Title: Undercover
Rating: SFW
Wordcount: 13483
Summary: After Oboro departs for Nagarea, Fuyo's Detective Agency takes its first case: running an increasingly convoluted background check on Luserina's new secretary.

Note: Written for the casestory Big Bang on LJ/DW. Art by nickygabriel available here (remove spaces): i. imgur GWNSo. png

For Luserina's post-game status, I chose to interpret "new administrator" as "mayor." I also let one of my personal crack pairings out of its cage and into the plot.

Painting her name over his was the hardest part, so Fuyo had taken care of that first, then propped the sign against the wall to dry. Rearranging the furniture was sweatier work, but less emotionally charged—perfect for Shigure and Sagiri, who, despite their denials, harbored depression in the angles of their jaws and the slopes of their shoulders. Having never quite mastered the nuances of their body language, Fuyo assumed that any mood apparent to her was an extreme one.

So she kept them busy. Shigure complained constantly, like a leaky roof, whenever Fuyo sent him and Sagiri into town to buy cleaning and decorating supplies, but he couldn't grumble and brood at the same time, no more than Sagiri could mope while good-naturedly chastising him. Fuyo didn't have to worry as much about herself; she had never been able to indulge a bad mood when there was paperwork that wanted doing.

They would all three be fine on their own. Fuyo wasn't sure she could say as much for the not-at-all-a-replacement-for-Oboro who had spent the last week nidifying on the sofa, but at the moment she cared less about his emotional stability than she did about his disregard for the finer points of running a business.

Whoever was outside had already knocked twice. Fuyo had no qualms about taking a cheap shot. "Crow—"

"Raven," he snarled, but his heart didn't seem to be in it.

"Fine, then, Raven, we have a potential client at our door, and it would be very unprofessional to have someone spread out on the furniture while we're trying to conduct business. Do you follow me?"

Raven scowled and flicked his wrist, becoming a thief-shaped depression in the cushions.

"No, that's not going to cut it. We already have one lazy guy around here—"

Shigure grunted from his napping chair.

"—and we don't need another. Get up, now. Up!"

The cushions plumped back into shape as footsteps padded resentfully into the corner. Fuyo yanked the nearby curtains open, then set on her hands on her hips as Raven popped back into visibility in the rush of sunlight. "There, now," she said, ignoring his glare, "try to look like someone we'd hire while sober, please," and she put on a bright smile as she went to answer the door.

"Welcome to Fuyo's—Euram!"

The Barows boy stood awkwardly on the deck, clutching a satchel and looking as if he had just lost his grip on a more confident posture. Fuyo sometimes had that effect on people. "Hello," he said. "I, ah, was unaware that I had passed into your possession."

The attempted joke fell flat. Fuyo tried to usher him inside before he noticed. "Oboro's away on extended business," she said as he crossed the threshold. "But we can handle even your toughest cases, just the straight facts, reasonably priced!" Fuyo snatched a business card from her pocket and pressed it into Euram's hand, chirping, "Have a seat, won't you? We're doing a bit of remodeling, so please watch your step."

The open buckets of paint seemed to concern Euram most; he skirted wide around them and managed to catch his cape on a nail poking out of a wayward bookshelf. As he disentangled himself, he asked, "When do you expect Oboro to return?"

"Oh, sooner or later." Fuyo hoped her smile didn't betray any nervousness. While Shigure and Sagiri expressed no doubts that Oboro could handle himself just fine against the remnants of Nether Gate, Fuyo had never actually seem him fight anyone, and nearly a decade had passed since he left the organization. She steered the subject back on course: "But the four of us are perfectly capable of handling anything that comes up."

"Four?" Euram hesitated over the chair in which he had been about to sit, letting his gaze flit over the room until it settled on the far corner and Raven, who perched moodily on a box. Euram stiffened. "What is he doing here? That man is a force of harassment!"

For the first time since the arrival of the Barows boy, Shigure looked up from his pipe. "Yeah, we know."

