Content Warning: This chapter contains depictions of domestic abuse and human trafficking/exploitation involving minors. Reader discretion is advised.

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The river docks lay quiet under the moon, all dark water and creaking wood. Gale moved along the edge of the quay, boots silent against the damp planks as the smell of brine and old fish guts hit his nose. Fading lanterns burned at strategic intervals along the docks, swaying gently. If the slavers were moving people out of town, this would be the place to do it. That thought kept his shoulders tight and his awareness sharp. Boats could leave without notice. A crew could be paid not to ask questions. Cargo was cargo to the worst sort of person, so long as the coin was right.

Gale paused near a stack of crates marked with faded shipping sigils and listened.

Nothing. No murmured voices. No muffled crying. No guards pretending to be bored. Just the river, slow and black, sliding past as if it had never carried anything worse than timber or grain.

He circled the docks methodically, not missing a single shadowed gap between warehouses, not skipping a single moving flicker of the shadows. His old habits were drilled deep: observe first, confirm absence second. He checked for fresh tracks in the mud where carts might have turned, for disturbed ropes, for signs of the potentially recent loading of humans onto a cart.

There were none. Either the slavers hadn’t come this way at all, or they were far better at covering their trail than the men he’d seen at the inn suggested. Gale exhaled through his nose and straightened. For now, the docks were a dead end, which from what he had observed from his time around town as he was running errands in the afternoon, left the tanneries as his only other lead.

The walk inland took him through streets that changed character with each turn. Stone gave way to timber. The lanterns turned into lamps that then thinned before vanishing altogether. The air grew heavier, fouled by chemicals and refuse and the unmistakable bite of curing hides, as even from a distance, the tanneries announced themselves with a stink that clung to the throat.

Gale slowed as he neared the district, senses stretching outward. The street narrowed here, framed by low buildings with boarded windows and sagging roofs. Somewhere ahead, he heard water trickling.

That was when he heard it. Not a footstep, not a voice, but a breath, sharp and panicked, pulled in too fast.

Gale pivoted just as something swung at his head.

He caught her wrist mid-strike, as a cleaver, chipped and ugly, its handle slick with sweat as it flashed inches from his face. The blow had no weight behind it, no practiced follow-through, only desperation and terror.

The woman wielding it tried to wrench free. Gale twisted her arm gently but firmly until the cleaver clattered to the ground. He stepped back at once, hands open, posture nonthreatening. Moonlight spilled across her face then and he saw what fear had carved into it.

She was thin and lightly bruised, with one cheek still faintly swollen, yellowing at the edges. Her hair had been hacked short with no care for style, as if someone had taken scissors to it in anger. Her dress hung on her frame like borrowed fabric, collar stretched, sleeves torn. Her breathing was ragged and she stared at him like a cornered animal.

“Madam, I’m going to need you to be a little more specific, but I promise I won’t hurt you,” Gale said quietly.

She didn’t lower her guard. Her gaze flicked to the cleaver on the ground, then to his cloak and the hidden dangers she saw there, before coming back up to his face.

“I’m sorry for grabbing your arm,” he added sincerely.

For a long moment, she seemed torn between disbelief and exhaustion. Then her shoulders sagged, just slightly, and her breath hitched.

“I thought…” her voice broke. She pressed her lips together, then tried again. “I thought you were one of them. The way you were walking. Like you knew where you were going.”

“Would you be so kind as to share why you thought the business end of a cleaver was my next destination? And who they might be referring to?”

She laughed then, a short, bitter sound that held no humor at all. He waited and after a moment, she crouched and retrieved the cleaver, gripping it less like a weapon now. “If you are who you seem to be, then I shouldn’t be talking to you out here.”

They moved a little farther from the open street, tucking themselves into the shadow of a closed cooperage. Maren, as she soon introduced herself, spoke in fits and starts; her words tumbled over one another as if they were scrambling for an escape after being caged.

Her friend, Eleanor, was a girl she had met at the market some months back. Eleanor had been taken, she didn’t know when or by whom, and no one believed her. She was not a child, but not quite a woman; she was shrewd enough to argue the price of winter cabbage, but young enough to still smile too easily.

“My husband, he’s never cared about my friendship with Eleanor,” Maren said, her knuckles turning white around the cleaver handle. “But when I asked after Eleanor, he told me to stop poking into things that were not my concern. I wasn’t accusing him of anything; I simply asked him if he had seen her when he went into town and then he.” Her voice trailed off, but she pulled her arms closer into her body, protecting herself from the memory.

