Naum observed surreptitiously from the window of the captain’s office inside the watch house as the strange man he’d arrested while passing through Hightown was processed by one of the desk sergeants then led away to the holding area. Positioned up on the partial second story of the building, the office overlooked the room below with its rows of desks and watchmen hurrying too and fro, giving one a bird’s eye view of their activities.

The office wasn’t his— as a reeve he went to whatever part of the capital needed him, which meant he mainly used whatever space or office was free at any given time if he needed a desk to work a case at. Irritating, and somewhat limiting, but it did make it easy for him to pick up and move to whatever area most needed a Reeve at any given time.

There was a knock at the door and Naum called, “Come in,’ then turned to face the officer that entered. The reeve recognized him immediately— it was one of the watchmen that had first arrived on the scene after him. Naum had only met the watchman in passing before but he had a good memory for names and faces so he asked, “Antonov, isn’t it? You took the man’s statement?”

A flash of surprise crossed Antonov’s plain features but he quickly schooled it away and offered the piece of paper he’d brought with him. “I did, sir. He claims he quit his job as the count’s librarian and his lordship took issue with it.”

Naum arched one brow, expression oozing skepticism as he reached out and took the report Antonov had penned while the officer grimaced, obviously just as skeptical of the tale as the reeve himself.

“Hastur Ward,” Naum murmured aloud as he skimmed the report, brow furrowing thoughtfully.

“Isn’t he…?”

Antonov’s question trailed off, unspoken, but the reeve knew what he was asking without him needing to spell it out.

“He is.”

Naum had suspected as much the moment their eyes had met after Hastur accidentally tackled him in the street, but the man was the eldest son of Vorslav’s own Duke Fane. As one of the duke’s bastards, Hastur bore the surname ‘Ward’, rather than his father’s name, but there was no mistaking the blood that ran in his veins despite the inconvenience of his birth. Those eyes, black as pitch, were a hallmark of the Fane bloodline— though not every child inherited them. Naum had never heard of someone with them that wasn’t related to Vorslav’s ducal line in some way, however.

“The one that went off the deep end years back and dropped out of the Red Guard?”

The reeve folded the report in half and tapped it absently against his lips as he turned back to the office window to look down over the watch-house again. Hastur Ward was no longer in sight but Naum’s thoughts lingered on him anyways while he mulled over their strange encounter.

His laughable audacity at asking Naum out for drinks while he was still in cuffs aside, there was something intriguing about the man. Ruggedly handsome, if a little soft around the edges after so long away from the Red Guard, Hastur Ward stood out in a crowd. Of more immediate interest to Naum was the lingering suspicion Hastur had reacted to his spell before he’d spoken it.

While incredibly rare, it wasn’t unheard of for some casters to be so sensitive to the magic around them that they could sense someone gathering it to them with the intent to cast. Usually you only heard of particularly powerful casters having that level of sensitivity, though. For a bastard-son with no magic of his own to do so should have been impossible…

“The very same, I believe,” Naum answered Antonov when he turned and offered the folded report back to the officer, casting aside his suspicions as he did. He’d been up all night working on a case— he was tired and in dire need of not only his bed but a hot meal. Ward’s reaction had been coincidence.

It had to have been. For it to be otherwise was impossible.

“Hold Ward over night and release him in the morning,” Naum instructed the other watchman, who blinked in surprise.

“You really think Count Tsarkaya will come and file a complaint?”

Naum scoffed. “No. Whatever actually happened between them isn’t the sort of thing the count would want written down in a report somewhere so it can wind up in the gossip sheets in time for breakfast. He’ll settle things some other way.”

Understanding dawned in Antonov’s eyes. “You’re holding him for his own protection.”

“Hardly. Holding a suspect overnight to give complainants time to step forward is standard procedure.” Naum said and turned away again, this time toward the window that overlooked the yard and the setting sun. Shadows fell long and dark across the activities there, interrupted only occasionally by the steady glow of a street lamp. After a moment, he added, “If that happens to coincide with releasing him by light of day instead of night…”

“You’re very kind, sir.”

