Lia would've preferred to stay with Cor and Vito and make sure everything turned out okay there, but someone needed to fill the city guard in on what had just happened. They'd left an absolute mess behind, with criminals tied up, knocked out, or dead that needed tending to, and a whole load of dangerous drugs just sitting around for the taking. Their group had been too beat up to do much of anything about that.
When Cor was able to get his feet under him and keep them there enough to walk, Lia split off from the group, letting Vito get the two of them back to his shop for healing while she brought the news to the guard headquarters in the Administrative District. It wasn't something she was looking forward to, but it had to be done.
She tried in vain to sort out her appearance a little as she weaved her way out of Riverbend. She made a brief pause at the river itself to attempt washing her face and hair of the damn powder and dust, though she had no idea how successful she was. Getting it off her clothes and gear would take even longer, so she didn't bother. There were sporadic bloodstains on her, some of Cor's, some of it belonging to Kotter's thugs, and somehow none of it her own. All in all, it was pretty obvious she'd just been in a fight.
The guard headquarters were strategically positioned near the end of the Avenue of the Sun closest to the markets, Riverbend and the Harbor District, since that was where the majority of the city guard's most important work had to be done. Lia jogged up to the entrance, not bothering with a mask, and holding her hands up and open when the two guards at the front door barred her way with their spears, noting her suspicious appearance.
"I need to speak to the guard captain, Bernard," she stated clearly, keeping her tone from becoming impatient. "It's about an incident that just happened in Riverbend. I have information regarding Kotter's gang. She'll want to hear that, right?"
Those certainly seemed to be the right words, some combination of what she'd said and the color of her uniform relaxing the guardsmen enough that they shifted their spears back. "Aye, miss." The one on the left shifted his hand down to the latch on the door, lifting it and pushing it in. "Captain's office is first floor, end of the hall."
The path inwards took her first through a large, central room, many desks arranged into rows. Only a few of them were currently occupied, but even despite her disheveled appearance, none of those present tried to stop her. The hallway in question was a relatively short one, with only a few doors, and the one she wanted was already half-open, brass nameplate with "Captain Bernard" just visible at her angle.
The captain herself was out of her armor at the moment, behind a desk and dressed in the dark blue characteristic of the Guard, the bronze bands on her sleeves the only indication of rank she wore. Her appearance was otherwise quite tidy, short hair gathered into a neat queue at the nape of her neck, uniform free of wrinkles. She glanced up as Lia entered, fixing her with dark eyes.
"It's Scout-Captain, right? Come in." She said no more than that, doubtlessly trusting that Lia would make the relevance of her appearance here obvious in short order.
"Thank you, Captain." She stepped inside and came to a stop before the captain's desk, remaining standing for the sake of the furniture. "I just came from Riverbend. Alphonse Street. There was a drug production facility there run by Kotter's gang, but it's destroyed now. We weren't able to secure the area, though, so I thought it best to warn you immediately. You'll want to send guards there if you haven't already."
The captain grimaced. "A moment, please." Shifting her eyes to the open door, she raised her voice. "Jardin!" After a few seconds, a young man's head appeared in the doorway.
He smoothed away a bit of tousled blond hair. "Yes Captain?"
"That disruption Martin reported, near the Mudway? It was Alphonse Street. Get your squad and hers down there right away. You're cleaning up after the Lions, and you're going to want a wagon—sounds like a bust. Don't let your guard down."
Jardin nodded a few times before he remembered to salute, but Bernard was already shooing him out of the room with a gesture. Lia could hear him snapping orders to some of the others in the front room, before the noise faded out entirely. Bernard, meanwhile, turned her attention back to their end of the conversation.
"Thank you for that. Can I ask how you came to have involvement in this matter? I can't imagine someone hired you to raid anything of Kotter's. At least not anyone you'd take a job from." A tinge of skepticism entered her voice, but she wasn't outright dismissive.
"It's a bit of a long story," Lia explained, "but it's actually Inquisition work. Captain Pavell and I were brought here to find the source of the recent racial tensions. Since the riot, we've been trying to track down those responsible. Kotter's responsibility is only partial. The drug he's been peddling, Ember, it induces a mindless rage in those that take too much, and helped to start the riot, but he's only looking to make money off of it. There was a former chevalier involved, but he's dead now, and we don't yet know the true source of the drug." It wasn't anyone in Val Royeaux, Lia had to feel. Maybe they had hands here, pushing Jean-Louis and Kotter around, but whoever was behind this couldn't be local.
"At the Alphonse site it looked like Kotter was preparing the drugs for transport. From a conversation we overheard, he didn't approve of the riot. I think he's trying to move the rest of his product out of the city, and soon."