Gale’s jaw tightened. He knew the silent, rotting shape of domestic violence; more than one personal mission during his military days had been to set a man straight for laying hands on his wife or worse, children.

“I thought I was mad,” Maren continued, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “But then I found these under our straw mattress.”

She reached into her bodice and pulled out a folded sheet of heavy parchment. Gale took it and was greeted by an interlocking, abstract sigil at the top of the thick paper. It was a cold, professional contract binding her husband as a preferred client; a document promising discretion and “intact goods” in exchange for steady coin.

“You are not mad,” Gale said, gently folding the parchment and handing it back. “But you are in danger.”

She flinched at his words, but nodded. “I know. That’s why I was out here tonight. I thought if I found one of them leaving that cursed place, I could use this to make them tell me where Eleanor is.”

“Which place, Maren? Where do they meet?”

“The grand building on the narrow lane, just two streets over from the tanner’s yard,” she said, her voice shaking with a mix of fury and fear. “It pretends to be a fine restaurant, reservation only. The kind of place men of means go when they want to feel important, or to show off the pretty young women they mean to cheat on their wives with. My husband should have absolutely no business there, yet I’ve seen him lingering around their door more than once now. And then I found the paper hidden in our bed.”

“Maren,” Gale interrupted gently, “the way you were wielding that cleaver will only get yourself killed against men like that. Is there anyone else in town you can turn to? Kin? A tight-lipped neighbor?”

Maren rubbed her cold arms, her gaze drifting down the dark street. “My sister lives near the mill, but her husband drinks with mine at the alehouse. If I show up there with a bruised face and a packed bundle, he will call me a fool and send word to my house before sunrise. Or maybe he’s also…” she paused, horrified at the direction of her own thoughts. “No. I don’t have anyone. Right now, I don’t know who is safe anymore.”

Gale considered this, his tactical mind shifting the pieces. “Your husband. Is he at home now?”

“No,” she said, a bitter certainty in her voice. “On Friday nights he stays at the tanner’s yard until the third watch to count the hide tallies, and then he drinks his copper bits at the Boar’s Head. He won’t crawl into bed until the sky turns grey.”

“Good. That gives us an hour, perhaps two.” Gale unclasped the dark cloak from his shoulders. It was weathered but clean, thick enough to keep out the midnight draft and more importantly for tonight, hide her torn dress. He draped it over her thin frame. “Put this on. It’ll serve well enough to keep people who know your husband from recognizing you at first glance.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go to the River’s Rest,” Gale said. “I’m sure you know it.”

“The inn by the southern wharf?”

“Yes. Go there tonight. Tobias is a good man and more importantly, he’s been made wary of the same characters you’ve been looking for.”

Gale reached into his tunic, pulling out a small leather pouch containing a small writing utensil and a scrap of clean parchment. He quickly scribbled a short message: Tobias, house this guest on my account. Feed her, help her clean up, and keep her out of sight until I return.

“Here,” Gale said, handing her the note. “Tell him Gale sent you. There might be men watching the area, so don’t try to sneak around or they’ll take particular notice of you. Give Tobias the note as soon as he lets you in and he’ll keep you safe.”

Maren gripped the parchment like a lifeline. “Gale, I don’t have the money to repay you.”

“Don’t even think about the money, Maren. You staying alive and safe is all the thanks I need.”

She hesitated before finally nodding. “I need to go back to the house first. Just for ten minutes. I have a small tin box hidden in the chimney with my mother’s jewelry and enough copper bits to buy a coach ticket out of Dorney. I don’t have much else beyond that.”

“Be fast,” Gale warned, his voice low and firm. “Grab nothing more than you can carry at a hard run. When you leave your house, stay off the main street, and I would assume you know your husband and his friends’ daily haunts?”

She nodded.

“Do not take any path that might bring you near to those areas. Do you understand?”

Maren nodded, the deep hood hiding the fear in her eyes, replaced now by a desperate focus. “I understand.”

“Now go,” Gale said. “I will see you later at the inn. And once you’ve got some food in you, get some rest.”

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Welp, I warned y'all that Book 2 was gonna have some slightly more adult/dark themes and here's your first taste of it. Not gonna lie, it actually makes me rather uncomfortable to have to imagine scenarios that I would only attribute to the worst sort of human being, but I hope that this is still an enjoyable story for you, despite this nasty stuff rearing its ugly head so early on.

~tsiagisel (feels weird to have xoxo here 😥)