"Good morning, Vania," Eddin said, nodding as she walked up. "Everything okay?"

"Fine," Vania grumbled. "How's Prant?"

"He's fine, luckily. He only got a very small dose of the poison. Had to leave him home to rest today, though." He looked at her. "Why'd you contact me this morning and say we needed to meet outside?"

Vania dropped her hood; her dark blue hair was pulled back in a simple braid and then tied to hang in loose loops. The spines on her head poked up out of her hair, tips glinting in the sunlight. The sunlight also caught on the gold emblem on her black uniform.

"Ah, I see. New uniform, and you haven't had a chance to get it spelled yet the way your other one was. For hiding some things." He smiled at her. "I like your new hairstyle. Looks lovely."

Vania scowled at him and flipped her hood back up, muttering, "Commander's orders."

"She commanded you to do your hair differently?"

"No. She told me to stop hiding."

"Ah. Then," he tugged at the back of her hood, exposing her head once more, "stop hiding. Let everyone see how beautiful you are."

"Easy for you to say—she didn't order you to expose yourself." She crossed her arms, turning her back to him with a huff.

His eyes instantly riveted on her wings, hanging loosely at her back, framing her cloak.

She flushed and grabbed at her cloak, hauling it over her wings and around her shoulders, clutching it tightly closed over her chest. Her figure immediately smoothed and straightened as the masking spell on the cloak covered her. "Just. Stop looking."

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. If you like, you can go wait in Tarva's stall. No one will bother you there. I can go inside and get our orders and meet you." He reached over and gently pulled her hood back over her head. "Go wait with the horses; I'll be back soon."

She shivered, pulling her cloak tighter. "We already have orders."

"You already spoke to Captain Murrick?"

"No."

"Then how can we already have today's orders? I thought you said she told you to carry on your duties as normal unless she—" he interrupted himself, saying instead as the conclusion dawned on him, "She already gave you an assignment."

"Yes."

"Then I will go to Captain Murrick and tell him we're working on your orders from Commander Aleira today."

Vania bowed her head, still clutching her cloak close. "Thank you, Eddin."

"It'll be okay, Vania," Eddin said. "Just you wait and see." He smiled and clapped her on the shoulder. "Go. Do you need anything from inside?"

Vania sighed. "We're gonna need old case files. But trying to sort through them in the stable seems impractical. But, I just can't—"

"Yeah, I get it. Everyone's inside right now. Wait for me in the stable, anyway. If you stay with Tarva, no one will bug you, even if they do go in to get a horse; hell, if you hide behind her, no one will even see you. I'll meet back up with you after I speak to Captain, and we can discuss how best to tackle this; once everyone else has gone out to the streets for work, we can go inside."

Vania nodded. "Thank you, Eddin."

Piled parchments made walls on the tops of their desks. Eddin and Vania sat, scanning documents for references to the Dark Eaters and any hints as to what the organization did and where it resided.

"So," Eddin said cautiously, looking around the empty room, "why did the commander want you to... um. Change your look? Did she say?"

Vania sighed in exasperation as she set another file aside. "She said something about striking fear into people. I think it's meant to be an intimidation tactic of some sort."

Eddin snorted, trying to swallow his laugh. "Clearly, she's never seen you angry. Even with your masking spells on, when you're mad, it's terrifying."

Vania glared at him from under her hood. "You're not helping," she snapped.

"Though, if she really was serious about you not hiding anymore... why did she let you keep your old uniform cloak? She should've given you a new one to match your new uniform. Having the old blue cloak to cover the new black uniform seems a little odd. Plus, the emblems don't quite match."

"I don't know, Eddin. She just gave me the bundle and said it was my uniform. Not like we discussed it!" Vania frowned. The new uniform even has slits in the back for my wings. How did she know what my Mark was? Sensing my aura and knowing I was Marked wouldn't be hard for her, since she clearly could see through my masking charm during my interview, but it's not like I didn't have them covered up...

Footsteps sounded on the stairway and Vania sighed as a headache began.

"You said you needed information from our files?" Rand'din asked as he loomed over Eddin's desk. He looked over to Vania, spying the black cuff of her uniform sleeve, and added, "Congratulations on your promotion, Enforcer Nahalora."

"Thanks," Vania muttered.

"Yeah, we got orders to look into an organization called 'Dark Eaters,'" Eddin replied. "Have you or any of the others upstairs ever heard anything? We know we ran into rumors and whispers of them during the Du l'Tagne case... Turns out there are other cases they've been... loosely linked to... as well."

"We will check, unless you'd rather look yourselves," Rand'din replied. "Though, by the looks of your desks, you have enough files to weed through as it is."

"Thank you, Rand'din. We need any information about the Dark Eaters themselves, as well as what case it was with and where the information came from." Eddin quickly added, "If you have time. We know you folks upstairs are usually very busy."

"We have time," Rand'din assured him. He added quietly, "Apparently, after a high-profile case involving a murderous magic-user, people remember what they fear most about wizards. We have orders to keep ourselves in the background for awhile. To make sure there are no unfortunate repercussions."

"That case ended... almost a month ago," Vania replied.

"Yes, Enforcer Nahalora, but fear and distrust... permeates. Once it has taken root, it takes time to fade away. And tempers have been short in this district lately, so our superiors feared the public would be more likely to lash out."

"Well, we certainly appreciate whatever help you can give us," Eddin said. He gestured to the piled papers. "As you can see, we've got our work cut out for us."

"Very well. We shall send down a report summary before end of shift." Rand'din turned and walked back up the stairs.

Vania sighed as her headache slowly faded.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Vania mumbled.

"Two pages of notes, most of it vague references, are all we have after looking through all those files," Vania said. "And one of those pages was from the wizards upstairs. And hardly any info on where the information originally came from. I thought we had to note what people we spoke to as witnesses for the information in our files?"

"Yeah," Eddin agreed quietly as they walked out the station door, pausing to hold the door open for a group of enforcers heading inside. "It did seem odd. Even if one or two enforcers were sloppy, there should've been more information in those files. I doubt every single enforcer over the years neglected to take notes on witnesses like that."

"Especially since the details in the rest of the files was good," Vania replied, looking off down the street.

"You think someone altered the files?"

"Yeah."

"They didn't look smeared. There were no obvious inkblots that bled to cover information. Hell, even the water stains and mouse-chewed corners didn't remove the information."

"I know. It was simply... not there. No gaps where words were removed, no obvious hiding of information."

"You think the files were altered magically," Eddin said.

"Only explanation I can think of," Vania admitted.

"If any of our wizard colleagues had noticed spell residue on the files, that would've been in Rand'din's notes," Eddin said. "He's very... meticulous like that."

Vania sighed. You're known to be meticulous, Jezora told Bergin. Ever since the spell on my memories broke, I've been playing the event over and over in my head, Bergin confessed. She looked up at Eddin. "We need to go talk to Bergin. About his first brush with Du l'Tagne." About the night he killed my parents.