Tirisana Bloodsear

Wetwork

I am sitting in my favorite bar with my boots up on the table enjoying a bottle of Silvermoon’s finest when this little twerp who can not be more than an hundred and does not look old enough to shave, let alone be in the Army with a pair of shiny new lieutenant’s tabs, marches up to my table and snaps off a parade ground salute.

“Mistress Bloodsear.” He says, not making it a question.

I wave a couple of fingers in the vicinity of my right temple by way of returning his salute. “You found her,” I say. “What’s up?”

He looks all kinds of scandalized, but I outrank him so all he can do is say, “General Bloodheart’s compliments, ma’am and he’d like to see you at your convenience.” Which is a polite way of telling me to get my ass in the General’s office five minutes ago.

I toss back the rest of my drink, and head on over to Headquarters, brushing off an offer of directions from the twerp on account of having been in and out of the place longer than he has been alive.

I smile at the doll who is the General’s secretary, knock on the door, and go on in. Kel gets a real salute because he actually deserves it. The General kind of waves at me and tells me to close the door.

“Nice of you to drop by.” He says as I sit down in one of his chairs.

Turns out Kel needs a favor, “Official, but very unofficial” is the way he puts it. This is not a surprise because even though I am on half pay and officially on the outs with Command they have been known to need someone deniable to take care of their dirty work.

It’s when the General turns on the anti-snoop wards and everything outside goes all dim and muffled that I get an idea of just how unofficial the whole thing is. To make a long story short, there’s a Major Dawnblood on the General Staff who has been passing information to someone and Command wants it taken care of.

Now I kind of raise an eyebrow at this since the Ministry of Order usually handles this kind of thing. I mean, unexplained disappearances are kind of why we have a secret police, right? Well it turns out that Command hasn’t told them yet since they’re hoping I can clean things up before the Ministry of Order starts poking its nose into things the General Staff would rather they didn’t and finds Liadrin’s nudie pics or something equally embarrassing.

Normally this kind of thing results in an accidental magic discharge or a fall from a high window but it looks like Dawnblood’s done a runner to Old City, probably hoping he can hide out until he can be exfiltrated. Not that any of this stuff is exactly legal, mind you, but when politics is involved, legal goes out the window.

Silvermoon isn’t the city it was before Arthas came through and gave it a Scourge enema. Sure, some of the main streets have been rebuilt but that’s pretty much just makeup on a corpse; with most everyone getting killed plus a war on most of it’s the way Arthas left it. That’s Old City; the better parts are slums for refugees and outcasts, the bad parts are full of dark alleys and the kind of people you don’t want to meet in them.

I get to work on the case because Kel’s promised me a pretty sweet payoff and because doing favors for Command never hurts. It takes the best part of a day of asking around, calling in some markers, and greasing the right palms before I am able to get someone to tell me that he’d been seen near Crystal Square. Needless to say, that’s one of the bad parts.

I know this part of town since I grew up a couple of neighborhoods over and every trip back is like a walk down Bad Memory Lane. A couple of hours of looking and I haven’t found anything but bones, rubble, and a couple of junkies who take off as soon as they spot me.

I’m figuring that finding Dawnblood is going to take a while when Morrie steps out of more or less intact building and gives me that big grin of hers,

“Fancy seeing you here. Looking for our missing major?”

I shrug and say I didn’t know we were missing any majors and Morrie gives me the kind of look that says she knows I am bullshitting her.

“He doesn’t show up for work, nobody’s seen him around, you get summoned to Bloodheart’s office and start asking questions. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s happened.”

I shrug, “Maybe we’re just worried about his health.”

Behind me there is the faint feeling of movement that I have been waiting for so I duck, spin, and plant my boot in something that goes “Ooof!”

“Nice try, Linnie.” I say, dancing back a couple of steps while Morrie’s sister picks her ass up off the ground. “You guys pulled that one on me a couple of years ago.”

“Fuck you.”

“Last time I asked you weren’t into girls.” I say and she makes a very rude hand gesture.

Now I know Morrie and Linnie haven’t found anything because Morrie hasn’t been rubbing my nose in it, which she would if they had, so I propose we team up because a split fee is better than nothing. Morrie and I are competitors but we’ve worked together before so she agrees after we haggle for a bit. Besides the faster we find Dawnblood, the faster we can get out of here because the dead buildings are starting to give me the creeps.

We spread out to cover more ground and about half an hour later Morrie gives a holler. I hoof it over there and she’s leaning against a wall with a frown on her face.

“We got a problem,” she says, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

The problem is three dead guys. Normally dead guys in Old City wouldn’t be a problem but I recognize one of them as Inspector Volos who is a Ministry of Order asshole which means the other two are probably a couple of his goons. This is a problem because the Ministry gets really pissy when one of their inspectors turns up dead and they start asking a lot of questions. The kind of questions that involve sharp instruments in painful places or a shadow priest ripping answers from your mind or both; the Ministry likes to be thorough.

We could pretend we didn’t see them but the Ministry will haul out the scryers and arcanists and none of us has the magical oomph to hide from that. We all make faces at each other and decide we will have to report this to our employers and with any luck they can deal with the Ministry.

Dawnblood is in the next room. And the room after that. Morrie finds his head, which is more or less recognizable, Linnie finds his signet ring on his hand, and I find a sealed envelope which ought to be the documents Kel wants. There’s a nice bit of gold tucked away with the documents which I am about to tell the sisters about when I hear the growling and we all get our backs into a corner.

Officially, there are no more Wretched. Officially, our new super-duper Sunwell has solved our mana problems. Officially, Old City has been completely cleansed.

I count a half-dozen officially non-existent Wretched before I’m too busy trying to stay alive. It’s a short, ugly fight. I stun one that’s trying to tackle Linnie and she cuts its throat before it can recover. She returns the favor when my sword gets stuck in a torso and she puts a knife through the eye of the one who’s trying to blindside me. And then it’s over and there are five dead Wretched on floor and a couple of blood trails leading off into the ruins. We’re kind of dinged up but nothing a little Naaru juice won’t take care of.

After that, we  hightail it back to civilization and agree to meet up later to split the take. Kel’s in his office and I get ushered right in to hand over the documents and give him the lowdown. The general’s real happy to get the documents back, but not so happy about Volos. Fortunately, the Wretched are a nice, neat explanation for that. Maybe a little too neat, I say and Kel agrees with me. He suggests that maybe I want to take a vacation somewhere for a few weeks and I agree that sounds like a great idea because I am not stupid.

Between my fee, Morrie’s fee, the bonus for the documents, and what Dawnblood had on him, I am in possession of enough gold to keep myself in fruity rum drinks for a couple of months so I drop off a month’s rent with my landlady and catch the next portal out of town.