Bernard expelled a weighty breath, one that became a low whistle at the end. "And here I thought my biggest problem was going to be keeping people from getting upset enough for round two." With a small shake of her head, she set aside her idle quill. "We'll set up some extra protections at the roads out, see if we can't catch this and get it out of circulation. Thanks for the information, and if we can help you prevent another riot, let me know."
"Thank you, I will." Honestly, Lia hadn't been sure what to expect of Guard Captain Bernard. Their only encounter had been an uncomfortable one at the Alienage gates, and she was a new emplacement at the position besides. At least, Lia didn't remember her from before she left the city. She found herself pleasantly surprised; the Guard Captain was going to be someone they needed to work with often, if they were going to root out the real problem in the city, and it was a relief to find she wasn't the sort of person they'd need to struggle against.
"I should be getting back to my friends," she said, glancing at the door. "It wasn't the cleanest attack, as I'm sure you can see. Thank you again, Captain."
"Of course. Take care."
Lia didn't waste any time getting out. Though the guard captain seemed amiable enough, she wasn't about to go easy around the rest of them. She kept her pace at a jog, just barely catching sight of the group of guards making their way into Riverbend before she ducked down a different street, following the now familiar path that led her towards Vito's shop. She could see the girl, Marisol, watching over the entrance, and she preemptively pulled open the door for Lia as she approached. Vito appeared to still be at work inside.
"City guard is taking care of the rest," she informed them, pulling off her bow and quiver and setting them carefully down across an empty table. "How are we doing here?"
Vito had dragged a couple of canvas cots out from somewhere, and the debris of a rather involved healing process were scattered around on the counters. Empty glass flasks, half-used rolls of bandages, and soiled clothing, among other things. The man himself had swapped shirts for something with shorter sleeves, probably to make working near injuries easier. There was a fair amount of blood on his hands; apparently Cor's, since he was just stepping away from where her friend sat.
"Oh, we'll live." He said it sardonically, almost, but softened the tone of the words with a slight smile. "I've flushed the Ember from their systems and started on the wounds. Mattone here is... oddly difficult to heal." He patted Cor on the shoulder and stepped to the counter, pulling a washcloth out of a small bucket there and wiping down his hands and arms. "But I've stitched his leg to keep it closed, and the other injuries were minor. Evie's a bit worse off, but at least I'm not worried that my magic's suddenly terrible in her case." He nodded to where the other woman lay.
"It's not a problem unique to you," Cor reassured him, shifting a bit stiffly. Either he or Vito had removed most of this armor, but the long-sleeved tunic and trousers were still the standard Lions' uniform, down to where the blood from his leg wound had soaked into the pant leg a bit. Even injured he seemed rather hale; without the Ember to worry about it seemed he wasn't put out by his wounds much.
He pursed his lips a bit, though, then focused on Lia. "Guards were civil?" It had been sort of an open question whether they would be, when the Lions had first come to Val Royeaux, and while eventually most of the company had won at least grudging respect and cooperation, that didn't always hold for their non-human members.
"Surprisingly, yes." She sank into a cushy chair, pulling her hair free and slouching fairly low. She'd never been the best with posture. "The captain seems reasonable enough, and the rest didn't give me any more trouble than was warranted. The uniform still comes before the race, I think." It didn't mean things were ideal with the guard, but it meant they could at least work together if they needed to.
She appreciated Cor asking the question. It was concerning to hear that he still wasn't healing well. Vito wasn't the first healer to report that, as Cor mentioned. Ever since Emprise du Lion... but that wasn't a topic they needed to cover right now. "How're you holding up, shem?" She lobbed the question in Evie's direction. "That fight got a little hairy."
Evie was awake, and had been though she hadn't moved much since Lia had returned. She still laid in the cot Vito had found, her head turned toward their conversation. She too had been peeled out of her armor and was left with the coral shirt she wore when she'd found them. When she was finally addressed, Evie slowly raised a hand and gave her a thumbs up, before letting it fall back to her chest. The expression on her face revealed that she wasn't pleased with the result, but she was alive and that counted for something.
"So..." she said, quietly, "What now?" A minor coughing fit followed.
Lia shrugged. "Not sure. We dealt a blow to Kotter's drug trade today, but he obviously doesn't want to sell it here anymore. Seems like it'll work its way off the streets soon. That should help keep things calm for the moment, but we still don't have much of a lead on who your uncle was working with, who's really behind this." Unless there was something she'd missed, it seemed to Lia that they'd more or less broken up the plan by now, if indeed the plan of their enemy was to create multiple riots and bring about chaos in the city, for whatever reason. But since they didn't have those responsible in chains, they had to assume they'd try something else, and sooner rather than later.
