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Yeah, next chapter! Enjoy.

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Chapter 2:

"Afternoon," Mandila greeted Lex. She was perched on a barrel with a mug of ale in hand, and although she was extremely tired after last night's work, she managed to sound chipper. The fatigue was well worth what she'd accomplished, for she'd gotten her hands on a rare necklace that had absolutely delighted Armand. She'd even been promoted for it, and now she got to see her favorite captain, which made the day that much better. Actually, she'd seen Lex twice today, for she'd left her target's home in the early morning hours, and he'd already been out and about. Of course, he hadn't seen her, and for that she was grateful. The man might be fun to play with, but raising his suspicions would make her life hell.

"Afternoon," Lex replied, and his feet stopped moving. Mandila stared, mug frozen half-way to her lips. Why was he stopping? He never stopped to say more than a greeting, and sometimes not even that if he was busy. She couldn't believe her eyes.

"Can I do something for you?" she asked, and found herself looking at his mouth. His lips really did look soft. Oh hell, she shouldn't be thinking about that. Then again, if she stole that kiss, Methredhel would have the shock of her lifetime. The look on the woman's face might be worth risking jail time, but even so, Mandila knew when her impulses were best left alone. Sometimes the entertainment value simply wasn't worth the cost, but only rarely.

"I have a few questions," Lex stated. Me too, she thought.

"I don't know how helpful someone like me can be," she smiled, "But ask away." His somber face didn't falter once as he talked, and rather than focus his words, Mandila found herself wondering if he ever laughed—not a weak, humoring laugh, but a full-blown one. She watched the way that his jaw moved when he talked, and how his blue eyes silently demanded answers. The intensity—that was it. That had to be what interested her so much, for it was a rare sight, especially when in pursuit of justice. Perhaps, if a man like him had been around when she'd been younger, her elder brother would never have been murdered.

"Do you know anything about the Grey Fox?" Lex asked. So that was what he wanted.

"Perhaps," Mandila mischievously replied, but baiting Lex might not have been the wisest idea. Oh, how her mouth sometimes ran away from her. She momentarily wanted to slap herself, but she still smiled in amusement. There was no choice but to roll with her predicament now. "I'll answer your question, but it will cost you," she said, and Lex looked downright disgusted. Only he could look that revolted over such a simple comment.

"Leave it to your kind to ask for money," he nearly spat.

"I don't want money," she told him, and the man's eyes narrowed suspiciously. He definitely wasn't one to easily trust others.

"And what, good citizen, do you want?" he demanded. "Be careful what you suggest. I could have you slapped in chains and forced to answer my questions if you won't cooperate."

"I'm flattered that you think me worth the time," she simply replied, and loved how his face tensed. Gods, the man would be put in an early grave by his stern disposition. It couldn't be healthy to be serious all of the time. "I want to ask you a question," she continued. "You answer my question, and I'll answer yours." With a long-suffering sigh, Lex slowly nodded.

"What is your question?"

"How old are you?"

"Thirty," came the sharp response. "Now answer the question of importance."

"I know nothing besides the rumors," Mandila told him with an exaggerated shrug, and Lex scowled, realizing that she had only been playing with him. She wore a mirthful and sneaky grin that was better than the open rebukes that his superiors gave him, but no less frustrating. No one took his hunt for the Grey Fox seriously, not even this slip of a woman.

"Good day, citizen," he roughly told her. "If you learn anything a bit more detailed, you know where to find me." She surely did, and the man had no idea how predictable his location always was. He rose early, came to the harbor, worked, patrolled, stopped for lunch in the market district, worked some more, and then went back to his rooms for the night. It was clockwork, and anyone else would have found watching him boring, but not Mandila. There was an exactness to his every movement that somehow captivated her attention. Like now, he was diverting his gaze to a group standing some yards away from them, and he managed to make even that slight shift look regal.

"If I have to tell those sailors one more time..." Lex lowly commented, and Mandila turned to see what was happening to draw his eye.

