Garrett watched the well dressed man mull about his makeshift office, consisting of three tables, a trunk, stacks on stacks of paper, and a lovely view of the marching dead.
One of the Baron's high collared administrators had apparently been delegated to supervising corpses, no doubt to the man's appall, still, whilst thoroughly distracted cataloging the causes of death floating by, Garrett was able to nik the man's key from right under his nose. As well as his coin purse.
Garrett typically wasn't one for keys, the City hadn't seen any advancements past burning coal, what little there was, and neither had the doors, or specifically, the locks. Yet the key Garrett now held was undoubtedly a new key, one that Garrett had never seen before, broad and mechanical, teeth on four corners of a square rather than just along the base.
If given the time and resources, Garrett was sure he could figure out a way to pick a lock designed for such a strange key, but Garrett had neither the time or the resources to toy around, so, key it was.
The General had been kind enough to affix a note claiming that 'all unauthorized persons beyond this point would be severely punished' to a suspiciously well barricaded door, and if that wasn't invitation enough, Garrett didn't know what was.
The room beyond wasn't much, if anything, given the stash of finer-than-average cutlery tucked away at the back, Garrett haphazard that it was the Thief-Taker General's personal break room, not that it offered him much in the way trinkets to lift or documents to swipe.
The room did however offer him a ticket to the crematorium… Or the crudely constructed crematorium… Garrett doubted most crematoriums used blast furnaces to burn their bodies, but given the sorry state the City was in, if beggars couldn't be choosy, neither could Barons.
There were fewer guards loitering around the crematorium, but far, far more morgue workers, and after a short ride along the corpse trail, Garrett found himself needing to drop back down to the ground once again.
"Whoa hey." A familiar voice called out from just out of sight, accompanied by a painfully familiar crack of cane that nearly had Garrett freezing in place.
"One at a time. No pushing." The Thief-Taker General jeered sarcastically to the corpses drifting by, Garrett couldn't see him, but the thief could imagine the General standing, leaning on his cane as he admired the macabre march above. Garrett slipped by below, unheard, unseen.
"Flames ain't going anywhere without you." The General commented with a grim sort of glee; "No matter if you're rich or ragged. Beggard or buttered up… You're all gonna burn." Truly, the man loved his job… A little too much perhaps…
Still, the General's… Infatuation… With the bodies was all well and dandy by Garrett, if it kept him occupied for the time being. Even better was the fact that the converted crematorium kept the old foundry floors, granting Garrett ample room beneath the very shoes of the people above him.
It also, unfortunately, allowed Garrett to hear each and every bit of conversation happening above and around him…
"What was that about?" One of the workers murmured as quietly as he could to a nearby co-worker as the General cankered away, cane, false-foot, real foot creating a 'clack, creek, thud' rhythm.
"I'm not even going to guess." The co-worker replied with a dour huff; "You don't stick your nose out, it doesn't get slit."
"Still…" The first man mused, the further away the General got, the more confidence leached into his words; "Didn't see many bodies with rings until then…" A pause followed, accompanied by the sound of scissors cutting through cloth and then skin before the first worker spoke again.
"Hey uh, you don't suppose we should be checking for um, cock-rings and stuff, do you?" He asked, something akin to shame clinging to his words, worsened when the co-worked made a half-choked guffaw.
"What the bells is a cock-ring?" The second man asked, bafflement evident in his tone as he stopped his cutting to turn to the first man.
"It's a ring…" The first man began, tripping over his own tongue as he made some vague hand-gesture; "For… You know. You're Gentleman's Finger?" He concluded sheepishly.
The second man stared at him for a solid pause; "Are you winding me up?" He asked.
"No, no!" The co-worker assured hastily; "Some people have stuff like that… Well, the rich anyhow. Didn't you know? Helps with getting it up, or something." Garrett watched through the grates as both men turned to a particular corpse across the room, sharing a grimace, before returning to their respective bodies.
"My brother, Daniel, knew a Blossom." The first man continued just as the sounds of toil resumed from the other table; "She said if you were in a pinch, you could use a pig's gut, tied in a knot."
If Garrett was hoping that the conversation would end, the co-worker was desperate for a conclusion.
"I'm here with my hands on a dead man's ass!" The co-worker snapped; "And you're telling me about your brother tying his dong in a knot?" The first man made some undignified sputter.
"The Pig gut! Not the…" His voice trailed off bitterly; "Don't be having a go at my brother. He's passed on." He bit out curtly, the co-worker merely huffed.
"Yeah, I'm not surprised."
Garrett moved along before the two could get into a row or an even worse topic of conversation. He still has a corpse to find and a ring to palm after all.
And Cornelius Greaves was proving to be a very difficult corpse to find…