"So for now, we wait. Ask around where we can, see if any leads come up, and take care of what work comes our way in the meantime." She paused, crossing her arms. "Any chance the rest of your family knew anything about what your uncle was up to? You all live here in the city, right?"
"I don't think so," she said with a shake of her head. "Father is too concerned about our image to have let things progress this far," she said sourly. It sounded like she apparently wasn't on the best of terms with her family presently. "Everyone else has too bright of a future to have known and not said anything," she said, her frown deepening. She closed her eyes and inhaled, and shaking her head and wincing. "I'll... try to talk to them, see if they know anything that could help. If they'll even talk to me," she added.
"Seems like that's all we've got for now." Cor flexed his hand a few times, rubbing absently at the spot on his leg where Vito had stitched him up. "The rest of us will just have to keep our ears to the ground." Knowing him, he considered this something of a defeat, but he also wasn't the type to show it in front of people.
Bracing both hands on the sides of his cot, he stood, testing out his leg and nodding slightly. "Thanks for the help, Vito. We'll be at the barracks if either of you need to see us. If we're not around, ask for Captain Donnelly."
"Think nothing of it, Mattone. I'll get Evie here back on her feet, and tell some people to keep their eyes open for me."
Evie adjusted herself on the cot to get a better look at him "And I thank you for that... Hey Vito?" she said, looking thoughtful for a moment.
"What kind of muffins do you like?"
Vito's brows arched, then furrowed. With a soft huff, he shrugged. "If you're in the market for thank-you gifts, I accept standard rate for my services." Having said that, though, he amended. "Chocolate is also nice."
"Seconded," added Marisol.
"We'll get you more than standard rate for today," Lia promised him. He certainly didn't have to come along and fight one of the most dangerous criminal elements in the city with them. Lions were expected to do that kind of work, but he was just a shopkeeper by all appearances, and poking the hornet's nest like this too many times would eventually put a target on his back. That blood mage he'd traded spells with came to mind. The man had disappeared into the wind.
As for the shem... Lia supposed she held it together well enough. Helped them get the information that led them to the site, and didn't hesitate too much when it came to blows. Took an explosive blast pretty well, too, for someone who clearly wasn't the most experienced with that sort of thing.
They were no Inquisition Irregulars, this little group they'd formed, but they'd gotten the job done so far.
When Cor was able to get his feet under him and keep them there enough to walk, Lia split off from the group, letting Vito get the two of them back to his shop for healing while she brought the news to the guard headquarters in the Administrative District. It wasn't something she was looking forward to, but it had to be done.
She tried in vain to sort out her appearance a little as she weaved her way out of Riverbend. She made a brief pause at the river itself to attempt washing her face and hair of the damn powder and dust, though she had no idea how successful she was. Getting it off her clothes and gear would take even longer, so she didn't bother. There were sporadic bloodstains on her, some of Cor's, some of it belonging to Kotter's thugs, and somehow none of it her own. All in all, it was pretty obvious she'd just been in a fight.
The guard headquarters were strategically positioned near the end of the Avenue of the Sun closest to the markets, Riverbend and the Harbor District, since that was where the majority of the city guard's most important work had to be done. Lia jogged up to the entrance, not bothering with a mask, and holding her hands up and open when the two guards at the front door barred her way with their spears, noting her suspicious appearance.
"I need to speak to the guard captain, Bernard," she stated clearly, keeping her tone from becoming impatient. "It's about an incident that just happened in Riverbend. I have information regarding Kotter's gang. She'll want to hear that, right?"
Those certainly seemed to be the right words, some combination of what she'd said and the color of her uniform relaxing the guardsmen enough that they shifted their spears back. "Aye, miss." The one on the left shifted his hand down to the latch on the door, lifting it and pushing it in. "Captain's office is first floor, end of the hall."
The path inwards took her first through a large, central room, many desks arranged into rows. Only a few of them were currently occupied, but even despite her disheveled appearance, none of those present tried to stop her. The hallway in question was a relatively short one, with only a few doors, and the one she wanted was already half-open, brass nameplate with "Captain Bernard" just visible at her angle.
The captain herself was out of her armor at the moment, behind a desk and dressed in the dark blue characteristic of the Guard, the bronze bands on her sleeves the only indication of rank she wore. Her appearance was otherwise quite tidy, short hair gathered into a neat queue at the nape of her neck, uniform free of wrinkles. She glanced up as Lia entered, fixing her with dark eyes.