"Not again," she muttered, her face adopting an exasperated expression not unlike the captain's. The pirates that periodically docked here were harassing Puny Ancus again, surrounding the poor, Imperial beggar so that he could not walk away from their taunts. The man's scruffy face was downturned, staring at the stones beneath him as his arms protectively encircled the small sack that he carried, and Mandila's spirit flared at the sight. She knew Ancus since he slept near her house, and he was one of the kindest listeners that she'd ever met. He was also weak and indecisive, which made him an easy a target for the harbor's brutes.

"Look at him!" the female pirate laughed. "He can't even form words."

"Yeah, skinny little fetcher," another mocked. "What's in the bag?" Mandila could tell that Lex was considering how far his involvement should go, but he seemed content to bide his time. That was exactly like him, she thought. Like most guards, he didn't get involved in petty squabbles if he could avoid it, and especially not to defend a beggar. In fact, the guards sometimes worsened the problem by laughing when a beggar was tossed into a puddle or verbally abused. Such actions had helped widen the gulf between officials and the waterfront people, who saw guard noninvolvement as another sign of justice's biased nature. Mandila often agreed with that thinking, which was why she was in the guild, but she still found herself expecting Lex to intervene. She might expect nothing from another man in uniform, but Lex was different.

"Here, let me help you," a pirate sarcastically offered, violently shoving Ancus forward and knocking him off balance. The poor man lost his sack as he stumbled, and to his horror, it hit the ground before he could grab it. Plump, red fruit scattered across the stone walkway from its folds, some rolling into the filth that people tended to leave lying around. The pirates laughed and moved to give Ancus another shove as he frantically tried to retrieve his food, and that was the last straw for Mandila. She set her ale aside and stood to intervene, but to her surprise, someone beat her to the task.

"You there!" Lex's voice boomed. "That's enough. If I have to tell you to mind your hands one more time, I'll fetter them." The female pirate sneered and pinned Lex with a withering glare, but it had no effect on the man. He walked directly toward the group as if he were untouchable, Ancus cowering at his feet, and laid a threatening hand on his sword's hilt. "I won't warn you again," he threatened. "Now take your business elsewhere."

"Let's go," the female pirate spat. The rowdy group grumbled in response, but moved down the harbor toward their ship, and Mandila rushed forward to help Ancus collect his berries. She knelt beside the tensed man and began scooping the ruined morsels into his waiting hands. She wasn't sure if the beggar was acting jittery because of his encounter with the pirates or the fact that Lex's presence was looming over them.

"Those better not be stolen," Lex warned, and Mandila looked upward. They were working in Lex's shadow, and she found herself craning her neck to get a better look at the captain's face, which was obscured by the sun's position behind his head. It seemed to her that even with the lighting against her, his blue eyes shone with purpose. He had acted as she'd hoped he would, and as she thought about that, she wondered what would possess her to be disappointed if he had merely walked away from the scene. His currently cold and accusing stare was nothing special and even hostile, and that is what she should have expected instead of help.

"They're...they're mine, sir," the beggar was nervously saying.

"I hope so," Lex replied and turned to leave. Mandila felt his departure even though she was looking at the ground, and she noticed that Ancus gave a shudder in the man's wake.

"Damn pirates. Damn captain," the beggar muttered. Mandila smiled reassuringly and laid a hand on his shoulder. The man was focused on retying his sack, but he looked at her as she gave him a light squeeze. It was obvious from the way that he scanned his surroundings that Lex scared him, but that was normal. The captain followed the letter of the law to an exactness that bordered on obsession, and he was a real stickler for punishment. It was enough to scare most out-of-luck individuals, who loathed Lex as the most meddlesome official to ever walk the docks, and it was because of his tendency for righteous harshness that the Thieves' Guild worked against him.

"Don't you worry about the captain," Mandila advised. "He might not have an ounce of mercy, but he doesn't have evidence either. You enjoy your meal, Ancus." And the beggar showed her his crooked grin.

