Death Rites

4 - The part with the criminal investigation

They made it to Teague's house without getting spotted. Which was not that difficult, since Teague's back way out of Prince and Lexa's other offices involved jumping out of a second storey window and ducking into the sewers. That was the good part about actually living in the sewers. No nosey neighbours peering through the shutters. It also made the whole lights-out policy very easy to evade. Of course it also meant not having to drag the entity through the whole city. Of course her sewer accommodations were only temporary, and it wasn't really -in- the sewer anyway. Just an unused set of maintenance rooms. There was even a window. Lots of pipework, but no sewer smell and a door that closed. Throughout the years she had managed to fill it with enough stolen goods to make it habitabble. She pointed the entity towards a chair and returned to the door to do her perimeter checks. She just hoped that when she came back the girl would still be there, and all her stuff would still be intact. She hadn't always done perimeter checks. She wasn't a paranoid freak. It's just that before she did perimeter checks, her shit would get stolen. She would get squatters. One time a guard was waiting for her here. So now she checked the perimeter when she got back; preferably before she actually went inside, but that wasn't always possible. Like now, when she was dragging around an entity. She went more quickly than usual. There was nobody on the rooftops. Nobody hanging around suspiciously in the nearly square. Nothing weird at her canalside window and nobody had tripped any of her triggers around the sewers. It would have to do for now. The tour took her through a good bit of the sewers. It smelled and it was always leaking, but luckily her place was behind two doors that held most of the smell out - in between the doors was an area of open air so it wasn't that bad. She had  places 'triggrs' throughout the sewer that did nothing but tell her someone had been by. A piece of paper between the door that would fall if osmeone opened it, sand covering the floor that would show footprints, fake spiderwebs, that sort of thing. No booby traps, just stuff to tell her someone was lurking about. Today, as far as she could tell, nothing had been by. That was good. For a second she had forgotten all about the thing from the marrowgrove estate, but as she made her routine patrol around the sewer it came back to her. Had that been an entity too? She had suspected it to be mancer work, which was... well, not better, just different kind of bad. Maybe the two things had been related? 

The thing with the entity had distracted Teague so much that she had forgotten he feeling of being hunted; but that came back rather quickly now that she was reminded. She had to tell herself that that was just her imagination and there was nothing actually after her; all her triggers were still there and she had spent hours at Prince and Lexa's other offices. Surely it would have attacked her there, or at least lost interest. People said mancer magic did not work in the daylight, either. She wondered if that meant 'during the daytime' or if it simply meant 'during the daytime, but only outside, and in dark places like sewers you're screwed no matter the time of day'. Maybe PRince would know more about it... but she wasn't going back there, not with the guards there and not with the entity here. 

What the hell was she supposed to do with it anyway? 

From underneath the confusion and the borderline panic came the familiar voice of reason. After all, she wouldn't have survived long if she couldn't be analytical in tough situations. Sure, this all sucked, but everything would be made easier if she could only communicate with the entity somehow, tell her what to do, at least get her name. Being able to speak to her would solve many of the problems she was anticipating. So far it had only been repeating her words, but maybe that just meant she wanted to learn? Teague tried to place herself in the entity's position; stuck in a weird world, people speaking a language you don't understand, magic being done on you for no apparent reason... she'd be confused. Then again, to the entity it probably seemed more like stuck in a restaurant where all the food was making noise, with your hands tied behind yhour back. More annoying than confusing. Still. She needed to be able to tell it about the world and about the rules.