The Death Lady

Jorgen sniffed. The stench of corpses obviously came from humanoids, not seafood. He continued forward, and at the corner of the corridor, a black shadow suddenly leapt out. Reflexively, Jorgen grabbed the other person's wrist and pushed their back against the wall. After raising his dagger, he recognized a pair of fangs protruding from the sharp lower jaw in the dim light. It was an ogre.

"Oh, brother, what are you doing?" The ogre stared at the dagger that was almost vertical to his eyeballs, and his neck jerked back violently. He was holding a pair of tweezers in his right hand and wearing a medical apron that was barely white around his waist.

"What is this place?" Although the other party cowered, Jorgen did not relax his grip.

"Don't you know? Who brought you in? ... Be careful, you're about to cut my teeth. Hey, you don't look like you're craving 'dinner' ... Don't do anything dangerous."

"Tusa, how many times have I told you not to make so much noise coming and going, you always make me uneasy... " A human woman poked her head out of the innermost room, looking puzzled by the scene in front of her, but not particularly panicked. "Hey, what's going on? Who are you?"

"I swear it wasn't me who brought him in, Miss Glocara..."

The two people in front of him seemed to have adapted to similar scenes, but they did not emit any dangerous aura. Glocara was in her thirties, wearing a much cleaner white apron than Tusa's. She stared at Jorgen, her gaze seeming to want to drive away the stubborn child who had wandered into the garden at random. The only disturbing thing was that some stench of corpses came from her.

Jorgen figured it out a bit. "Is this... a hospital?"

"No, but I have a lot more to do here than hospitals, and it needs more quiet. Didn't you see the people sleeping on both sides when you broke in here?" Now release my assistant."

Glocara suppressed her loud voice but spoke sternly. Jorgen removed his hand from Tusa the ogre. He felt very uncomfortable. He thought he must look like a reckless drunkard making trouble without reason.

"Brother, you have quite a grip." Tusa said, rubbing his chest where he had just been pressed.

"Tusa, go back to work. I'll handle the rest."

"Yes, Miss Glocara. Brother, your soul is frighteningly angry. Take it easy, if there's anything I can help with, just tell her. See you later."

Tusa slipped back into the room he came out of. Jorgen put his dagger back in its sheath.

"So," Glocara looked Jorgen up and down, "who are you? Those clothes are really clean. You're not from here, are you?"

Such a direct question made it difficult for Jorgen to open his mouth, and the previous scene had disrupted his thinking to some extent.

"If you don't answer, I'll have to ask you to leave. But I advise you to leave your coat, wandering around Night Herring Lane in those clothes, you'll get robbed."

Glocara's strange yet frank sincerity in her words led Jorgen to abandon the lie. "My name is Jorgen. I work to uphold Stormwind's laws. I have some questions to ask you."

"Stormwind?" Glocara paused for a moment, frowning. "Were you the one following Idoli?"

"It seems I came to the right place. Yes, I followed him. Who are you to him?"

"Come inside and talk."

Glocara went into the room, and Jorgen followed. He now knew where the stench of corpses came from. In the center of this slightly larger room was a human corpse laid out on a long wooden table. It was an emaciated middle-aged man, with his chest to abdomen almost vertically concave and covered with large and small scars. Tubes were inserted into the corpse, guiding the blood into containers next to the wooden table. Simple preservation procedures.

"You should be used to seeing this kind of thing too." Glocara pulled the black curtain in front of the wooden table, covering the corpse, then opened a small door to the side and walked into the next room. "Come in here."

It was a small, cramped room with little color. The worktable was piled with a large number of documents, and medical books and several skull models were buried behind the documents. Against the wall was a small sofa that could barely fit legs. The smell of disinfectant was very strong. There was a smoking pipe on the edge of the table, and Glocara picked it up, took a puff, and put it down again. Jorgen found that her gait and whole body movements were always in a hurry, as if rushing to important appointments and doing various boring chores to calm her nerves before speaking, and she spoke very impatiently. He remembered Banjay's words: "That's the Death Lady's domain." Death Lady? Was she referring to the woman in front of him? This nickname was too inappropriate.

"Where did this corpse come from?" Jorgen asked.

"The twentieth this month." Without Tusa, I couldn't handle even a third of them."

This answer, which seemed to omit too many steps, puzzled Jorgen. Glocara noticed his expression.

"Don't you understand? You really are an outsider. Let me tell you, these corpses are all people who lived in the lower reaches of Booty Bay."

"Can their relatives afford the preservation fees?"

"Relatives? Don't joke. They are all alone. They came here to make a living, died, and the corpses couldn't be left alone. The goblin businessmen would step in."

"I didn't know goblin businessmen were also involved in charity work."

"Charity? As if. They found burying them in the ground too troublesome, throwing them into the sea would lower the meat quality of the fish schools, so they hired people like me to do some simple handling before throwing them into the middle of the ocean from the cargo holds of their long-haul freighters."

"Who are those sleeping in the corridor rooms?"

