Clink. Clank. Clank.
Chains rattled in the darkness of a room where the air smelled of damp stone, sweat, sickness, soot, and rancid stench.
Rows of cages lined the walls. And in these cages weren't creatures. No.
In these cages were people. Men and women, boys and girls, were huddled inside, their skin pale, and their eyes dull.
Some coughed weakly, others didn't move at all, and a few were another day away from beating their last heartbeat. The
Above each cage was a number carved into iron plates.
Rather than human, it felt more akin to the image of livestock. Slavery had been made illegal over a century ago, so why were there so many humans locked up when there was no profit to be made?
The sound of a cane clicking got louder and louder as it traveled down across a set of stairs.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The "livestock" all jolted at the sound of the cane. They huddled up tighter to one another, their bodies shivering. To them, the tapping sound didn't come from a cane — it was coming from the very same scythe a grim reaper would carry.
Count Vorath Droselmire reached the bottom step and began walking slowly between the cages. He carried himself like he was inspecting cattle, and the people in the cages responded by acting as if they were cattle being selected for slaughter.
The Count's face sagged with age, yet his clothes were clean, expensive, and bright against the filth around him.
A few of the caged humans, the ones with a little more strength left in them compared to the rest, mustered to courage to look at the Count, and they couldn't help but notice that there was a second person in the room following closely behind him.
One of the caged humans wanted to scream at the second person for help, to save them, but if they were here, then it was likely that they were cut of the same cloth as the Count.
Screaming for help would just be screaming to be killed sooner rather than later.
The second person was none other than Dr. Debronx, who was clutching his case of tools.
"You see now, Doctor," Vorath said. "Like I told you. I have a strong selection of stock. They're fed, bred, and watched over carefully. A few of them… the weaker ones, they do die prematurely, but that's usually how raising livestock goes. They last years like this."
Dr. Debronx's jaw tightened.
When he kidnapped people, he did it for the sake of his daughter. It was a justification and a good cause.
But as far as he could see, there was no justifying the Count's decision to cage all these people. There were at least fifty cages, each with roughly twenty or so people inside.
A thousand caged humans.
Why? Why was the Count doing this?
"These people—"
"Livestock," Vorath corrected, tapping the bars of one cage with his cane, and a little girl flinched at the sound, wetting the floor with her urine.
"These livestock," Dr. Debronx didn't hesitate to correct himself, "why have you caged them up? What purpose do they serve you?"
With a crooked smile that caused the same girl who flinched to faint, Vorath responded, "They exist to serve me."
Turning around, he pressed the bottom of his cane lightly against Debronx's chest. He lifted the cane up along with Debronx's chin, forcing him to meet his eyes.
"And now you also exist to serve me just as they do. I agreed to provide you with whatever machinery and resources you need to help your daughter breathe another day, including the bodies of other children her age, in exchange for one thing."
Dr. Debronx nodded.
"Make me younger. Make me whole again. I have so much left to do in this world. So many more livestock to raise. Just because I don't serve a god, that means I have to die of old age, unlike those monsters who live to be hundreds of years old? Hmph. No. I will outlive them," Vorath pressed his cane on Debronx's heart, "with your help."
Dr. Debronx's lips pressed thin, but he didn't argue.
His daughter's life was more valuable than any morals he may or may not have.
Vorath's crooked smile grew as he uttered, "Good. You may begin to repair your daughter tonight. Now you can't say I'm a bad person. Look how generous I'm being. Harharhar. Once you're complete with that… I shall be reborn anew."
* * *
Rain slicked the streets.
Maya pulled her hood low and was spending the day drifting through the city, invisible to those around her. In a city with a population in the hundreds of thousands, searching for clues of what you wanted was like finding a needle in a haystack.
It had been almost a week since she began searching for clues.
Hints were hard to come by, and half-truths made up most of what she's overhead, and those half-truths were irrelevant to what she was seeking.
But as luck would have it, she finally happened to stumble upon something that might be remotely useful.
At the eastern market, she had been lingering near the grain stalls for a little over a quarter of an hour. She was about to move on to another location when she overheard two merchants ranting.
"Did we do something wrong? Why did the client reduce their weekly commission for wheat?" one of them muttered in frustration.
"I'm not sure. I've taste-tested our latest batch," the other said, brushing flour from their hands. "It's perfectly fine. If anything, it's better than before. I reckon our client is a little low on funds. We used to sell them enough wheat to feed five hundred people, but now… four hundred?"
"Three hundred is more like it. Tsk. Whatever. They're still our biggest client. If only we knew who they were. We could go inquire with them about whether or not it was indeed our mistake. But they communicate to us through a third party."
Maya wasn't exactly sure just how relevant this information was, but she made sure to write it down in her notebook.
Even if she didn't know what the wheat decrease had to do with the culprit of Emily's arm being lost, anything strange that was occurring could be important.
By midday, she had moved toward the docks.
