Chapter 17: Murk and Lena, A Match Made in ... the Sewers...

There are days when I wonder if Graywatch is real, or just some bad dream clinging to the edge of my boots. A city this crooked shouldn't hold together, not with the weight of all the secrets pressing in from the alleys, cellars, and backroom parlors. But here it is. Always here. Always damp. Always watching. I keep thinking I’ll get the hang of this, like one day the clues will arrange themselves polite and neat in a little line, and I’ll just walk them home like lost puppies. But the truth is, I’m still swinging blind. Still using fists where finesse is needed. Still letting my temper do the talking while the clever ones are already halfway out the door.

I’m no sneak thief. Too tall. Too scarred. Too damn loud when I walk. And I’ve got a face that folks remember, for better or worse. Usually worse. Which meant I needed help if I was going to slip into the Velvet Clover without drawing every eye in the room. So I went to find someone who made a life out of being unnoticed.

The alley didn’t have a name. Most of them don’t. It curled off Gutter’s Row like a forgotten thought, narrow enough to make even the shadows squeeze through sideways. He was there, same as always, leaning against a brick wall with one leg stretched and the other bent like some half-carved gargoyle. His blanket was damp, his beard was braided with copper wire, and his eyes tracked me before I even got within reach.

“Morning, Scree,” I said, crouching down so we were closer to eye level. My coat bunched at the knees, still wet from the mist.

“You're late,” he grumbled. “Sun’s been up for hours. Thought maybe you finally got smart and skipped town.”

I handed him a cheese waffle wrapped in yesterday’s broadsheet and two coppers warm from my pocket. “Got hungry. Figured you might be too.”

He sniffed the waffle, nodded like a priest before a sacrament, and took a bite with all the ceremony of a starving man at a banquet. When the crumbs stopped falling, he spoke again.

“Next time, bring a bottle. Cheese is good. Whiskey’s better.”

I smirked and leaned my elbow on my knee. “You know how expensive good whiskey is?”

“Cheaper than failed dreams,” he said, licking grease off his fingers.

I let that hang in the air for a moment. He wasn’t wrong.

“I need a way into a place,” I said, voice low. “Hotel, edge of the Merchant’s Quarter. Fancy enough to hide its rot under polished floors and velvet drapes.”

Scree looked at me sideways, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You ain’t planning to rent a room, then?”

“Not unless they start accepting buttons and old grudges as currency.”

He chuckled and tapped the metal tin he used as an ashtray. “Always a back door, Blackthorn. Especially in Graywatch. Place is riddled with more holes than a bard’s virtue.”

I fished out a few more coppers and placed them on the step beside him. He swept them up without counting. That meant he’d already decided to tell me.

“Back door’s called the sewer,” he said. “Every building worth its chamber pots is piped into the dwarven grid. The old ones, from when the city was still more stone than skin. You want quiet entry, that’s where you go. Course, it’s not just piss and rats down there.”

“I figured,” I said. “Anything else I should know?”

He leaned in, his breath ripe with waffle and wisdom. “Gangs, sure. Magic, more than you want. Things that don’t like light. Things that don’t bleed right. And maybe worse. But you didn’t come here looking for easy.”

“No,” I said, rising to my feet and brushing off my coat. “I didn’t.”

Scree tucked the waffle back into his shirt and nodded toward the curve of the alley behind me. “Drain gate behind the old glassworks. Used to be sealed. Word is it ain’t anymore.”

“Thanks.”

“Bring that bottle next time,” he called after me. “None of that sweet elven garbage either. Real stuff. Puts hair on your bad luck.”

I didn’t look back, but I raised my hand in agreement. Scree never lied to me. Which in Graywatch, practically made him a saint.

****

The storm drain was tucked behind a stack of busted crates and rust-wrinkled barrels that stank of fish oil and time. It didn’t look like much, just another forgotten corner of a city that specialized in forgetting. But Scree had been right, it was here. Hidden in plain sight like most things in Graywatch worth finding. I crouched, shoulder brushing a wall slick with moss and soot, and ran a gloved hand over the old iron grate. The metal was black with age, the edges rusted to the point where they bit if you weren’t careful.

It groaned as I pried it loose, the sound echoing off the stone like a warning whispered down a long hallway. I braced my boots on the rim, breathed through my mouth, and dropped into the dark below.