"Hush, you." To Euram, Fuyo replied, "He left a challenge pinned to the door about a week after Oboro left, and he didn't take it very well when we told him that Oboro was unavailable." This was an understatement; Raven had burst out of a shadow and spent the better part of ten minutes loudly redefining words like "honor" and "responsibility" before sobbing on Fuyo's shoulder and demanding to know what the point was now. "I think we've adopted him."

"Right," Raven stage-muttered, "just talk about me like I'm not even here."

Perhaps having decided that a Raven who had not yet commenced harassment would be unlikely to do so in the near future, Euram settled into the chair. Sagiri slipped in from the kitchen, shadow-silent, and set a cup of tea on the table in front of him. To his credit, Euram didn't react with more than a slight startle.

"Rainwall's making wonderful progress," said Fuyo, sitting down opposite him.

Euram tapped his fingers against his teacup. "You have my sister to thank for that; it's all I can do to keep up with the tasks she delegates to me. It's a bit embarrassing to realize that I haven't the slightest idea how the city operates, but I suppose I've only myself to blame." Before the awkwardness had time to settle in, he gave Fuyo an earnest look and said, "Speaking of my sister—"

"Luserina?" came from the corner. Fuyo winced; Raven had a knack for choosing to participate in conversations in the worst way and at the worst moment. "Nice girl, heh. Always liked her."

Euram's eyes narrowed. "My sister," he snapped, his voice edging toward the one he had once used in unhinged tirades against the prince, "would never have had anything to do with the likes of—"

"Please don't mind Crow," said Sagiri. "He likes to hear his own voice." Raven made an affronted noise but wisely fell silent when Fuyo caught his eye and gestured at the storage closet.

Judging from Euram's expression, his outrage over what might have been aspersions on his sister's character hadn't survived Sagiri's frozen smile. He took a sip of tea and fumed quietly.

"So," Fuyo prompted, "how is Luserina? I've heard good things about her work."

Euram set the teacup down and let the intensity rush back into his expression. "I fear for her life."

Deep in Fuyo's chest, excitement fluttered, got its wings sticky with worry, and crash-landed in an urgent need for paperwork. She had a notepad and fresh pencil ready in the time it took Shigure to lower his pipe and say, "We're listening."

Leaning forward, Euram dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. "My sister's new secretary is plotting against her. I'm certain of it! You must expose him before his perfidious machinations succeed!"

"That does sound serious." Fuyo began to scribble down notes before realizing that she couldn't yet manage an outline heading. "Let's start with some details. His name?"

"Alvan." Euram spat the word as if it had tainted his mouth. "Before he came to pollute Rainwall, he lived in Stormfist. Stormfist!" This word apparently tasted even worse. "Luserina said it would be good for relations, but he's clearly a conniving member of the Godwin faction, come to enact a foul revenge!"

In the corner of her vision, Fuyo watched Shigure and Sagiri exchange a look of quiet vexation. She squared her shoulders and pressed on: "So what makes you think he's up to something?"

Euram slapped his palms against the table. "I don't like him!"

His voice rang shrill, but Euram immediately looked so abashed that Fuyo forgave him; after all, only a year ago his outburst would have been taken as an ironclad reason for action. "That is," he said, deflated, "his behavior arouses my suspicion. There's something undeniably unpleasant about that man."

A smoke ring drifted over from Shigure's seat. "Well, they say it takes one to—"

Fuyo cleared her throat. "Is he sneaking around at night? Disappearing every few days?"

"Perhaps!" Euram's face lit up as his grasped straws turned to gold. "I haven't been in a position to observe his movements myself, but it's certainly possible!"

Giving up on her notes, Fuyo tucked her pencil behind her ear and smiled resolutely. "Well, we've done more with less. So unless you have any other information—"

A stack of papers slammed onto the table, topped by a competent pencil sketch of an unremarkable face. Euram peered eagerly over his now-empty satchel. "I copied everything by hand while Luserina was in meetings," he said, arranging the pages into three piles. "Here are his references, which I don't mind telling you were not checked at all thoroughly, and here are his qualifications and application, and this is the best I could do trying to sketch his face through the window. He's very touchy—one might say suspiciously touchy—about being stared at."

