Thaland, Justicar, Part 3
He began striding purposefully toward the seedy, run-down district where Isgil’s family resided in a too-small apartment within a decrepit tenement. Various potential scenes, ranging from pathetic to positively blood-thirsty, unfolded in Thaland’s imagination as he walked with ever-increasing speed toward Isgil’s home. He turned from the broad, well-maintained thoroughfare into a lane too narrow for anything wider than a one-horse cart to pass without trouble. That didn’t stop the rag merchants, sausage vendors and other enterprising souls from hawking their wares or services from the rough cobblestones as they navigated barrows, hand-carts and even a wagon or two, up and down the milling stream of dirty humanity.
Washing hung from lines run between the tenements that lurked on either side of the lane, contributing to the illusion that the street was infested with giant spiders whose webs displayed the gutted remains of their previous victims. The way the refuse and chamber pot spillings made the lane smell added to the dungeonesque illusion.
Many of the buildings’ bottom floors were given over to shops offering wares ranging from mundane dry goods and the local bakery to fortune-tellers, a quarter of whom might have a fragment of true Talent. There were more than the usual sprinkling of pawn-brokers and second-hand shops. Desperate people draw their own brand of vultures, Thaland knew. He also knew that a large number of the managers of these shops had connections with the Thieves’ or Slavers’ Guilds and their stock had recently graced the homes or shops of the finer classes of Kingston or another coastal city. A used doublet is a used doublet, who can say whether the former wearer parted willingly with it or not? The same was often the case for lamps, half-burned candles or anything else here, for that matter. No one was going to spend the coin for a Trace spell to recover something worth less than the spell unless there was a great sentiment involved, and the thieves, as well as their masters, knew it.
In the midst of these thoughts, a deep segment of Thaland’s attention was grabbed by a seemingly innocent scene two buildings away and behind him that would have escaped his notice only yesterday. (Of course, yesterday, he would have been looking for someone to ambush him because of his uniform.) Only a grain would have fallen in a Time Glass in the time it took Thaland to assess the situation and grind his teeth in rage.
Thaland couldn’t begin to count the number of bereaved families, siblings or parents that had come to him, fully expecting him or his subordinates to find a missing child. The majority of the time, it was an attractive, nubile girl or almost beautiful boy. He had often agonized in the countless Turns of the Glass he’d spent in fruitless searches for missing children; why couldn’t the flesh peddlers be satisfied with the uncounted cast-off children prowling the slums and leave the few wanted and loved children at home with their families.?
Isgil’s father and uncle would have to wait. Thaland could clearly read the fear and panic in the faces and thoughts of the three girls, and the predatory lust in the teenage boys and older men, as the children were skillfully herded away from the relative safety of their rented apartments.
Even had he seen the incident yesterday, there was no way he could have forced his way through the people and covered the intervening distance before the captors had gotten their prey hidden away and despoiled their virtue, and quite possibly the rest of their lives. Even now, knowing that he could run full-tilt through the crowds, he despaired because the ruffians were pushing their captives around the corner of the further building into the alley. A terrible sense of urgency seized the former watch captain. He needed to be there, in the alley, to protect the three girls.
Thaland wasn’t sure exactly how he’d done it, but he was aware of reaching across the distance to where he wanted to be. He pulled and stepped through the people and buildings as though they were no more substantial than the harbor fog.
When the world re-solidified, Thaland’s first impression was that the alley was filthy. The stones were carpeted with a thick layer of decomposing refuse and populated with vermin ranging from lice and roaches to rats he couldn’t see yet could somehow sense to …the ruffian enforcers busily hustling their three young, barely pubescent, prisoners along the narrow passageway towards the as-yet unnoticed Justicar.
The first two enforcers, scouting for any interference, Thaland presumed, both ignored and avoided the cloak-shrouded figure, just as everyone else Thaland had encountered since his ‘death’. Suddenly, Thaland was afraid that the rest of the oncoming crowd would pass by unseeing and uncaring. He drew his sword with his right hand to block off the alley to his right and readied his left to catch the next ruffian that came within his reach.