By the time Garrett has picked all the hay out of both his clothes and the Clock Tower, and gotten his and Basso's due, plus interest, from that lying noble, he actually managed to put Lord Attano at the back of his mind.

Unfortunately, the wily bastard wouldn't stay there.

Basso's latest job has him tracking down a letter. Unopened, but he'll know it by the seal: a pair of crossed swords pressed in red wax. The seal belongs to the client, a well-off merchant; the letter belongs to his wife. He claims she's using his seal to send letters to his business partner, Simmons. He suspects infidelity and he's paying quite a bit to have it verified or disproved. Naturally he wants this done without his wife or business partner catching wind of it.

Naturally, Garrett is the man for the job.

A handful of days later, his lockpicks find their way into the backdoor of the merchant's house, allowing him to slip into the merchant's workshop. The drunk Watchman at the end of the alley doesn't hear a thing.

Simmons doesn't keep anything worth taking in his workshop; it's mostly rolls of cloth stored on ceiling-high shelves. He isn't keeping the letter down here. Important documents, especially the kind people don't want to be found, are usually in an office or a bedroom. Why they don't just burn them after reading is the type of sentimental thinking he's never understood.

Garrett slinks up the stairs into an empty sitting room. No guards, no lovers. He nabs a silver candlestick off a table and rescues a couple of stray coins lying almost underneath a chair before he registers the sound of two different voices coming from the dining room--one with an accent that's becoming all too familiar. He stops beside the doorway, braces himself for the worst, and looks inside.

The table is empty of all dishes and silverware save for two cups of coffee. Simmons has his hands wrapped around one, nodding along with the conversation. Attano sits at the opposite end of the table, nursing his own cup in gloved hands.

"--been jealous," Simmons is saying. "He... Won't handle this well."

"Then it sounds like I made the right choice coming to you instead," Attano says.

Garrett rolls his eyes.

Simmons sighs and taps his nails against his cup. "It doesn't feel right not to include him, is all I'm saying. He's my business partner."

"The Empress is only offering a way for you and your partner to sell your goods more widely. It won't be a secret you'll have to keep," he reassures him. "Think of the money to be made. The opportunities. This is something he'll thank you for."

"I don't know..."

Garrett tries to stifle his irritation as his mind starts whirring. With Attano here, he'll have to be more careful than he first thought. But this could still work in his favor. That means two of his biggest obstacles will be focused on each other. He'll have almost free rein of the place, assuming Simmons doesn't have a horde of Watchmen stuffed upstairs.

He glances at Simmons, looking closely at his belt. It doesn't look like he has the letter on him, but he hasn't gotten this far in life because he was sloppy. He takes one slow breath, then another. On the exhale, the room around him bleeds into gray, save for the two men sitting at the table. Simmons gleams the expected shade of harmless blue, no letter attached to his belt. Attano is a tense shade of yellow. Caution.

He drifts away from the doorway, letting the Primal settle back down, when he hears Simmons' voice raised in concern.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine." Attano's voice, rigid with... Uncertainty? Fear? "Sorry. You were saying?"

He doesn't know what sort of training that man has, but he's learned the hard way to be careful around him. He has to make this quick. He moves from one room to the next, searching as fast as he can without missing any obvious details. He even checks the ashes in the fireplace in the sitting room. The letter isn't downstairs.

He moves up the stairs, listening for any noise coming from the dining room. Stairs are often the noisiest thing in the house, but the threat sitting drinking coffee in the dining room keeps him moving as fast as possible.

At the top of the stairs, he immediately hears a woman's voice. The left side of the hall has two doorways, both lead to a small sitting room. That's where the woman's voice is coming from. The right side also has two doors, both closed. He takes the right side first.

The first door is a bathroom. He does a cursory check, finds nothing of interest; in all his years of thieving, he's never found a secret passage leading to or from a bathroom.

The next door opens up to a bedroom. Small, clearly meant for one person. He checks the bedside drawer, the bookshelf, and the wardrobe. All he finds is a brooch in the drawer. Then he checks again. But there are no false bottoms in the drawers, no buttons hidden behind the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, no secrets. He even checks under the pillows.

