Chapter 18: Coffee

27th of Month of High Cold, 1837

10:58 AM

The carriage is still screeching to a stop when Curnow's boots hit the cobblestone. Two outer guards salute, and he nods without breaking stride. He takes the steps three at a time as he strides into the Watch headquarters. Inside is everything he needs: information, manpower, and coffee. The latter is the only thing on his mind as he presses past more officers, a desk sergeant trying to deal with a pair of hysterical men, and the barely controlled chaos of the foyer.

An olive-skinned woman stands by the coffee machine with two mugs in hand. "Had a feeling this would be your first stop," she says as she hands him a cup. "One sugar, two cream, hold the whiskey."

"The day is young. Don't hide the bottle yet." Curnow takes his caffeine, then downs it without pause. To his surprise, she trades his empty cup for the other one she was holding. "Thanks."

She nods. "Anyone who spends the night in the trash deserves it. Care to fill me in?"

"As soon as I get my spare uniform. This one itches like mad." The Captain follows his lieutenant to the other side of the historic room, up two flights of stairs, and down the hall to his office. By the time she unlocks the door for him, he's finished the latest mug and is already wishing for more. Later: if he has more than two an hour, his hands will start shaking.

Margaret O'Connor shuts the door before taking her customary seat, drumming her fingers on her lap as Curnow opens his wardrobe. He can't stand spills on his uniform, and eventually started storing extras in his office for when his coffee attacks. He changes pants without hiding from his lieutenant. They've worked together too long to be bothered with that formality.

"Burrows won't be happy when he gets our bill for this month. The whole station put in overtime trying to find you," Maggie explains calmly. Her way of warning of the approaching shit storm while also saying, 'I was worried.'

Geoff adjusts his collar before buttoning up his shirt. "It wasn't my choice. Or Campbell's, believe it or not. We have any updates about the Overseers? Burnley said they had a break-in, no casualties, and Campbell's exiled."

"That's the short version. After some ritual out of their thousand year old rule book, they kicked him out on his ass. Now we have to bill anyone who gives him the time of day. Rumor has it the Overseers doubt how legitimate the ritual was. Their 3 AM shift change came on and found half of the last group unconscious in the library. That's when your escort realized you were gone and got shoved out the door. They're happy to know you're still alive, by the way."

"Good, good," the Captain says absently. Another confirmation of Attano's exploits. If he hears it one more time, he might actually believe it.

O'Connor does a vague opening gesture with her hands. "Your turn. What the fuck happened last night?"

Curnow battles another silent urge for coffee. So instead he sits down behind his spotless desk, pulls open the bottom drawer, and retrieves a canteen of water. His time in the military gave the taste of metallic water a calming effect, along with an occasional craving for dry tack food. He argues whether or not to tell her for only a second while he drinks the water.

"Corvo Attano," he says calmly. "That doesn't leave this room."

O'Connor sits up in her chair. "You have to be shitting me."

Curnow gives her an overview of his interview with the masked fugitive. His story lacks the prose of a story teller, but it covers all of the important points in ten minutes. Attano dropped Campbell with a dart, proved that the High Overseer tried to kill Curnow, and fed him a story about conspiracies and magic assassins behind everything. Now Corvo's going after Burrows and colleagues with back up from some Loyalists and Callista, hoping to get Emily back on the throne. At least, that's the story the intruder wove last night.

The Captain surprises himself with how easily he recounts his adventure. He sounds irritated, as if getting kidnapped and tossed out with the trash was a minor inconvenience.

"Guess he didn't embarrass us enough when he escaped Coldridge. He's not going to be easy to catch. How do we want to handle it?" O'Connor's trademark sarcasm is gone already: she knows when to shut up and get to work.

Curnow starts digging out blank notebooks, pens, and chalk from his drawers. Everything needed to keep his thoughts organized. "Right now, our best bet is to find the Loyalists. Attano spent two hours telling me this story: there's got to be some truth in it to use against him."

"You're not exaggerating," she says more than asks. The Captain doesn't need to look up to know the look being cast his way. It's that questioning one she gets when she thinks something's up.

"Wish I was," Curnow replies. He leans back in his chair, feeling the old leather bend to the familiar shape of his spine. There's a reason he brought it from home when his promotion came with an office. "Campbell let us in at midnight, Corvo was on us before we could sit down. I heard the clock chime two not long before he choked me out. At least I don't remember being tossed in the trash bin."

O'Connor puts one hand in front of her in a stopping motion. "Levine said he checked on you sometime after one. Did Attano have a gun on you?"

