Chapter 20 – Citizenship

	There might have been something to Finn’s ‘posh’ tastes, after all.  Even in a second-hand shop in an area of this city that was ‘lower-class’ by the standards of everyone we’d met so far, the clothing on offer here was infinitely superior to most everything I’d worn in the North Country.  At least, if we were talking Otherwolf clothing.  I obviously much preferred a simple breechcloth and cloak or parka, which covered very little of my natural coat.  My fur sufficed well enough even in the north to keep me warm, let alone here.
	But if I was going to cover my body in cotton or leather, it was at least far more satisfying that it be softer, cleaner, and more well-knit.  The shirt Finnegan picked out for me was sewn differently on the inside, with the seams flattened out.  It didn’t rub quite so much against me in the shoulders and collar and it fit me better, too.  I liked it so much, I even agreed to replace my britches as well while we were here.  That required they let a pair they had out, not at the waist but length-wise, so we’d pick those up in a day or two.
	Finnegan found clothing that fit him nearly perfectly.  His body wasn’t a particularly unusual fit for foxes, apparently.  The new outfit he bought, despite obviously being washed, still smelled of the last man who’d owned it.  Which I wasn’t all that fond of.  I liked Finn’s scent.
	“I’ll smell them up soon enough,” he’d insisted, adjusting the cuffs of his frock coat.  The coat was fitted well for someone as slim as himself, and black with brass buttons, with wolf’s head markings on them of unknown origin.  He had, of course, selected a dark green, double-breasted vest to wear beneath, along with gray britches, a hat not much unlike his last one and black spats.  He insisted the black coat, although not made of leather and thus considerably less durable, was essential if he was going to pass as any kind of professional in Otherwolf society.  I couldn’t make sense of that exactly, something cultural I suppose.  But he looked sharp, that was for sure.
	I was probably admiring him for different reasons than most would, to be fair.  But I was beginning to see why he thought this might be important enough to spend time on our first day into the city.  Finn really did look like a different man when he cleaned up.  You could probably have put my father, or any tribesman, in a similar getup and they’d pass for ‘respectable’.
	Finnegan was in his element, here.  He re-armed himself as well, once we’d left the tailor’s shop.  Wearing a pistol on your hip seemed more uncommon here than it was in the North Country, but it clearly wasn’t illegal.  There were so many guns here.
	He assured me that most of them were city guard or with the army.  They were easy enough to pick out from the uniforms.  A few were probably soldiers of fortune or hunters though, and those were the ones that made me nervous.  But thus far, no one had taken particular interest in us.  Hopefully it stayed that way.
	That first night at the inn, Finnegan stayed up late into the night practicing replicating the Citizenship cards.  He’d had trouble working the whole while we’d been on the Arbor Express, insisting the honestly fairly light rocking of the boat on the calm river made him feel sick whenever he tried to write.  I’d never been at sea, but I’d heard of people getting water-sick, and not just from Finnegan.  The only thing on the boat that had given me any indigestion was the poor food, otherwise I couldn’t feel whatever it was that seemed to be ailing Finn.  He’d been alright on the raft, but the Roseline was a larger river.  He said it got much worse at sea. 
	“A navy man I once knew said you get ‘sea legs’ eventually, even if you’re not one of those types that takes to it well at first,” he said, scrawling on one of his slips of paper later that night in our room, “but he was a smug-mouthed cocksucker, so he was probably just trying to talk me onto one of his bloody ships as a cabin boy.  I never got used to it on the trip here.  I don’t think I ever will.” 
	“Guess you’ll just have to stay here in our land,” I said with a long yawn, smiling tiredly at him from the bed.  “If the trip back to your home country would be such a misery.”
	“Ohhh, I don’t like how I’m rubbing off on you,” he said, not looking up but smirking.  “You’re starting to get cheeky.”
	“Tonak ito,” I said to him in Nontawlik.  
	“To. . . nak. . . ito,” he repeated, nodding.  “Alright.  What’s that mean?”
	“It’s a fish trap,” I said.  “Mostly for eels.  They can get in, but not out.”
	“Oh?”  He seemed amused.  “You planning to trap me here?”
	“That’s the beauty of the tonak ito,” I said.  “The eels trap themselves.”
	He glanced up at me.  “I don’t think I’d mind being trapped here with you, Tulimak.”
	“You wouldn’t miss your home?”
	He shrugged, getting back to work.  “Not my home, no.  There are things I’d miss. . . well, people.  Most of the ‘things’ I’d miss from Amuresca, they’ve already imported here.  And a lot of things I wouldn’t have missed, too.”  He sighed at that.  “I’ll miss my uncle Mikhail.  But he left the Risers long ago.  Nearly everyone I knew growing up has either moved on, or died.  Mostly the latter.”
	He said it casually enough, but it was a stark reminder of the survival rate from Finn’s neighborhood.  I suddenly wanted to put my arms around him.  I sat up and moved to the side of the bed, settling for putting a paw on his knee.
