Sarah's Story Chapter 025 - Early Morning Scene

After seeing Sarah off in the first rays of dawn’s light, Helen went back and took their dishes from the dining room, otherwise deserted at this early hour, through the kitchen and back to the small scullery, and quickly washed them and put them back on the shelves, ready for the morning breakfast rush.

Helen wanted to tell Sarah to quit the guard job. It was still too early for her. She didn’t have the right mindset nor the right training. But, thirty silver pieces was a lot of money. Helen was barely making ends meet as it was, between their room and board here at the inn and the work she was doing to help out; and besides which, taking on any more work would get in the way of building her [Gossip] network and her real goal: finding James.

She sighed. At least Nadine would be coming back to chat tonight, while Sarah was still at work, and she could vent to her older sister without putting more pressure on her daughter.

Sarah, on the other hand, walked through the early-morning streets with her head full of thoughts about how to handle hypothetical situations in the bar with dozens of adventurers and barmaids and possibly two hostile full parties of adventurers.

Not so distracted that she didn’t immediately notice the boy her age approaching just a little closer than normal on the street.

Not so distracted that she didn’t notice the way he bumped up against her despite there being plenty of room in the street, even if he did look half asleep.

Not so naive that she was just going to let him reach in her pocket, even if there was only rocks in it.

Whirling, she grabbed his wrist as his hand slipped imperceptibly out of her pocket, and caught his ankle with her heel as she spun, pulling him off balance and taking him to the ground, hard. Harder than she meant, in fact, given that she had been reflecting on her mother’s wisdom as she walked.

“Oi, what the hell are you doing!” he yelled, suddenly wide awake. Before Sarah could respond, he continued yelling, even louder, trying to make a scene.

“Help, help! I’m being attacked!” he shouted.

Sarah had him pinned, with one hand holding his wrist out to the side putting his shoulder in a joint lock, and the other pressing down on his back, under which was pinned his other arm.

“Stop right there!” A city guard ran up. Where had he come from? “Let him up!”

Sarah glanced quickly in his direction, but he hadn’t drawn his sword and his hands were free. He wore an open faced helmet and chainmail over leather armor. He also had two swords on his hip: one sheathed, and one was just wood cut in the shape of a sword.

She took this in as fast as possible and turned back to the shrieking boy beneath her. “He stole from me,” she said firmly, but the screeching beneath her drowned her out.

She pressed harder, temporarily silencing the boy as he groaned, and projected her voice. “He stole from me! It’s still in his hand!”

“No I didn’t!”

“I said let him up, girl. Do it now!” [Threat Awareness] drew her eye to his hand reaching for his sword, as well as the boy beneath her.

So she quickly punched the boy in the temple, knocking him out cold. [Threat Awareness] dimmed for the boy, but the guard lit up even brighter, and his hand wrapped around the handle of his wooden sword. Sarah quickly got to her feet, eyes locked on him, and put the boy on the ground between them.

“He stole from me,” she repeated, “and I think he has a knife.” She raised her hands, palms out, showing she was unarmed.

The city guard gave her a hard look, hand tight around the hilt of his wooden sword, and after a moment gave his orders. “Take two, no, four more steps back and don’t move.” Sarah did so and he watched her like a hawk. A few shopkeepers had stopped their early morning preparations to open to gawk at the spectacle, and the city guard’s eyes flashed between them all. But they were all elderly men and women, nobody he could deputize.

“Oh my, are you Sarah, Helen’s daughter?” one of the shopkeepers, a middle-aged woman with wavy dark blonde hair said. The city guard’s head snapped to her.

“You know this girl, Miriam?” he asked. The woman, Miriam, shook her head. “No, I just met her mother the other day when she was doing some shopping, and we got to talking, you know how it is.” She waved a hand at her little store, packed with fresh fruits. “Helen mentioned her daughter walks this way to the Adventurer’s Guild in the mornings.”

Sarah remembered that she needed to get to the Guildhall soon, or she was going to be late for class, and spoke up as well. “That’s right, I’m Sarah, daughter of Helen. I just signed up with the Adventurer’s Guild this week.”

The city guard narrowed his eyes at her. “Got yer license on you?” Sarah nodded. “Toss it over then.” Sarah’s eyes flickered down, the boy was still out cold, and she reached into her pocket and took out the small wooden board, and deliberately tossed it underhand to the guard, slowly.