"It's Scout-Captain, right? Come in." She said no more than that, doubtlessly trusting that Lia would make the relevance of her appearance here obvious in short order.
"Thank you, Captain." She stepped inside and came to a stop before the captain's desk, remaining standing for the sake of the furniture. "I just came from Riverbend. Alphonse Street. There was a drug production facility there run by Kotter's gang, but it's destroyed now. We weren't able to secure the area, though, so I thought it best to warn you immediately. You'll want to send guards there if you haven't already."
The captain grimaced. "A moment, please." Shifting her eyes to the open door, she raised her voice. "Jardin!" After a few seconds, a young man's head appeared in the doorway.
He smoothed away a bit of tousled blond hair. "Yes Captain?"
"That disruption Martin reported, near the Mudway? It was Alphonse Street. Get your squad and hers down there right away. You're cleaning up after the Lions, and you're going to want a wagon—sounds like a bust. Don't let your guard down."
Jardin nodded a few times before he remembered to salute, but Bernard was already shooing him out of the room with a gesture. Lia could hear him snapping orders to some of the others in the front room, before the noise faded out entirely. Bernard, meanwhile, turned her attention back to their end of the conversation.
"Thank you for that. Can I ask how you came to have involvement in this matter? I can't imagine someone hired you to raid anything of Kotter's. At least not anyone you'd take a job from." A tinge of skepticism entered her voice, but she wasn't outright dismissive.
"It's a bit of a long story," Lia explained, "but it's actually Inquisition work. Captain Pavell and I were brought here to find the source of the recent racial tensions. Since the riot, we've been trying to track down those responsible. Kotter's responsibility is only partial. The drug he's been peddling, Ember, it induces a mindless rage in those that take too much, and helped to start the riot, but he's only looking to make money off of it. There was a former chevalier involved, but he's dead now, and we don't yet know the true source of the drug." It wasn't anyone in Val Royeaux, Lia had to feel. Maybe they had hands here, pushing Jean-Louis and Kotter around, but whoever was behind this couldn't be local.
"At the Alphonse site it looked like Kotter was preparing the drugs for transport. From a conversation we overheard, he didn't approve of the riot. I think he's trying to move the rest of his product out of the city, and soon."
Bernard expelled a weighty breath, one that became a low whistle at the end. "And here I thought my biggest problem was going to be keeping people from getting upset enough for round two." With a small shake of her head, she set aside her idle quill. "We'll set up some extra protections at the roads out, see if we can't catch this and get it out of circulation. Thanks for the information, and if we can help you prevent another riot, let me know."
"Thank you, I will." Honestly, Lia hadn't been sure what to expect of Guard Captain Bernard. Their only encounter had been an uncomfortable one at the Alienage gates, and she was a new emplacement at the position besides. At least, Lia didn't remember her from before she left the city. She found herself pleasantly surprised; the Guard Captain was going to be someone they needed to work with often, if they were going to root out the real problem in the city, and it was a relief to find she wasn't the sort of person they'd need to struggle against.
"I should be getting back to my friends," she said, glancing at the door. "It wasn't the cleanest attack, as I'm sure you can see. Thank you again, Captain."
"Of course. Take care."
Lia didn't waste any time getting out. Though the guard captain seemed amiable enough, she wasn't about to go easy around the rest of them. She kept her pace at a jog, just barely catching sight of the group of guards making their way into Riverbend before she ducked down a different street, following the now familiar path that led her towards Vito's shop. She could see the girl, Marisol, watching over the entrance, and she preemptively pulled open the door for Lia as she approached. Vito appeared to still be at work inside.
"City guard is taking care of the rest," she informed them, pulling off her bow and quiver and setting them carefully down across an empty table. "How are we doing here?"
Vito had dragged a couple of canvas cots out from somewhere, and the debris of a rather involved healing process were scattered around on the counters. Empty glass flasks, half-used rolls of bandages, and soiled clothing, among other things. The man himself had swapped shirts for something with shorter sleeves, probably to make working near injuries easier. There was a fair amount of blood on his hands; apparently Cor's, since he was just stepping away from where her friend sat.
"Oh, we'll live." He said it sardonically, almost, but softened the tone of the words with a slight smile. "I've flushed the Ember from their systems and started on the wounds. Mattone here is... oddly difficult to heal." He patted Cor on the shoulder and stepped to the counter, pulling a washcloth out of a small bucket there and wiping down his hands and arms. "But I've stitched his leg to keep it closed, and the other injuries were minor. Evie's a bit worse off, but at least I'm not worried that my magic's suddenly terrible in her case." He nodded to where the other woman lay.