"No." Geoff blows a long blast of air through his nose while he picks his words. "He threw on Campbell's jacket, tricked the Overseers into following him out. He dealt with them while I talked to Levine and Howards. Attano said he wasn't done with his story, wanted to finish it. I played along."

"That's horseshit." There is zero hesitation on O'Connor's face as she fights back. "We have code words for a reason. You could've warned them, let Attano come back to three pistols pointed at him. That would've been the end of it."

"I made a mistake," Curnow announces defensively. "Attano was making sense, too much for me to just dismiss it. And we used to be almost friends. I owed it to him to hear him out, if only so he could feel like someone else knew what happened to him."

"You know odds are he's playing you, right? Gives you some sob story to throw you off the scent. That leaves him with every opportunity to get what he wants, whatever that is."

O'Connor and Curnow have a special relationship after a half decade of partnership. It doesn't matter who's ahead in their game of leap frog through the ranks: they're even partners to each other. It means neither one is afraid to call the other out when they're wrong, and they can read each other well. They know each others' tells, where they have their strengths and weaknesses.

Which is why O'Connor is going after him. She knows he has a soft spot for underdogs. If someone made themselves sympathetic enough and hid their tells, Curnow would believe more than he should. That makes someone like Corvo dangerous: trained in keeping his thoughts to himself and finding other people's weaknesses. Add that to a history with Curnow, and Attano is one of few people who has a good chance at lying to the Captain and getting away with it.

The lieutenant's weakness, by comparison, is not giving up on her theories. She's smart and quick to connect the dots, but has trouble dropping an assumption she's already made. It takes some hard proof for her to let go of something. Or Curnow explaining his own thoughts. His opinion carries enough weight to make her budge. Which is what the Captain is riding on today.

"Too many things don't add up about the Empress's death. The blood, where Emily went, the guards all going missing at the exactly wrong time," Curnow explains calmly. "I'm not saying Burrows arranged it, but his ducks were in a row when she died. And Daud is the only assassin who could pull off that hit. You know how tight-lipped we've been about the Whalers. Corvo described them the letter, even that smoke trick they're using to fake magic."

O'Connor doesn't back down. "All of which he could've learned in Coldridge from the other prisoners, the ones who actually know Daud. He had six months to come up with this story."

"A story from a man who never had a reason to kill the Empress. We never found any bribes, any blackmail, no proof that anything political pushed him. If the rumors about them are true, he had every personal reason to protect them, not the other way around," Curnow feels himself trying to stand up from his chair. Maggie's got him on the defensive.

She leans forward in her chair, matching her partner's gaze. "Then it's a lover's spat with fancy outfits. How often is the boyfriend innocent when the girlfriend falls on a knife?"

"Fine, let's treat it like any other murder," Curnow says, lowering himself into the leather. He's relaxing again, and keeping his mind logical. "We've got a vigilante on the loose and his story. Means our best chance is to pick it apart, find some leads, and use it to get ahead of him. Agreed?"

Maggie smiles at her victory as she walks over to the office's chalkboard. "Sure. I say we start with what we already know, see what matches with his story. I'll work on his helpers." She quickly wipes off some scribbles from past cases and makes a new list titled "Loyalists."

"Attano's interview works in our favor then. Someone got him a breaching charge to blast out of Coldridge, so there's at least one with access to a naval armory. His sword and crossbow are custom: that had to come from somebody in the Academy."

O'Connor adds the first two bullet points, one for the "naval connection," and one for the "Academy source." She pauses briefly, then continues writing. "A driver. Might be the same one who got him the explosives, but they had to have a boat to pick him up from the sewers."

"How much are we betting there's some nobility involved in this?" Currnow asks while fidgeting with a pen. "He might not have had a map of the sewers, or they bought a cheap one from Bottle Street."

"A group like this needs coin. They can't be planning this at home, has to be somewhere private. If a noble buys some estate somewhere abandoned, they've got a reason to be there and a nice base of operations. Plus, someone's got to keep the inventor supplied for this custom gear in the first place." O'Connor adds another three items to the list for the noble connection, the secluded planning spot, and the likely use of the quarantined districts.

The list is already shaping up nicely. Curnow joins his partner at the chalk board, moves some of the wanted posters covering it, and starts his own section. "Might as well think about targets too. It's a long shot, but if we can get ahead of him..."

"Think we can all agree who the top prize is," Maggie grumbles. "Burrows caught Attano red-handed, and he became Regent out of it. No way Attano's going to forgive that."

