The 'present day' parts of this fic are set during and shortly after the fourth chapter of Deva Victrix.
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In Luise's first clear memory, she was crouched on the stairs at the rear of her da's butcher's shop with baby Ludwig beside her. He was sitting unsupported, his chubby, dimpled hands curled around the edge of one chipped stone step for balance, so she couldn't be less than five years old.
Behind the closed door at their backs, Ma and Da were screaming new obscenities and old accusations at one another, their voices swelling like the wail of the siren that marked the start and end of all the shifts at the factory on Dray's Field Road. Ludwig was sniffling quietly, because the noise and commotion still frightened him, but Luise had learnt long since how to pretend that it was all happening somewhere far, far away. She ignored them, and kept all of her attention fixed on her older brother.
Gilbert's pale hair seemed to glow almost white in the radiance of the full moon overhead; a bright spot of light bobbing and weaving around their poky yard as he fought imaginary monsters lurking behind the rain barrel and washing line.
"I'm going to be a knight when I grow up," he said, brandishing his stick at a menacing patch of shadow. "Travel the world and kill dragons for the Emperor."
He'd talked about little else since they'd stopped in College Square on the last festival day to listen to the bard sing about the trials of King Llewellyn.
"Da says dragons aren't real," Luise reminded him.
He'd been firm about that, calling it 'stuff and nonsense' that only the Brittonic 'barbarians' could possibly believe.
"Why would people write songs about them if they aren't?"
Luise had thought the same, but she didn't want to contradict their da and so she stayed silent.
"There won't be any left once I'm through with them, though." Gilbert hacked at the shadow until a cloud drifted past the moon and it was vanquished by the darkness which swallowed it whole. "See, I'll be an awesome knight. I'll fight dragons, and ogres, and the damn Germanics" – Da would tan Gilbert's hide for saying such things, and Luise was so very glad that he wasn't there to hear it – "and defeat every one. You should come with me. I bet you'd be an awesome knight as well, Lu."
Luise wanted to keep the Empire safe from dragons, and ogres, and even the damn Germanics, but, for all their faults, she loved Ma and Da, and Ludwig and Gilbert. She loved her cosy room under the eaves of the butcher's shop, the way the cobbles on Ashfield Street smelt after it rained, and the tiny cakes dripping in honey that Ma bought once a week from the baker's down the way. She couldn't imagine wanting to live anywhere else.
She wanted to fight, but only if she could become a knight who stayed in Old Town.
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The cell block beneath the guardhouse is dank: the walls and floors both slimy with rising damp and moss.
Luise walks carefully along the line of holding cells, each step measured and slow. It's a guard's walk – proceeding, Alasdair has always called it – which keeps the legs from aching too badly over the many hours of a shift's patrol. It's also useful, Luise has found, for minimising the risk of slipping on the treacherously slick flagstones underfoot.
She doesn't think she'll lose the respect of her corporals if she lands on her arse in front of them, but it would likely end up tarnishing her reputation slightly, all the same.
Outside the last cell, Corporal Jones greets her by saluting with one hand and thrusting a piece of paper towards her with the other.
"Sign in sheet, sir," she says briskly. "For the suspect Corporal Kirkland apprehended outside the tannery."
Luise scans the paper quickly, her eyes only catching on his date of birth and the name written at the end of the page: Niall Walsh. One of the men that Angus claims as a brother, no doubt, and she makes a note to ensure that the corporal is not allowed to enter the cellars unaccompanied for the time being.
She trusts the men and women under her command, but family loyalty is, she knows, a very powerful thing.
When she looks up again, Walsh has sidled to the front of his cell and is staring at her with unabashed interest through the bars.
"I know you," he says. "We met before, when you were a kid."
Although he has only a few years on her, and must have grown up only a few streets away, Luise is certain that they never did. The Walshes are all orphanage boys, and her ma and da would never have allowed her to mix with them because snobbery is as rife in Old Town as on any Highgate boulevard, in its way. It's easier to be content that you have no more than two coppers to rub together on a good day if you can still feel yourself superior to those who have none.
"I don't think so," she says.
"Ah, come on, you've got to remember! You and Kirkland chased me for... Must have been half a mile or more before I gave you the slip over the tannery wall," Walsh says, as cheerfully conversational as if he they truly were old childhood acquaintances catching up with each other's lives over a pint at the Lost Antler. "Kirkland recognised me easily enough."
