The fatigues were rancid and wet with sweat, and I wasn't entirely certain they had not soiled themselves at one point out of sheer laziness. Gritting my teeth, I donned the garb without complaint as Clara did, leaving our folded clothing with Emmaline to place inside her pack. Clara kept her carbine, but I took a fallen lasgun and kept my power sword slung across my back, donning a small, stained tarp over it as a makeshift cloak. 

I lead us out of the docks, moving with a laziness and looking around with disdain smeared across my face. I found the dregs of society had a way of walking. Men who would gut you as soon as greet you moved with a subtle loathing and a bowling gait, as if gravity itself annoyed them. Clara was not a field agent, used more for security detail on Pacitus and the Caledonian when I needed her presence there, but she did well in copying my movements. The two in the back were partially cloaked by our presence at the fore, and the upended ground and constant puddles of fetid water only deepened how tired they were of this whole expedition, which was good for our cover at the current moment. 

"Ska, id got the hagk!" One of the guard called, asking what I had brought them today, curiously not posing it as a question in the traditional sense. 

"Jama, jis fen wobs fo boz," I remarked derisively. Hopefully if he thought the two trailing Clara and I were meant to meet their leader, they wouldn't be stopped on the way to the city. 

Three of the guards glanced over at the group, but only in passing. One of the guards was squatting like a particularly ugly ape, and he peered at them suspiciously, but a slave suddenly dropping a bucket of water drew his attention back to his work. I kept myself from breathing a sigh of relief as we sauntered past the guards and made our way into the mouth of the first towers wrought of eerie looking basalt. As we stepped under the first blanket of shade, the coolness was contrasted by the feeling of anxiety that shot up my back and prickled my psychic senses. I felt very much I had stepped out of the cook pot and into the fire.