“I’m not. I just hate an unfair fight.”

~*~

Hastur had gotten so used to rough treatment from the cops back in Detroit that not catching a few good hits around the head on his way back to the holding cells came as a pleasant surprise.

Then again, he’d had a criminal record back in Detroit where as, as far as he could tell, Mikey had been keeping his head down in his body for the last fourteen years. Watchmen and cops were largely the same breed, though, and Hastur knew for a fact it wouldn’t take much for them to turn on him. He may have been the duke’s eldest son, but he was still a bastard son.

He didn’t complain when he got the news he’d be held overnight to give the count a chance to come file a formal complaint, though Hastur knew there was no way the man would and it was obvious the watchman on duty in the holding area didn’t believe so either. Better to be released by light of day when he could see any hired goons that might be coming for him than wandering through dark streets alone and far from home, though.

Finding himself with a surfeit of time on his hands, Hastur made himself comfortable on the clean-ish cot along one wall of his cell and turned his attention inward.

The memories Mike had made in his body were still there, and while it wasn’t always easy to review them in detail without context to bring them up in the first place, Hastur was able to piece together the broad strokes of what the man had been up to for the last fourteen years.

Before he’d been unceremoniously snatched out of his own body, Hastur had been a rising star in the Red Guard— the dukes own force of highly skilled swordmasters stationed there in the capital and all across the duchy. Hastur had always excelled with the blade and the sword his father had given him on being accepted into the guard at the age of eighteen was like an extension of his own arm. He may not have had an ounce of magic in his body, but none of the duke’s other children had ever come close to Hastur when it came to swordplay.

Mike, though… Mike had all the fight of a child’s pet rabbit in his heart. There was no doubt in Hastur’s mind that if he hadn’t taken over the man’s body when he had, he never would have made it back from the war.

Needless to say, Hastur wasn’t surprised that Mike had dropped out of the guard when he found himself in a new, unfamiliar body. He might have had all of Hastur’s strength and muscle memory for swordplay, but it took something more than than skills and a good blade to be in the Red Guard. It seemed most people had taken Hastur’s sudden shift in personality some sort of mental break and it hadn’t taken long for Mike to lose touch with any and all of Hastur’s old friends and acquaintances. In fact, he’d put distance between them intentionally, terrified they would find out he wasn’t Hastur at all and punish him in some way.

Or worse, give him to the casters to experiment on.

Hastur didn’t blame the guy even as he mourned the loss of his former career and his reputation. Honestly, it probably had been the best choice Mike could have made under the circumstances. In some ways, Hastur had been dealt the easier hand between the two of them. Sure, he’d had to survive a war, but it had also offered him the perfect excuse to cover his sudden change in personality.

‘Trial by fire’ his fellow soldiers had called it. He’d seen the fires of war and rather than being burned, they had forged him into something stronger than he’d been before. Hastur hadn’t disabused them of the notion and played along as he got his bearings and settled into the business of surviving.

Once the conflict had ended within a year, Hastur had been shipped back ‘home’ to Detroit where he was free to make himself a new life. Mike’s parents had died years before and he had no other close relatives or friends which mean Hastur basically had a blank slate to work with.

He’d eventually wound up eyeballs deep in his own criminal syndicate controlling a huge percentage of the city’s illicit liquor trade but that was besides the point.

Mike, a bookish man by nature, had lived off Hastur’s savings as long as he could and then eventually taken a job in a bookshop that catered to the nobility. It was there he had met Count Tsarkaya, who had taken a liking to him and hired Mike as librarian for his personal book collection, which had in turn been how he met the count’s lonely young wife.

She’d taken a liking to Mike too, and while the man had resisted her advances on principle, she’d gradually sunk to blackmail to earn his ‘affections’— all under her much older husband’s nose.

Oh, Mike, Hastur groaned internally as he scrubbed absently at his face with his hands. You really were soft if you couldn’t stand up for yourself even when you were in my body…