"Newcomers to Booty Bay. Of course, all from lower berths and cargo holds. Their bosses hired me to house them temporarily. Who knows how many will end up as corpses back here? I bring the living ashore and send the dead aboard. How many of Stormwind's laws have I violated?"

"Not a few. But we can't deal with it."

Jorgen had meant to say "So that's how you got the nickname 'Death Lady'", but held back. Glocara clearly did not enjoy this kind of life. No one would. Glocara had piercing eyes and a rapid speech, but Jorgen could find deep fatigue between her eyebrows.

"I see. Let's talk about Idoli."

"He said someone was following him. I knew someone would come knocking on my door, that rascal always brings me trouble. But fortunately, you're here to help Stormwind, not a creditor or something. Speak, what did you do to him? Did you catch him? That would be best..."

"He's dead." Jorgen interrupted her.

"What? Did you say he..." Glocara's eyes dropped for a moment and looked up again, her previous eloquence turning into incoherence. "You say ... but ..."

"I followed him into the jungle, and then..."

Glocara interrupted Jorgen's words with a slap. This sudden action astonished Jorgen, not because he had been slapped, but because the slap showed no anger, only Glocara's helplessness.

"Don't tell me how he died," she said with her head down, "I forbid you to tell me."

"Do you want to be alone for a while?"

"No need." She took a deep breath. "There's nothing strange about this. This day would come eventually. That foolish boy."

"So he was your..."

"Brother."

Glocara looked up, her eyes wandering anxiously around the room, sometimes staring into a corner as if pondering something. Judging from her expression, she did not seem sad or even indifferent. But to Jorgen, her reaction largely stemmed from not being able to fully understand the news.

"Disobedient since childhood. Always." She said. "In fact, I hadn't seen him for years. Had your people wanted to catch him for a long time?"

"He was a fraudster with a bad reputation."

"I knew he would end up in this line of work. As a child, he could come up with hundreds of ways to trick pocket money out of our parents."

"We had been watching Idoli because he had contacts with many more dangerous people than himself. But this time we were going to take action because he cheated a very sensitive construction fund."

"How much?"

"500 gold coins."

"No wonder he was so excited. " She suddenly remembered something and stared at Jorgen and said, "You suspect I took that money, don't you?"

"Indeed. Even if you didn't mention your relationship with him as a relative, I would suspect you. Whether I take you away now depends on what you say next. And don't lie."

"Don't lie? Fine, I can do that. Let me tell you one thing. Just now I regretted slapping you, but now I don't regret it."

"Think what you like, the focus now is not on me."

"He didn't give me that money. Nor did he tell me where it was hidden, and I didn't ask him either."

"What did he talk to you about?"

"He just said he had money now, was going to make it big, but the situation wasn't quite stable yet. Let me tell you, Idoli was always using people, although clumsily. He wouldn't come to his sister just to share the joy of cheating 500 gold coins. That afternoon, when he saw I was tired of his bragging, he finally revealed the real purpose of finding me."

"To help him get on the goblins' ship?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

"We have no right to search goblin ships."

"I see. He wanted me to use the opportunity to transport the treated corpses to send him off too."

"Why did you refuse him?"

"First, it was too risky. Then, I didn't want to. Mainly, I didn't want to. Do you have anything else to ask?"

"My main purpose was to clarify this, but..."

"That's all I can say for now. It's the truth. Do you believe what I just said, or do you want to take me away in handcuffs or something?"

"I don't intend to take you away."

"Well, if there's nothing else, can you leave first? I have to finish this work tonight. After all, I can't leave this place."

Jorgen pretended to consider it. He saw that the news of his brother's death had brought anxiety to Glocara, which was slowly emerging. She wanted to get rid of the stranger in front of her as soon as possible and send him far away.

"All right, then. We'll stop here today."

Jorgen walked out of the room and closed the door for her. Crossing the corridor, he glanced at Tusa's room. Tusa, who was suturing a corpse, waved at Jorgen. The three addicts who had entered a state of blindness after "dinner" were gone, as if ghosts had seeped into the air. The occupants of the crowded bedrooms were sound asleep. Jorgen's footsteps were light.

He was now more uncertain that Idoli would invest the money in gambling. If he was smuggled away, he would not be able to get the winnings. In inferring this conclusion, Jorgen found that he had taken all of Glocara's words as facts. In principle, he should not believe her at all. She worked for the dark side, was related to Idoli, and had not been subjected to any interrogation.

But Jorgen found it hard to doubt Glocara. She wore a little light makeup, smoked heavily to relieve anxiety, rushed between the corpses of strangers, trying to suppress her naturally high-pitched and fast-talking voice to avoid waking the sleeping people. The three addicts had chosen her corridor to enjoy "dinner" because they knew that even if their eyes couldn't see for the time being, they were safe here.

Walking out of the musty room, Jorgen felt that even the salty sea breeze seemed to become clear. He found that he was eagerly wanting to return to the middle and upper layers of Booty Bay, to return to the bedroom of the Sailor's Rest Inn. People like Glocara and their corpses drifted in the lowest layers of Booty Bay.