The stink hit first, raw and familiar. Wet rot, old piss, sour grease, and the chemical tang of alchemical runoff. It reminded me of the field latrines during an early campaign in the Eastern Reaches, when the rain never stopped and everything fermented in mud and misery. Back then, we’d piss in the trench and joke that the smell could kill a wyvern. This wasn’t much different. Only now there were no tents, no mess hall, and no commanding officer to curse under my breath.

Just me. And the sewer.

The walls around me were dwarven. You could see it in the craft, arches so clean they looked like they’d been poured from stone, not carved. Rune-marked junctions glowed faintly with warding glyphs, cracked but still active in spots. The water like fluid flowed through narrow channels, designed with such precision that even in a storm, the tunnels wouldn’t flood. The dwarves didn’t build for beauty. They built for permanence. And in Graywatch, that meant carving order into the filth and chaos the rest of us floated in.

Most folks forget that Graywatch isn’t just another imperial city. It’s the only one like it, born of treaty, greed, and necessity. A dwarven outpost turned open gate. The trade flows here like blood, thick with coin and corruption. And the dwarves? They stay below, mostly. Watching. Counting. Selling their masterwork blades and lockboxes while the surface folk haggle over who gets to skim off the top.

You don’t find craftsmanship like this in the capital. You don’t find it anywhere else on the continent. And yet here I was, ankle-deep in runoff and moral compromise, picking my way down a maintenance path carved to last a thousand years. That’s Graywatch for you. Golden rooftops and silver tongues above, rotting truth and rusted bones below. I followed the walkway, the moonlight from the entrance not that far away cast long shadows across old stone and newer graffiti. A serpent coiled into a rune. A crown crossed out in black. Gang signs. Warnings. Claims. The underworld marking its territory like dogs on a lamppost.

My boots splashed through puddles of gods-know-what, and I caught myself wincing at the thought of what might’ve crawled through here last. Sewers weren’t just for water. They were for the lost. The exiled. The kind of creatures that slipped between the cracks of civilization and made their homes in places no one else dared look. I thought about Penny. She hadn’t gone in to work again today, hadn’t even pretended. When I left the Anchor, she was nursing cold tea and red eyes, pretending she wasn’t crying. I hated seeing her like that. Hells, I hated feeling this way.

I don’t know what it is about the broken ones. Maybe it’s because I’ve been there. Maybe it’s because I still am. People like Penny don’t get fairy tale endings. They get used up and swept aside. But she still showed up for her sister. Still tried to hold herself together while the world shrugged and moved on. Maybe it was the whiskey still burning low in my gut. Maybe it was the memory of old friends whose names I can’t say out loud. Maybe I just needed to matter to someone again.

But I wasn’t going to leave Fessy’s fate to rumor and rot. She was one of the little ones. One of the people who live in the cracks of other people’s stories. The ones who never get mentioned by name when the bards sing of victory. But someone had to care. Someone had to knock on the dark doors and demand an answer. And today, that someone was me. Even if the stink soaked into my skin. Even if it led me into places I couldn’t crawl back from. I’d punched my way through worse. I just hoped I still had enough fight left to punch again.

****

After some time of moving through the darkness I knew I had a problem. The darkness wasn’t a problem. Not for me. One of the perks of having elf blood in your veins, even if it’s watered down and tainted with too much grit and not enough grace, is being able to see in the dark. I could make out the shapes, the shimmer of wet stone, the glint of rat eyes before they scattered. But that didn’t mean I liked what I saw.

The sewers had a voice of their own, and it wasn’t friendly. Every drip echoed like a whispered dare, every hiss and scrape set my instincts twitching. Narrow walkways I followed now hugged the sides of a sluggish river of filth that had never seen the sun. Whatever ran down the middle wasn’t water, not anymore, and the smell confirmed it. It was a scent that clung to your soul, not just your coat.

I moved slow, careful, but I could hear the way my boots clacked on the stone. Too heavy. Too loud. Like a soldier marching through a temple. Subtlety wasn’t my strong suit, but down here? It was impossible. The walls threw back every step, every breath, like they were mocking me. I muttered a few curses under my breath, dark little prayers to no god in particular, just to break up the sound of my own footsteps.