In the quick glimpse Fuyo caught of the description sheet, she saw "the black, beady eyes of a weasel" as its own bullet point, followed by "could be concealing a poisoned dagger in that cane." Hoping that Euram had bothered with such niceties as height and build, she said, "I'm sure this will be a big help. And as long as we've got your bag out, why don't we get your payment squared away? Our prices are on the back of the card."

Euram slipped the business card back out of his sleeve and peered at it with some trepidation. "What are 'reasonable expenses'?"

"In case our boat explodes," Sagiri replied.

"Er, does that happen often?"

"Only once so far, and it was actually our client's fault." Fuyo waved to draw Euram's attention away from her investigators, who seemed to unnerve him. "Anyway, we pride ourselves on understanding our client's financial restrictions, and since you've given away your fortune, don't worry about paying the deposit."

Shaking his head, Euram set a small pouch on the table. "No, no, I insist. Use it to protect my sister, please." He hesitated. "By the way, if I may ask another favor, I've already spoken to Luserina about my concerns, and she, well..." He sighed. "Let's leave it that she wasn't terribly impressed. If she knows that you're in Rainwall at my request, I'm afraid that she'll be quite cross with me."

Fuyo beamed. "Oh, that's easy. Rainwall worked out great for us earlier, so we're having our grand re-opening there."

"Ah! Excellent." Euram bowed as he rose, twirling his cape with a flourish. "I can scarcely express my gratitude. My sister deserves far better than I've ever given her, and if I can play some part, however small, in foiling a plot against her, I'll give everything I have!"

"That's very noble of you," said Fuyo, leading him politely to the door. "We'll have an easier time checking his references here in the capital, so we'll leave for Rainwall tomorrow."

As she waved a final good-bye and shut the door, Fuyo heard the clinking of coins and excited whispering that, upon the click of the lock, rose to audible levels. She turned around in time to hear Shigure let out an exasperated, "Shut up!"

"But I should get a bigger cut," said Raven, no longer sulking in the corner. "I'm a master thief, and no one else here is a master anything."

"Incorrect." Sagiri deftly swept the spilled coins back into the pouch and tossed it to Fuyo, who caught it against her chest. Smiling against Raven's blustering, she said, "Don't worry. Fuyo takes good care of our money."

Shigure sighed around his pipe. "Why the hell is he even here?"

"Because he's about to make himself useful," Fuyo replied before Raven could offer his perspective. "Assuming Euram's not just overreacting, we're going to be in for some stakeouts."

Sagiri inclined her head. "Do you think we'll find anything?"

"I think," Fuyo said diplomatically, "that Euram is a paying customer, that his heart is probably in the right place, and that we all might enjoy a little vacation in Rainwall."

Issues of financial distribution apparently forgotten, Raven perched on a chair and grinned. "Just wait till you see me in action. I'm as patient as a cat when I want to be, ah ha ha ha—"

"That's the spirit," Fuyo interrupted. "Sagiri, I want you to take the sketch and the description to the parliament building and see if anyone recognizes him. Shigure, see how many of his references you can trace. I'm going to read over the rest and make sure we're river-worthy. Crow—" She hesitated. He looked more alert than he had at any point in the last week, but Fuyo wasn't prepared to think of him as reliable. "Can you put away the paint?"

He squawked about the inappropriate use of his talents, but Fuyo noted with approval that he at least began rounding up the lids as Sagiri and Shigure slipped out the door. She sat down at her desk, automatically filed a stray expense report, and spread out the pages of Alvan's application. Mr. Mouse emerged from his favorite drawer to scamper up her arm and tickle her ear with his whiskers.

According to his résumé, Alvan's professional history was as unremarkable as his face. Before the war, he had served as the assistant of a minor bureaucrat who oversaw the upkeep of the city's roads. His prior jobs painted him as a professional assistant, probably the sort of person who lurked among the filing cabinets and went unnoticed until he took a sick day, whereupon the office collapsed into chaos. Fuyo felt a faint stirring of kinship.