	“You really could stay here with us.  With me,” I said, more seriously.
	He didn’t look up from his work this time.  “One thing at a time, Tuli,” he said quietly.
	Odina’s knock at the door signaled the end to the conversation.  We’d been expecting her back for some time.  She was hard to read even since she’d decided to start being more open with me, so I wasn’t sure how well her evening had gone.  She looked. . . irritated.
	“Well?”  I asked, knitting my paws in my lap.
	“I took a ferry into the city proper,” she said, heading over towards us and sitting on the other end of the bed, crossing her still healing leg over her knee.  She rolled her pant leg up and began to undo the splint she was still wearing.
	“You didn’t need to go that far,” I insisted.
	“Unfortunately, I did,” she said pensively.  “As best as I could find, speaking with one of the tribal liaisons at the pier, there is only one office in upper Debriss that handles Immigration.”
	“I thought we were after ‘citizenship’,” I said the word as carefully as I could.  It was a complex Amurescan word.
	“That confused me as well,” she said, rubbing her leg gingerly.  “But the Enukhuwaten wolf at the port explained to me that to the law here, it’s all the same.”
	“That’s asinine,” Finnegan growled.  “Tulimak isn’t ‘immigrating’ here.  He’s a native.”
	“I was born here,” I said, even though it was obvious.  “My tribes- both of them- were all born here.”
	“The same office handles all the cases for citizenship,” she said.  “Whether you’re newly arrived or newly seeking documentation.  And as you might imagine, there are a lot of people in our situation.  I was there late in the day, an hour before they were set to close.  I’d hoped to just get a few questions answered by the officials there, but I didn’t get past the sitting room.  There were dozens of other people there.  I learned more from talking to them.”
	“I was worried it might be something like this,” Finnegan muttered.
	“Months,” she said, through her teeth.  “It could take months, even just to have our case seen.”
	“I can’t wait months,” I insisted.  “We can’t even risk being in the city that long.” 	 
	“It gets worse,” she continued.  “I’m not even sure Ambrose can get us through the door.  You need a Solicitor with documentation.  Someone who works on these cases.”
	I looked to Finn.  “Is that something you could fake?”
	“I’m no more a citizen here than you are,” he reminded me.
	“So we’d need someone with citizenship,” I said, my heart sinking, “to get citizenship.  What about that man Anderson spoke of?  His brother-in-law?”
	“I doubt he’s that kind of Solicitor,” Finnegan shook his head.  “And even still, it sounds like that wouldn’t be fast enough.”
	“We can’t have come all this way for nothing,” I breathed out, putting my muzzle in my paws.
	“I’m sorry I burnt my bridge with that Mayor in the North Country,” Odina sighed.  “But I’m not even sure he’s still alive or in power, let alone able to get things like this done any more.  He had a small stack of those cards, he just penned Sawyer’s name, species and descriptors in.  And that was years ago, I don’t think there’d be any left by now.”
	“Don’t worry, we’re still in the right place to get this done,” Finn spoke soothingly, getting up from his chair to sit beside me.  He wrapped an arm as far around me as he could, leaning against me.  “There are other ways.”
	“To be honest with you,” Odina admitted, “I never thought we’d manage this without resorting to something drastic.  A single bribe to forge one document. . . that’s one thing.  But we’re looking to get papers for an entire tribe.  Not to mention me and my girl.  And possibly you, Ambrose.”
	“An alternate identity might serve me well, given my situation of late,” he agreed.
	“I know you’ve been cooking up schemes in that scruffy head of yours,” she said to him.  “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
	“Alright first off, I just brushed my fur,” he said, exasperated.  “But. . . yes.  I do have schemes.”  He gathered up some of the papers on the small end table he’d been working on into a stack and looked to her.  “Do you still have the things you seized from the Jackwalds?”
	“In my room,” she said.
	“We need to make some coin, first thing,” he said.  “Any thoughts on what we can sell?  The horses are out as far as I’m concerned, we’ll need them to move around quickly through the city-“
	“Also you’ve named yours ‘Pebbles’,” I said, wryly.
	“Don’t you besmirch Pebbles,” he wagged his finger at me.  “Yes, another reason we’ll need more coin.  Feeding them is costing quite a lot.”
	“We should sell one of the rifles,” I offered.  “We’ve got four and I hardly need a firearm as it is, we can stand to part with one.”
	Finn snapped his fingers, “That’ll fetch a good price!  Alright.  There are a few other things I’ll need from the Jackwald stash, as well. . . .”

	“Oh, the Immigration Offices are a nightmare,” the wolverine snorted, shaking his head sadly.  “Even if you had a representative familiar with the process with all their paperwork in order, it could still take you weeks, months even, to be seen.  That’s just how it is.”
	On my insistence, we’d looked up this man First Mate Anderson had given us the information for.  I wanted to say we’d done all we could to pursue this whole thing legally before we resorted to Finnegan’s plan.  Although he’d agreed that meeting with the Solicitor could be helpful either way, which made me wonder.
