Bastard nodded slowly, finally standing fully, and his height was so great that his head scraped the ceiling. "What was your brothers name?" He asked dully. All emotion in his voice was lost. There was nothing in it, closer to a silence than a sound in its emptiness. It chilled the two watchmen to the bone. The ticking of the clock stopped, and the floorboards halted their creaking.
"Isak." Whispered Hans. He looked aged, sickly. "But you would have known him as Dog-Talker."
"Dog-Talker." Repeated Bastard. He paused for a minute that stretched on and on and on. "He was loud."
Wulf's eyes had rolled into the back of his head as he silently choked, yellow froth bubbling from his lips, and yet he could not fall, for the fall would break the silence, and he knew the silence could not tolerate it.
"Stop that." Sound rushed into the room instantly, and Wulf crashed into the ground. Hans rushed to check his pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief. The girl was glaring up at Bastard, with her cold stone eyes. He'd almost forgotten about her. He looked down at her with empty pits for eyes, her anger eaten and dead in the pits of his hazel ones. Still, she glared at him, angry in the way only a child can be, indignation and naivety meshed into one, furious, helpless mass. A little bit of something trickled into Marits eyes, a splinter of emotion that seemed to wake him from his nothingness. Bastard cocked his head to look at the girl, strings of emotion taking their turn playing his face like a violin, before he reached out his hand for the girl to take, and together, they left the building to the half hearted protests of Hans the Watchman.
They walked in tandem through the messy streets, and occasionally heard the scream of an Altac muffled by the sky. Eventually, they stopped at the bottom of the old clock tower of Ardorf in the Smoke quarter, sitting inside one of the old guard posts that would have been manned before the war. Now, though, it was crumbling, years of neglect had worn the walls down and the roof was almost entirely gone, spiders it's only residents.
"What's your name, girl?" He asked quietly.
She glared at him again. She liked glaring, apparently. "Which one?" She retorted, seemingly satisfied with the level of grumpiness in her voice. Her face scrunched in confusion when she saw Bastard, however. His mouth was agape at her words. 'Which one?' What the fuck did she mean by that. She had to know, how could she not, it was impossible that her patron hadn't told her. "Please tell me," Bastard said, seemingly scared of the answer to come, "That you haven't been giving out your True name to random people." She seemed even more perplexed by his words now.
"What's wrong with giving out my True Name?"
Illum above, the girl was an idiot. "How many people have you told your name, your true one, I mean."
"Just two. Answer my question."
Male or not, the kid had balls. Bastard sighed. "You have a basic understanding of magic and naming, yes?" The girl shook her head, and his eyebrow raised even higher. "That will take too long to explain, but for now all you must know is to not spread your True Name about unless you want to become someone's Name-Whore." Judging by her sufficiently shit-scared expression, he'd done enough. "Tell me your name, not your true name, a given name or a chosen name, in the morning, feck, you can even make it up on the spot. You can tell me what you were doing out in the greygrass as well." He said, yawning, and the child noticed something under his tunic rustling as he did so. "Until then, we sleep. The watch never check here so we won't be found." Bastard paused and looked at her, only just noticing that she was trying to hide her shivering. He frowned. "We'll have to work on that. Until then," he took off his grey cloak and gave it to her "Wear this. It'll warm you." The cold and exhaustion had clearly gotten to her, as she had none of the defiance he had seen before, and accepted it quickly. She looked at him, confused, and Bastard could see the question behind her eyes. He made a small flame in his hands and held it close to his chest. "I'll be warm." She looked at him with wide eyes. "You should be able to do this too, Father Flame blessed we mages with his warmth when he moulded us, the fall from Illum and the naming of the dragons. Your teacher must have been thick if they never taught you this.", Bastard spoke softly. Tiredness was encroaching on his mind as well, he though, holding off a yawn. He felt the metal-bag shift behind him and swore under his breath. Feck. He had forgotten about it until now, and he wouldn't be able to sell it in the morning. The Watch would have posters all about town of him with a fifty-Finger Bounty by then, so he'd have to sell it fast.
He looked over at the girl; asleep. That was impressive, it had only been a few minutes. How long had she been awake for? Bastard looked outside the post and saw no watchmen, though he could hear distant shouting, which could be the fighting rings, but maybe he was too hopeful. He slunk out, moving down Tinpatter Street with careful steps. Out in the open he'd had to put out his flame, and was beginning to regret the loss of his cloak in the sheer winter cold. He moved off into a side street that smelled of beer and vomit and old sex, before coming out on Farlods Walk, perhaps a more disreputable part of town. The doorways held the odd corpse, warm not 2 hours ago but now awaiting the body men to take them to the church, where they would be cremated and made into tattoo ink. Bastard looked down at his own tattoos. Hello Johannes, he thought absent-mindedly. His surgery had been near here. As had the whore house.
A lantern light swung jauntily from a Watchmans polearm and Bastard froze. Nowhere to hide that he could reach, shit. If he was found there was little chance he could win the fight without making a huge mess, which would only draw in more Watchmen, and even he wasn't foolhardy enough to believe his flame could stop six polearms and ten rifles. What to do, what to do! Curse his huge fecking body! A door swung open under a sign reading 'Mindels and Sons', and an old man hissed from the darkness of the doorway "Hurry up and get in if you want to live you stupid-", he didn't get to finish the sentence. Bastard had already barged his way inside.