If she cocked her head into the plane of jealousy and paranoia, she could find cause for suspicion in the sheer blandness of the application. His every position had been innocuous, as politically neutral as Stormfist's bureaucracy allowed. Perhaps he had omitted any work that would have given his potential employer pause, but Fuyo didn't see any gaps in his work history. He wasn't impossible—not even entirely implausible—but to always be the right man in the right place at precisely the right time...

"The paint's gone," said Raven.

Fuyo glanced up to confirm and was unsurprised to see that he had not bothered with the brushes. "Thank you," she replied, turning to root through the boxes of old investigation files. "Now I'd really appreciate it if you also picked up the rest of the painting paraphernalia—" the door clicked shut— "but I'm sure that's asking too much since you've already disappeared somewhere. Well, at least you're outside for a change."

After a little sigh, she continued digging through the boxes until she came to the one labeled "Prince of Falena, K-O." From there she retrieved the folder on Marina. Why the prince wanted an investigation of his friendly and patently harmless innkeeper remained a mystery, but he hadn't stopped with her; by the end of the war, he had requested information on almost everyone whose name he knew. Not even Oboro's four-month entanglement in an ultimately absurd case in Haud had generated so much paperwork. For all his virtues, the Prince of Falena was deeply weird.

Luckily, the prince had never seemed to realize that the average investigation resulted in far more information than was passed along to him. He might well have been thrilled to learn about Marina's first pet and what she liked to eat on her eggs, but he certainly didn't need to know. Detectives were the ones who needed irrelevance, and only so that they could tuck it away until circumstances deprived it of its prefix.

Shigure and Sagiri, no doubt thanks to their childhood training, possessed near-eidetic memories—a disadvantage when trying to leave behind years of waking nightmares, but an advantage in their current line of work. So when Fuyo found in the notes on Marina a name that matched one of Alvan's former employers, she didn't hesitate to accept it as hard evidence.

"Mostly B. again," Shigure had scrawled, pointedly failing to cross his t's and dot his i's. "Nice old man, dinner weekly—worked on roads? Egon Garmund. Dead two years, no fam.

"This is a such a pain," he'd added sideways in the margin. "Who cares?"

Fuyo glanced between the papers and hummed thoughtfully. According to Alvan's application, he was still working for Egon quite some time after the old man died.

It had been a long shot, but Fuyo had learned never to pass one of those up; after all, she lived with people who could throw a fork and pin a fly to the wall. She clipped a note to the application and began to tidy the rest of the office.

That no one on the Stormfist delegate's staff recognized the man in the sketch was not proof, Sagiri knew. The city's bureaucracy sprawled like a giant mycelium, and her earlier glance at Alvan's references indicated that he claimed no ties to anyone of note. He also had a face made for blending into backgrounds.

No one from Sable or Estrise knew him, either. Undeterred, Sagiri excused herself from another busy office and spotted Shigure in the corner of the lobby, settled deep in a chair.

"Don't bother with Stormfist," he said when she approached. "All his references are dead."

"I checked Stormfist first. No one on staff has seen him before." She nudged Shigure into sitting somewhat more upright. "I wonder how many were dead before he started working for them."

Shigure shrugged. "Everyone lies on those things. At least he was smart enough to lie about stuff so boring only the Barows brat would care." In casual defiance of a nearby sign, he slipped his pipe from his jacket and patted his pockets in search of his tobacco pouch.

"He might be harmless," Sagiri said, politely confiscating the pipe, "or he might not. If you're finished here, why don't you help Fuyo with the boat?" After some grumbling, he agreed to do so in exchange for his pipe, which he abused his fire rune to light on his way downstairs.

Sagiri's next target was the delegation from Beaver Lodge. As expected, she found nothing, but Muroon appreciated visitors and Oboro had always insisted on thoroughness. In Lordlake's office she was greeted warmly by a young aide who remembered her agency's role in revealing the truth behind the town's uprising. It still felt a little strange to be welcomed by anyone outside the agency.

"Chairperson Talgeyl is indisposed," he said, offering her a seat, "but we expect him back soon. I'd be happy to pass along a message for you."

