(2025-06-12) Mayellen Takes the Case

Details

Author:	inkie
Summary:	A few months ago, Admiral Fallon visited Mayellen Hazan with a proposition. (Not that kind of proposition.) In the wake of Deathwing's defeat, as Stormwind City gets back to business, he makes good on that offer.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: Apex Investigations

For the past several months, a massive contruction undertaking has occupied the entire length of an unassuming dead-end side street in Old Town. Said street has been re-dubbed Resurrection Row, though as no official signs have appeared as yet, this seems likely to be the neighborhood's own colloquial coinage.

Several of the buildings at the lane's near end, closest to where it opens off the main road, are now completed or nearing completion. The exteriors have been designed to fit cosmetically with the rest of Old Town's general style — half-timbered buildings with gray stone foundations and red-tiled mansard roofs — but the resemblance ends there. Most of these are taller, stately townhouse-type buildings of modern design, set with more windows than is Stormwind-typical, including dormer windows on the upper level. Black chimney-pipes rise from their roofs. The architectural style will look more familiar to a native of Gilneas or Kul Tiras than one of Stormwind.

On the ground floor of each building, to the left of the entrance, is a broad bay window that looks more like a shop window rather than the domestic dormers above. That's because it is: Each of these buildings has been zoned for mixed use, and the ground floors are meant to house businesses, the upper floors apartments.

At the first of these buildings around the corner from the main street, a discreet shingle has already been hung out beside the door. It reads PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. Up the few stairs from the street and just inside on the left, a sturdy wooden door is set with an upper glass pane that bears the same neatly-stenciled inscription.

Through the door, the office's reception space is a comfortable room designed more like a study than a commercial waiting room. A pair of comfortable armchairs are arranged by the bay window on the left with a tea table between them. There is a rack of newspapers and a bookcase (currently empty) along the far wall, and a polished wooden reception desk (also currently empty) on the right.

Behind the reception desk, four doors open into four neat offices, each of which at the moment contains a desk and chair, a client chair, a bookcase, and a small filing cabinet. All are empty, and there is no further decor. To the side of the reception desk on the far wall beside the bookcase is a fifth door; this one opens into an employee lounge of sorts, furnished with cupboards, a table and chairs, and a settee.

Annai Curran is standing behind the reception desk at the moment, dressed in one of her neat tweed skirt-suits and holding the handle of her attaché case before her in both hands. Siamus Fallon, in the sort of suit that says he has just come from a session of the House of Nobles, is perusing the newspaper rack. Predictably.

They await the new proprietress of the agency.

Mayellen Mullby arrives right on time in a crisply tailored light brown dress with an empire waist that allows for postpartum tummy. Her thick dark hair has been textured with teasing and/or product to dull out its usual auburn highlights and pulled back in a neat knot that resembles a chocolate pastry.

"Admiral Fallon. Miss Curran," she says with a neat bob of her head. "Where shall we start?" Right to business.

Siamus turns at once, already smiling, and crosses to offer out a hand. Miss Curran sets her attaché case on the reception desk and begins taking out papers.

"Mrs. Hazan," Siamus says. "Have a look around and tell me whether it suits, and if so, Annai's got the lease papers and the keys, and then we'll go into more details."

"It's excellent," May says. "Larger than I was expecting — so many rooms. Room to grow." She nods in satisfaction.

Siamus gestures expansively. "Aye, I'd thought that you and Miss Kensington-Whit would make a start of it, and hire your secretary as the pair of ye please, and then there are offices to spare if ye decide to bring other partners in. If there's more ye require in the way of furnishings or facilities, ye let Miss Curran know."

Miss Curran glances up from her arrangement of papers on the desk and smiles politely.

Siamus pauses and then asks, low-voiced and solicitous, "The stairs at the front weren't a trouble, were they?"

Mayellen smiles crookedly. "A bit, but that's my own fault for leaving my cane at home. I keep forgetting this is a safe place for it. That I no longer have to give an appearance of being of perfectly sound body to get work. Next time, I'll bring it. For now, I'd like to sit while we talk."

"Please, of course." Siamus gestures to the armchairs by the window.

Mayellen sinks into a chair with obvious relief and arranges her skirts. Then she slaps her palms lightly on her knees, her pale gaze rising to meet Siamus's.

"So! Papers to sign, you said?" She rummages in her bag for a pen.