He still nearly fumbled it, taking his hand off his sword to catch it with both hands in the end.

The guard quickly confirmed the sketch matched Sarah’s face. “Okay, don’t move. I’m holding onto this while I investigate.”

“Okay,” Sarah replied.

The guard slipped the license into his own pocket and quickly checked out the boy who had, until just a minute ago, been screaming his head off. He was still breathing, good, so as per procedure, he started patting him down as [Body Search] guided his hands.

Immediately he found several knives. Then several more.

Bloody Knife Wielders. Still, that by itself didn’t mean much. Half the city was Knife Wielders.

No, it was when he rolled the boy over and found that his hand, which had been pinned under his chest was gripping a dagger, and his other hand fell open loosely letting several small stones clatter to the ground, that he went from concerned for the boy’s health to fully alert.

Quickly, he pulled out both his sets of iron shackles and shackled the boy’s hands and feet, and only when the final bolt slid into place with a click did he breathe a sigh of relief.

Bloody Knife Wielders.

That left… the Adventurer girl, still standing there, hardly moving at all, except her eyes, which alternated between scanning all the lookey-loos and watching him intently.

He was torn between giving her the benefit of the doubt for doing what he said and standing there without moving or distracting him with nonsense, and shackling her as well based solely on how hard she was setting off his [Danger Sense] skill. Well, he still had her license, and Miriam seemed to know who she was, so even if she ran off, she’d get tracked down eventually.

He stood back up and stepped away from shackled, unconscious boy.

“Sarah, was it?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m Sarah,” she replied, eyes locked on him.

“You say he stole from you?”

“Yes, he reached his hand in my pocket.”

It was only with an effort of will that the city guard took his eyes off the young girl and glanced down at the stones lying on the ground where they had fallen from the boy’s hand. All the nearby shopkeepers had grouped up in twos and threes by this point and were murmuring and [Gossiping].

“Those stones? That’s what he stole from you?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

The guard paused. Why did he always get the weirdos? He even swapped to the quiet morning shifts but it was like they were following him.

“You were carrying stones in your pocket? What for?”

The girl furrowed her brow, as though she didn’t quite understand his question.

“Uh, for throwing? You know.”

No, he didn’t know! But wait, Adventurer? He pulled out the girl’s license and looked at it more closely. Sarah. Rank F, with approval for Rank E and… Rank C jobs? That’s unusual. Issued just a few days ago. Classes… Brawler and… Scout? There was the mark that indicated more information could be requested from the guild. He looked back up at her, standing exactly where she had been before.

“Is throwing part of your Class?” he asked, thinking about the mark next to her Scout Class.

“Yes, that’s right,” Sarah replied, thinking about her Brawler Class.

The guard, feeling a bit more comfortable with the situation, stooped and picked up the stones from the ground. They were four smooth river stones, unlike the little rocks you could find in the city.

“This all of them?”

“Yes, well, the stones he stole. I have more in my pocket.”

The guard narrowed his eyes. “Keep your hands away from your pockets, please.”

The girl nodded and lifted her hands a little higher. “Okay.”

Of course he was starting his day dealing with a girl who kept stones in her pocket and a pickpocket who was trying to steal stones out of a girl’s pocket!

A few chuckles and quiet, stifled laughter reached his ears from the onlookers. By this point, more and more people were taking to the streets, going about their business, when a young woman passing by glanced over out of idle curiosity and stopped, then pointed and yelled.

“Ah, that’s him! That’s the pickpocket who stole my purse last week!”

Great, the situation was escalating.

He put the Adventurer girl’s license on the ground, and put the stones on top of it, then moved over to the shackled, still unconscious boy and hauled him to his feet. Dangerous, but the guard station was only a few blocks away. The young woman with a look of fury on her face was going to be a Problem.

He called over his shoulder, “Sarah, you’re free to go for now, but we may contact you via the Adventurer’s Guild later.”

He saw the girl nod. “Okay,” she said, then stepped forward smoothly, scooped up her license and stones, and jogged down the street towards the Guildhall.

“Guard! Guard! Listen! That’s the boy! That’s the dirty rat that snatched my purse last week! I told you guards there was a Thief on the loose, but you didn’t do anything! I had twelve, twelve silver pieces and six copper pieces in that purse and I want it back! Have you searched him yet! Search him! Do you know where his hideout is? Have you questioned him yet! I’ll have you know–”

The guard sighed. He just couldn’t catch a break.