	Josef Engelwood was a stocky, short but broad wolverine man who took up residence in a fairly clean, if crowded neighborhood in Debriss.  It was an hour on horseback from where we were staying and we’d had to negotiate some very busy streets and consult a city map we’d obtained more than once to find our way, so I’d been real hopeful by the time we found the place that the trip wouldn’t be wasting everyone’s time.
	After speaking with the man in his cluttered office for just a few minutes, I feared that we had, in fact, come all this way for nothing.  
	His building was one of many like it, crammed against one another in rows on an area of the city with a steep incline.  The roads here were particularly dangerous, we’d watched more than one cart teetering by either semi-out-of-control on the way down, or laboriously being pulled up by some beaten-down beast of burden.  The shops and offices all had crumbling steps leading to sinking paving stones and overfull drainage ditches near the bottom of the hill, which this man’s office resided in.  A half-drowned tree was the only sign of nature on the entire street and I rather wondered why they bothered to keep it.  Maybe it flowered and livened the area up in the spring.
	A worn sign clacked in the mid-morning wind, hanging from the entrance, proclaiming ‘Engelwood Criminal Law’.  There were many such like it along this street, a lot of businesses of the same ilk seemed to gather in specific areas in this city.  Perhaps for ease of communicating with their fellows, perhaps for the ease of those seeking their services.  I couldn’t say.  But Josef’s office was in one of the older, shabbier buildings on the street, if one of the larger ones.  It had a second story I assumed they lived in, like the place we’d gone in Broen.
	Inside, the very first and only accessible room on the main floor seemed to be his office.  It had clearly been a sitting room and bedroom at some point, since there were two fireplaces, but he’d taken down the wall to make it a larger space with shelves of books- more books and papers than I’d ever seen in my life- a large, cluttered desk near one of the fireplaces and a window, and many mis-matched chairs and sitting areas.  One oversized chair, Finn explained to me it was called a ‘sofa’, had torn, threadbare cushions but otherwise looked inviting for someone of my size.  It turned out to be rather comfortable. 
	The room was thick with the smell of old books, paper, ink and stale tea.  As well as wolverine, obviously.  The man himself had greeted us when we’d knocked and allowed us in, only asking us to stow our firearms at the door, which we’d done.  Otherwise he seemed completely comfortable allowing a group of strangers into his private sanctum to speak.
	To be fair, he had a rifle prominently displayed on the wall alongside his desk and he was a big fellow besides.  Still, it spoke to someone with either a lot of confidence, or apathy.
	“And I suppose this probably isn’t the sort of case you’d regularly take on?”  Finnegan asked, sitting squeezed in beside me on the ‘couch’.  He probably could have pulled up another chair, but he liked to find casual excuses to touch me or be near me and I wasn’t about to argue with that.
	“I would literally rather argue a murder case where the main witness was the risen soul of the deceased, pointing their finger directly at my client,” the wolverine chuckled grimly.  “You’ve got a tall order on your hands, there.  An entire tribe, you say?”
	“Yes,” I said, slumping a bit.  “I’m here as a representative.  I could try for Citizenship just for myself, but that seems short-sighted.”
	“There were provisions,” the wolverine said, stroking his chin, “back closer to the war, I think.  Certain loopholes by which a tribe could back-door their way into the Unification Treaty.  But I think the time when those were still valid has long since expired.”
	A door opened from the back-left corner of the room and a petite skunk in a flower-print dress made her way in, precariously balancing a tray of something in her hand.  Odina, who had chosen to remain standing, saw her enter and quickly moved to help her with the door.  She thanked her softly and smiled at all of us passingly, before bustling over to the desk with the tray in hand.  I saw the wolverine’s eyes light up.
	“Afternoon,” the woman said politely, setting down the tray on the desk.  It was stacked with flat, round baked goods of some kind, speckled with what smelled to be cinnamon on top.  They were still warm, exuding their sweet scent and effusing the whole room.  I was instantly enamored with this mysterious skunk woman and her tray of. . . whatever they were.
	“My wife,” the wolverine said, “makes the best sugar cookies you’ll have ever tasted, I guarantee it.  Love, these folks were referred by Wallace.”
	“Oh, he’s back in port?”  She huffed, wiping her paws on the apron she had tied around the front of her dress.  “God forbid he visit his sister unless he’s hungry.  Meredith,” she curtsied slightly, not in an overly fancy way.  “It’s a pleasure.  How’d you meet my brother?”
	“We were passengers on his ship,” Finn answered.
	“Ah, of course,” she stuck her hip out, putting a hand on it while looking down at her husband, who was already grabbing for one of those ‘cookies’.  I was highly considering it, myself.  “I hope you’re paying him for his time.  He has a bad habit of being charitable just so he has an excuse to talk at folk.”