Siamus turns and gestures to Miss Curran, who comes out from behind the reception desk bearing a sheaf of documents. She sits down in the other armchair and arranges the papers on the tea table. "This is your lease agreement. Note that for the first six months — that is, until mid-November — your rent will be five silver a month. After that point it will rise to market rate, but it will remain fixed at that point for at least the next three years, unless the market rate should decrease, in which case it will drop accordingly and fix at the new, lower rate.

"We have standard property insurance on the building and facilities, but you will be required to arrange your own professional indemnity insurance. I can recommend the names of reputable firms if you like.

"Assuming all of that is acceptable, you will need to initial here and here, and then sign and date here."

Pen in hand now, Mayellen listens intently, nodding at each point. Once Miss Curran has finished her explanation, Mayellen reaches for the papers. "The discounted rent will be a Lightsend while we drum up business," she says. "How did you manage that?"

Miss Curran smiles and tilts her head toward Siamus. "You may thank your landlord directly, if you like."

May turns to give Siamus a look of sincere gratitude. "Really, Admiral, you're too generous." She pauses, tipping her head. Her neatly bound hair doesn't stir. "Or perhaps you consider it a sound investment, in which case I thank you for your faith in me, which frankly pleases me a great deal more than generosity."

"A sound investment for more than one reason," Siamus tells her. "I anticipate your success, naturally. Can't imagine otherwise, having relied on ye myself in the past. I also anticipate that you ladies and your agency — and its success — will be a model little business for the street and a draw for other business tenants along the row." He gestures vaguely toward the window. "And naturally I anticipate ye filling a need in the city that will prove of service to her people."

"I have the same anticipation, Admiral," Mayellen says, lowering her gaze for long enough to read the contract and sign and initial in all the right places. When she's finished, she extends it toward Miss Curran, then meets Siamus's gaze once more. "Anything I should begin work on today? Any outstanding or stalled investigations?"

Siamus exchanges a glance with Miss Curran. She nods, gathers up the signed papers, and rises to go back to the desk. Siamus takes her former seat across from Mayellen. "A bit of a… peculiar one, as it happens. And personal. It's not time-sensitive, so please feel free to work on it as time allows among other matters, but I can certainly start ye off with it."

Miss Curran at the desk has removed a large, rolled scroll of some manner from her attaché case. (It is clear now that the case is enchanted; the scroll’s emergence is reminiscent of Mary Poppins removing an umbrella from her bag.) She lays it on the desk.

Siamus glances that way and then gets to his feet again and offers Mayellen a courteous hand to help her rise. "I'll have to show it to ye, and I'm afraid there's not room enough on the tea table."

Mayellen politely pretends she did not notice the hand as she uses the arm of her seat to help lever herself back to a standing position.

"Let's see it," she says, brisk and eager to get to work.

Miss Curran takes out a small piece of paper — approximately the dimensions of a gift tag, because it is in fact a tag of some kind — and lays it beside the scroll, then steps away from the desk.

Siamus takes no evident offense at the polite hand-snubbing; he is also acquainted with Miss Kensington-Whit, who is soon to be May's co-worker and is evidently a pea in the pod. He crosses to the desk himself. "Several months ago," he tells Mayellen, "this was delivered to Fallon House in my absence." He touches the scroll, and then picks up the tag to show her. In a crisp, copperplate hand, it reads simply STORMWIND FALL. The card is fuzzed by scraping after the second L, suggesting part of the second word has been scratched away.

"It said 'Stormwind Fallon,'" Miss Curran puts in. "I scraped off the final letters to take the ink for an alchemical analysis." Indeed, the ink is a distinctive, slightly iridescent shade of peacock-green.

Siamus lays the card down at the desk's edge nearest Mayellen and unrolls the scroll.

The roll of heavy, fine-quality parchment proves to be a map. It has been colorfully and precisely hand-drawn in vivid hues, coastlines demarcated in minute, craggy detail, and both terrestrial elevations and nautical depths have been noted.

Apart from the architecturally-neat numbers denoting latitude and longitude, elevations and depths, and the meticulous compass rose in the lower right-hand corner, nothing is written on the map at all: no text, no labels — except for an almost-missable, minute black x marked over one of the rivers that fractures a broken mass of land north of an inland body of water.

Mayellen leans in, fascinated, her storm-sky gaze roving over the unfamiliar coastal outline. She takes a step back, then, eyes going unfocused, hands smoothing the air as though over the edge of the paper to what's missing from it — a lot of something. Her fingertips seem to trace what would be the Eastern Kingdoms, from Eversong Woods down to about the Thandol Span.

"This is a map of Kul Tiras," she said. "Custom for its particular purpose. Where is this?" She points to, but does not touch, the x.

