“So you’re going to come here and tell us right from wrong?”

“It’s easy to excuse away doing nothing,” Jason said. “It’s our tradition, our culture, our values. That does not make it acceptable to hand someone over to a predator.”

“You’re naïve,” Arella said. “It’s easy to do more harm than good, bumbling around with no idea of the realities.”

“I've seen the realities, Director. I covered up crimes by a man who tried to have me killed. I did that because the only people who would be hurt if I tried to do something about it would be the victims. Yet this woman I just had locked up in the tower has been hunted for months. Why? For taking things that didn’t belong to her? That’s the easy excuse that lets a pervert with power claw after her. Thadwick Mercer tried to have me murdered and the best I can hope for is that his mum tells him off. Every time I kill people in job lots, I get a promotion. But gods forbid a poor person take a rich person’s stuff. That’s pretext enough to hand them over to whatever filthy lech has the power to demand it. This whole thing was over hunting down the victims and you’re going to tell me I don’t know right from wrong?”

“Are you quite done, Mr Asano?”

Jason let out a tension-relieving sigh.

“You did ask,” he said.

“I think we’re done here. You can have your thief, Mr Asano. The agreement with the city is quite clear on this point, and I will see it is enforced. Try not to make more trouble than you have to.”

* * *

The Adventure Society holding facility was a stone tower. Not the usual Greenstone, but a dark grey. It saw little use and had little capacity, which is why the Ustei had been penned up in the marshalling yard. Only the Ustei leadership had been held in the tower. An adventurer entered, shoving two surly men in manacles ahead of him. Inside the only door was a small administrative area, where an Adventure Society functionary sat behind protective glass.

“I need to put these two in lockup,” the adventurer told Albert, the man behind the glass.

Albert regularly worked the jobs hall a lot and had an eye for faces, but he didn’t recognise this adventurer. That had been happening a lot lately. With so many people on the expedition, the director had been pressing the more nominal members of the Society into service. This adventurer looked more rough and tumble than the usual noble fop, though.

“I’ll need to see a copy of the contract they were taken under,” Albert told him.

“No contract,” the adventurer said. “These two idiots tried to mug the wrong guy.”