	“I’ll be happy to pay you for the hour, sir,” Finn assured him.  “But it sounds like you can’t help us with our case.”
	“You said you were looking to have this done by the spring-time?”  He shook his head, taking a bite out of the cookie.  “I’ll be honest lad, I’m not certain anyone can.  Unless you know someone on the court’s pay roll.  I’ll even take cases for folk in need on promissory, let you pay off the balance later, but not if I think I can’t possibly make headway in time to make a difference.”
	“And there’s no coin to be had from a Citizenship case,” Finn nodded.  “It’s understandable.”
	“Wallace and I,” Meredith spoke up, “our parents came over from Amuresca, a generation back.  My brother and I were fortunate enough to be born here, but in their case, took ages to get legal.  I feel for you lot, I do.”
	“I was born here,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral.  But I was getting frustrated with having to explain that again and again.  My ancestors had been here far before the Amurescans had even arrived.  It was utterly nonsensical that we were now being told we had no right to the land we’d lived on for longer than they had.  I felt like it was the simplest and most obvious thing in the world. 
	She looked to me sympathetically.  “I’m sorry, lad.  I shouldn’a compared our situations, I suppose.”
	“It’s alright,” I said, sighing.
	She pushed the tray at us.  “Not much, but they’re warm’n sweet.”  She looked down to her husband.  “Nothing we can do to help the lad, then?”
	He brought his burly arms up over his chest, crossing them.  “Advice is probably the best I can offer. . . .”
	I reached for one of the ‘cookies’ while they talked, biting it in half and chewing.  I guess I must have made some kind of face, because Meredith noticed and smiled at me.  “You can take as many as you want.”
	“I don’t know if that’s wise,” I said, entirely seriously.
	“I generally start with four, then keep going until my troubles have melted away,” Josef said, already on his second.
	“That. . .” I paused, “. . . would take a lot of cookies.”
	“Don’t I know it,” the wolverine grinned, patting his belly.
	“Say we do find someone to take Tulimak’s case,” Finn spoke up.  “And hypothetically, this Representative can fast-track us through the process.”
	“Hypothetically,” the wolverine repeated, arching an eyebrow.
	“Hypothetically,” Finnegan repeated, for some reason.  I felt I was missing something.
	“Well,” the wolverine leaned back in his chair, “this Representative of yours, if they can get seen at the main office, would have to lead their client through a series of interviews.  Knowledge of the law, of the Unification Treaty, grasp of the spoken language, purpose in this country, etcetera.”
	“And following all of that?”  Finn leaned forward.
	The wolverine cleared his throat, knitting his thick fingers together on his desk, “Following that, there’d be the trial phase.  Not a criminal trial, obviously.  A hearing.  You’d move on from a Solicitor to a Barrister at that point.  The courts hold several such hearings each day in the mornings, down at the East District Courthouse.  That phase is relatively quick, provided you’ve passed the interview stage you haven’t much to worry about.  It’s basically just a phase to weed out anyone with a criminal history, or debtors.  It’s also the only phase of these cases I’ve generally had any part in, so you know.”
	“Still,” Finn pressed.  
	“Right, so,” Josef continued, “past that it’s just bureaucracy.  Paperwork.  You return to the Offices with Judge Rainier’s signature, presumably, and you get your stamp.”  He paused, giving his next words some weight.  “Now. . . in this highly hypothetical scenario. . . in which you’d breezed through the lengthiest parts of the process. . . that’s the goal line.  Everything important happens in the final visit.  Once you have your card, you’re golden.  They only stamp them here and in other major cities, so there are very few places you can obtain one.  And you don’t want to mess with the false ones,” he said bluntly.  “The stamp is too hard to falsify, and it’s a Federal crime to have a counterfeit in your possession.  They won’t fool most people, anyway.  Most everyone knows what they look like.”
	“So it’s the interviews and the trial that take so long,” I spoke up.  “If we could skip that part-“
	“Hypothetically,” Finn emphasized. 
	“-if all of that had been accomplished somehow, quickly,” Josef said, “and of course, most importantly, legally.”  He made an odd gesture with his middle finger at that, in the direction of the window facing east.  “Well, then. . . then it’d be smooth sailing for you, my boy.  The rest could be done in one visit.”
	Finn smiled slowly.  “What was that Judge’s name, again?” 

	
	I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the Immigration Offices were, by far, in the largest building I’d ever seen in my life.  
	Even with the horses, we’d had to take a ferry, which was a big boat of a sort, across part of the bay to get to the central area of Debriss.  There was a land route apparently, but it could take most of the day to get so far through the crowded city streets.  This trip was easily the most jarring few hours I’d spent in Arbordale so far.
	For one, the ‘bay’ was the first I’d ever seen of the ocean.  The smell here, like salt, fish and so many other foreign things I couldn’t identify, was overpowering.  It wasn’t unpleasant, I’d decided.  Just totally new and exotic.  I spent most of the ferry ride on the upper deck, nose to the wind, taking in the assault on my senses.  Finnegan was happy to remain with the horses in the lower part of the ship, where the movement caused by the waves seemed to be lessened.  Poor guy.