Downstairs, the telltale scrape of chairs being pushed in. They're almost done. He crosses the hall.

"'Wait up for me,' he says," the woman mutters. "'I'll make it up to you.'" She scoffs as she stares into the crackling fireplace. "'Grand life of our own.' Yeah right. My husband might be a troll but at least he's a reliable one."

Her chair is facing the fireplace, her back to Garrett. As she picks up her drink, his eyes are drawn to the small table beside her. A teapot, her cup and saucer and the letter sealed with red wax. As he inches closer, he can see the pair of swords crossed over each other in an X.

Taking the letter is easy, leaving through an upstairs window is even easier. But that prickling sensation is back. This time, he's ready.

He doesn't bother calling out to him or waiting for the man to show himself. He takes off towards Grandmauden, a hiding spot already coming to mind, but first he has to shake him off.

He races through the tangle of streets in Stonemarket, looking for the apothecary, his starting point. This is his home and he won't be easy prey for some royal's spoiled pet. Let him learn to navigate the City the way Garrett did: with no time to second guess. He climbs up to the apothecary's roof and crosses the wooden walkway into a narrow space between buildings. The sound of boots on roof tile follows him.

He glances back once he's on the other side of the gap. Attano is already moving through it. With an annoyed huff, Garrett crosses another roof, another walkway and is greeted by the sight of scaffolding stretching throughout the streets, empty at this time of night. Grandmauden, already confusing to navigate with its sharp corners and interconnected buildings, in the midst of being rebuilt after the fires and riots. A thief's playground.

He climbs through an empty apartment's window, slips right back out another, and comes out on a roof. He veers left, almost backtracking, chest, sides and throat starting to ache, and passes through another space between buildings. The small area he ends up in, behind the apartment, is meant for storage. The smell of the lumber left leaning against one wall mixes with the lingering smell of smoke that seems to permeate this whole district. His eyes land on the shelf, on the space beneath it, just big enough and dark enough to hide him.

Now, he tries to catch his breath in an effort to ignore the ache forming between his shoulder blades, and waits. It takes an infuriatingly short amount of time before he hears the sound of boots on roof shingles. He inches back as far as he can and slows his breathing.

Thump.

Attano drops down into the little dead end. Garrett notes, with no small amount of satisfaction, his heavy breathing as he searches for him. He watches as the other glances around, peeks behind the lumber leaning against the wall, eyes the only door locked from the outside, tries it anyway. He even glances up. Then, seeing no rope and no other way to climb up there, he turns to leave.

The prickling sensation returns full force. A dozen little needles pricking their way up the back of his neck, over his scalp and behind his eye. The pain of it washes over him in waves, rising to an overwhelming level before slowly receding. On the crest of one of the waves, for one frightening instant, he has the sensation of something trying to get in.

He gasps.

Attano pauses. He turns and stares at the shelf--under the shelf and sees Garrett. In one quick motion, he reaches down, seizes him by the wrist and drags him out from underneath it easily despite Garrett's struggling.

"You again." Attano frowns. "I should've known."

"Don't touch me." He yanks his wrist back, glaring daggers now the pain is receding. Anger and an absolute refusal to lose any more money to this man quickly take its place. "A nosy stray is not part of my job. What do you want this time?"

He leans forward, invading his personal space and glaring back. "And a nosy little rat isn't part of mine."

Rat? Garrett almost cracks a smile but he doesn't budge. He's seen much worse for much less.

"Give me that letter."

No one in that house should have known he was there tonight. But Attano does. Not only that, he knows exactly what he took. "What letter?"

"Don't bother lying," he says. "I know it was you. I saw you."

There's no way. Attano was never upstairs, at least not while he was there. He was perfectly quiet. And, assuming someone did notice the letter was gone after he left, how would Attano even catch up to him that fast? He would've had to run to catch up, and Garrett would have heard that. Especially on the rooftops. "Nobody sees me unless I want them to."

