City Offices

“Hm. Yes.” The administrator, as most of the breed, seemed somewhat distracted, though it was impossible to tell by what, since he was hardly swimming in a pile of documents or dealing with a swarm of people at that particular moment. Perhaps focus and hard work would ensure that a person would be set to more important tasks than this.

In any case, after a moment, he looked up, then pointed down a nearby hall. “You’ll want to go that way. Third door on the left. There’s a sign on the door if you can read. Can you read? Nevermind, it doesn’t matter. You can count to three. Third door on the left.”

Assuming he followed the directions, Thalric Dale, Paladin would quickly find the indicated door. It stood open, with a small sign set up beside it, the wood pained to say “Watch Of ice” in an unsteady hand with one of the Fs flaked off. Inside, a woman sat behind a large wooden desk, quietly humming while she whittled at a piece of wood with a small knife. From the look of it, she had spend many days this way, considering the array of small carved wooden animals arranged on the desk.

The woman looked up when he entered, placing her work on the desktop with the care anyone holding a very sharp knife might be expected to use, but with the calm ease of a person very used to it. She stood up and smiled, gesturing to the other seats around the room. “She did? Well, have a seat, then, and let’s talk about the watch. I’m Ami, and I drew the short straw this week.”

She paused for a moment, then shook her head. “Sorry, first things first. Are you looking for help, or looking to help?”

“No chance you want to volunteer to sit at the desk full-time?” She laughed and sat down again. “The captain wouldn’t have it, anyway. He’s convinced that anyone here should know what it’s like out there, first. So we can speak from experience. Even if you’ve done similar work in other places, Lhesa is a different beast.”

The woman seemed relaxed and pleasant, but was obviously sizing Thalric up as she spoke. Not just his size and build and equipment, but how he reacted to her words, measuring his facial expression and body language as much as any spoken response.

“We don’t have a long list of laws and regulations with miles of details and definitions and exceptions to work from here. The watch operates with a great deal of individual discretion when it comes to keeping the peace. Which means we have to be very careful who we let in. And which civilians we bring on for temporary help.”

Ami cleared a space on her desk and took out a small notebook, flipping through for a moment before reading from it, then nodding. “Do you, then? Have experience, I mean.”

Ami nodded as she listened to his resume. “Law enforcement experience, combat experience, leadership experience. Checks almost all the boxes, doesn’t it? Seems to me, a man like you could get work in almost any army you wanted. Or settle in to a relaxing desk job somewhere.”

She tilted her head curiously for a moment, giving him another look in light of this new information. “So why did you leave? What made you decide to hop on a ship and come all the way down here?”

“I suppose I don’t have to ask how your faith impacts your work, then.” Ami chuckled again, tapping the open notebook. “We don’t make a big deal out of it here, as a rule, but sometimes, faith can be a problem. Gods that demand subjugation and conquest often lead their followers into this job, after all. That isn’t the kind of peace we want here.”

She leaned back slightly, drumming her fingers on the desktop. “You have mentioned Lady Rashmi a few times today. But you didn’t bring a letter or introduction or recommendation or anything like that. How do you know her?Why did she point you to us?”

“Or it just didn’t trickle down to us lowly peons in the ranks. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the captain was sitting somewhere with the letter on his desk, wondering how long before he hears from me that you came in.” She huffed and slumped in her chair, then shrugged.

“Ours is not to reason why, I suppose. The rank and quality have their reasons for doing things the way they do. I like to think they must be at least marginally competent reasons.”

Ami looked down at the notebook, flipping a few more pages, then turned to Thalric again. “I don’t think there’s any reason to go back up the chain through informal channels, since we’re about to run this up through the normal ones unless things take an ugly turn here I don’t expect. Are you familiar with Lhesa’s laws? You mentioned you just arrived, so probably not in much detail, right?”

“That is a lot of it, in rough strokes. Our job is mostly in keeping the peace. Theft, violence, that kind of thing, we step in. Which is why we keep an eye on gambling halls and seedy bars and such places. That’s where violence is more likely to happen.” Ami nodded and tapped the book.

“Like I said before, we don’t have a million little loopholes to deal with. The lawyers can sort that out with their contracts and disputes and everything. As long as the disputes are arguing across a desk, it’s not our problem. If it look like it’s about to turn ugly, we try to talk them down. If we have to, we thump heads. From the look of, you know how to handle yourself well enough, if it comes to that.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk and clasping her hands together. “Let’s get a sense of how you think about where the line is there. Tell me… Pretend you came upon a man and a woman arguing in front of a bar, shouting and waving their arms. The woman has a knife in her hand. She says he’s been unfaithful and she is demanding to know who the other woman is. There is something of a crowd gathered, but they are keeping their distance at the moment. What do you do?”

She nodded as she listened to the man’s answer, then smiled warmly as he reached the end. “And a healer, too. I take back what I said before. Checks all the boxes. Of course, in the field, you would have a senior partner or two along. At least until you have been around long enough to be the senior one. We try not to be alone too much. Partly for exactly the reason you bring up.”

Ami stood up and stepped around the desk to stand in front of it, leaning back against it with her arms crossed. “I like what you said there. About keeping her talking so she isn’t stabbing. A lot of people, when they see naked steel, they go straight to arming themselves. Or to stabbing first. Sometimes, you have to, but we don’t want to be seen as brutal thugs. We want people to see us and think to themselves ‘oh, good, the watch is here.’ Not to be afraid of us.”

She paused again, carefully considering her words. “There is no law here about fidelity or adultery, if you weren’t aware. As morally wrong as the man might have been, he isn’t a criminal. Just a shitty person. But what if he was a criminal? Same scene, but this time, she’s accusing him of, say, stealing from her. No. beating her. She has a black eye and is shouting that he will never beat her or the children ever again. What then?”

Ami stood up straight from the desk with another nod. “Well, as far as preliminary interviews go, I would say you’ve done well.” She walked back around behind the desk and shuffled through some papers, continuing to speak as she searched.

“Of course, I can’t just sign off on it and call it good. Honestly, if it was up to me, I’d assign you to go around with one of the field teams today and see how you do. But the Captain has procedures, so we do it by the book.”

She apparently found what she was looking for, sliding a loose page out of one of the stacks, and immediately filling in some of the blank spaces with a charcoal pencil. “We need more people looking to join up more than searching for treasures out there. Even if you do something, what are you going to do? Probably squander it all in a week, then be out there again, praying you find another. Here, you get good, steady pay, and you get to know you’re making a difference. Help people. Leave the city a better place than you found it. That’s something you can have carved on your tombstone.”

She held out the document with a smile. “Take down the hall, the same way you were already going. All the way to the end, on your left. That’s the captain’s office. Give this to his assistant, and he’ll get you sorted. If Lady Rashmi did send word ahead,you might get sent right through.”