Nothing like a productive meeting to improve a person's mood.
    Dealing with competent people really did make all the difference. His staff was top-notch, but the whole Ministry was constrained by 'leadership' that was far from ideal. Including himself. 
    Ventris had been efficient and knowledgeable. They had spent a pleasant hour and a half discussing the properties of various alchemical inks and how they could be used to enhance security at the palace. There were still some details in the security of the process to work out, but some of the suggestions about 'modified' pen designs that would recognize specific users would solve many of those. Nicholas would have to assign some personnel from his team to the manufacturer. The man had been surprisingly resistant to allowing access to the manufacturing process, but that could be worked out later. 
    He was genuinely looking forward to a project for once. Having the whole palace switch over to the new technology would improve their efficiency while improving the working conditions for the government employees. Two birds with one stone. His favorite kind of solution.
    Nicholas walked out of the offices of the Patriot Guild and looked back up at the building with satisfaction. His annoyance on the way into the building had kept him from noticing some of the details. While this neighborhood wasn't upscale by any stretch, you wouldn't know it by this building. The three story wooden building showed no weathering, as if it were just painted. It was a charming light gray with white flower boxes overflowing with blooms and black shutters at each window. Taking up a full block, the building should have been imposing, but instead it seemed pleasantly unassuming. The only indication that one of the most successful new guilds in the empire was housed within was a simple wooden plaque with its name that swung above the door. 
    Hmmm...I wonder how big this place really is, he thought. After a moment of contemplation, he decided to be a little nosy. 
     While he had been inside, he had only seen the lobby, a couple of corridors, and Ventris' office, despite the hints he dropped about wanting a full tour. He assumed their workshop on site and was hoping to get a glimpse of new inventions or even get a chance to meet the talented Artisan who headed the guild's team. His appetite had been whetted when the head of the guild had shown him the next item that they were preparing to release. 
   While a device that could replicate sound and replay it was not exactly new, the efficiency of the device, and the vinyl disks the device used, were worlds ahead of the clay and wax cylinders that Nicholas had seen being used by others experimenting in the field.
     The sound quality it had produced had also been far superior. The voice of the Opera House's premier Prima Donna had flooded the room, as if she were performing a private concerto just for them. The other man had even let him know that the recording had been done in a single session using a device the size of a hatbox.  Even more astonishingly, the singer had not had to sing directly into the device. Instead, it had been set aside and left to record while she performed as usual on the stage. 
     The applications for a device that could be so easily concealed were never ending. Especially for the military and other, more discreet, branches of the government. 
     That was just one of the inventions that their labs had been preparing, according to the guild head. When pressed, Ventris had admitted that there was a single individual who headed their workshops and labs, and from what he had seen, this man was a genius whom he must meet and attempt to recruit.
   He reached the corner, looked down the cross street, and found himself becoming confused. Like looking in a fun house mirror that distorted reality, while he was expecting to see the side of one building, he instead was looking at what appeared to be the fronts of two buildings. He looked to the right, and there was the gray, white, and black front of the Patriot Guild with its discreet swinging sign, and to the left was a building that was much more utilitarian. 
    Painted in shades of brown, there were no elegant shutters or cheery flowerboxes beneath the plain window frames. Intrigued, he walked down the side street until he faced the door, which was placed in the center of the building, just as it was with the guild house. But instead of a swinging plaque above the door announcing the name of the business, there was a set of double doors, a silver crest of an eagle holding a shield in its claws facing each other on each door.
    A moment searching his memory had him placing the crests. This must be the headquarters of the newest mercenary company that has recently made a splash in the Empire. The Screaming Eagles had made a name for themselves in some recent skirmishes at the border. The March Lords of the East were singing their praises in the Council of Nobles lately. 
    Information was scarce on the band, so Nicholas had dispatched agents to gather more information, but they had not reported back yet.
    A merchant guild and a mercenary company sharing a building? His curiosity was piqued. 
    He continued along this 'front' of the building until he came to an alleyway that marked the end. The alley ran uninterrupted the length of the building, was broken by the next street, then continued on the other side of the street. It seemed that the building was a true square block, bordered on all sides by streets and this alley. He retraced his steps past the guild house and to the opposite corner, no longer shocked to see yet another building 'front' on this side.
    This one was a clean and bright light blue color, with dark green window sills and shutters. When he passed in front of the door, also located in the center of the building, he saw wood and glass double doors. 'Ruth B. Ginsburg Boarding House for Young Women'  was etched on the glass. Through the glass, he caught glimpses of a clean and well-appointed lobby dominated by a front desk with rows of wooden cubbies behind it. The severe middle aged woman behind the desk looked up, and before she could lock eyes with him, he turned around and moved briskly back towards the main street. 
    This was definitely unusual. A merchant guild, a mercenary company, and a boarding house for young women all sharing one large building. Each appeared to be a separate entity, down to the decorations on the building itself. But were they really separate? What could they possibly have in common, and if they were affiliated, what could the purpose possibly be?
    Not only did he need to get back to the office and resume the work he had left behind, the thought of which had the headache he had driven away starting to pulse at the back of his skull again, but he also wanted to get one of his staff to pull the information on this building and see who owned it. 
    This could all be some strange new architectural fad or a strange coincidence. Something was telling him to take a closer look, though, and he usually trusted his instincts. If he were a cat, his whiskers would be twitching with his curiosity.
    As he approached the corner once more, he heard a commotion coming from across the street. He turned in time to grunt as a small form barreled into him. Knocked back a step from their momentum, he grabbed the person's arms to steady them while he regained his balance. 
