The encounter at The Salty Mermaid had left a film of grime on his spirit, a necessary filth. Lutz moved through the gathering dusk not as a man, but as a current, flowing with the tide of workers heading home, then breaking away into the quieter capillaries of the city. His destination was the public library, but he would not be entering as "Henrik Moss" today. That identity was finished.
He positioned himself in the deep shadows of a printer's shop across the street from the library's grand, pillared entrance. The gas lamps were being lit, casting pools of warm, flickering light that made the encroaching darkness seem all the deeper. From his vantage point, he had a clear view through the large windows into the main reading room. And there, right on schedule, was Matthias Brenner.
The investigator was at his usual table, but the scene was different tonight. The usual tidy stacks of books had been replaced by a chaotic sprawl. A large map of Indaw Harbor was weighted down at the corners, covered in a scattering of pins. Ledgers were cracked open like dead birds, their pages splayed. Brenner himself looked older, his shoulders more stooped, his movements as he jotted notes were sharp, frustrated. The pressure from above was clearly being funneled directly onto him. He was the man trying to assemble a puzzle while someone kept shaking the table. Perfect.
'Seems like my endeavors have been keepin' you real busy pal, sorry about that, but its gonna get a whole lot worse from now on' Lutz joked.
Lutz didn't need to get closer. He had seen all he needed. He melted back into the alley behind the print shop, the sounds of the street fading into a muffled roar. Now, for the messenger.
He didn't have to wait long. A scuffling sound, the patter of bare feet on stone. A boy, maybe ten years old, with eyes that were too old for his face, darted into the alley, chasing a runaway potato that had likely fallen from a vendor's cart. He skidded to a halt when he saw Lutz's form detach itself from the shadows.
Lutz didn't move. He let the boy see him, a silhouette against the distant light of the street. He held up a hand, palm out, a universal gesture for stop. In his other hand, he held the sealed letter he had prepared previously along the document, and two gleaming copper pennies.
The boy froze, his eyes wide, calculating the risk. Two pennies was a meal. It was wealth.
"Look across the street," Lutz said, his voice low, filtered through the cloth of his scarf and distorted by the alley's acoustics. It was a voice without identity, a whisper from the stones themselves. "The library. See the man inside at the table by the large window? The one with the spectacles and the grey-trimmed beard?"
The boy, intrigued now, risked a glance. He nodded, a quick, jerky motion.
"This is for him." Lutz extended the letter. The paper was cheap, coarse. The seal was just a smudge of generic wax, no distinctive mark. "You walk in. You go right to him. You put this in his hand. You say, 'A man with a scar paid me to deliver this.'" Lutz tapped his own cheek, just below the eye, where no scar existed. "Then you do not wait. You do not answer questions. You turn, and you run. You run until you are somewhere else. You understand?"
The boy's eyes flickered from the letter to the pennies, then to Lutz's obscured face. He was street-smart. He knew this was dangerous. But two pennies were two pennies.
"What kind of scar?" the boy asked, his voice a rasp.
"Bad," Lutz said, the word flat and final. "Now, do you want the job or not?"
The boy nodded again, more decisively this time. He snatched the letter and the coins with a quick, bird-like motion, stuffing the pennies into a hidden pocket and clutching the letter as if it were a live coal.
"Go," Lutz commanded.
The boy didn't need telling twice. He was a ghost, flitting across the street, slipping between two carriages and vanishing through the library's heavy doors.
'I've really come full circle huh? I even support child labor now, well, it is what it is, its not like i can change their situation.' Lutz though self-deprecatingly.
Lutz didn't wait to watch the delivery. The moment the boy was inside, he was moving, flowing deeper into the alley network, putting distance between himself and the act. He had chosen the library because it was a public, semi-sacred space. Brenner would be off-balance there, unable to give chase or conduct an immediate, loud interrogation. The boy would be long gone, his description useless: a skinny kid in a city of thousands of skinny kids.
Inside the library, the scene unfolded exactly as Lutz had pictured it. Brenner, frowning at a customs manifest, didn't notice the boy until a small, grimy hand was thrusting a letter at him.
The boy recited the line, word-perfect, his voice barely a whisper. "A man with a scar paid me to deliver this."
Then, true to his instructions, he spun on his heel and bolted, his bare feet slapping softly on the polished floor before he disappeared back out into the night.
Brenner was left holding the cheap, anonymous letter. He looked around, but the boy was gone. He looked down at the letter, his investigator's mind already racing. A man with a scar. It was a classic misdirection, a detail too generic to be useful yet specific enough to feel authentic. He broke the wax seal.
There was no greeting, no signature. Just a single sentence, scrawled in the same blocky, uneducated hand Lutz had practiced for hours:
"The Baron's new toy glows in the dark. He keeps it in his walls."
Brenner's breath caught in his throat. His eyes darted from the note to the map on his table, to the pin he had placed on the Viper's warehouse. Glows in the dark.