	The trip over the water was short, and after we’d off-loaded our horses and made our way into the city ‘proper’, as Odina had called it, I got a taste of what Otherwolf cities could really be like.
	Debriss wasn’t even as grand as the center of Arbordale, if what I’d been hearing was true.  But this was the central area, the seat of power for this part of their city leadership, so everything here was monumentally larger and more fortified than anywhere else I’d been so far.  Nearly every building was made of stone, top to bottom, and some had more than two stories.  We passed several towering structures with towers like sharp peaks, reaching skyward with intricate metal gilding.  The red banners with the phases of the moon emblazoned on them in gold were everywhere near those buildings in particular.  They were some of the most beautiful structures I’d ever seen, but Finnegan explained to me I would never be allowed inside.  My markings denoted me of another religion, one the Otherwolves did not approve of and considered blasphemous.
	I’d heard the term ‘fortress’ before, but never seen the like amongst my people.  There were tales of walled villages, with more than twenty longhouses.  The Basin was the closest I’d ever seen, with tiered caves carved into the mountainside.
	The Immigration Office was a fortress, as far as I was concerned.  Metal fences ringed it, the building rose three stories out of the already raised stone walkways and stairs that encircled and led inside of it.  It was, by my count, twelve large windows long, four wide, each story above the next getting progressively smaller, with a massive stone archway near the front doors.  Three different flags flew in the wind over top of it, one of which was that red and gold, three-moon symbol again, the other two of which I didn’t recognize.
	Finnegan had by now told me that the three phases of the moon, wherever I saw them, denoted the ‘Faith’ the Otherwolves practiced.  Their religion.  On their holy buildings, it made sense, but I wondered at how this place that was meant to welcome people from other countries and tribal peoples like myself would ally themselves with this ‘Faith’ that excluded us so thoroughly.  
	We hitched our horses outside the main gates and Finnegan shouldered his leather coat on over his new, prim black one, tightening the belt on his thigh holster and checking his pistol covertly.  “Alright, Odina. . . you’re up.  Tuli and I will keep the horses watered and wait for you here.”
	“I’m not certain how long this will take,” she said, handing Finnegan her weapon.  
	“We’ll wait as long as need be,” he assured her.  “We’ll come back tomorrow if we have to.”
	She headed off and left us waiting outside for some time.  While we did, Finn brushed out his pony’s mane and tail and went over the plan with me.
	“Now all of this is flexible, obviously,” he reminded me.  “So be ready to change things on the fly.  You need to go over it all again?”
	“I can handle it,” I assured him, trying to put some confidence into my voice.  “I know this is more your world than mine Finn, but this is my tribe’s future.  I’m not going to let my nerves get the better of me.  I promise.”
	He smiled at me, reaching for my hand where it was obscured by our horses from the road.  “I know,” he said, looking me in the eyes.  “I have faith in you.”
	Odina returned faster than we’d expected, only an hour or so later.  She looked like a cat with a prize catch, too.
	“So?”  Finn asked, expectantly.
	“One of the women I spoke to yesterday was there again today,” she said, smiling tightly.  “A tigress with a thick accent, but we’d struck up a conversation yesterday and her Amurescan’s as good as mine.  From some place called ‘Tavesi’.  Her whole family’s trying to get legal, and I think she was comfortable talking with me since we’re both feline and both got young girls around the same age.  She’s in her second stage of interviews.”
	“Did you get a name?”  I asked.
	“Someone called ‘Chadwick’,” she made a face at the name.  “Dog, of course.  Brownish red fur, middle-aged, other than that she couldn’t tell me much about him.  Except that she dislikes him and thinks he’s going to deny her case.”
	“That’s more than enough,” Finnegan nodded.  
	“For what it’s worth, I think she suspected something,” she said.  “But she was still willing to give up the information and didn’t pry about why I wanted it.”
	“Maybe if we’re successful here, we can help her,” Finn said, once again checking his hip.  He tugged something out of his leather jacket pocket, then removed another and handed the little metal pin to me.  “Right on the lapel, Tuli,” he showed me how to pin it on.  “You’re going to have to get us through the door.  I can fill in here and there, but my accent’s too noticeable.  Yours is at least local.”
	“I can do it,” I again assured him.
	“Alright,” he looked towards the building.  “Let’s go.”

	The building was not guarded during the day on the outside, but inside, there were three city guardsmen posted in the large sitting room, near each of the windowed clerks.  All of the clerks were female canines, two of which were speaking to families when we came in.  As we watched, one of the guardsmen opened a door near the windowed office and allowed people past, after consulting with the clerk.
	“Any of them will do,” Finnegan said lowly.  