"Then you've met your match." He holds his hand out, palm-up. "Letter."

What must the criminals in Dunwall be like if he expects him to give him the letter just because he demanded it? His eyes slide over to the little ledge. So close. He could--

"Don't even think about it." His hand snakes out and wraps around Garrett's again. "I tracked you from that house all the way here. I could find you anywhere in this city. You know I could."

He hardly hears him over the rushing in his ears, the pain building in his head. There's something the Primal doesn't like about this man. Garrett is inclined to agree. But he won't stay away from him.

He looks down even as he tries to pull away. There isn't much he can do to hide the Primal when it's active aside from looking away. The last thing he wants is for Attano to go home and tell his empress about the thief with the magic eye. "Let go." His voice sounds hollow and far away. Small.

He pulls him closer. "You know how to make me leave."

He tries blinking it away. It doesn't work. He doesn't know what this is. He looks up at him, glaring to the best of his ability. "Let go." He tries to put as much force into the words as he can.

"I'm-" he drops off mid-sentence.

Garrett knows how to tell if someone has noticed his eye by now. Attano definitely has. His eyes go round, then his brows furrow like he can't quite make sense of what he's looking at. Then an almost quizzical look crosses his face, something stuck between curiosity and caution.

The prickling is back. Worse than before. A hundred little stings poking and prodding, at him or at the Primal, he isn't sure. He starts to pull away at the same time Attano draws back.

There's a pulse. They both feel it. All the little stings stop. Attano grunts and staggers back, almost falls. All he does is stare as Garrett turns and runs.

He doesn't waste any time heading back to the Burrick. But the combination of whatever the Primal just did and the frantic pace he kept on the way over leaves him exhausted. He's still panting and lightheaded when he drops the letter on Basso's desk.

He looks down at the letter then up at Garrett. His eyes go wide. "What the hell happened to you?"

He shrugs, unsure of where or how to start.

"Was it that Attano fella again?" He asks sternly.

"Am I getting that predictable?" He tries to infuse some levity into his tone, more for Basso's sake than his.

Basso frowns. "He's dangerous, Garrett."

"Don't I know it." A slow pulsing pain is starting to radiate out from his eye to the rest of his head. He puts a hand to his head.

"What happened?" He asks, standing up from his desk. "Did he hurt you?"

He holds up one hand. "Headache. Just... Tell me what's wrong with him."

"Attano doesn't just work for the Empress." He turns and picks a paper off the disheveled shelves behind his desk. He brings it back over and sets it down on the desk. "He's her personal bodyguard, messenger and spy."

It's a newspaper article, complete with a picture. Corvo Attano, Royal Protector. That is definitely the man who pushed him off a roof. Must be how they say hello in Dunwall. He and a group of others he doesn't have any interest in are apparently in the City to offer aid while it recovers. He slides it back to Basso.

"What about the other one?" He asks. "The one in the mask?"

He shrugs. "He's, uh, a bit of a mystery. But get this: he's been spotted in Dunwall too. Raised some hell over there for a while. They call him the Masked Felon."

He's tired just thinking about it. If this Masked Felon is half as much trouble as Attano is, he'll have to find some way to avoid both of them. "What are they doing? Migrating?"

He shrugs again. "Who knows?" Then he smiles, though it seems a little rigid. "Maybe he's after Attano, huh?"

He gives a tired smile. It's the best he can offer. "I should be so lucky."

He heads back to the Clock Tower after getting his payment from Basso and thanking him for the information. He double checks the traps he's set on the lower levels of the tower before he lets himself relax. And yet, there's a feeling he can't shake. As if he's forgotten something and it's just beyond remembering. Something important. He realized it when he was fighting over the letter, but then he had to run, and now... What was it?

He'll have to let it go. For now. It will come back to him eventually. And something about the Masked Felon and Corvo both being from Dunwall... There's something there. Right now, he's too tired to decide if it's important or not. He'll mull it over and make up his mind later, but right now he needs to sleep on it.