Peaceful Wolverine “No, no,” Wilbur interrupts, dropping his tankard too quickly from his lips and ignoring the subsequent waterfall down the front of his shirt. It is not the first.
“No,” he repeats firmly, then pauses. “Uh…”
“You’ll tell us about this unnamed killer you witnessed,” the man across the table — the greasy, gouged, distinctly wet table — says again. “Or you’ll get nothing. If you’re useful, Wilbur,” and he leans forward slightly, his arms remaining crossed over his leather-armored, crested chest, “maybe I’ll reward you enough you can finally drink and smoke yourself to death.”
“No, no, no,” Wilbur snaps, “I’ll tell you— Look! Jush listen!” and pauses again, blinking hard. “It was night,” and he hisses the last word and throws his hands up dramatically, splashing everyone around the table with the warm, aromatic mixture; 3rd Investigator Geary of the Kelvash Watch, his two hardened escorts, Wilbur himself, and Lila, seated beside Wilbur, who had helped Geary track him down.
They sit in a large, rundown tavern on the outskirts of the 60th Ward in the city of Kelvash, on the island of Foley. Every major city in Foley is a harbour city, and the slumping edifice is near enough the water to be full of callused, sunburnt sailors and fishermen, even mid-ten-day. It’s monsoon season, and the oppressive rain and resultant humidity adds its heaviness to the sweet stench that’s always present in places like these. Mould reaching with eternal determination from the corners and from between the floorboards, obscured by constantly rising — and puffed — smoke and vapors.
Wilbur is older, but not old; grey-bearded, balding on top, but well-built. His teeth are deeply yellowed, but he has them, as he demonstrates now, grimacing heavily and wiping his face.
Geary also wipes his face, then flicks his hand at the floor. His teeth are gritted as he flexes his arms across his chest. “By the goddess’s tits, Wilbur, I will break both of your fucking arms this night if you don’t get started past describing the time of day!”
Lila sighs, then again. The odd one out of the group, she is a pretty woman, not yet thirty, who wears her hair in a high ponytail, carries her chin up, posture straight. Her clothes, relatively new and fitted to her, were clean when they came in. She also has her escort, a tired, jaded man in a chainmail shirt, curved sword at his hip, but he sits at the bar some ten strides distant, glancing back only occasionally.
She waves reassuringly at Geary, now, and pats Wilbur on the shoulder. “Really do get started, please,” she says to him, low, metal in her voice.
Wilbur burps, casts her an arch glance, and, finally, starts in. His voice is slurring and uneven, but he warms to his tale, becoming somewhat articulate.
“It was night! Yeah. And I was at the waterfront, near the Shining Sun, because they have— er, no, it’s just the one girl, but she makes… She has the food-cart. With the spicy pork.
“But she wasn’t there, because it was night. So, I was just sitting down for a rest — tired, my legs were — and I heard a commotion up the way. You know the way. What do they call that… I don’t know. But I know there was some interesting shouting.”
He waves impatiently at Geary, who is shifting in his creaking chair. One of his constables, a tall woman who looks as though she has seen everything, is smirking and turning an ear, rolling her eyes at intervals.
“It was interesting because it was in Enceslos, yeah, the yelling? Don’t hear that in Kelvash often. And from some strong characters, too,” Wilbur chuckles. “Rather thought I might have it in with them, but I get’s up closer and they’re all big fuckers wearing chain, aren’t they? With short spears, like they say the giantesses use.
“So I tucks myself into the corner, and I—” he gags suddenly, swallows hard, and gasps several breaths, “and I just watched, and I don’t speak Enceslos, but they were angry. They weren’t from here, Inspectah sir,” and Wilbur grins slyly at Geary and chuckles, “I could tell. Maybe even arrived that day. Breeze was down the way… what’s it called, but they don’t smell— Didn’t smell like the city, yet. Interesting, huh?
“Anyway, the fellow they was threatening, he was talking back. He was Gennesker, too. That dark skin and smooth hair, eh? Almost makes me look pale. But I could see,” and Wilbur leans full over the table, resting his upper chest and already-soaked shirt in the muck. “I could see right enough they couldn’t handle him.”
Geary speaks, now, his gravelly voice even. “Why’s that, then? Let me in on the special thing you know.”
“Way he was moving,” Wilbur nods. His voice is clear. “Blurry at the edges.”
He gestures at his eyes, deep ocean shades of green, “These are good. Do well by me. And that fellow was moving his feet in a way so that the other Gennesker couldn’t see where he is, or couldn’t be sure, or maybe they step too short or too long, see?”
Geary shakes his head, leans back, closing his own eyes, but Wilbur doesn’t stop.
“When they finally went for him, they just missed, just like I thought. And he hit that first of them in the back with his bare hand, Geary… Near folded him in half. I heard all kinds of things breaking. Yes, indeed. You remember last rainy season when those two three-masted guzargar loaded full with grain collided just off the loading docks? Crunchy.”
Geary’s eyes are open again. “Anything interesting about his appearance,” he asks, flat.
Wilbur chuckles. “You had to know he was wearing good ol’ WK’s uniform. Senior factor, more like. Not some junior clerk running errands.”
“You don’t tell anyone else that,” Geary growls. “Or have you, already?”
“Don’t be ignorant. Wilbur’s good at this, as you well know,” Lila puts in. “He knows what to do with information — bring it straight to me, and no one else.”
“Aye,” Wilbur nods, his face going serious. “I’ll not be getting their attention.” He eyes Lila, then indicates her to Geary with a thumb. “She’s still young, but she punches hard and keeps her books straight, you know?”
“Did he kill the rest?” Geary asks.
“Oh, aye. That first one he struck in the back, drove him into the ground like a piked eel. Didn’t make another twitch. Then he took a couple of steps after another passed him by. Couple of steps, but fast, Geary.” Wilbur’s eyes twinkle. The two men have known each other some years.
“Grabs him by the back of the neck and squeezes, drops him on the ground. He rattled around a bit before he stayed still. Last three he just hit, once each, right in the body.” He mimes a duck-and-hook. “I left before he was done checking them. That’s it, then. Got lucky to see what I did without getting killed.
“But you got to see them up close, didn’t you Inspec-tah? What did they look like? All caved in?”
Geary pauses a moment, then shrugs a little. “All caved in. And soldiers, all of them, and marked. From the peninsula. Expensive.”
He sighs. “What do you make of it? Lila?”
Wilbur speaks first. He’s grinning again, has his tankard back in one hand, his other hand fishing a sturdy glass pipe from the satchel at his side. “Just the things you like, Geary. They don’t do business like that, in the open, not the Western Katalmudra. That wasn’t right. There’ll be more loose threads.”
Lila’s voice is smooth and warm. “There’s more to find, if I feel like it. Speaking of…?”
Geary pays her in large-denomination coins, stamped — like so much in Foley — with the crest of the Western Katalmudra Trading and Mercantile Guild. They keep the grocers stocked and the shipyards running and a hundred trades besides, including the weights and measures and minting for half the world. They buy the majority of fish off the docks in this city, brought in by men and women like Wilbur. They are one of the three major shipbuilding guilds that cooperates to organize the almost seven million inhabitants of Kelvash. They have been for centuries. What their secrets are, no one can say. No one with sense asks.
As Geary stands to go, he murmurs to his two escorts, low. “This could be it. This could get us in.”