	I nodded and the two of us stepped from the threshold into the large tiled space.  There were long benches throughout, dozens and dozens, with all kinds of people sitting or milling around.  Many had families, some were unlike any other peoples I’d ever seen before in my life.  I wanted to take the time to look around and absorb it all, but we had to act as though we were here with purpose.
	We were, so that helped.
	We immediately caught the attention of the otherwise bored-looking men on guard duty.  They were all canine, dressed in drab gray, buttoned-up uniforms and armed with rifles and bayonets, like many others we’d seen throughout the city.  Finn and I were both visibly armed with pistols, which a sign near the main doorway very clearly said were not permitted in the building.  I wasn’t a fast reader, but even I caught it.
	We approached the clerk who was free, a white dog with black spots and black drooping ears.  She looked to the guardsman near her, a shepherd of some sort, nervously.  He approached us first, suitably intimidated but still apparently intent on doing his job.
	“Excuse me, you can’t be armed on the premises-“ he began.
	“Jackwald Detective Agency,” I said gruffly tapping my badge with a claw.  For once, I didn’t fight the roughness in my tone and I made sure to stand up straight when I looked down on the man.  
	This is the point where we both had to rely on this militia’s reputation and hope the people in this building didn’t know too much about their inner workings.  Finnegan and I had learned first-hand that most of the Jackwald Agents, the official ones anyway, were canine.  They’d been working with a coyote and a few foxes, but we had no reason to believe they’d been anything outside of contacts.  It seemed likely the organization itself was specist. But these people would probably not know that.
	“I’m sorry,” the guardsman said, glancing between the two of us.  “We still cannot- many of the people in this building are foreign and lowly, we’re just trying to limit the potential for trouble.”
	“I don’t care,” I said, letting a growl slip into my tone.  “We have business here.”
	“In the building?”  The clerk behind him asked, clearly able to hear our conversation through the glass window and the small open tray in the bottom of her seating area where she presumably pushed papers through.  
	She sounded curious.  Still nervous, but her ears were up and she was leaning forward some, like she wanted to hear more.
	I moved past the guardsman without asking- Finnegan had told me to be rude, dismissive and pushy, like we had every right to be here.  It was honestly a little. . . thrilling?  I’d thought the guards inside this place were going to give us a lot of trouble and I’d been worried about that, but Finn assured me that most armed men around public buildings were not seasoned soldiers and would allow you to get away with quite a lot before risking a fight with someone my size.  Let alone someone armed.
	He was right.  The shepherd didn’t even try to block my way.
	“C-can I see your badges?”  The clerk asked, looking me and then Finn over.
	I unclipped mine and so did he, and we slid them through the slot into her little nook.  She took them for a moment, looking them over, before pushing them back out towards us.  She didn’t seem to take much time to verify them, if she even could.  I doubt she’d ever seen one before. Although apparently this company was larger than the standing military of this nation, if rumor was to be believed.
	“Are you here to affect an arrest?”  She asked conspiratorially.  She was very clearly asking it of Finn, not of me.
	“Just questioning, for now,” he said, falsifying his accent to sound more regional.  I’d heard him practicing it before, it was honestly pretty hard for me to pick out the differences, but a native speaker might notice it more.  He said he wasn’t as good at it as he’d like.
	I spoke up again.  “Man goes by surname ‘Chadwick’.  We need to have a few words.  We know he’s here.”
	She put a hand partially over her muzzle.  “Richard?  Oh lord, what’s he done?”
	“Private affair, not anyone’s problem but his and ours right now,” I said, remembering those words specifically.  I was to repeat them whenever people got too nosy about why we were here.
	“Too indecent for the gentler sex,” Finnegan said smoothly, leaning on the counter and giving the woman a slight smile.  “We’d hate to trouble you, ma’am.”
	“I’m a ‘miss’, thank you very much,” she said to him, fussing with one of her black, flopped-over ears.  “Do you have to talk to him out here, in the lobby?”
	“Rather not,” I said.  “Like I said. . . private.”
	“Not a problem, his office is right down the hall,” she said, looking past us to the guard.  “Samuelson?  Can you escort them to room 104?”
	The nervous guardsman nodded and went to open the door for us into the inner hallways of the building.  I traded a worried glance with Finn.  We’d already hit a snag.  We’d hoped they’d just allow us in.  The escort could be problematic.
	But Finn had said we’d have to think fast and be fluid with our plan, so as we were led down several white-washed walled hallways, past the wooden doors of offices and gilded-framed paintings hung in between.  I tried to calm myself.  I thought of my family and reminded myself why were doing this, and that gave me the conviction I needed.
	“One oh-four,” the guardsman said as we neared the doorway.  “I’ll wait-“
	“You’ll give us some god-damned space is what you’ll do,” I said gruffly at him, putting some bellow into my voice.  “What part of ‘private affair’ don’t you understand?  This isn’t anyone’s business but the man’s, and the law.”
	The guard looked torn, but also extremely uncomfortable, verging on frightened.  