Alasdair would, but then he has a far better memory for faces than Luise. She does, however, regularly review the reports from unsolved cases, and Walsh's description of their encounter seems familiar.
"A ring and purse were reported stolen from a house on Hickmore Way. You were stopped outside the White Hart on Darwin Close, searched, and found to be carrying both."
"That was me!" Walsh's grin blooms and then withers again in an instant. He quickly adds, "I was just keeping hold of them for a friend, though. I didn't nick anything."
"Maybe not," Luise says, "but you have just confessed to handling stolen goods."
"Wait a minute! I –"
"You have the right to have the assistance of a lawyer, Mr Walsh. I recommend my brother, Gilbert Beilschmidt; his fees are incredibly reasonable."
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One morning when Luise was seven, Ma pressed a penny, dulled with grease and verdigris, into Gilbert's hand.
"Thanks, Ma," Gilbert said, pink cheeked and beaming, as he folded his fingers around the copper coin.
Ma had never given her a penny before, and Luise tried very hard not to be jealous, but she must have frowned, or pouted, or glared a little, regardless, because Gilbert's face soon fell.
"I'll buy a big bag of sweets with it," he told her, "and you and me and Luddy can all share them."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," Ma gave Gilbert a quick clip around the back of his ear, making him yelp. "You'll give that to Mr Kirkland over at the apothecary. He's agreed to let you sit in on the lessons he gives to his twins for a couple of days a week, so he can teach you to read and so on."
Luise's stomach started squirming, like it was filled with worms and nothing half so pretty and delicate as butterflies.
Mr and Mrs Kirkland had always been kind to her, smiling and waving at her when they passed on the street, and Ma and Da both liked them, because they had never treated them with the same suspicion as most of their other neighbours, even though five years in Deva hadn't been near long enough to scrub the traces of Germania from their accents.
Alasdair and Caitlin Kirkland, on the other hand, made her nervous. They were the same age as her, but they were so much taller, and talked with the assurance of adults, using long words she didn't understand.
Besides, when Gilbert was six, he had poked fun at Alasdair's lisp and Caitlin had bitten his arm so hard that her teeth broke through his skin as well as his sleeve. They had both avoided the twins ever since.
"Do we have to, Ma?" Gilbert asked.
He never normally sat still for a moment or two at a time, so Luise couldn't imagine him with a book and chalkboard, quietly learning to read.
She couldn't imagine herself. Aside from the few chores Ma and Da set them around the house, their days were entirely their own. Whilst their parents worked, they explored the streets of Old Town together, fished for tadpoles and minnows in the pond behind the ironmongers, and played at being knights, duelling with their stick-swords and rescuing wild-bird-princesses from stray-cat-dragons.
Lessons, she thought, would be extremely dull in comparison.
"Yes, you have to," Ma said. "You won't get very far in this life, otherwise."
Gilbert whined and moaned, and then he begged and pleaded, but Ma stood firm.
"Do you want to have no choice but to take over the shop when you're grown?" she said. "I've never heard of a knight who doesn't know his letters, Gil."
That silenced Gilbert where likely nothing else could. He nodded meekly, and Luise knew that Ma would never listen to any of her complaints now that Gilbert had agreed with her.
She would have to screw up all of her courage, and all of her determination, and go with her brother to the apothecary.
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"This is everything we found on Walsh, sir," Corporal Jones says. Her hands tremble a little as she holds out a shallow tray to Luise, which causes its contents to clink and rattle against the cheap, dented tin.
The hastily written report she had turned in upon her return to the guardhouse had described her part in Walsh's arrest in completely dispassionate terms, but it has clearly shaken her more than she will likely ever admit. Although her shot went wide and only grazed the man's shoulder, it had still been the first time she'd ever aimed her pistol at anything other than a wooden practice target. Luise would be more worried if it hadn't unnerved her somewhat.
Jones thrives on movement and occupation, so it would be no kindness to send her home for the rest of her shift to recuperate, as Luise might order any of her other corporals who found themselves in similar circumstances.
Instead, she pretends she has not noticed Jones' trembling or her ashen skin, and simply eases the tray out of her hands without comment before it can overspill, so she can study the meagre haul it contains more closely.
