In all the room left a lingering mental aftertaste of toll and tax, each an unpalatable taste to the average Muse merchant.

A dutiful taxpayer, Fitcher quite liked the depository and preferred to spend what little free time he had amidst its desks rather than risk venturing into any other of the building's other ample rooms. Anabelle's chamber was too much an extension of her personality for his own comfort: imposing and formidable and filled with sharp corners only noticed once brushed against. Just down the hall from her office obediently crouched her chamberlain's, a room as small and petty in it's strict observation of order as its owner. Never feeling welcome there and rarely welcomed anyway Fitcher avoided it with the same staunch certainty of feeling he reserved for the chamberlain himself, a coldly haughty youth of undetermined natural disposition and debatable popularity.

A short flight of stairs led down to the lower foyer. So often was it crammed with Muse citizens eager to lodge complaints that Fitcher barely remained there any longer than the time it took to mutter a hasty apology before bolting back up to the sanctity of government territory.

Which really only left the library as a haven, a room intimidating only in its veiled reminder of the lumbering juggernaut that was law and politics. And Fitcher had long since learned that manipulating the briar patch of politics was much like wielding any other common weapon: devastatingly effective once you stopped cutting your fingers on the finer points. The room held no thrall over him and, if anything, served to bolster a smug recollection than any man who pointed anything sharper than a breadknife at the government servant could just as easily discover both a padlock and an audit notice tacked to his door the next morning.

Anabelle had ordered him to file a report. As Fitcher ambled through the door of the library with the same giddy light-headedness that any escape from the mayor's office unscathed instilled he was mildly surprised to find a clerk still on duty. Most city officials were predictable in their habit of retreating to more agreeable areas of the city when the mid-noon break rolled along. There were only three people who proved exceptions to this unspoken rule, the Muse mayor being one of them. Jess, the city chamberlain, a man who looked upon both bodily fatigue and hunger as ignoble obstacles in the pursuit of his solemn duty of public servitude, was another. The final was Fitcher himself, for the sole reason that Anabelle seldom let him alone long enough for any pause from work to extend into even a brief respite.

The clerk, a harried looking man with wispy watery-brown hair and thin shoulders that folded in towards his chest, glanced up from his ledger as Fitcher wove his way towards the desk. "Ten minutes and I'm officially gone for lunch," he warned. "Whatever you need you can find your own damn self."

Fitcher raised an eyebrow at the testy inflection hedging the man's words. "Rough day at the office?" he hazarded mildly.

The derisive way the tight line of the clerk's mouth bent down into a scowl was answer enough.

"I only need to file a short commission statement," Fitcher assured him. "It can hold, if you'd like."

The clerk passed him a dour look, licked his fingers once with the fastidiousness of a cat and plucked a single sheaf of paper from the bulk of his ledger. "Lady Anabelle wouldn't appreciate that much," he said. "She sent you to the Muse-Highland border, correct? You've got eight minutes."

Recognising the poised pen as his cue, Fitcher began a rambling summary of his largely uneventful trip to the border to the deeply uninterested on-duty clerk. He took care to gloss over details surrounding the smoke sighting; no solid evidence pointing to its source had been uncovered and he imagined Lady Anabelle would not appreciate him publicly voicing his own speculations on the possible involvement of the Unicorn Brigade anyway. With his consciousness thus entertained he allowed a private part of his mind to detach itself and spin off along its own orbit of thought.

He had been lucky, disgustingly lucky, to have escaped from a harsher sentence from Anabelle. He was wise enough to realise that and be thankful for it. Highland be damned; if given the choice of risking a hostile encounter over enemy terrain or facing down the full passionless wrath of the Muse giantess, nine times out of ten he'd be hiking out over the border before allowing a second thought to cross his mind. To be certain it wasn't because of a tempered severity on Anabelle's behalf - a man with a sword makes his intentions, however murderous, plainly clear, whereas even the slightest upturning of the Muse mayor's lips could as readily be the precursor to impending interrogation as to a genuine smile. Legal documents were easier to read than Anabelle's face.

Conversely, Fitcher had often sustained the unsettling idea that Muse's redheaded mayor saw as easily through people as a parchment held to light. The slight aberrations of articulation and gesture that went unnoticed by the wide majority became silent traitors in the canny eyes of a woman well versed in the art of subtlety, and she snatched up their significance like a heron spearing frogs. As many an officer worker-turned-victim of her scrutiny bemoaned in the privacy of the depository, it was as if the woman knew everything.

