Adrian breathed deeply and did his best to calm the fire inside. He wouldn’t help Anubis by burning the entire building to the ground right now. Instead he turned to Travers and nodded sharply. They had what they needed; it was time to rescue a pup.
Travers slid his hood back so the silver hair of the air mage fell out into the open. Shifting the cloak a bit let the black uniform of the city guard peek out of the drab brown camouflage. While Adrian was impatient and anxious, Travers seemed like a cloud floating at his own pace. The knock on the door was loud and steady. The two fools inside instantly shut their mouths at the noise. It was a long moment before the door opened.
“What do you want?” was the gruff greeting.
To his credit, Travers didn’t even flinch. Dia fell into place on the other side of the doorway, a mirror to Adrian, and he could see Barkley down at the end of the hall with the ‘ankle biter’ latched onto his leg like a leech. “I’m here on behalf of the Lord’s guard. We had a report of mismanagement in the building and we are here to investigate the allegations. If you’ll allow, me and my colleges would like to take a quick look to ensure the building is up to code.”
“Go look somewhere else.”
“We are looking in each room, I assure you,” Travers added before the other man could slam the door in his face. “You are, of course, free to decline the inspection. I am required to tell you, however, that if you do so you will no longer be able to claim the grievance pay should the building be found unsuitable.”
There was a slow pause as the stranger thought through what Travers was saying.
“He means you won’t get paid if we can’t look around,” Dia summed up with a snort. “He talks fancy, but that’s what it comes to.”
“How much?” the man - Adrian wasn’t sure if it was Torren or Lorren - asked.
“If the building’s shit, the owner gets fined and you get a portion. Depends on how bad it is,” Dia said bluntly. “If everything passes his look-through then you get 5 copper for the trouble.”
“You’ll have to keep it down,” the man said as he stepped back. “My cousin’s ill and needs his rest.”
Travers stepped into the room first, followed quickly by Adrian and Dia brought up the rear. The room was quaint, small, and sparse: two beds that were essentially mattresses on the floor, bursting at the seams, one occupied; a table with a man who had seen more bad days than good, dingy brown hair and green eyes giving the potential for earth magic and wrinkles on his face making unhappy frowns; a dresser with a broken foot leaning to the side; a window that didn’t have any glass looking at a brick wall close enough to touch.
Adrian assumed the man at the table was Torren. Lorren must have answered the door. Looking at them didn’t give the sense of twins, but Adrian could see enough resemblance between them to know they were brothers.
He let Travers’ voice become background noise as he wandered about the tiny room as best he could. With a bit of focus his magic bubbled around him in invisible eagerness, and Adrian pushed that warmness towards the person in the bed. He couldn’t make assumptions, but if he could get that person to throw off the blankets covering them then he would know.
They so close that one missed step would have Adrian falling on the pile yet he knew reaching for the blankets would draw too much attention. He had to do this unnoticed so he kept focusing on gentle heat and smoldering coals. It was warm enough that person had to be sweltering, and it was getting to the point Adrian was worried about getting some stranger truly sick. The blankets hadn’t even twitched. There was a person under there, right?
“Ri?” That was Dia’s voice and her touch on his arm pulling him out of his trance. Using this much magic in such a controlled way took a lot of concentration, and Adrian had lost track of what was going on in the room.
He shook his head and glanced at the blankets.
Dia understood the message.
“Does your cousin live here?” Dia asked the two in the room.
“Of course,” Lorren snorted.
“Then I’m confused. There are three of you, but only two beds.”
“Well, me and the boy there share,” Torren smirked. “He’s a bit of a rascal sometimes. Likes to kick.”
“Three people in a room meant for one?” Travers asked. “I could understand two, perhaps three if the third was a child, but it doesn’t seem wise for three to be in a room this small.”
“We’re tripping over each other so much poor Ri here can’t even move,” Dia snorted. “We should fold up the beds to get a good look.”
Lorren paled a bit, but his brother simply scowled and smacked his palm against the table. “The three of you’s the ones barging in here and taking up space. If you don’t like it, get out.”
Dia stepped backwards as if startled by the sudden turn, bumping into Adrian and giving him the excuse to fall onto the lump of blankets behind him. “I apologize!” he said gently, “I wasn’t expecting-“
The sheets were thin and worn with holes Adrian could put his fist through. Damp spots from the last washing had dried into stains. It did nothing to hide the lengthy cut on Anubis’ cheek, the deep bruising around his eye, or the dried blood around his nose and lips.
“Why does this man look like he’s been in a fight?” Adrian growled out.
“Like I said,” Torren grumbled. “He’s a rascal.”
Adrian pushed back the hood of his cloak and sat up properly. “Let me rephrase: which one of you dared to hurt him so badly that me falling on him didn’t wake him up?”
“I barely touched the boy-“
Adrian saw red. He launched himself at Terron and ripped him out of the chair to throw him against the wall. The fire gave his arms strength as he held the man up by his neck, and his hands heated enough that Adrian knew Terron’s throat was burning. He could smell the skin singe under his fingers and see the hints of black from the scorching anger bursting from his fury. “What did you think you were doing?” Adrian hissed, “when you bullied, beat, and touched a man who wasn’t willing?”
Terron was probably screaming, but the sound was silenced by the lack of air. The little breath he was getting set his lungs on fire.
“My lord, you’ll kill him,” Barkley warned from the doorway.
Adrian backed off just enough to let the man breathe. “Look at that face and tell me he doesn’t deserve it. Listen to what Travers recorded and tell me he didn’t earn worse.”
“My lord, we didn’t know,” Lorren tried to placate. “I’ll take my brother somewhere far away and you can have Jay all to yourself. We won’t bother you at all. I promise, we’ll keep quiet as mice about everything.”
“Quiet as a mouse only means you’ll turn into rats when it suits you best,” Adrian snarled. “Did you think you could escape a judging by claiming he fell?”
“It happens often enough, sir. The boy is sometimes clumsy-“
A bit of flame had Lorren yelping and snapping his mouth shut. They had drawn a bit of a crowd from the others in the building, but they were smart enough to keep their distance.
With the worst possible timing, Ken popped his head around Barkley’s leg to look in the room. With a shout he ran to his brother, tears puddling in his eyes when Jay didn’t respond. “Mister, he needs a healer! You promised.”
Adrian had done no such thing. Still, he dropped Terron to the floor and turned to take care of Anubis. He couldn’t do more with a child in the room. “Arrest them,” he told Dia. “Travers can act as witness to what they were plotting. Celia did say she could judge one of them in the morning. Two shouldn’t complicate things too much.”
“Here’s the shiny!” Ken announced, holding up Jay’s wrist and drawing the attention of everyone in the room.
“That’s right,” Adrian said gently. “I gave him that shiny. It’s supposed to keep him safe, okay? So don’t take it off.”
If Dia was rough securing the ropes around Terron, Adrian didn’t complain. And if Lorren looked a little too pale as he realized who Jay had gotten tangled with, well, that wasn’t Adrian’s problem. Adrian just sent Travers to get a healer and settled himself in the corner of the too-small room. It would be better if he wasn’t recognized by the whole world on this trip, and he needed to bank the fires still fueled by his fury.
Terron had dared to hurt his treasure. The man hadn’t suffered nearly enough.
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