There are a handful of coins – only half of them Imperial tender and not one of them genuine; the shallow scratches marring their silvery surfaces reveal nothing but dull brass underneath – a string of cheap and battered prayer beads which indicate Walsh is, surprisingly for a known thief, an active devotee of the Silent God, and a thick leather wallet that looks far too well-made for it to be anything other than stolen property.
The lozenge-shaped golden clasp holding it closed is embossed with a picture of a ship so intricately detailed that every rope of its rigging and each timber of its hull are precisely outlined despite the entire vessel being no longer than the first two joints of Luise's index finger. On the largest of its billowing sails, a bunch of five plump grapes stands out in proud relief.
Luise has seen that crest before, rendered in bronze, silver, gold and stained glass at the Martinez residence, which she'd visited several times during her tenure as a sergeant in Eastgate in order to inform Mme. Clemence Martinez that her son, Henri, had once again disgraced the family name.
"Send someone to fetch my brother," Luise tells Jones, a chill settling deep in her belly. "Mr Walsh may not want a lawyer, but I think he's going to need one."
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The door to the apothecary seemed to loom impossibly large above Luise's head, black as pitch and foreboding, even though it was made out of exactly the same wood and set in exactly the same sort of frame as the door that led out onto her own house's back yard.
It made her think of the long, terrifying hours she and Gilbert spent attending temple services with Ma, their arses going cold and numb from the rock-hard benches whilst they listened to a golden-robed priest with fever-bright eyes spitting out warnings of the Darkened Halls, where those who angered the Silent God were locked away forever without light or love or laughter. The dread portal to that cursed place, he'd always said, resembled any other, but there was an eternity behind it.
She was so lost in that thought, that Gilbert's hand closing around her own caused her to jump a little, and loose a low cry of alarm.
"You look scared, Lu," he explained, when Luise glanced at him questioningly. "But don't worry; I'll protect you."
His voice was shaking, his eyes as round and wide as saucers, so Luise squeezed his hand twice as hard in return. He smiled at her then, but it was a thin little thing, prickly and tight-lipped, and he didn't seem even slightly happy or reassured.
It still gave him enough courage to knock at the door, albeit only lightly; ever so lightly, as though he was hoping, like Luise was hoping, that it might pass unheard. That way they wouldn't have to lie to Ma - 'We tried, Ma! Really, we did!' – if they went home now without ever receiving their threatened lessons.
Nevertheless, it wasn't quiet enough, and was answered within a beat or two of Luise's racing heart by the muted sounds of footsteps beyond the weather-beaten wood.
Gilbert's fingers gripped Luise's so tightly that they began to ache.
The door swung open to reveal, not the Gatekeeper of the Darkened Halls as Luise had been half-expecting, but only Mr Kirkland, and her closely held breath flew out from her mouth in a sudden rush of relief. There was nothing even slightly frightening about Mr Kirkland: he was a small man, soft around the middle, and his grey-green eyes were as gentle as the smile of welcome he gave Gilbert and Luise, the long tails of his moustache lifting and parting to reveal a quick glimpse of his straight, white teeth.
He gave them a short bow like they were royalty come calling, and said, "Perfect timing." He spoke like he was royalty, too, in a crisp Highgate accent with its elongated vowels and staccato constants. "I've just got the twins settled down, so we were about to begin."
He ushered them into a kitchen that looked very much like the one in Luise's home, except the whitewash that covered the walls was clean and bright, not darkened with cooking grease and soot, and the heavy beams in the ceiling had been waxed and polished with such care that they shone.
There was a lively fire burning in the grate, a kettle coming to boil on the stove, and sunny yellow curtains at the windows, which made everything feel warm and snug and homely.
It seemed to be a very friendly sort of room, up until Luise finally allowed her gaze to stray towards the long table in the centre of it.
There sat Caitlin and Alasdair Kirkland at one end, their heads bent close as they whispered to one another. Caitlin's grin was sharp-edged, and Alasdair's thick, dark brows were drawn down low in a scowl, so Luise suspected that whatever they were saying was probably unkind.
Still, they stood up quickly enough when their da led Gilbert and Luise towards the table, and bobbed their heads properly and respectfully in greeting. Neither of them smiled, though.