"That shouldn't be necessary." She held out the sketch. "Do you recognize this man?"

The aide peered at it, then gave Sagiri the anxious look of one who desperately wished to be helpful. "Maybe? I mean, it's hard to say..."

"Perhaps this will help." She began to hand over Euram's list of physical characteristics, then thought better of it and read some of them aloud, skipping the worst of the adjectives: "He's rather tall and not especially muscular. He walks with a limp in his right leg, and he depends on a—" here came thickets of inane description— "silver cane with a frog for a handle."

"An animal cane?" A second aide, laden with fat folders, breezed into the conversation as she approached the front desk. "Lord Rovere used to collect those things." She redistributed the weight of the folders and she added several more to the top of the pile. "I never knew what he saw in them, frankly, but I remember one had a crane with pretty little sapphire eyes. Terrible shame," she added, bustling away.

The first aide shrugged apologetically. "My aunt had one with a squirrel on it. It was hideous."

Sagiri considered. "Are they common in Lordlake?"

"Less now than they used to be, thank goodness. They're pretty old-fashioned." Chewing his lip, the aide stared at the sketch for a few seconds longer before saying, "I'm sorry, I just don't think I've ever seen him before. Should I ask Talgeyl when he comes back?"

There was no sense in turning down a lead. After thanking the aide, Sagiri headed for Lelcar's office. Wasil spied her before she'd had a chance to approach his secretary and rose to welcome her.

She had no greater luck here than with Lordlake; Wasil shook his head at the drawing and listened to Euram's abbreviated description without a flicker of recognition until she came to the end.

"A frog-topped cane?" Wasil stroked his chin. "That does ring a bit of a bell. Rovere used to collect them."

"It seems to be our suspect's only distinctive trait. Are they common in Lelcar?"

Wasil shook his head. "They're Lordlake's quirk, and an old-fashioned one at that. Strange to see a man under fifty carrying one." He paused. "Does he walk with a bit of a limp?"

Sagiri cast her thoughts back to Euram's description. "Yes. A 'diabolical' one."

"Well, I suppose that explains the cane, then." He shrugged sheepishly at her sigh. "I'll ask around the delegation, but I know my islets well, and I doubt that he's one of ours."

Sagiri thanked him for his time, headed down to the darkened basement office that the dwarves had made their own. When she opened the door, the rich scent of earth informed her that if a tunnel had not already been dug to Baska Mine, one was certainly in progress.

She picked her way through the gloom to the nearest female dwarf, waited for her to stop hammering a nail into a support beam, then tapped her politely on the shoulder.

"Light-footed, aren't you?" The dwarf pushed a wayward braid out of her eyes and left a streak of dirt across her forehead. "Name's Dorga. What brings you down here?"

"My agency is looking for this man," Sagiri replied, holding out the sketch. "Have you seen him?"

Dorga squinted. "Can't say that I have. You all look pretty much the same to me, no offense."

Dwarves were always a long shot, but it never hurt to be thorough. Sagiri copied the least ridiculous elements of Euram's description to a fresh sheet of paper, folded it together with the sketch, and said, "Would you mind passing these along down the tunnel, with instructions to send word of any recognition to Fuyo's Detective Agency in Rainwall?"

"Sure, I owe a few favors to your kind." Dorga tucked the papers into a pocket before adding, "You're with those detectives, right? Tell your man Raven he owes the gang a round of drinks."

Occasionally it was useful to have a fixed facial expression. "Certainly. I appreciate your help."

Before she left the Parliament Hall, Sagiri jotted down a summary of her findings for Fuyo. The thin scraps of circumstance filled less than three-quarters of a page, so she filled some of the emptiness with, "Crow has a social life. With dwarves. Who knew?"

Shigure returned first and had to be asked repeatedly to remove his feet from the surfaces Fuyo wanted to dust. "You could help," she pointed out.

He moved only the parts of himself required to blow a fat smoke ring and replied, "Yeah, I could." She dusted his bangs until he yelped.

When Sagiri finally arrived, Fuyo abandoned cleaning and picked up her notes. "So," she began, then paused. She opened the curtains to let sunlight flood the room before continuing, "What do you two think?"

