"Please, sir…" A commoner begged weakly, caked in grime, wearing clothes no better than the passengers upon his cart donned; "We've been hauling corpses since dawn… We just want this day to be done."
The guard manning the door sneered, glancing over to his partner with vitriol in his words; "Do you hear this guttershite?" He asked snidely, the other guard merely nodded, taking a moment to spit at the cartman before him. "Consider yourself lucky you're pulling that cart and not in it."
"Now move it!" The first guard barked as he threw a poorly aimed kick at the commoner's shin, said man scrambled to pick up his load of corpses, groaning along with his hastily crafted cart as he made his way past the two guards.
Garrett watched from across the Foundry market. What once could have been a bustling street, filled with goods and vendors, was now a shoddily constructed guard keep, complete with burning fires, barracks and a foul-smelling sloup stall.
Guards loitered about, hardly keeping the facade of 'watching' as they bickered and bantered, complaining about the sloup, the shift, the chill and anything else that irked them in the moment. Still, Garrett tread carefully, sloppy guardsmen were still guardsmen, armed with blades and crossbows, and more than eager to shoot anything that moved.
Still, while far from Garrett's favorite thing to deal with, the city watch had their uses. Gossip and rumor were never perfect bases for belief, but they were decent starting points if one knew how to follow the trail of tongues, and guards often had very, very loose tongue, especially during the night.
And when one of the guards began complaining about a certain general being on the premises that very eve, Garrett listened.
Typically, Garrett was not one to tempt fate, and if he could be avoided, the Thief-Taker General was given a mile-wide margin, that man brought nothing but pain and misery wherever he went and Garrett had no interest in pissing the general off anymore than he already had.
But, Garrett was on a mission, and if anyone were to be a half-decent starting point for his hunt, unfortunately, it would be Thaddeus Harlan.
Getting inside of the foundry was a simple enough task, apparently the small gaggle of guards lazing about the exterior walls was deemed good enough defense by someone, and upon setting foot within the courtyard, Garrett was met with nothing but a vacant stone field.
And then it happened.
Garrett crossed over a would-have-been garden, dried dirt, little more than dust beneath the soles of his shoes. Up his leg, crawling like frost across a window, up, up, up his spine and into his head until silver and blue consumed his right eye and a faint whisper called out to him through the fog.
Garrett staggered back, off the patch of dead earth, clutching his eye with a silent hiss. Once he had finally collected himself, he took a moment to look around, properly.
The courtyard was still empty, the sky still blackened by smog and clouds, the air still rank with death and smoke, and standing there, in the center of the patch of ash-choked dirt, was a single flower…
Garrett approached cautiously, crouching low to appraise the small impossible thing before him… The flower was pale, petals milky-soft, its stem straight and without leaves. Strangest thing of all however was its coloration.
Blue.
A staggeringly luminant blue.
Garrett reached out without a second thought, feeling that same coldness settle into his palm, up his wrist, slowly along his arm. He plucked the bloom before the chill could reach his shoulder. It came away from the stem without hassle and the chill retreated.
Garrett pocketed the flower, it felt the best thing to do given the strangeness of it.
Garrett offered the courtyard one last contemplation before he turned to the wall before him, a thick pipe ran from the ground up, snaking through the stone and wood struts, all but begging for a thief to use. And who was Garrett to deny himself such an invitation.
Clambering up along the pipe was a simple endeavor, Garrett of course remained careful, but without the immediate threat of being spotted by some meandering gaze, the thief allowed himself to relax, if only enough to enjoy the thrill of the climb.
That is until Garrett made it to the edge of the wall, where the courtyard ended and the entry junction began. Where two more guards stood appraising the newly cartered corpse before them.
"Look at this. A High-Born in with the low-lifes." One of the guards mused sardonically as the corpse-cart came to a rattling halt before them, the two commoners tasked with the duty were accompanied by another man, finely dressed, more than likely a relative or beneficiary of the deceased, who stood to the side, well away from the two commoners.
"I wonder what he's got…" The first guard mused loud enough for the second guard to dig his elbow into his side, hissing a curt; "Not out here sloup-for-brains!" As he jutted his chin towards the thief member of the corpse parade.
One of the cart-men fidgeted in place, anxiously glancing towards the finely dressed man and the guards before he spoke up with a stammered and softened; "We carted him gentle as we could." Another glance back towards the third man.
"You are… Treating them with respect, aren't you?" The commoner asked anxiously, head bowed, eyes downcast. The third man finally turned his attention to the guards, even at the distance he was, Garrett could tell that the man's gaze was frigid.
"Respect?" The first guard began, almost as though he were about to tell a morbid joke of some sort, luckily for him, his partner was quick to cut him off with a heel to his toes.
"Yes. The dead are being treated with the due respect deserved." The second guard interjected curtly as he all but dragged his partner to the side, the first guard still hissing and cursing under his breath as he hobbled along.
"Set the cart down inside and get back to your sackhouses." He ordered as he hauled the door open, fully hiding his partner from view as he allowed the cart-men and the third man inside; "We'll take it from here."
No other words were exchanged, save for the rattling creak of rickety wheels and the baying cries of rusty door hinges.
Garrett moved on, climbing the rest of the way up the side of the building until he found an open vent, its grate long since fallen to the ground below and presumably looted by some desperate urchin. Still, an easy ticket into the actual foundry, and not one Garrett was keen on dismissing.
The inside of the vents were stagnant and predictably foul, the stench of the dead hung heavy in the air, wafting up from deeper within the foundry, tinged with ash and soot along with the echoed conversations of guards and morgue workers, Garrett was more than a little relieved to escape from the vents and into the foundry proper.
Of course, the interior of the foundry was just as rickety and worn as the exterior suggested. The floors were hardly any cleaner than the streets beyond the walls, blood-mudded boot prints lined the halls, dried and were inevitably swept into corners and under rugs if a fresh-cut guard made enough of a fuss to be delegated to cleaning for cheek.
The guards within were likewise as lackluster as the guards meandering out in the courtyard, not that Garrett would complain. Afterall, it only made his job easier in the long run, and Garrett was not the sort of thief to look a gift-horse in the mouth.
Garrett only hoped that the morgue workers were as inattentive as the guards.