The tunnel twisted again, then again, until I lost track of where I was in relation to anything above ground. I didn’t have a map. Didn’t know if anyone did. The dwarves who built this place kept their secrets, and if there was a layout somewhere, it was locked behind guild doors or buried under stone.

Still, there were signs I wasn’t alone. Someone had been here recently. Old bedrolls. Broken charms made from chicken bones and tarnished copper. A patch of graffiti scratched in thieves’ cant that told me this part of the tunnel belonged to someone. No one was around now, but the air had that stale tension like someone had just left the room and taken the warmth with them.

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I paused, tried to shift my weight like a shadow instead of a soldier. Too late. My foot sent a loose rock clattering down the side into the muck. I winced and kept moving, feeling more like a blundering oaf than anyone with street-smarts.

Then I heard it. A screech, sharp and panicked, echoed from around the bend. Not human. High-pitched, desperate. I picked up the pace, fists ready, coat flaring behind me like some angry wraith.

The tunnel opened into a broken cistern chamber, and in the middle of it, something squirmed and hissed. A creature that looked like a cross between a leech and a centipede had wrapped itself around a scrawny little figure and was trying to pull him into a crack in the wall. The thing had too many legs, too many teeth, and it smelled like rotted egg mixed with burning hair.

I didn’t think. I moved.

One stride, two, and I was on it. My first punch landed on the thing’s glistening flank with a wet crunch. It shrieked, reared back, and I followed up with a kick that would’ve made my old drill sergeant proud. The beast didn’t have time to retaliate. I drove my elbow into its soft spot, then slammed its head into the stone until the only movement was the twitch of legs that didn’t know they were dead yet.

I spat beside it and turned to the figure it had been dragging. He was small, even for a kobold. Big yellow eyes blinked up at me from behind a tattered scarf. His scales were a dull russet, tail trembling behind him, and he clutched his little arms around himself like he could disappear that way.

"You all right?" I asked, dusting sludge from my hands. "Or at least alive?"

"Sss-still breathin’, misss," he squeaked, voice full of sibilant panic. "Lester thanksss you kindly. Thought that was the end, it did, oh yesss. Bad juju down here lately, bad jujus and badder monstersss."

"Tell me something I don’t know."

He nodded, eyes darting around like he expected more horrors to fall from the ceiling.

"I owe you a lifesss-debt," he said, reaching into a satchel that smelled worse than the sewer. "Lester has gift. Best I can offer."

He held out a rat. A dead one. Big, bloated, half-decomposed and still dripping from where it had been chewed on by something hungrier than him. I blinked. Then shook my head.

"Keep it," I said. "Consider the debt paid."

His expression fell for a second. Disappointed, maybe. Then he perked back up when I crouched beside him.

"I’m looking for a way under the Velvet Clover. Fancy inn near the merchant’s edge. You know it?"

"Knowsss it. Heard of it. Nasty magesss there, glitter on the outssside, rot in the rootsss." He glanced around again. "Drain under it’s near, yesss. Closer than you think. Take the next three bends left, then down the mossy stairsss. Listen for the dripping that sizzlesss. Magic runoff. Means you’re near."

I gave him a nod. "Appreciate it, Lester."

I turned to go, thinking maybe I should ask him to show me. A guide might be smarter than wandering blind. But when I looked back, he was gone. No splash. No sound. Just vanished.

"Figures," I muttered, tightening the grip on my coat and squaring my shoulders. The Clover was close now. I could smell the perfume of illusion just past the stink. And I had a feeling the real trouble hadn’t even started.

I kept moving, letting my thoughts wander as my boots sloshed through filth and old city water. The stink didn't bother me so much anymore. Not because I was used to it, no one gets used to the tang of rot, piss, and alchemical discharge, but because my mind was somewhere else. I kept thinking about the people who lived down here. Not just passing through, like me, but really lived in it. Crawled through it. Made it home.

I’d spent enough time on the streets topside to know the truth that most folks like to ignore. Penny and Fessy, Kathy slinging tankards at the Anchor or selling their bodies for far too little, the beggars who muttered secrets and smiled at copper coins, they weren’t that far from this. Maybe two bad nights. Maybe one. That sat heavy in the pit of my stomach, a weight that no amount of whiskey could wash down. You see too much, you stop pretending there’s a big difference between the poor and the desperate. Just a question of depth. And I was walking through it.