Fitcher knew fully well that he himself was not beyond the scope of her perception. Years spend as a minor government official had, if anything, taught him the value of a carefully cultivated veil of beguiling stupidity, to be dropped whenever a question was posed that demanded an obvious answer. It was a lesson hard learned, and even then only after he realised that his often overly clever mouth was unpredictably aggravating more people in high places than it was impressing. Unwholesome flashes of insight had cost rather than benefited, as several exhausting years spent on the lowest rungs on the administrative ladder had quickly taught him. Unexpected intelligence put a politician on guard; amiable idiocy, on the other hand, was as warmly welcomed as the taxpayer's vote.

His dumb routine was stageworthy. It had certainly fooled the previous government and their underestimation had left him with a certain advantage and unexpected security. Upon entering office Anabelle, however, had eyed him without word during his initial stumbling introduction and, without pomp or ceremony, promptly spoiled the entire cagey act by hiring him for her own private retinue on the spot. Feigned ignorance had earned him a derisive snort and nothing else. No further exclamation was needed at that point; he knew that she knew - the routine was blown entirely out the water - and that was pretty much the end of that.

His disjointed musing was suddenly interrupted by a memory, an incident dating back to Anabelle's first term in office. Amusing enough upon recollection it had proven thoroughly embarrassing at the time, for it had been one of the first instances that the fledgling mayor's knack for seeing straight through him despite his best efforts had been made plainly evident. It began when the Finance Minister fired his secretary for imagined slights and hired a new man as replacement, one later proven to be the son of a family friend. Obsequious and fawning towards his superiors, the fellow's true nature eventually surfaced like a bubble of marsh gas; within a week he had established himself as a bully in the robes of office who delighted in tormenting all petty officials beneath him. Fitcher, mild-mannered and jumpy by nature, had naturally been singled out as one of his favourite targets of opportunity for abuse.

After several dreadful weeks spent in fearful evasion of the man Fitcher had managed to plan out his own brand of revenge. An innocuous remark was passed - construction of the secretary's magnificent new mansion was progressing with unusual haste, wasn't it? - and left to work its own guile. As predicted the observation rode piggyback from conversation to conversation like a parasite and soon festered into rumour and outright speculation - the unholy bastard must be cutting corners and putting undue priority on his own estate, the swine! - until, one week and one violent quarrel later, the pride and joy of the Finance secretary narrowly avoided being converted into the city's newest barracks for suspicion of lack of a building permit.

Utterly untrue, and yet unwholesomely effective. Fitcher had shaken his head as solemnly as the next man at the audacity of the suddenly humbled thug and gone about his business with mysterious good cheer - until Anabelle had invited him into her office later that very day. Upon his arrival the redheaded mayor had favoured him with a pleasant smile, laced her fingers together over her knees, and told him in no uncertain terms that if she ever caught him spreading malicious rumour again - no matter how disagreeable the victim - she'd personally remove his lower intestine with a salad fork.

Any vindictive streak in his personality, however meek and recessive, had been effectively snuffed the moment he'd slunk from her office, thoroughly shaken and embarrassed and feverishly wondering just how the hell she had found him out.

Fitcher was honest enough to admit that he still fell victim to genuine ignorance with distressing frequency. Rifling through her papers had been running a dangerous risk, one he had been well aware of from the start. Unfortunately legitimate information was hard to come by in a city as large as Muse, where rumour spawned as quickly as disease and spread just as liberally. To find data of any solid accuracy one had to follow a paper trail that led, time and time over again, directly back to Anabelle's desk. While the popular exclamation that the woman knew and saw all was somewhat of a gross exaggeration, the amount of factual information that she did have at her immediate disposal was decidedly considerable. Little escaped Anabelle's eye - and what did Fitcher was promptly sent out to retrieve.

Not that he minded his job, to be certain - it was infinitely preferable to a life spent back in Coronet wrangling fish - but with increasing frequency the information that Anabelle required, however trivial, was to be found over in Highland territory. The vast stretch of inhospitable land was a veritable treasure-trove of political secrets and he suspected that their inaccessibility irked her to no end. Fitcher was silently dreading the morning when the Muse mayor would summon him to her office, turn an impassive face set with ice blue eyes in his direction, and mildly remark that border violations weren't really as serious a business as he had been led to believe.

