Chapter 628: Sandwich

"What happened? If she was sleepy, she shouldn’t have started working so early." Benjamin carefully adjusted their positions so Erica would stay in the middle of the bed.

His observation was mild and bemused.

Heka, still trying to cling like a parasite, simply shifted to accommodate the extra body without fully waking.

Within moments, the three of them occupied the mattress in a tangled, quiet heap.

The sheets were a disordered mess around all of them. The single window let in a pale rectangle of light that fell across the floor and didn’t quite reach the bed.

When Erica’s eyes opened again, the first thing visible was a stretch of plain ceiling.

The light in the room had shifted. Morning had advanced into something closer to mid-morning brightness — the pale rectangle on the floor had grown larger, warmer, and the shadows in the corners had retreated.

Consciousness returned slowly, carrying with it the residual heat of embarrassment and the vague memory of a mouth against her cheek.

"Where am I...?" Erica asked the empty air.

Then the awareness of weight and warmth on both sides arrived at once.

A solid presence pressed along one flank. Softer, sleep-heavy breathing pressed along the other.

Erica turned her head.

"Eek..!" The sound was high and involuntary. It cut through the quiet of the room like a knife.

She was being thoroughly sandwiched on Benjamin’s bed. Benjamin on one side, still half-asleep and faintly smiling at nothing, his face relaxed.

Heka was on the other. Her blonde hair was tangled across the pillows and the blanket.

The guest-room sheets were a disordered tangle around all three of them.

Erica’s face flooded crimson all over again.

Her whole body went rigid, her hands clenched in the blanket.

Benjamin shifted slightly in his sleep, murmuring something unintelligible, and his arm tightened around Erica’s torso, as her blush deepened.

***

All the adventurers of Thaad were on alert.

Adventurers never really killed other adventurers. At least not in Thaad.

It had started quietly, the way most bad news did. Word moved through the city in low, careful tones — murmured behind market stalls, exchanged over half-finished drinks, passed from guard to guard at the gates with a look rather than a shout.

Enough to put people on edge, but not quite enough to start open panic. The balance was delicate, and everyone seemed to understand that tipping it too far would only make things worse.

Guards checked papers a second time at the gates, their eyes lingering longer on faces. Their hands rested closer to their weapons.

Parties that usually left at first light now waited until the streets were fuller, until there were more bodies between them and whatever might be waiting in the shadows.

The usual morning noise of the markets carried an undercurrent of listening — vendors still called out their prices, customers still haggled, but beneath it all was a constant, low-level awareness.

People were paying attention to things they normally ignored.

The city had been taught that safety was a temporary arrangement.

"The Rat" still had not been found, and it appeared to be in their midst.

A full week had passed since Benjamin said he would handle it, but he had nothing to show.

He would reach for it, try to fit it into some pattern he could work with, and come up empty every time.

He had walked the main districts, and used every quiet advantage he possessed — the Serpentine Gaze and the small network of contacts he had begun to build.

And still, nothing. The Rat remained a mystery, and a shape without edges.

The looming presence of Renard finally forced him to put more effort into the search than he had been willing to spend.

He had already searched the entirety of Thaad that his senses could reach, but found no one that felt right.

Some parts of the city were sealed from his Serpentine Gaze entirely.

The blocks sat in his perception like blank spaces on a map.

He would extend his awareness outward, feel it flow through streets and alleys and buildings, and then hit a wall.

Not a physical wall, but something that pushed back. The sealed regions were simply there — dark spots in his mind’s eye, places he could not see into no matter how hard he tried.

There was no point getting angry about it or demanding the barriers come down.

The seals were a means of security. The people who had placed them had their reasons. Pushing would only make things noisier than they needed to be.

One of those sealed regions was the district called Lot.

***

It was the only part of Thaad that looked neglected on purpose.

People called it a "lawless" city. They said it with a certain relish, the way people always did when describing places they had never been.

But the truth was quieter and more practical than that. Poverty showed in the uneven streets and the buildings that leaned a little too far toward one another, their walls propped against each other like tired old men.

Infrastructure had been allowed to age without much interference. Roads went unpaved, and lamps went unlit.

The city simply stopped caring about this particular corner of itself. This particularly, magically obscured location.

Crime rates were higher than in the cleaner districts. That much was true, but not chaotic.

Not the anarchy that the word "lawless" suggested. Lot was home to the homeless, the poor, wanted adventurers who preferred to stay wanted, mercenaries between contracts, and other dangerous folk who had decided that living under the city’s full attention was worse than living under its neglect.

They had their own form of order. Their own rules and way of keeping the peace.

They kept things in moderation.

If anyone in Lot became enough of a problem to force Thaad’s hand, the response would be swift and final.

Everyone who lived there understood the arrangement. It was the only place a criminal or a desperately poor person could survive with something like comfort, so they policed themselves just enough to keep the arrangement intact.