"That is part of the issue at hand," Siamus says. "It's not a thing a mainlander will spot, but this map is not… Kul Tiras as I last knew it. The coastlines are different here and here" — he traces his finger along a southern edge of Tiragarde, where an archipelago of tiny islands stands offshore, and then repeats the gesture with the western coast of Stormsong Valley — "and the shape of the Sound is different, as well as the western channel and the delta. And this" — now he indicates that fragmented, river-run land north of Tiragarde Sound — "was not previously so broken." He touches the x. "That mark is set at the coordinates of my grandparents' lands. The Westrys. Except, as ye can see, it appears now to be a river, according to this map."

He glances over at Mayellen. "If it isn't a piece of fantasy — and it's certainly too artful to be an idle fantasy, someone exercised a great deal of skill in the making of it — then I assume it's a map of Kul Tiras since the Cataclysm. The difficulty is that I have no way to confirm that because I can't contact anyone in Kul Tiras, and no one in Kul Tiras ought to be able to contact me. I can't know whether it's fiction or fact until I know who sent it and how."

He picks up the tag again. "It could, of course, be a mainland cartographer. In which case he took a great deal of trouble to concoct an imaginary Kul Tiras or he has some way in and out of the isle I don't know of. It could be a Kul Tiran cartographer, in which case I'd like to know who and how they got it to me. The card is the only thing we have, and it said — as Miss Curran notes — 'Stormwind Fallon'. Which implies to me Kul Tiras. No one on the mainland would call our House anything but Fallon. In Kul Tiras, they would distinguish us from the Stormsong Fallons."

Mayellen nods, her expression intrigued. She turns to look at Miss Curran. "Anything on that ink yet?"

"Indeed," says Miss Curran, and draws from her mysterious attaché case a document which she passes to May. It proves to be a fairly technical alchemical analysis report. "The chief bit of interest is that the ink contains anchor weed. Despite the word 'weed' in the name, anchor weed is rare and rather valuable. And it is only found in Kul Tiras." She shrugs. "That's not to say a mainland cartographer couldn't get hold of any, or of ink made with it, but it is suggestive."

"And this is also suggestive," Mayellen says, pointing to the x. "Who on the mainland would happen to know that these exact coordinates are relevant to the recipient? The depth of the anonymity involved here — lack of labels perhaps to avoid excessive handwriting samples — this suggests someone who is flouting laws and risking danger to make this communication. I would bet hard money this was somehow sent from Kul Tiras… but how they got around the blockade, I can't imagine. Extraordinary effort was made. The message must be deeply important."

Siamus and Miss Curran both regard May in silence for a moment. Siamus is smiling. Miss Curran is not. The silence feels unanimously approving nonetheless.

"That is exactly so," says Siamus. "The whole thing seems… suggestive of Kul Tiran drafting. My hypothesis is that the cartographer wanted to convey news of my grandparents — or at least their lands — in the wake of the Cataclysm. And rather than send a note to that specific effect — potentially more traceable — they perhaps assumed — rightly — that others at Fallon House would wish to see the information the full map conveys, for news of a sort about their own homes and people." He pauses. "A hypothesis. I can't think what other significance it has. There's nothing to suggest it's strategic or political; the mark makes it personal to my family."

"How exactly did this map appear?" Mayellen asks, looking between the both of them. "On what day and time, and by what means? Did it arrive via the arcane mail system, a courier? Simply appear on your doorstep? You said it was delivered in your absence, but there were people at the house, correct? Staff, guests? Did any of them observe its arrival?"

Siamus looks to Miss Curran.

"It arrived on the 7th of September," she says crisply. "The Admiral was in Vashj'ir. It was hand-delivered, and at the time I'm afraid no one took much note of it; documents and parcels come routinely from the city by courier for the Admiral. Including maps — he's known to collect them. Her Grace at the time assumed it was one he'd ordered, in fact, and set it by in his office until his return home.

"There were a few other parcels for the household delivered along with the map, and the courier who delivered them all was from a city agency the family employs frequently; they often receive cargos directly at Stormwind Harbor to deliver direct to Fallon House. Mr. Shine found the courier in question and interviewed him, and he said that he picked up the bundle of items at the docks to deliver 'as a lot,' and had no idea the specific provenance of any of them. No one else we spoke with at the agency or the docks could say exactly how the map came to be in the delivery. I don't believe they would even have noted it as peculiar at the time if it simply appeared — was placed by an outsider — among the other items at some point. As I said, it isn't at all unusual for the Admiral to receive various documents, including maps."

