Jadaar, while fond of drinks in their proper place, was not what you would call a drinking man. Though he couldn't reasonably claim to have never drowned his troubles in drink, he found overindulgence in general to be an embarrassing display and avoided it whenever possible. He was, therefore, rather annoyed that getting Ajay Green to talk was turning out to involve so many rounds of some sort of throat-searing whiskey that was strong enough to go directly to Jadaar's head despite his not-insignificant size advantage over most of Azeroth's brew.
Finding Asric's former lodgings had not been difficult — there were not that many inns in town, and one of them didn't even admit draenei. It was simply a question of asking around until someone mentioned a sullen, unpleasant blood elf with long auburn hair and a taste for sour cherry wine. Of course, the patrons of the Legerdemain were also quick to describe Asric as 'that fellow who'd been dragged off by a uniformed Sunreaver guard', which made actually tracking him down a bit of a chore. The Sunreavers, he found out, were entirely blood elves; most of them did not wish to speak more than a few words to him. In general they treated him as though he was on the verge of taking blood vengeance for his people, despite continued claims of strict neutrality on the Alliance and Horde conflict and a general belief in not holding every living blood elf accountable for the atrocities of Tempest Keep and the insufferable pettiness of the Scryers. It had taken him the better part of two hours to find a Sunreaver partisan who was willing to talk to him freely; she told him that a blood elf of that description was currently being held on suspicion of being involved in a disappearance. He was a shady character whose name had been bandied about by the victim, shortly before he vanished completely. As far as the Sunreaver herald had been concerned, this made it an open-and-shut case. When Jadaar explained that this particular Redmourn had been in the city for only three days, the herald only shrugged and said that the Magisters had it under control.
Magisters. He knew that title. Well, he did warn Asric this would happen.
So Asric had managed to get himself into trouble in the brief span that Jadaar had been speaking with draenei from the Exodar in the Silver Covenant resting-house, gazing out the window at the shifting violet portal to Shattrath City, and doing a great deal of thinking. He couldn't go back to Shattrath — not yet, not without something to show from his exodus other than a misspent night and a half-hearted apology from the author of all of his troubles.
Asric. He had, in the days since their stay in the Kalu'ak village, thought about him quite a bit. For someone who prided himself on level-headedness, falling into bed with a man he loathed was a palpable blow to his claims of rationality. Was he really so starved for company, so embarrassingly lonely since leaving Shattrath? Ever since Navaah had devoted herself to a cause that left no room for him, he had hardly given a second glance to anyone, man or woman, draenei or outworlder…and yet, he had tumbled into bed with a long-eared loudmouth who found it, for whatever reason, entertaining to flirt with him. All this despite the fact that Asric had ruined his life through what might have been deliberate incompetence and some definitely deliberate shadiness.
No, it wasn't that he was lonely — at least, that wasn't the most of it. Asric, obviously, was an underhanded scoundrel, a gibbering incompetent, a craven dandy who cared very little about anyone but himself…but while all of these things were true of Asric now, Jadaar had slowly come to recognize in Asric the shards of a shattered idealist. Navaah had always teased him about his soft heart.
Of course, Asric was absolutely insufferable, and showed no sign of improving in that area. So, he had left — a few days away from Asric, he had told himself, would clear his head and show him whether or not he really wanted Asric around in the concrete as well as the abstract. He had spent the last three days with a blank void where there used to be insults, and a sea of strangers where there used to be one familiar face. And, when he finally made up his mind to find Asric again, he'd gotten arrested on trumped-up charges. Clearly the elf was incapable of handling himself without someone's hand on the rudder of his life, and better him than whatever sort of people had been responsible for Asric's current sourness.
Ajay Green flashed a smile that might have been charming three glasses ago. "So, this Utherin Brightspark. What about him?"
"That was my question, actually. I need to know who he is. I have it on good authority that he had a conversation with you shortly before his disappearance…"
"And when was that?"
"Two days ago."
"Ah. Right." The man squinted as though he needed spectacles. "Yes, I remember him. He came down here on occasion — wanted to talk with Suri, he did. I think they might have been having a fling. Not that it's my position to judge, of course, but seriously —"
"Wait, wait…who's Suri?"
Ajay Green gestured expansively, as though indicating the entirety of his ramshackle bar. "Usuri Brightcoin. She's a goblin. Mister Brightspark used to come down here to meet with her. Never got a room, though. Just drank, talked, and left."
"Did he ever mention the name Redmourn?" Jadaar took another swig of his drink and tried to hide his grimace. He didn't know much about the drinks on this planet, but he was fairly certain it wasn't supposed to be gritty. Well, anything for the case — that was the Peacekeeper's motto. Or something like that, anyway. It was getting difficult to remember, which meant he needed to wrap up this conversation as quickly as possible."
"Oh, yeah. Once or twice in the past week."
"What did he say about this Redmourn person?"
"Oh, only that he had sold him something. I think it was a ring or something like that. Mister Brightspark seemed to think the ring was worth more than the person paid for it, and he seemed pretty upset with himself."
This was a positive development, though not conclusive proof. Asric could have reasonably tried to cheat someone out of a ring in the three days he'd been here. "What did you say his relationship with Usuri Brightcoin was?"
"I think they were screwing." Jadaar gave him a dubious look. "Uh, failing that, I'd say they were…collaborating? That's the word, right?"
"On what?"
"She's a goblin. If it doesn't involve money or dynamite, they're not interested."
"Where does she live?"
"Uh — I'll draw you a map." Ajay Green grabbed the corner of a bar tab stub and sketched a crude outline of the under-city with the scrap of charcoal his barmaid used to take down orders. "You can't miss it."
"Right. Thank you, sir," Jadaar said, and left his whiskey unfinished on the table.
Usuri Brightcoin's house was more of a shop than a dwelling-place. A sign scrawled in three languages declared her to be a moneychanger. Jadaar knocked on the door.
"Coming, coming!" cried a tiny voice behind the door. A slat of wood slid open and a pair of sterling-grey eyes blinked at him. "We're closed, you know," the goblin said.
"I know. I'm here on police business. Please, open up."
"Police business, eh? Well, in that case, go away." The little peephole slammed shut, and Jadaar swore. He stood in front of the door for a moment, unsure of what to do. He couldn't exactly force her to open the door — he didn't have the weight of law behind him here. Besides, there were rules to this sort of thing. You couldn't go barging into people's houses at all hours, even if there was a crime to be solved. Down that road was anarchy and chaos.
But if he didn't do something, then Asric might be punished for something he hadn't even done. That seemed dreadfully unfair, especially since Asric was guilty of so much already.
Jadaar looked down at the ground. He couldn't break in — that was beyond contemplation — but a set of small footprints in the mud between the cobbles, leading around behind the money-changer's shack caught his eye.
Jadaar sighed heavily, and crept around the back of the little shack as quietly as he could manage. There was enough discarded straw to keep his hooves from making too much noise, and after a few moments of sneaking that seemed to much longer than they were, Jadaar was crouching next to a trash heap in the darkness of an alleyway, trying to root through it as quickly as he could.
Twenty minutes later, he had a half-completed bill of sale with a misspelling on it that had been crossed out in grease pencil, and a crude ashtray. It wasn't technically stealing, as trash didn't belong to anyone per se, but the thought still nagged at him as he carried his prizes gingerly up the ramp to the main thoroughfares and out into the sunlight.
Rifling through private property without a warrant. If Asric ever found out about this, Jadaar would never hear the end of it.