"About Crow?" Shigure exhaled smoke through his nose. "He's a pain in the ass."

Sagiri shrugged and said, "He isn't Oboro."

"I meant about Euram's case, actually, but it's good to see we're all on the same page."

Shigure shrugged again. "His references are all dead and he's boring."

"His cane might have some connection to Lordlake," said Sagiri, "but no one from that delegation recognized him. No one from any delegation recognized him, in fact. He's a ghost."

"That's appropriate, since he last worked for a dead man." Fuyo passed around her notes, beaming, waiting for recognition of her ability to be something of a gumshoe when she wanted.

"Yep," said Shigure. "He's definitely either an undercover assassin or, y'know, some guy lying to get a job he's not qualified for."

Fuyo deflated. "Well, it's suspicious."

Sagiri perched on the back of the sofa like a friendly raptor. "What are the odds that Euram is completely wrong about this man?"

"We still have a file on him." Fuyo retrieved a folder from the "Prince of Falena, A-E" box, attracting Mr. Mouse to her shoulder in the process, and adjusted her glasses. Halfway through skimming the first page, she giggled. "My, that thing with the evil book was pretty funny! You know, in retrospect."

Shigure snorted. "Yeah, I rest my case."

"On the bright side," said Sagiri, startling Fuyo with her sudden proximity, "it should be easy to foil a plot that doesn't exist."

The door burst open and smacked against the wall. Fuyo jumped—generally she had to remind her fellow residents to make a little noise, please, to keep her aware of their movements—and her brain had run through half a dozen invasion scenarios by the time Shigure grunted a greeting: "Crow."

Raven slammed the door shut and crossed the room in a stiff, disheveled sulk. "Shut up. None of your business. Did not."

Fuyo waited until he'd ceased offering preemptive answers to ask, "Where have you been?"

"Nowhere. Minding my own business."

She glanced from him to her investigators, who were already exchanged their own inscrutable look. After a pause, Shigure sighed as if the weight of the world had been tipped onto his shoulders and said, "He broke into the palace storeroom."

"Really?" Fuyo ignored Raven's sputtering. "How do you figure that?"

Shigure shrugged. "Chuck's guarding it now, right? He knows about that damn rune."

"I don't think Crow ever realized that Chuck isn't dangerous," Sagiri added. "Chuck must have heard suspicious noises, grabbed at them, and got an afternoon's help sorting—" she sniffed— "old clothes."

Fuyo applauded. Glaring, Raven schlepped past her and drooped across the sofa, trailing a faint odor of sweat and mothballs. "His hands," he said acidly, "are bigger than my head. And he was still pissed off about last time."

"Oh, he's a big softy. He carries spiders outside because he doesn't want to kill them." Mr. Mouse, who had once been gently released into the wild after poking around the storeroom, nuzzled Fuyo's ear. She scratched under his chin. "And anyway, you deserved a little hard labor. What on earth possessed you to sneak into the storeroom?"

"It was the Sun Palace storeroom!" A mothball tumbled out of Raven's hair. Annoyed, he flicked it away and shook his head vigorously. "I'd be a laughingstock in the thieving community if I passed that up!"

Despite herself, Fuyo asked, "There's a community? What do you all do? Is there a potluck supper every week?"

"It's monthly and it's catered." At her look, Raven rolled his eyes. "What, you think I'm just gonna give away trade secrets?"

Fuyo shooed away the image of a company of ruffians voting on whether to have chicken or fish. "Just so we're clear," she said, setting Mr. Mouse back on the desk, "if you steal anything while we're in Rainwall, family tree or otherwise, you'll spend the next month locked in a closet."

Raven contrived to look indignant. "Did you already forget I swore off stealing until he gets back? There's no fun in it if no one's got even half a chance to catch me!"

"Then what the hell," asked Shigure, "were you doing in the storeroom?"

"Browsing. Gotta keep my skills sharp, don't I?"

He got out only the first few notes of maniacal laughter before Sagiri elbowed him in the diaphragm.