Dragooned!

[Lent]

"You two!" A grizzled bark. The man was closing in on forty. His voice was closing in on fifty-five. His eyes, ten years older than that. His bedraggled uniform? Positively ageless. Constable Kurt Lentham sized up his prey. A thief and his minder. "Fool's errand, huh?" Corporal Seasons he knew in passing. Superiors had kept them apart. Volatile and explosive. Literally and figuratively. "Finding a ghost? Know something about that. Eventually it comes to you."

He advanced upon the two. The other man was Tennant. "Yours? Not yet." A man trying to clear his name with an absurd story. A man who had gone through an ordeal to earn the right. "Spooky. Ghouls that can change shapes. Boogity." The last word was rasped out as he wiggled his finger, a mad look in his eyes. He stared at his weathered hand as the wiggling stopped. Scars up and down it. The wood took its toll. "Anyway, not killing anyone. MY Ghost is. You're with me now. BOTH of you. Had a boy." Lentham tapped at the bridge of his knows, either indicating Maxwell's spectacles or ... well it could have been anything really. An itch. He looked like he suffered his share of those. "Ran off. Something to do with a new Governor. Doesn't matter. The job needs doing. Skill, the tricky sort." This to Tennant. "A spine, just gnarled enough." This to Seasons. "Just what I need."

Without another word, Lentham walked past them. "Come on. Karolinger's killed. Will kill again. All on us to end this."