Eventually the tunnel shifted. The grime didn’t vanish, but it thinned, and the brickwork stopped sagging under time’s weight. Someone had reinforced this section. The smell changed too, less rot, more dust and stone and something faintly charged. I paused under a crossbeam and glanced up, following the arch of clean, precise masonry. Must’ve been one of the original veins cut beneath the city, a true masterwork.

I exhaled slow and low, a breath that carried no warmth. This was directly under the Velvet Clover. I could feel it, even before I looked around and whispered a quiet thanks to Lester, that nervous little kobold with his sibilant talk and vanishing act. Say what you want about sewer rats with a conscience, he got me here.

Something shifted in the back of my mind. Not a sound, not a sight, more like a whisper curling behind my thoughts. It wasn’t magic, not in the flashy sense. I couldn’t cast a spell to save my life. But I had something else. Something quieter. My mother used to say it was a gift the elves passed down to the ones they didn’t quite claim. A way of sensing what should be hidden. A knack for doors that shouldn’t open and trails that shouldn’t be found. It had saved my neck a hundred times while leading the Ghostwolves. Still did, even now that the wolves were gone and all I had left was the echo of their howls.

I grunted as I ducked under a low arch, half-walking sideways like a troll in a goblin's pantry. Nearly seven feet of hill-giant blood crammed into dwarf-sized corridors. I hated tunnels. Always had. Yet somehow, every third mission of my military life ended in one. And now here I was, retired, free as a vulture in an empty sky, and crawling through more damn stone.

No commanding officer. No chain of command. No medals. No maps. So why was I still down here? The truth clawed at me like the damp. I didn’t know. All I knew was I couldn't let Fessy vanish into the cracks like so many others. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was rage. Maybe it was the part of me that couldn’t stop being a soldier, even when there was no war to fight. Whatever it was, it had teeth.

I stopped in front of an old maintenance valve. It was tucked into the wall, half-hidden behind layers of mildew and grime. My nose twitched. Ozone. The sharp tang of lingering abjuration. There was a grate there, subtle, nearly invisible if you weren’t looking for it. A thin line ran around the edge, faintly pulsing with the remnants of a magical ward.

I leaned closer, careful not to breathe too deep. The ward smelled like charged air before a lightning strike. Whoever put this here didn’t want company. If this had been my unit, I’d have had a rune-slinger two steps behind me, already scribbling counterglyphs and muttering spells to bypass the enchantment. But this wasn’t a military op. Just me, a stubborn jaw, and a right hook that never learned how to quit.

“Old school it is,” I muttered.

I braced one hand against the wall, balled the other into a fist, and drove it into the glyph with a satisfying crack. The ward flared white, snapped like breaking ice, and discharged with a pop that rattled my teeth. My knuckles went numb, but I was still standing. The spell fizzled out, flickering around me like an angry ghost that didn’t get the memo. Another perk of being my mother’s daughter, tough skin and the ability to soak a little arcane backlash without going belly-up.

The magic gone, I found the hidden latch and wedged my fingers beneath it. With a grunt and a curse, I pulled. Stone groaned. Metal shrieked. Then it gave, and the gate swung inward. I stepped through.

The moment I stepped into the hidden passage, I knew something was off. This wasn’t dwarven stonework anymore. No precise chisel marks or rune-set corners. The geometry was wrong. The stones felt newer, more rushed, set with desperation or secrecy. And I could still smell the magic; thin, electric, clinging to the air like the smoke from a spellfire too long extinguished.

I let my fingers brush the wall as I moved forward, one hand resting near the knife at my belt, the other steadying me against cold, sweat-slick stone. It was darker than a crypt, but I didn’t need light. I could see just fine. Not fancy magic or long-lived wisdom. Just clear eyes in the dark, when most folks would already be tripping over their own terror.

Then I heard it. A voice. Not chanting. Not whispering. Humming. Almost singing. At first it made no sense. A soft baritone tune floated through the gloom, carried on the stale air like smoke through broken shutters. I crept forward as quiet as I could. Even tried to soften my steps, which was a joke considering I had all the subtlety of a charging aurochs. Still, I did my best. The melody was familiar, too familiar. Took me a moment to place it.