The river smelled of brine and oil, of goods from faraway lands, and goods produced in St. Vernon that were being exported elsewhere.
Dockhands loaded crates either silently or extremely loudly, chatting with their fellow workers; all of their movements were precise as if they were all well-oiled gears in one machine.
Maya was no longer invisible, but she did keep her hood up, her head low.
With her thumb and index finger, she flicked a coin into the air towards one of them, who caught it without even looking.
It was the payment to ask them a small question.
"Any strange shipment this past week? Anything out of the ordinary?" she asked.
Glancing at her, he was wary, but as he was just a regular worker, not having sworn loyalty to any organization, he eventually nodded.
"What?"
"I'm not sure. Just a bunch of heavy crates that were labeled 'FRAGILE'. Don't know who ordered them. We were just tasked with taking them up to the north side of the city, where another group would transport them elsewhere."
'The north? That's the side of the city where the nobles reside,' Maya thought to herself.
"Who was the group picking it up?"
The worker glared at her in silence.
Another coin was tossed his way.
"I'm not sure."
Maya frowned underneath her hood.
"At the very least, I can tell you that the group must've belonged to a noble family."
"How?"
This was likely the truth since the crates were being moved up north, but she just wanted to know why this worker was so sure of this idea.
"The sword at their hips. I have a sword of my own, and I can tell that theirs is so expensive that it would take my entire yearly salary to buy one. Who else but a noble can afford that? Maybe merchants, but those money-hungry people wouldn't waste money on a sword like that when it barely makes a difference."
Maya disagreed, 'Your weapon makes a lot of difference, but I guess to regular people, they wouldn't know that.'
"Did you recognize any of them?"
"No. All of them were wearing a white mask over their face." The man shrugged as he recalled seeing the group that took the crates with them, "Nobles are weird people with secrets they wouldn't dare let the public hear about."
Someone called out to the worker, and he turned his head.
"Okay! I'm coming!" he screamed. Turning his head around, he said, "Alright. I wish I could help—"
Maya was already gone. Any traces of her had completely vanished, and if it wasn't for the two coins in his hand, the worker might've been convinced that she was a ghost.
Leaving the docks with more questions than answers, Maya continued moving along the city, lurking in the shadows, listening.
Her notebook was being filled up, one page at a time.
Later, in a tavern on a narrow street, she sat in a corner, keeping her ears open.
A drunk man leaned too close to his neighbor, burping and muttering about a cousin who had vanished after taking a night job a couple of months ago.
"Good pay, they said," he slurred. "Never came back. Nope! He never came back. Just poof. Vanished. What job? What pay? I don't even know. He got the job, went to work, first day… gone. Gone gone gone."
"Get off me," his neighbor said, pushing his face away. "Did your cousin tell you where this job was?"
"Burp! Uh… he said something about in the north-west district? North-east? Noth-north? North-south? North-something. Burp!"
Maya's eyebrow raised. Another entry into her notebook.
Many patterns were forming. Many things were connecting, but with how much information she was gathering, she wasn't sure which connected to which. What lead was she even following anymore?
Moving through the city as the sun fell, she slipped into alleys where the walls were still damp from the early morning rain. The shadows in these alleys were long.
A woman carrying water paused to rest, her apron muddy.
Offering to help carry the water, once she poured it into the basin, Maya then asked the woman if she had heard or seen anything strange this week.
The woman thought about it for a second before whispering, "My niece claims to have heard a scream coming beyond an iron gate two days ago. She works as a taxi driver and was traveling on Rockshire Street, where she claimed she heard it."
'Rockshire Street? That travels along the east to west on the upper northern side of the city.'
Maya noted this information in her journal.
The woman who was hunched over straightened her back to find that the lady who had helped her was gone. And on the floor was a coin which she didn't hesitate to pick up.
This was one of Maya's informants that she's been coming to for a while now.
Ducking into another alley as rain began again, heavier now than the morning rain, she continued to watch from the shadows, jotting down her notes, listening in on snippets of conversations.
Once most of the people were off the streets and the silence of the night began to wash over St. Vernon, Maya began to move along the wet streets, past vendors closing up for the night, past children looking out of their windows watching the rain, past the occasional noble carriage or car that rolled through the puddled roads.
By the time she returned to the Agnus estate, she didn't know if she had gathered anything useful.
But she had information.
She just didn't know if she could piece it together.
Maybe Bell can. Or rather, she was hoping that the Facold family behind him could.
The next morning.
She lightly dropped the notebook on the table. Bell, who was sitting with his legs crossed, reached for it and started reading.
One page.
Then another.
Then another.
Then another.
"Are you… are you not going to hand the notebook over to the Facold family?"
With his eyes still attached to the page before him, he asked, "Why?"
'Why?'
It was only a single word that he uttered but it stunned her.
"...Nevermind," she grumbled as she took a step back and continued to observe him reading the notes that she had been taking the past week.