"It's not a problem unique to you," Cor reassured him, shifting a bit stiffly. Either he or Vito had removed most of this armor, but the long-sleeved tunic and trousers were still the standard Lions' uniform, down to where the blood from his leg wound had soaked into the pant leg a bit. Even injured he seemed rather hale; without the Ember to worry about it seemed he wasn't put out by his wounds much.
He pursed his lips a bit, though, then focused on Lia. "Guards were civil?" It had been sort of an open question whether they would be, when the Lions had first come to Val Royeaux, and while eventually most of the company had won at least grudging respect and cooperation, that didn't always hold for their non-human members.
"Surprisingly, yes." She sank into a cushy chair, pulling her hair free and slouching fairly low. She'd never been the best with posture. "The captain seems reasonable enough, and the rest didn't give me any more trouble than was warranted. The uniform still comes before the race, I think." It didn't mean things were ideal with the guard, but it meant they could at least work together if they needed to.
She appreciated Cor asking the question. It was concerning to hear that he still wasn't healing well. Vito wasn't the first healer to report that, as Cor mentioned. Ever since Emprise du Lion... but that wasn't a topic they needed to cover right now. "How're you holding up, shem?" She lobbed the question in Evie's direction. "That fight got a little hairy."
Evie was awake, and had been though she hadn't moved much since Lia had returned. She still laid in the cot Vito had found, her head turned toward their conversation. She too had been peeled out of her armor and was left with the coral shirt she wore when she'd found them. When she was finally addressed, Evie slowly raised a hand and gave her a thumbs up, before letting it fall back to her chest. The expression on her face revealed that she wasn't pleased with the result, but she was alive and that counted for something.
"So..." she said, quietly, "What now?" A minor coughing fit followed.
Lia shrugged. "Not sure. We dealt a blow to Kotter's drug trade today, but he obviously doesn't want to sell it here anymore. Seems like it'll work its way off the streets soon. That should help keep things calm for the moment, but we still don't have much of a lead on who your uncle was working with, who's really behind this." Unless there was something she'd missed, it seemed to Lia that they'd more or less broken up the plan by now, if indeed the plan of their enemy was to create multiple riots and bring about chaos in the city, for whatever reason. But since they didn't have those responsible in chains, they had to assume they'd try something else, and sooner rather than later.
"So for now, we wait. Ask around where we can, see if any leads come up, and take care of what work comes our way in the meantime." She paused, crossing her arms. "Any chance the rest of your family knew anything about what your uncle was up to? You all live here in the city, right?"
"I don't think so," she said with a shake of her head. "Father is too concerned about our image to have let things progress this far," she said sourly. It sounded like she apparently wasn't on the best of terms with her family presently. "Everyone else has too bright of a future to have known and not said anything," she said, her frown deepening. She closed her eyes and inhaled, and shaking her head and wincing. "I'll... try to talk to them, see if they know anything that could help. If they'll even talk to me," she added.
"Seems like that's all we've got for now." Cor flexed his hand a few times, rubbing absently at the spot on his leg where Vito had stitched him up. "The rest of us will just have to keep our ears to the ground." Knowing him, he considered this something of a defeat, but he also wasn't the type to show it in front of people.
Bracing both hands on the sides of his cot, he stood, testing out his leg and nodding slightly. "Thanks for the help, Vito. We'll be at the barracks if either of you need to see us. If we're not around, ask for Captain Donnelly."
"Think nothing of it, Mattone. I'll get Evie here back on her feet, and tell some people to keep their eyes open for me."
Evie adjusted herself on the cot to get a better look at him "And I thank you for that... Hey Vito?" she said, looking thoughtful for a moment.
"What kind of muffins do you like?"
Vito's brows arched, then furrowed. With a soft huff, he shrugged. "If you're in the market for thank-you gifts, I accept standard rate for my services." Having said that, though, he amended. "Chocolate is also nice."
"Seconded," added Marisol.
"We'll get you more than standard rate for today," Lia promised him. He certainly didn't have to come along and fight one of the most dangerous criminal elements in the city with them. Lions were expected to do that kind of work, but he was just a shopkeeper by all appearances, and poking the hornet's nest like this too many times would eventually put a target on his back. That blood mage he'd traded spells with came to mind. The man had disappeared into the wind.
As for the shem... Lia supposed she held it together well enough. Helped them get the information that led them to the site, and didn't hesitate too much when it came to blows. Took an explosive blast pretty well, too, for someone who clearly wasn't the most experienced with that sort of thing.
They were no Inquisition Irregulars, this little group they'd formed, but they'd gotten the job done so far.