It was the perfect stitch, tying a coarse, dockyard rumor to a precise, tangible location. It wasn't proof, but it was a direction. A target.
Lutz, now three blocks away and changing back into his own clothes in another filthy alley, knew the letter would do its work. He had handed Brenner a key and told him exactly which door to try. The third arrow had found its mark, and this one carried not just a lie, but a map. The hunt was now focused, specific, and deadly. The walls, both literal and figurative, were beginning to close in.
Lutz then made his way towards his center of resource acquisition.
The Gallowsmarket at noon was a creature of offers and suggestions. It didn't have stalls so much as territories, claimed by vendors who stood before blankets spread with goods of dubious origin. There were cheerful shouts all around. The air was a thick soup of smells: The tang of old metal, the earthy odor of herbs, and beneath it all, the ever-present stink of the nearby docks.
Lutz moved through this bazaar with a thief's grace, his posture slightly hunched, his eyes downcast, yet missing nothing. He was just another shade looking to trade. His first stop was a tanner who specialized in "unregistered leathers." The man's fingers were stained dark, and he eyed Lutz with the flat gaze of someone who knew the difference between a customer and a problem.
"Harness leather," Lutz said, his voice low. "I need the thickest you have. Oil-tanned. Stiff."
The tanner grunted, pulling out a roll of leather that was like iron cloth. "Harness leather. This'll stop a glancing blade. What're you making?"
"A tool belt," Lutz replied, his tone flat, closing the subject. He paid without haggling, the 2 Hammers disappearing into the tanner's pouch. Next came a booth selling "reclaimed hardware." He selected brass buckles, D-rings, and a spool of waxed thread as strong as wire. Each purchase was a piece of his new skeleton, the architecture of his impending freedom.
His next acquisition was more peculiar. He bought a large roll of coarse brown paper and a ball of cheap twine from a old woman selling packaging. She didn't even look up from her knitting.
Then came the stranger requests.
He found a smithy operating at the market's edge, a makeshift setup with a portable forge whose heat warped the air. The smith, a burly man with soot ground into the lines of his face, was hammering a piece of red-hot iron into a hook. The rhythmic clang was a heartbeat in the din.
Lutz waited for a pause. "I need ashes," he said.
The smith lowered his hammer, squinting. "What?"
"Ashes. From your forge. I'll pay." Lutz held up a silver Shield.
The smith blinked, his soot-covered face a mask of pure bewilderment. He'd been asked for many things—weapons, repairs, favors—but never for his rubbish. He shrugged, a massive rolling of shoulders. "Aye, alright. Help yourself. The pit's round back." He took the coin, shaking his head as if he'd just humored a madman.
Lutz went to the ash pit, a mound of fine, grey powder still holding the ghost of heat. He opened the sack he'd brought and began shoveling the ashes in with a small trowel. They were light, dusting the air and coating his hands and forearms in a pale grey film. To anyone else, it was refuse. To Lutz, it was potential. Ashes could blind, choke, obscure footprints, and ruin a tracking dog's nose. They were the raw material of disappearance.
His final stop was the butcher. The Gallowsmarket butcher didn't deal in prime cuts; his domain was offal and mystery meat, the parts no one asked questions about. The stall was a festival of flies and the metallic scent of blood. Great hooks hung from the awning, holding unidentifiable carcasses.
"I need blood, trying a new fancy soup recipe" Lutz said, placing 5 silver shields on the counter.
The butcher, a man with a blood-spattered apron and dead eyes, looked from the coin to Lutz's ash-covered clothes. He didn't ask why. In the Gallowsmarket, "why" was the quickest way to a knife in the gut. He simply took the shiny silver coins, bit it with a grunt of satisfaction, and nodded towards a large, foul-looking barrel.
"Help yourself."
Lutz produced a stout glass vial, sealed with a cork. He dipped it into the barrel, filling it with the dark, congealing blood. The smell was overpowering, a rich, ferrous stench that promised violence. He corked it tightly, the vial now a small, heavy weight of false evidence.
As he moved to leave the market, his bag now heavy with leather, ashes, packaging paper and blood, he felt the familiar, acquisitive pull. His eyes lingered on a vendor selling lockpicks of exquisite fineness, on another with vials of what promised to be potent toxins. The Marauder in him wanted to take it all, to add every tool to his arsenal.
But he quashed the impulse. He had what he needed for this phase. Greed now was a liability. Each additional, unplanned purchase was time wasted and a potential thread that could lead back to him. Discipline was the sharper tool.
He melted back into the warren of alleys, the Gallowsmarket swallowing his departure as completely as it had welcomed his arrival. He was a ghost carrying the components of his own resurrection: leather for structure, ashes for obscurity, and blood for deception. Back in his room, he would begin the work of stitching it all together, building not just a harness, but the means to become someone else entirely. The plan was no longer just in his head; it was in his hands, gritty, tangible, and waiting to be shaped.