"So how was Highland?" the clerk said suddenly, snapping him out of his reverie. The wire-thin official has settled back in his chair and was running his eyes over what he had written with a passable show of interest.

"Looked pretty dull from the distance I saw it at," Fitcher replied, suddenly wary. He knew Anabelle considered Highland business off-limits to petty clerks, most of whom disliked their job and were inclined to gossip freely.

The man eyed him dubiously. "You were gone long enough to just admire their scenery and look at some smoke. I think even Lord Jess started to miss you."

Fitcher had to grin at the thought of the dour-faced youth moping over the absence of anyone who wasn't Anabelle. "One of our horses picked up a stone and was lame on the trip back," he lied easily. "We had to make a stopover at a town along the route back to arrange for another."

Unconvinced, but unwilling to argue the matter with lunch impending, the clerk shrugged once and slipped the report back between the sheaves of paper in his ledger. He stood, pushing back his chair, and gathered up his coat and satchel and draped them over one arm. "You probably can't talk about the matter anyway, lest of all to someone like myself. Take my advice and jump out a window."

Fitcher panicked. "W, what?!" he said.

"On your way out, rather than using the front door," the man continued, unconcerned. "Anabelle released the details of this year's budget to the public while you were away and people have been lining in the lobby at noon to argue the finer points ever since. It's a civilised mob down there."

"What, again?"

The clerk's brow wrinkled in discontent as he picked his way around his desk and arrowed towards the exit. "Evidently this is becoming a festive yearly event. Lord Jess has been fielding questions from concerned Muse citizens since breakfast and it's still likely to be a messy crowd down there."

Fitcher grinned again. "I thought it seemed odd that he wasn't with Lady Anabelle in her office when I arrived this morning," he remarked.

The other man regarded him with amusement from the library door. Jess' admiration for the mayor was hardly secret, and the focus of one of the most regularly gossiped tidbits of office rumour.

"Just avoid him today, that's my advice," said the clerk as he stepped out into the hall. "Unless you want your head bitten off. The following few days have done as much for his cheery disposition as being irreparably insane has done for Ruka Blight's."

With a sly wink he was gone, the soft tread of his footfalls fading as the door swung shut behind him. Fitcher was left to grin at the barren library at large as his brain began a clipped process of thought, spurred on by the clerk's parting words.

Ruka Blight...

Swinging himself away from the desk he'd been leaning against he trotted across the room to a random bookshelf. He pulled down a ledger thick with filed papers and flipped through it until he found the page he was certain he was looking for. Folding it carefully he shoved it into the pocket of his shirt, returned the book to its place on the shelf, and ambled from the room with as much innocence of purpose as he could muster. Removing official documents from the library was forbidden and as a rule strictly enforced. However, even breathing on Lady Anabelle's personal papers was already treading as closely to sin as one could earthly achieve; thus damned Fitcher felt he could afford to break a minor bureaucratic law or two. By all likelihood he'd have it returned the next morning anyway.

The crowd in the lobby was indeed as intimidating an obstacle as prophesised. Feeling foolish, Fitcher took the window.

* * * *

All in all, he often remarked, he could have picked a worse city to live in than Muse.

He certainly couldn't have found a better one to work in. Muse was the indisputable political heart of the City-State, the pulse of which extended to reaches as outlying as the Highland border. As a result it attracted a great deal of business, both economic and civic, and had swiftly established itself as the largest city in Jowston as well. Despite the fact that within its walls were housed some ten thousand souls it was surprisingly tidy and free of crime. Fitcher supposed this was largely attributed to the fact that the bulk of its population was made up of merchants and traders, drawn by the hive of political activity, and the only real crimes merchants could ever be accused of were for charging outrageously excessive prices.

The fact that Lady Anabelle had contributed greatly to this - of Muses' current economic stability, that is, not the inherent financial fascism of its merchants - was widely acknowledged and support for her was high. From the beginning of her campaign for the position of mayor, to her recent signing of the peace treaty with Highland Anabelle had proven herself a cool and competent leader. People often swore that Muse had never functioned so efficiently as a city as it had ever since its redheaded mayor judiciously wrested the authority from its previous administrator.

What impressed Fitcher was that the man had been her father. Evidently Lady Anabelle had never presumed that she would enter upon the role of mayor once her father stepped down - when election time had rolled around those ten years past she had duly fought a campaign for the position and had, Fitcher felt, well earned it.

