Third Rule of Myrken Wood: Nothing's Sacred. Want to know the first rule? Don't care. Third rule is what matters here. Some places should be sacred. Home and Hearth. Church and Hearth. Meeting House and Hearth. Everywhere needs a Hearth. Gets cold in the winter. Fire's cheaper than blankets. Grows on trees. The place that has a hearth and is the most sacred of all? The tavern. Father to you; best place to ask advice. Mother to you; the teat you suckle on til the day you die. Brother to you; nowhere better to find fellowship. Sister to you; well, if you had a sister it'd make her both prettier and easier to deal with the longer you were there.
Sacred, that's the point, except in Myrken, nothing's sacred. Try to burn a Councilor's house, good and fine. Succeed, kill some poor bastard, bit less good, but not the end of the world. Try to burn down the Inquisitory, they probably deserve it. Little piggies who go wee-wee-wee and build a house out of stone, anyway. "They tried to burn down the Stinky Sheep, Eddington." So pay attention, right.
Lentham was ragged as ever, making his erstwhile partner and subordinate looking almost dashing by comparison. "Did pretty good with the last fires, good enough. Followed leads. Took notes. Didn't get killed. Didn't kill any babies. Showed that you could do the job if the job was right for the doing. Maybe it is now," he looked down at a little notebook and blinked three, slow, long blinks. "This is more serious. Good place, nice people, cheap drinks. We've survived the Meetinghouse burning down. Nothing important in there. Taverns though? Taverns are the lifeblood and all that. Or the drink is the life blood and the taverns are those things that blood flows through. Veins, right?" Enough looking at the notebook. Best to move on to the lifeblood. He opened his flash, took a sip, didn't share. Eddington proved himself competent, not a hero.
"Tell me again what you think about your fire. Then I'll tell you about mine."That would be the easy part. Words. Drinks. Drink, that was, since Eddington didn't get one. They were walking down a dark path now. Made him peering at that notebook pointless. Sometimes you did pointless things in Myrken to remind yourself that you were alive. Rule Five. That one was for free. Eddington hadn't been informed where they were going, just asked to meet Lentham here by the edge of the town wall. "What I learned from talking to who what were there."