Mayellen's eyes go distant as she tries to picture all of this.

"So… at the docks, there is a set of items meant for the Admiral. At some point, casually, this item is placed among them, either by someone recognizable at the docks and so not suspect, or someone who waits for a moment of inattention to sneak it in. If you've already interviewed the dock folk involved, either one of them is lying — paid off perhaps or personally motivated to protect the sender — or a stranger slipped it in without the regular dock workers noticing."

Mayellen chews on her lower lip a moment, eyes fixed on the wall.

"An item from Kul Tiras would have to have come on a separate vessel from regular Stormwind shipping, wouldn't it? As there would be no Stormwind vessels returning from Kul Tiras last September, would there? If not, how did a Kul Tiran vessel go unnoticed and unremarked on, on our shores? Was there somehow a ship in Stormwind style in Kul Tiras that this person could access, allowing it to get close enough to our shores to send a rowboat without anyone raising an alarm? Was there telemancy involved? If so, this suggests a portal of some kind, which would need an anchor on this side, which suggests a cooperative mage who was here to create it."

Mayellen glances apologetically to Siamus, then to Miss Curran. A wry half-smile appears on her face. "I know I'm not being particularly helpful yet, but this is sort of… my process. I just throw a hundred questions at it and try to figure out which sounds least absurd."

Siamus has been listening to her with his head cocked, bright-eyed with interest. He shakes his head. "No, no, it's a sound process, I appreciate it. But there's your mystery for ye; Miss Curran and Mr. Shine looked into it themselves among their regular duties, but pursuing it eventually became too much in view of that other work. Miss Curran can provide ye with any information ye like from their investigation as ye proceed, including the information about the courier agency and so on. Will that suffice?"

"Oh, most definitely," Mayellen says. "Especially now that I've found a good nurse for Aprilanna, I have plenty of time to stick my nose into things and drive people bananas with endless detailed questions." She turns briefly to Miss Curran to incline her head respectfully. "Thank you for the tax information, by the way Miss Curran, that helps justify my decision even further, though my reasons were already sound, I think. We don't know much about whether fel corruption can be transmitted through maternal feeding, and I'd not really like to be a test case. But now that I'm no longer a human 24-hour buffet, I have the ability to go anywhere at any time and to persevere as much as needed."

Siamus laughs. "Aye, I do think a nurse a sound investment for a working lady, fel or no. And Miss Curran will know all the ins and outs of the tax codes for ye like that. She can keep your books for the first year or until ye find someone ye like for yourselves, whichever's sooner."

"I can't express enough how grateful I am for this opportunity. What it means to me and my family. I couldn't have done this on my own, and it's a dream for me, really." May catches herself starting to get Sentimental and puts the brakes on, fast. "So these offices…" She points to the doors behind Miss Curran. "Is one in particular assigned to me? Are they all alike? Does it matter? I find myself eager to stake a claim on one."

"It's your agency, Mrs. Hazan," Siamus tells her. "Take which ye like. And name the business as ye please, as well; we can have the signs repainted. These were only a stopgap to get ye set up."

Her eyes go wide. "Oh, a name. I… will try to do it justice. This will take some thought." She moves toward the office doors, opening each and peeking into it, checking for differences.

The two offices in the center are moderately larger than the two corner offices, more square-shaped than rectangular.

Siamus rolls the map up again and confers quietly with Miss Curran; there is a jingle as Miss Curran removes a set of keys from her attaché case.

"This one," Mayellen says decisively about the right-center office, directly behind the reception desk. "This is my office."

She stares into it, a heaviness settling into the moment as she visibly marks it Significant, engraving it onto her memory. Then she turns toward the jingle of the keys.

Miss Curran steps forward to extend to her a keyring with two keys on it. "This one is for the building's door, and this one is for the office's outer door. The Admiral and I both have copies of our own."

Mayellen takes the keys from Miss Curran with the same air of deliberate solemnity with which she regarded her new office.

"Thank you," she says. "I'll start putting up some flyers around just as soon as I think of a name, and work on investigating the map while I wait for other clients to come calling. I'll see about getting the reception desk properly occupied once we have money coming in to pay someone properly, but for now I suppose I can see to it myself, as I won't be terribly busy with cases at first."

"Excellent. And I'll be speaking with Miss Kensington-Whit as soon as," Siamus tells her, "to put the two of ye together. I expect that your connections with Cobalt and hers wi'the Stormwind Guard will both be assets to your operation." He steps forward to offer Mayellen another handshake. "I very much look forward to seeing your work, Mrs. Hazan."