvale Manor tomorrow night to find out why. I’d appreciate it if Terry here didn’t wind up gagged and forgotten in some dark cell before I’ve had a chance to finish the job. You start making noise with the Watch, or dragging this gnome to the council chambers in the morning, and the whole thing vanishes underground.”

“You’re sayin’ it’s bad,” he said. “Real bad. And you’re askin’ me not to string the little prick up ‘til you sort the mess.”

“I’m saying if this goes public before I have answers, your Guild gets dragged through the sewer and left to rot.”

He grunted. “You got a sharp tongue on ya. Reminds me o’ my third wife. Dwarf woman. Could shave metal with a word.”

“Didn’t ask for your love life, Burlen.”

“No one ever does,” he muttered, then jabbed a thumb toward me. “Right, then. You get yer answers, Blackthorn. I’ll sit on the gnome. And for the record…”

“Yeah?”

He scratched his beard. “We don’t take kindly to the idea o’ bein’ used as tools in some noble’s backroom blood opera. You dig up what’s really goin’ on, and I’ll pay your daily rate. Guild’ll cover it. I want my name clean.”

He let out a long, slow breath that hissed like a steam vent, then barked over his shoulder, “Runa! Wake the second clerk. File a provisional special charter, under Blackthorn’s name.”

The dwarven apprentice scrambled off.

Burlen eyed me, a little less thunder in the stare now. “Blackthorn, you sort this. You dig out whatever rot’s hiding in that manor. I don’t want the Drayman’s Guild takin’ the fall for a bunch o’ back-alley scabs.”

“Fair enough.”

He barked again at the apprentice, Runa, who came scurrying back in to drag Terry’s unconscious form down the hall with all the ceremony of hauling out the trash. Then Trixie, bless her manic energy, bustled over and poured coffee into mismatched mugs.

Now, I’ve had coffee in a lot of places. Field kitchens. Docksides. Once out of a boot. But whatever alchemical sin Trixie pulled with beans and boiling water, it tasted like salvation. Hints of clove and cinnamon and maybe magic, though she always smiled like it was nothing more than technique.

“Now,” I said, cradling the mug, “talk to me about Alric Mornvale.”

Trixie didn’t even blink. “Ooh, now there’s a spicy one. You don’t read the gossip rags, do you?”

I gave her a look. “Do I look like I read gossip?”

She grinned. “No. You look like you threaten gossip until it flees into the sewer. But I do.”

She perched on the edge of the desk like a queen holding court. “Alric Mornvale. Youngest son turned heir after his older brother fell off a horse, some say accident, others say the horse was bribed. The family’s old money but shallow pockets these days. They’ve been throwing parties like confetti, trying to stay relevant or land Alric a duchess with more wealth than sense.”

“Sounds like the whole family’s got champagne taste and breadcrumb budget.” I said.

Trixie went on with a smile and a wink. “Like I said they’ve been throwing parties and midnight galas like coin’s growing out of the manor walls, but everyone knows they’re broke.”

“Wouldn’t be the first noble house with skeletons. They just need a basement big enough to stack them neatly.” Steven offered.

“And now they’re running an off-book cab service,” I said. “Kidnapping for entertainment or worse.”

Murk had been quiet until now, legs crossed on the edge of the of a small couch, smoke curling from his pipe like it was listening to the conversation. “Or worse,” Murk agreed, puffing his pipe. “The wards I saw? They weren’t for keeping people out. They were to keep things in. Nasty ones too. Traps in the sewers. Surface glyphs around the whole estate. I found Terry in the alley behind Mornvale Manor. Place is wrapped in wards, on the bricks, in the sewer walls, maybe even the ivy. Getting in without tripping something’ll take more than luck.”

Steven leaned against the wall, arms crossed and jaw tight. “So what’s the play?”

“We get in,” I said. “We let them take us in. Only way to get through the wards is to be invited.”

“I volunteer,” he said, without hesitation.

“Of course you do,” I shot back. “But you won’t get in. You’ve got ‘mercenary with a grudge’ written all over you.”you look like you could bench press the manor. They won’t think you’re a victim.”

“You’ll never get in directly,” Trixie added.

“And you think they’ll take Lena?” He asked.

“Not as I am,” I admitted. “But if I look like a highborn debutante with more coin than caution…”

Trixie looked me up and down. “You’re not exactly dainty, Lena. No offense.”

“None taken,” I growled.

Murk’s voice cut in, cheerful as always. “I might have something I found somewhere. A little illusion charm. Might help Lena look… shorter. Softer. Less like a one-woman siege engine.”

“It’ll need help,” Trixie said, eyes already alight. “Illusions are great, but they can’t fake silk, sweetheart. You’re gonna need a dress.”

“You’d still be nearly seven feet tall,” Steven said.

Murk grinned. “Not if she’s glamoured.”

“Yes!” Trixie squealed, practically glowing. “We’ll go first thing in the morning. I know exactly the shop.”

“It’ll need help,” Trixie said, eyes already alight. “Illusions are great, but they can’t fake silk, sweetheart. You’re gonna need a dress.”

My blood ran cold. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not putting on a…”

“You are. We’re going shopping.”

Murk puffed and grinned. “May the gods have mercy.”

Steven actually laughed.

I just groaned, and stared into the depths of my coffee like maybe it would kill me before the dress did.

Because I’d rather face a demon lord naked in the rain than let Trixie take me dress shopping.

But gods help me... I had a job to do.