The current ruler of the Isles is the first to be added to the list. "Question is how many he takes out on the way there. Attano always played the long game when he had a title. All of the conspirators in this little plot are in his cross hairs first."

"Presumed conspirators."

Curnow ignores that comment and adds a few possible categories, each with a question mark after them. Parliament, ranking Watch officers, the Academy, financial support, the Whalers. More assumptions than facts on this side. He taps the chalk to his chin, trying to think of anything to add or cross off to make things a little more manageable.

Maggie continues writing on hers, adding her own opinions with asterisks at the end. The Captain's mind never worked quite like hers: if he wrote it down, he was almost certain it was a fact. He sorted through the guesses in his head first. Lieutenant O'Connor wrote everything down, then struck out the failed ideas later. To each, their own.

This continues for another fifteen minutes before Geoff steps away. "Let's take a break before we burn out. I'm sure there's some damage control to be done after last night."

O'Connor scribbles out her 20th thought on the board, then wipes the dust from her hands. "The men will need some story about last night. And the Dunwall Courier should get something too, before they start inventing their own again."

"Who's in charge of the Abbey with Campbell gone?" Curnow asks, sitting behind his desk.

"They don't even know yet. It's been so long since a high Overseer got canned, they're dusting off the really old rule books. Didn't help most of them were asleep when it happened."

"Alright, let's deal with the Courier first. Get one of the record keepers to make something formal, says last night, the Abbey... security lock down from a false alarm, I was caught in it, they're still a little jumpy this morning. Better make sure the Abbey gets that report first before some Overseer gets caught saying something different."

O'Connor has her personal notepad out and is scribbling down the orders. "Got it. Our men getting the same story?"

"No, they won't believe it..." Curnow clicks his tongue as he thinks. "What about a real alarm? Campbell and I were arguing about the damned prostitute incident, thought we saw an intruder, got separated during the chase."

"Lock down starts, your escort is kicked out in the confusion, you sneak out in the morning," Maggie finishes. "That could do it. Their egos will be happy to hear you're smarter than the Overseers."

The Captain hesitates exactly four seconds. "And we say we'll help the Abbey only if it asks for the assistance... Works for me."

"You don't want to lie our people," O'Connor says, proving exactly how well she knows him.

"Not counting the misinformation to catch traitors, this is the third time I've lied to them," he thinks aloud. "It's not easy, and it probably shouldn't be."

She sets the book down, then pulls her chair closer to the desk. The pair are scarcely a foot apart when she matches his gaze again. "Why are you lying to them now? Explain it to me."

"I don't want Corvo knowing how much we know. He feels like we're closing in, there's no telling what'll happen." The Captain leans back in his chair, closing his eyes are he spins the pen in his hand. He speaks slowly and almost seems to stop once or twice. "Plus, the last thing we need is the men trying to pick a fight with the Overseers over of this, or the other way around. If Burrows finds out Corvo escaped us twice, Levine, Howards, and I will all lose our heads. And if the men have a reason to hate Corvo more, they might try to be heroes and get payback. They won't last a second."

"So other than your conscience, is there any good reason to tell the truth right now?"

Curnow would swear he can feel her stare still pointed at him. He doesn't bother looking over to confirm this thought."Not really."

She reaches across the desk and pats his shoulder. "Exactly," she laughs. "The same rules as always: everyone gets the truth when it's safe. Until then, quit whining. We've got bad guys to catch."

Shaking his head, Curnow stands from his chair. "I thought I was the logical one."

"You are. Just need a reminder sometimes." She's already halfway to the door, waiting on him with a smile.

"Apparently," he admits. "I'll give the station the speech and start spreading the word to the outposts. You take my message down to records, then the couriers. We can start digging into Attano after that."

As he approaches her, she smiles and salutes with her notebook. "We'll get him, and we'll get Callista back too. He can't outrun us forever."

"You sound confident."

"A positive outlook is half the battle. The other half is a steady supply of coffee."

Yeah, another short one. I don't know why Curnow's chapters always come out with the dwarfing word count compared to Corvo's. But I always come in with the list of things I want to accomplish, let the story flow from one to the other, and end up with a smaller word count than I expected. Weird.

Anyway, another Curnow chapter before we dig back into our favorite supernatural assassin. I don't know why I always enjoy these little detours for him the way I do. But you guys seem to like him too, so I'll keep messing with him. (When I'm not having a IRL Husky puppy chewing on my feet when I write. Snowball is still learning what's a toy and what isn't.) Hope you enjoy the chapter, and I'll be digging into the next one soon! Until next time! ~MGA