Mei Lin had been in Stormwind for four days and she had already been arrested.
In her defence. The stew at the Pig and Whistle was not stew. It was brown and warm and had a carrot in it the way a pond has a frog, by accident. Halfway through a bowl, a dwarf and a human argued about a chair. The shove became a swing. The swing became a dwarf face-down with ale in his beard.
She knelt. She called a small riptide, grandmother's favourite, soft as rinsed rice. The bruise under his skull went blue and then nothing. He blinked. Sat up. Ordered another ale.
Across the tavern, two guards saw: a Pandaren, glowing water, a man who had been down now standing.
"NECROMANCY!" one of them yelled.
The tavern cleared faster than she had cleared her bowl. "I'm not dead," the dwarf said, to no one.
"He wasn't dead," Mei Lin told the guards, hands up. "He was having a very specific kind of nap."
They did not like that. The taller one had a limp.
"Beautiful breastplates. I can fix that knee, friend. Two breaths. No ale required."
They escorted her to the Stockade.
The Stockade smelled of wet mutton and old rope. The chair was designed to make a person feel small.
"This chair has a structural lean. My grandmother's back fence has more dignity."
The warden had a moustache with opinions. He did not look up.
"Your lamp is crooked. At that angle you look concerned. Like you have bad news about my uncle."
He looked up. "Why are you in Stormwind?"
"Travelling. Studying the water. Befriending cats."
"That sounds like a cover story."
"It sounds worse when I say it. I am a hobbyist in every regard except emergency healing, and apparently that is the problem."
A prisoner's tray went past. Lentils. She smelled them.
"Those are under-salted. Whoever feeds your prisoners is trying to break them via seasoning."
The warden pinched the bridge of his nose.
Behind him, two guards had been standing at parade attention since she sat down. Mei Lin turned her chair slightly to face the taller one.
"Soldier. Quick question. Who polishes these breastplates? The shine on yours is devastating. I need to recommend them to a friend."
The guard's eye flickered. He held.
"Look at him hold," she told the warden, impressed. "If I stood that still I would evaporate. Is there a trick? Is it the wax? It is a wax, isn't it."
"Do not speak to my guards."
"I'm complimenting them. That is organisational citizenship." She turned to the shorter one. "You. You are holding that spear like you have opinions about pikes. Are you a pike man trapped in a spear posting? I have feelings about this. Grandmother always said the tool should match the hand. Your hand is a pike hand."
The shorter guard shifted his grip. The warden noticed. The warden made a small noise.
"Your previous interrogator," she said, helpful, back to him now, "did they retire, or were they dismissed? I have seen tea cosies ask harder questions."
"Be quiet."
"Your moustache is uneven."
"Be quiet."
"It's the left side. I am trying to help."
The iron door banged open.
Kindrra walked in like she owned the stone beneath her hooves. Orion padded at her hip. Two hundred pounds of black-maned muscle, quiet as a thought, tail flicking once at the smell of the torches. The warden's quill stopped moving.
"Warden," Kindrra said. Crisp. Shoulders set the way Draenei shoulders are set when they have decided something. She tapped a leather badge on her belt that could have been anything. It looked official enough from three paces. "Captain Kindrra. Night Watch, eastern chapter. I need this Pandaren released into my custody on an ongoing matter."
The warden opened his mouth.
"Before you ask." Kindrra held up a hand. "I am not going to tell you what the matter is. I will tell you that my direct report is to Captain Ashton at the King's Hand annex off Old Town. If you want to send a runner to verify, please do, but I have a second matter waiting three streets over and I cannot sit here arguing pedigree with a man whose moustache is, frankly, a tragedy."
The warden's hand went to his moustache.
Mei Lin opened her mouth to say I already told him that. Kindrra did not look at her. "Do not."
Mei Lin closed her mouth.
Orion, who until then had been sitting calmly at Kindrra's hip like a very heavy ornament, stood. Not fast. Not angry. Just up. The chair he had been sitting beside creaked. The warden's own chair made a small embarrassed sound.
One of the guards behind the warden had, on seeing the creature follow Kindrra into the room, decided it was a very large Draenei hunting-dog. Rare. Exotic. Possibly bred on Azuremyst Isle. He had been holding onto that theory quite firmly for several minutes, because the alternative did not bear thinking about. When Orion stood to his full height, the dog theory collapsed. "That's a lion," he muttered, with the careful tone of a man updating his understanding of the day.
"Papers," Kindrra said. "If you please. I am late."
The warden's pen hovered. His eyes flicked from the badge, to Kindrra's face, to Orion, back to the badge.
Mei Lin could not help herself.
"I didn't realise Duskwood posted chapters this far north," she said, cheerfully, to the ceiling.
Kindrra closed her eyes.
The warden looked up. For one clean moment, he knew. He knew he was being bluffed by a Draenei with a black lion and a Pandaren with a mouth, and his pen hovered above the paper like a man deciding what kind of career he wanted to have.
He looked at Orion.
He signed. Twice, because the first time his hand was not steady.
Outside, the canal was dark and the lanterns were doing their best.
"Was any of that real?"
"The King's Hand? No. Night Watch? Also no."
"You invented a whole office."
"I can invent a cathedral if the acoustics are right." Orion padded alongside, close enough that people stepped off the footpath without quite knowing why. "You cannot cast anything on anyone without checking which city you are in first."
"I was helping."
"In Stormwind, helping is a crime. I thought everyone knew that."
"In Pandaria, helping is a religion."
"And look how that is working out for you."
Halfway home a small grey tabby slid out of an alley and followed them, tail up. It had decided on Mei Lin with complete conviction.
She set two copper on a windowsill.
"For the cat."
"You are paying a cat."
"The cat is working."
Kindrra rolled her eyes so hard Orion groaned in sympathy, low and deep, the groan of a lion who has heard this exact conversation several times before. They kept walking.
I am glad it was Kindrra and not a stranger. The rain was starting again, the Stormwind kind, cold and in a hurry. Also glad it was not grandmother. I would have been in trouble in three languages.
— Mist