    From that brief moment of contact, he got the impression of a small frame, enveloped in a dark grey cloak that obscured the details of their figure and costume. With his gaze traveling down as the figure looked up, he was able to catch a glimpse beneath the hood, attempting to see their features. He was thwarted by a dark cloth stretched over the lower half of their face, completely obscuring their features from the bridge of their nose down. It left only a set of wide eyes whose color reminded him of the sea. 
    Whoever they were, they tossed a glance back over their shoulder at whatever was making the ruckus. Then he heard a soft voice say, "Mother pluckers!" before the strange person looked back up at him, locking eyes again. One of his eyebrows raised in reflex at the peculiar phrase, as the shouts got more intense now that pursuers could see that their quarry’s escape had been halted.
      He had only a moment to assess the situation while mesmerized by those striking eyes. The fugitive, hearing the shouts getting closer, narrowed those wide eyes at him and started to pull away from him. For that split second, he considered not releasing them, and truthfully, he should keep hold of a possible miscreant - at least until the relevant authorities were engaged, but something had him relaxing his grip. 
    As he released their arms and raised his head, finally attempting to look past them at who was in pursuit, they grabbed the lapels of his coat and spun him, switching their positions. They had surprising strength for such a small frame, and the maneuver was completed before he could get a good look at who was giving chase. 
    Now that his body was blocking whatever was coming down the street, they took off down the street past the boarding house. In the split second before they tore away from him, something about the way the cloth covering their mouth molded to their face made him think that they briefly smiled at him with a mischievous glint in their eyes.
    A  few moments later, a couple of guards dressed in the livery of a noble household pushed past him, followed closely by a huffing nobleman with a bit of a paunch and deep scowl. The figure paused for a moment at the mouth of the alleyway, looking left and right before dashing out of sight. He would swear to the heavens that the fugitive locked eyes with him one last time and held up their hand and pointed at him with their thumb extended towards the sky before winking and dashing into the opening.
   After a moment, he shook his head to clear it from the strange daze that seemed to have overcome him, catching up to the trio as they reached the alley just a few moments after the small figure had disappeared. They stopped abruptly, and he had to stop himself from slamming into their backs. 
   Looking past them, he saw what had made them halt. Where they should have seen the retreating figure in the gray cloak hurtling along, there was an empty alley.
    The afternoon was waning into evening, and shadows were stretching from building to building, but it wasn’t dark enough to conceal a person. They had an unobstructed view down the length of the alley, even across the opposite street. There was nowhere for anyone to hide. 
    The alley was long enough, and they had reached the corner quickly enough, that no matter how fast the fugitive ran, they should have still been in sight. Thus, the pursuit should have continued. With the person disappearing, apparently into thin air, the guards were stymied.
   Nicholas didn't spare more than a moment of attention on the trio, who were now arguing over who had lost their target. Instead, he turned and surveyed the building that had already captured his curiosity earlier. Before, he hadn't paid much attention to this side of the building, only noticing that it didn’t have a ‘front door’ like the other three sides.
    Now he inspected it more closely. Besides a distinct lack of doors, there were also no windows on the ground floor of this side.
   You would need to stand twice at twice as tall as himself even to consider reaching one of those windows on the second floor, and Nicholas was considered to be above average height. All the widows appeared tightly shut, with no lights or fluttering curtains behind them to indicate they were inhabited. The same held true for the third floor widows as well. 
   The other side of the alley was lined with a row of fences that enclosed the small rear yards attached to a series of workshops. Each of them abutted each other with no narrow channels through which to escape to the next street. The fences themselves also appeared to be well-maintained, with no broken or loose boards through which someone could slip. 
   More telling, however, was that the workshops were quiet, so it didn't seem like anyone had come running through and disturbed their work. This left an even more puzzling situation. There weren't that many possibilities for how the person could have disappeared. 
    They were either capable of scaling multi-story buildings in seconds, vanishing into thin air, had some sort of working relationship with at least one of the workshops along the alley, or there was another way into the strange building. 
   As he was musing over these possibilities, the three men continued their argument, and it appeared to be escalating. The nobleman was demanding that they just barge into all these businesses and demand the search of the premises, while the guards were advising that they call the city watch first. Of course, by the time any of that happened, the person they were chasing would be well away and probably laughing at them.
    After a last look down the alley in case he missed any clues, Nicholas turned and hastily left the three men behind. He had no intention of getting embroiled in whatever trouble was brewing here. He had already lost quite a lot of time today, and who knew how long whatever this was would going to take to resolve? Curiosity had made him follow that small figure, but he wouldn't waste a whole evening on it.
    He would have to have his staff do a bit of digging into the circumstances of this strange building. For three such different establishments to share walls as intimately as this was strange. It made him wonder more about the interior of the building and how it was all divided. There was no way that a boarding house for young women would share common spaces with a mercenary company filled with men prone to violence. A merchant guild with a new inventor that was innovative enough to put the Tallow's to shame wouldn't want unknown mercenaries and random young women able to freely wander its halls. He couldn't, currently, see what advantage such a strange arrangement might have for them.
    There was also the strange fugitive who had run into him. There was a reasonable likelihood that they had ties to at least one of the establishments in the building. He wasn't much interested in finding out what had caused them to be chased right now - he was sure that if it were a truly grave matter, it would cross his desk eventually anyway. However, the fugitive themselves had engaged his curiosity as well. If satisfying his curiosity about the strange building meant he happened to find out more about them at the same time, well, that was just a convenient happenstance. 
   Two birds, one stone.