Evidently he hadn't the monopoly on the opinion. Elections were creeping up again and from all the indications Fitcher had seen Anabelle would be remaining in office for another term. Maybe even two. He doubted she minded.

It wasn't to Anabelle alone that Muse had proven kind. Seated in the local tavern, patiently waiting for his lunch to be scraped from the sizzling grill and with the prospect of an afternoon off spread out in front of him like a blackjack hand, Fitcher readily admitted that he himself was finally seeing those better days.

Twelve years ago he had arrived in Muse with the firm notion that any business the big city offered him was a decided improvement from fishing for a living back in Coronet. Two job prospects had made themselves immediately clear once he admitted he lacked the ruthless money-grubbing nature essential to the successful merchant: he could either join the army or the government. The army offered free food and board, plus the expectation of a lot of fresh air and exercise, the only real downside to the soldier's life being that slight possibility that one day you would be called upon to fight for your country and get horribly mutilated in the process. Government work, on the other hand, had offered him the humble position of petty clerk, with little or no chance of promotion and the assurance that the rest of Muse's tax-paying citizens would regard you with as much respect they afforded to blood-sucking parasites. In the end, his choice had been fairly easy to make.

On his first day as a clerk he had realised that the job wasn't nearly as bad as popular belief led him to believe. At least he had been given a room to live in, completely free of rent. Your initial impression was that it was a fantastic deal - free room and board - until you realised that it also effectively gave Lady Anabelle complete accessibility to your services. Petty government workers in general were hardly the most gregarious of people; if you weren't to be found ordering your only meal of the day at the local inn and tavern then you were sweating over office work back at home, exactly where Anabelle had last left you. It was a shrewdly effectual system; one Fitcher certainly wasn't going to begrudge the mayor so long as she was willing to pay for his lodging.

Secondly, Fitcher had soon learned that he was the sort who made friends easily. That particular discovery had surprised no one more than it had him. Then again, he was hardly the type to kick a man's dog, insult his child, or run off with his wife - who would, Fitcher often reflected morosely, probably laugh in his face first anyway. In all likelihood, he was quite possibly the most non-threatening individual in Muse. Add to that the fact that he was a genuinely amiable sort of fellow and it wasn't a real surprise that a lot of people yielded him the same sort of good humour as they did to family, friends, and the homeless insane.

It left very little for him to complain about. Oh, to be certain the pay was minimal and the distressing confidence Lady Anabelle had in his abilities meant that he travelled a great deal to places he often fervently wished he could have avoided. All in all, however, Fitcher could think of worse situations to be in. Fish figured prominently in half of them.

When a waitress appeared out of the thick of the crowd to deposit a plate in front of him with her usual harried grin he was suddenly aware that he was ravenously hungry. Breakfast that morning hadn't proven much more than a sleepy attempt to sponge some sort of nutritional value out of something that had been cold and grey and smelled faintly of horses. Yet another downside to a life spent waffling between the office and the road.

As he tore into his meal he made a half-hearted attempt to sieve through the flotsam and jetsam of local conversations, as was his custom. While the chatter proved more often than not to be little more than the sediments of public opinion, every now and then a jewel of information managed to work its way up to the surface to shine. Somewhat unsurprisingly, rumours of the approaching Highland army had already begun to spread; from where Fitcher was sitting he could easily piece together fragments from no less than two separate discussions on the subject.

What was somewhat amazing was the fact that news of the border attack was already making its rounds. Fitcher shook his head in mute wonder, a silent tribute to Muse's seemingly supernatural ability at divining daily gossip and the capacity of the rumour mill grinding it out.

I really don't know why they bother sending me out sometimes, he thought. Give it a day and anything anyone wants to know will already be old news.

A memory tapped politely at the back of his mind. Absently spearing food on his fork with one hand, Fitcher reached into his pocket for the paper he had swiped earlier with the other. With some dexterity he managed to both unfolded the document and push egg around on his plate.

For a minute or two he chewed in thoughtful silence, engrossed in reading. Conversation swirled lazily around him, the whisk of the instruments of food preparation and the pop and sizzle of the kitchen grill mixed in with it. A waitress swished past his seat and tossed a feast to a waiting couple behind him, disappeared again through the crowd.

After a little time had passed Fitcher carefully set down the paper next to his plate and frowned at a bit of empty space across the room, his fork poised halfway to his mouth.