“There once was a maid from the south of the Vale,

who charged all the lads by the inch, not the tale…”

I rolled my eyes. I knew the song. Everyone did. It made the rounds in taverns after enough mead had drowned a man's dignity. I’d heard soldiers croon it on long marches, usually when the weather turned sour or the pay was light. I’d never sung it myself. Didn't have the voice, or the lack of shame. The voice came from a side chamber up ahead, and that was where the magic grew thicker, the scent sharper. I drew in a breath, rounded the corner, and stopped.

The room was dim, lit only by the dull blue shimmer of a spell cage. The bars weren’t metal, they were runes, old ones, etched into the stone and humming low, a tune all their own. Inside the cage sat a creature I never expected to see outside of tavern tales and questionable mercenary contracts.

Three feet tall, if that. Mossy green skin, patchy fur sprouting in wiry clumps, and ears like torn parchment tucked beneath a head of wild blackish curls. He wore mismatched boots, the left one tied together with twine and a desperate prayer, and between his tusked teeth sat a well-chewed, still-smoldering pipe. He was hunched over, sharpening a spoon against the sole of his boot, humming as though imprisonment was just another Tuesday.

A pygmy troll.

I’d read about them. Heard stories. Some folks say crossing one brings luck. Others say it brings plague and a missing wallet. I always figured the truth was somewhere in between. My mother taught me early that blood didn’t make a person good or bad. Choices did. And besides, I wasn’t one to judge someone just because they were short and hairy and locked in a glowing cage under a brothel.

He noticed me and the humming stopped. He didn’t flinch or panic. Just leaned back and puffed on that pipe like a gentleman watching a brawl from a balcony.

“Well now,” he said, voice gravel-smooth and smug. “Look at you. Shinyboots with a glare like sour beer. Come to gawk or gonna throw a shoe at me, Tallface?”

“Neither,” I said. “Just wondering what kind of idiot gets himself stuck in a box like that.”

He grinned, showing teeth that probably hadn’t seen a brush in this decade. “The kind that’s too good at his job. Which is how you end up in places like this. And you? What’s your excuse?”

“I break things. Occasionally people. Today, cages.”

His eyebrows rose. “Generous sort, are you?”

“No. But I don't like cages.”

That caught his attention. The pipe sagged a little. He squinted at me, then asked, “You got a key?”

“Nope.”

“Lockpick?”

I shook my head. “Never needed one.”

He sighed dramatically. “Oh splendid. A rescuer without the proper tools. We’re gonna die in here, I suppose. Unless you’ve got a miracle stashed in that big coat of yours.”

I growled low and stepped closer, wrapping my fingers around one of the glowing bars. The magic sizzled like wet firewood. My palm prickled. I gritted my teeth.

“No miracle,” I said. “Just bad manners.” Then I drove my fist through the rune-scribed bar.

The whole cage screamed, light bursting like shattered stars as the enchantment buckled and died. The chamber shook, dust raining from the ceiling as stone hissed with dying energy. The troll was flung back into the far corner with a yelp and a crash.

“Sweet stormin’ saints, woman!” he yelled. “You tryin’ to kill me or impress me?”

I waited as he stood up, shaking soot from his shoulders and muttering curses in three languages. He waddled over to a box in the corner, opened it, and pulled out a threadbare coat and a battered fedora that looked suspiciously like my own. Once the hat was on, he stood straighter, almost proud.

He bowed low, arm sweeping wide.

“Murk Stonestitch, at your service. Old school bard, jack of many trades, master of a few. Currently underpaid and improperly incarcerated.”

He stuck out a hand, all wiry fingers and grime. I took it. My palm could’ve swallowed his whole, but he shook with surprising strength.

Then he held something up with a grin.

“My knife,” I said flatly.

“Funny thing,” he replied. “Found it just now. Thought it might be yours. You’re probably gonna want it. The lads who threw me in that glowing coffin? They’re coming.”

My hand closed around the knife. It was definitely mine. Had been tucked in the sheath at the small of my back since forever. I had no idea when he’d lifted it. And now wasn’t the time to ask. Footsteps echoed from the tunnel. Dozens of them. I turned to face the sound, blade in hand, blood rising like heat before a storm. Murk puffed on his pipe, calm as a cat in a sunbeam.

“Well,” he said. “Do you like long odds?”

I smiled, just a little. “Not really. But I hate being bored.”

And then the dark erupted with sound.