	“You. . . won’t be arresting the man now?”  He asked, repeating the clerk’s question.  “This is a government building, any violence- even manhandling- within these premises is subject to-“
	“We’re just.  Here.  To talk,” Finnegan insisted, in a calm tone.  He reached over and patted the man on the shoulder, dropping his voice.  “Won’t take long.  We’d hate to keep you from your post.”
	The man looked back to me, and I glared down at him.  That seemed to do it.
	He left without another word, clearly put off and unhappy, but not willing to argue the point any further.  Finnegan and I waited until we’d seen him round the corner at the end of the hall, and heard the door leading back out into the lobby close, before we breathed a sigh of relief.
	“I can’t believe that worked,” I muttered as I removed the pistol from my hip, tucking it into one of the deep pockets inside my duster.  The badge followed suit.
	“Not used to hearing you swear.  It was almost cute,” Finn shrugged out of his leather Jackwald coat to the more formal black one he wore beneath and also unstrapped his thigh holster and pistol, bundling them up inside his coat and handing it to me to tuck under my arm.  “Most people don’t want to risk death for their job.  Also, the Jackwalds’ reputation is doing a lot of the legwork for us here.  But enough of that.  How’s my fur?”  He smoothed his neck ruff out and fixed his neck scarf, pulling out a rolled stack of papers from beneath his coat and snapping the twine around them with a claw.  He unrolled them and sorted them neatly into a stack in his hands, while I looked him over.
	“You look good,” I confirmed.
	“Professional?”  He chuckled, removing his top hat and holding it in one hand while rapping on the door in front of us.  “Now remember.  Sparse Amurescan.  But careful with the Nontawlik, there’s a chance a man in his position speaks it.”
	It took a few moments before we heard someone moving about the room and coming over to open the door.  The man who did so was as described, a middle-aged dog with rusty red fur, a somewhat drooping posture and a sour expression on his face.
	“It’s my lunch hour,” he muttered.  “I shouldn’t have an appointment for. . .” he glanced back into his room towards something, “. . . forty minutes at least.”
	Finn looked suitably surprised.  “I. . . uh.  Oh.  I’m so sorry.  I think we’re in the wrong place.”
	The hound rubbed an eye, irritably.  “Yes, well. . . you’re clearly new.  Not enough work across the sea?  More Amurfolk in the legal profession every damn day, it seems.”
	“I’m so sorry to take up your time, but-“  Finn began, but I remembered what he’d told me.  Act impatient.
	“When am I getting my papers?”  I asked in Nontawlik.  Then, when both men looked at me in confusion, I said in as thickly-accented Amurescan as I could manage.  “Papers.”
	“Oh, you’re looking for the Records Room,” the man sighed.  “You’re on the wrong floor.”
	“Judge uhhhh. . . .”  Finn sorted through the stack of paperwork in front of him for a few moments until he settled on one, “. . . ah. . . Rainier?  Signed off on the final documentation at our hearing this morning, we just need to have my client’s cards verified and stamped.”
	“Yes, Records Room,” the man repeated, frustrated.  “Third floor.  The place is a bit of a maze, but still, you’re off by two damn floors.”  
	“Could you please-“  Finn began.
	The man leaned out of the room and pointed, “Right at the end of the hall, and then take the staircase, and then left, and all the way down.”
	Finnegan barely had time to thank him before he shut the door in our faces.  The wolfdog smirked up at me.  “They make it so much easier when they’re ornery and careless.”
	As we took the staircase up two flights, which is officially the most stairs I’d ever taken in my life at once, I prepared myself for the last part.  This would be the hardest thing we’d gone over, because a lot of it relied on me acting counter to my nature.  But we’d gotten this far, and we’d had a number of worse alternate ideas for if something had gone drastically wrong up to this point.  So far, so good.
	The third floor was the smallest floor of the building, only four doors that we could see and one long hallway, although the doors were much further apart.  The hallway was empty and oddly warm, the sun coming in through the smaller windows baking the white-washed, stuffy space.  We walked the whole hallway once, getting the lay of the land.  The final door was a thick, oak-paneled one with iron crossbars and an obviously complex, durable lock, unlike most of the other doors in this place which seemed to have much simpler handles.  In faded gold-leaf, the words ‘Records Room’ stood out printed on the central wooden panel of the door.
	“Alright, not. . . no.  Not here,” Finn cautioned quietly, glancing to the left of us, where there was another staircase leading back down.  While he spoke, he tugged his scarf free, stuffing it into his top hat, which he was still holding in his left hand.  “Near the stairs.  We’ll start the argument there and hope they hear us, and move closer to the door if we have to.  Seems more natural, less like we’re staking out this room particularly.”
	“I’ll take your word on that,” I said, following him to the staircase.
	And that’s when we began ‘the argument’.
	I started off with, “What do you mean, my case has been denied?!”  In Nontawlik.  Everything I said from this point forward would be in my tribal language.  I raised my voice right from the outset, almost wincing at how it boomed and echoed off the staircase chamber.  Well, they’d definitely hear that.