"Aye, Miss. Thanks for your help." But it really hadn't been her help that saved the situation. I doubt that I could have done a better job than Lex. The man had ended coldly and hadn't been overly concerned for the beggar, but he had at least scared off the pirates. Mandila's commands probably would have been ignored, but Lex packed a punch, and troublemakers knew it. His authority was stronger than hers by a long shot.

"You need to learn to stand up for yourself, Ancus," she warned the dirty man as she reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. "Things wouldn't be so bad if you said something."

"To who?" he demanded. "The snotty guards? Nah, if I open my mouth, it's still bad. It's best to keep quiet and take it. That way they get bored." It was a sad philosophy, but a realistic one, and Mandila had to concede that Ancus had point. The guards didn't care, and other poor people didn't want to get overly involved lest they become targets. Sometimes the harbor was a world of willful ignorance, and the Grey Fox offered protection because of that. He did something for these people, and if the authorities would do their job with the same consideration for the poor, the Grey Fox wouldn't have such a strong following, but reality wasn't kind. Lex wasn't kind, but Mandila couldn't help but think that he looked so promising in his shining armor.

She sighed as she watched Ancus scurry away for his bed roll. She was sorry that Lex was not the hero that his appearance might suggest, but she didn't think that she'd like a hero. Her eyes lifted, and she found him standing there. He was watching her from a short distance, and he'd probably heard her entire conversation with Ancus. She nodded briefly in thanks for his assistance, and she thought that maybe his head slightly dipped in response before he left.

She smiled at his back and knew that she wouldn't want him to be less than what he was. For one, the guards had to be bad to make the thieves good, and the opposed forces were obstinately determined to view each other as villains. Two, the fact that Lex was her enemy somehow made close interaction with him that much more engaging, and she considered him a worthy foe to poke with a stick. Part of her wished that he would grab the stick instead of always ignoring it, but like today, she wasn't sure what to do once he did give her attention. Why had he decided to talk with her today, when she'd been trying for a conversation for months? It was strange to her thinking, but she wanted it to happen again. She really, truly wanted to speak with Lex again, and feel those determined eyes on her face.

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Lex wound his way through the city streets and toward his rooms in the guard tower. He'd made no apparent progress today, and that was frustrating, especially since he knew that more could have been done if people took him seriously. What he really needed was a contact within the Thieves' Guild. Then he could plan more arrests, but the real problem was not necessarily knowing who was in the guild, but catching them red handed. He knew of several guild members, including Armand, but he couldn't prove it to the satisfaction of his superiors, and he wouldn't arrest someone without proof of wrongdoing anyway.

He briefly greeted the other guards as he entered the barracks, and climbed the ladder to the large, top loft that served as his quarters. Being a captain had its perks, but while he enjoyed the peace and quiet of his private room, it was of less concern to him than making progress. Take the Grey Fox for instance. Lex would do about anything to catch that thief, for the man stood as the symbol of crime in the capitol, and that someone could defy orderly society and even flaunt it was beyond aggravating. No one got away with flouting their disregard for authority, as had been drilled into Lex's head since he'd been a child. His father had been a captain, and a damned good one at that, but his track record had been nothing impressive. Lex actually suspected that the man had taken bribes, making him a hypocrite, but that wasn't Lex.

Laws kept civilization from falling apart. Lex believed it not because he'd been told, but because he'd watched people. When guards were taken off of particular streets, crime increased in that area. It was shameful how people would taken advantage of a situation like that, and it sickened him to know that without patrols, the city would be in horrible condition. He helped keep the order that made the empire possible, but there were so many mediocre men under his command. It wasn't that they weren't skilled or intelligent; it was that they weren't concerned with spending all their energy on tracking down an organization that, for all intents and purposes, was so elusive and secretive that most denied its existence.