Mr Kirkland bade them to sit, then extended the same invitation to Luise and her brother. Gilbert shook his head, fumbling to open the small pouch hanging at his belt.
"Ma said we should give you this first," he said as he extracted the grimy, time-worn penny Ma had given him.
He held it out towards Mr Kirkland, who shied away from it slightly, as though it was something poisonous he didn't dare touch.
"I told your mother I didn't require payment," he said. "You keep that."
Gilbert hesitated momentarily, fingers curling around the precious coin, but despite the sweets he had longed to buy with it, Luise knew he would refuse Mr Kirkland's offer even before he said, "We don't need charity, sir."
They're their da's words, oft overheard, and spoken in a close approximation of their da's gruff tone.
Mr Kirkland's round cheeks reddened. "Of course you don't," he said, accepting the penny from Gilbert now with the delicacy of a noble's grace. "Here, I'll put it in the tin on the mantel, with the rest of my earnings."
Alasdair snorted loudly, the sound swiftly curtailed by his clenched fist against his mouth when his da turned a censorious eye on him.
When he dropped his hand again, he and Caitlin traded smirks like they were sharing some sort of private joke, and Luise couldn't help but wonder if it was a joke at Gilbert's expense. That perhaps he had done something they considered so ridiculous or stupid or impolite that they weren't able to stop themselves from laughing at it.
Luise thought she might hate them both, just a little.
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Luise had lost herself so thoroughly in reviewing the reports from the day patrols that it seems like nothing but a handful of minutes elapsed between her dismissal of Corporal Jones and the familiar, distinctive knock at her office door that announces her brother's arrival.
She stacks the papers neatly, face-down, and then calls out for him to enter.
His step is filled with an equally familiar energy and force, though when she looks up to greet him, she's dismayed to see that the bags beneath his eyes are even fuller than usual, and his skin is dulled with a greyish pallor.
He hasn't been sleeping well of late. Luise has been woken at dawn by the sound of him pacing back and forth across his attic room every morning this past week.
Despite his obvious exhaustion, he has clearly taken great pains with his appearance. He's clean shaven for the first time in days, his prematurely white hair slicked back smartly behind his ears. His frock coat is second-hand – three seasons out of date – but well-pressed and only slightly frayed around the collar.
He almost looks like a real lawyer.
"What have you got me this time, Lu?" he asks.
He can never seem to remember that she's not his little sister in this place; in this office. He compounds the discourtesy by tossing his leather satchel down on top of Luise's desk without so much as glancing towards it beforehand to check that there's nothing important there that he might be disrupting.
"Stolen handkerchief, maybe?" Gilbert continues, ignoring Luise's curtly spoken displeasure as he always does. "Yet another fracas outside the Lost Antler?"
"A murder suspect," Luise says, which makes Gilbert's maroon eyes spark bright with excitement.
He hadn't seen the victim's body when it was lying lonely, bloated and unclaimed in the dank cellars of the Paupers' Temple, but Luise had, and even though she knows her brother's interest is purely professional, she thus can't bear to witness it.
She looks instead at the satchel in front of her; leather cracked around the clasps, stitching unravelling along its sides. It had once borne Gilbert's initials, embossed just below the handle, but they have long since worn away. Luise had saved up her pennies for months to buy it for her brother before he went away to Durolipons to attend the university there.
That had been more than a decade ago. A few years back, he could easily have bought ten more like it, so she assumes that he kept it out of sentimentality even though he now uses it out of simple necessity as he can no longer spare the money to replace it.
"Shit," Gilbert says eventually, lowering himself unsteadily into the rickety chair opposite Luise's. "And they asked for me to represent them?"
He sounds incredulous enough that Luise feels no need to try and soften the blow by pretending that there was any choice on Walsh's part.
"No, he didn't want a lawyer at all, but I thought he should have one, all the same, given the severity of the charges against him," she says. "He's penniless, as far as I can tell, so the guards will have to pay the retainer, and you're the only lawyer we can afford."
She glances up at Gilbert just in time to see a ripple of hurt cross his face, but it's quick to pass. His grin soon returns.
"It'll be good to have a case I can really sink my teeth into again," he says, suddenly launching himself back up to his feet again. He's really no better at staying still now than he ever was as a child. "Come on, Lu; what are we sitting around here for? I want to meet my new client before the mould in those cells of yours has chance to finish him off before his time."