	Finn leaned against the door frame that led to the staircase, inching slowly back towards the door.  “I don’t understand- you need to speak our language now, we’ve been over this.”
	“To hell with ‘your’ language!”  I bellowed.  “This is our home, it was ours for generations before you stole it from us!  You’re the ones speaking the wrong language.  Enough of this.  I want my land back!”
	For emphasis, I stomped a foot on the floor and Finnegan. . . rather melodramatically, but no one was yet around to see, threw himself back against the wall.  He winced briefly, perhaps forgetting his still mending wound and I very nearly went to comfort him before I remembered.  He gave me a ‘keep it going’ gesture with his hand.
	“You need to calm down, sir,” he said in an urging but frightened-sounding tone.
	“I refuse to be calm!”  I said, some of my earnest frustration creeping into my tone.  Finn had said to use that when we’d been practicing, so I did.  “My family has been ‘calm’ for too long!  Accepting more and more of your excuses. . . biding our time and hoping all would be well.  Enough!  I’ve seen what happens to our people when we’re displaced.  I refuse!”
	“We’ve done all we can do here today, we can appeal-“ he began to say, but at that point, someone opened the door.
	The man who poked his head out was a slight, short-legged canine and with long ears and jowls.  He was a full head shorter than Finn, wearing a brown checkered vest with his shirtsleeves rolled up and practical tan trousers.  He seemed nervous as most everyone else we’d met here so far.
	“What’s going on out here?”  He asked, of course, of Finn.  Everyone here seemed to address Finnegan first.  I was getting a taste of how Odina must have felt everywhere, being passed over.
	“My client and I were just-“ Finn began.
	“I shouldn’t need your worthless papers to defend my right to live on the land I was born on!”  I growled out.
	Finnegan skidded up beside the doorway and the man inside opened it fully, stepping out beside him.  As expected, he immediately went on the defensive for his fellow canine.
	“Are you alright?”  He asked Finn, before glaring in my direction.  “Shouting isn’t necessary nor welcome, sir.”
	“I’ve been trying to explain the appeals process to him,” Finnegan said, flustered.  He moved up closer beside the man, lowering his voice.  “But honestly, his grasp of the language-“
	“I understand you, I just don’t care,” I snarled.
	“I just work in Records, I don’t actually work with them,” the man said, shaking his head.  “I can’t be of any help there.  Do you need him to leave?  I can have him escorted out.”
	“I’d hate to put that responsibility on anyone else, he’s my client,” Finnegan sighed.  
	“It’s no problem, usually the threat of arrest’s enough to get them to leave,” the man cleared his throat.  “You.  Need to leave.”  He annunciated each word, pointing towards the staircase.  “I will call the guards.”
	I clenched my fists and stared the two of them down a further moment.  This was likely where Finnegan and I would part ways.  He was standing beside and partially behind the man, but I hadn’t seen if he’d managed what we came here to do just yet.
	“Leave.  Now,” the canine again insisted, putting a bark into his words.  “Arrest.”  He made a motion like manacled hands, and I took that as my cue to go.
	As I headed towards the stairs, I heard Finnegan speaking quietly to him.
	“He’ll be waiting for me in the lobby, is there another way out. . . .”
	I made my way downstairs and followed back the way we’d came, taking special note of some of the paintings I’d noticed on the way in.  It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought, sort of like following trail markers.  I reached the doorway we’d been let in from and passed the shepherd guard and the spotted clerk without a word, striding out into the lobby.  And just as quickly, I left the building.
	If they’d tried to ask me anything on my way out, I ignored them.  The guard never attempted to catch up to me or ask why Finn wasn’t with me, even if I’m sure he was wondering it.  Hopefully, Finnegan was in the midst of finding his own way out of the building.
	I strode down the walkway towards where Odina was waiting with our horses.  She saw me coming from the courtyard and began untying them, saddling up and bringing them around to me.  I took the reins of my old carriage horse and lumbered up into the saddle, grunting.
	“Ambrose?”  She asked, her eyes sliding around the courtyard.
	“He made sure I heard him say he’d be coming out the back,” I said, taking the reins for Finn’s pony and leading it with mine as we began to make our way along the roads around the massive building.  “I hope he manages it. . . .”
	We weren’t certain where or when Finn would be making his way out, so we circled the building a couple of times.  Luckily it was huge, so it didn’t look too strange.  But we couldn’t keep it up for long or someone would certainly notice.
	But then, I saw him, walking quickly but calmly along the fence-line towards a gap in the shrubbery, a side entrance that was still open during the day and publicly available.  He slipped out, hat in hand, and waited for us to trot up alongside him.  As we did, he pulled his dark scarf out of the basin of his hat and wrapped it around his neck again.
	“Did you. . . ?”  I asked expectantly, looking down at him from atop my horse.
	For a moment there I worried, but then he slowly smiled and reached into his hat, dangling a key ring.