That brought Lex back to the Grey Fox, the man that was the leader of the pack, and taking him out would scatter lesser thieves and make them easier to pick off. One by one, they would go to prison for their crimes, and Lex anticipated that day—all the more so because he loved a challenge. Taking out easy opponents never fired his spirits like following leads into unknown territory, and that's where real satisfaction was to be had at the end of the day. It didn't help that the Grey Fox had humiliated him when he'd gone after Armand several months ago, and it was the ridicule and frustration of the job that denied him the ability to walk away from it. He would prove the guild's existence to the world and show everyone that he was not some nut, but more aware than his fellow officers.

"Damn!" he angrily cursed as he removed his armor. He was sick of being one step behind his enemies, and it almost always felt that way. He ran a hand over his short, brown hair, and found himself thinking about that female Bosmer's words from that afternoon. For some reason, he could not get them out of his head.

He might not have an ounce of mercy, but he doesn't have evidence either.

Of course he didn't have mercy for criminals. They took what wasn't theirs instead of earning what they wanted. They had no right to expect mercy, and yet, the woman hadn't said those words with the usual bitterness that he expected from the waterfront people. She had sounded a bit disappointed when he considered the situation. The woman was compassionate, or so it seemed, but that emotion had little room in his career. He didn't want to be soft. He wanted to be the one who always caught the criminal and dealt the punishment with consistency. That was fair and just, if not always to everyone's liking.

He sat down at his desk and opened the letter that was waiting for him. It was an invitation to a formal event at the palace, and another event that he was obligated to attend, even if he'd rather be unwinding in the quiet of his room. He tossed the letter aside and thought about his day, the most eventful moment having been his interaction with the Bosmer.

She was slender with small brown eyes and long lashes. Her brown hair was always let loose around her shoulders, and she wore plain breeches and a tunic every single day. He had been thinking about her more since yesterday, and he'd been paying closer attention when he entered the harbor this afternoon. He felt stupid for it now, but was it just him, or did she learn out a little further from the barrel to see where he was? She had smiled when she saw him, but he had never given her a reason to desire his presence. In fact, he had discouraged it with his short answers, but she always said something to him, and it was usually sarcastic. He wondered why she made the effort, and he tried to remember whether anything notable had ever happened between them, but he couldn't find what he wanted.

When he had first started working, she never spoke to him, or at least, he was fairly certain of that. He'd watched her walk around, but not very often during the day, and then she'd said 'hello' one afternoon. After that, she said something every day, and he supposed that there was at least one encounter that stood out in his mind. It had been one rainy afternoon, and he was waiting beneath a doorway for it to stop. She had come running through the rain, laughing like a madwoman with a friend hot on her heels. He remembered how childish they had looked, splashing water on one another and giggling, but then she'd noticed him, and like every damned day, she had to speak. There, standing with her soaked hair plastered to her forehead, she grinned and asked him if he was enjoying the weather.

"No, citizen," he said. "I'm not."

"Oh, well I guess it's difficult to play with that armor on anyway," she teased. "Maybe some other day."

"Not likely." And she looked up into his eyes with a searching expression that he had not expected, as if staring into his face might tell her some secret. She had looked more sober then, like she was puzzled and could not tear herself away from him.

"Your eyes," she had told him. "You have the prettiest eyes, sir." Then she seemed to snap out of her haze, and she giggled. "Good day!" Her friend grabbed her hand, and they went off gallivanting, the only morons insane enough to risk getting sick for a bit of fun. Strangely, he did not remember the incident with scorn as his word choice suggested. Instead, he almost sighed at their carefree nature, for he could never remember feeling like that in his life—ever. There was something about that Bosmer that was perpetually energetic and curious, always snooping, always asking questions and making cryptic comments that tended to annoy him.

How old are you?

Please explain to him how that had any significance. He had answered because it was simple enough, and he wanted the Grey Fox so badly that he really hadn't thought about whether or not he should answer the question. A damn strange question to be sure, but the elf was like that. At least she had a clean record. He had reprimanded her on more than one occasion for creating a scene or some such thing, but it was always minor and only a result of her brand of humor. He didn't think that he should seriously pursue her as a possible guild member, but one could never tell. He had to be prepared for anything.