While it may look suspicious, in retrospect and in comparison with previous guard captain appointments, that Henry Noman was appointed with minimal deliberation, that was far from the feeling at the time. It is hard to overstate how popular Noman was among the populace, among the guard corps, and even within the Regency's bureaucracy.

  More than that, the other lieutenants, despite their seniority, lacked the notoriety that Noman had amassed in his short tenure with the guards. It is not just that he was better known, but the other lieutenants were hardly known at all. Only their names have propagated through to today: the outer city lieutenant, a man named Darius Smelt; the inner city lieutenant, Even Svalbard; the lieutenant of the royal guard, Feris Main; and at this time an accident left the guard corps with one lieutenant covering both the inner and outer gates, the overworked Patricia Shorn.

  Despite homing the largest portion of Beorne's population, the outer city was mostly neglected by the guard and the Regency. The senior Lord Braven did so out of self-interest, using it as a breeding ground for easy corruption, but it was not a new phenomena nor one that has been well addressed since.

  It is not referred to as a slum for no reason. The outer city is administratively not considered part of Beorne. There is minimal protection, minimal social services, minimal attention paid to their concerns at all. Thus, the lieutenant in charge of the outer city actually has little to do with the outer city as a district; they are in charge of the nearby countryside, dealing with bandits, dealing with merchants, and so on. The slums are only part of this in the same way any reports of banditry would be part of it; prevention is difficult, so it is ignored until the problem gets too large.

  Smelt was well-suited to this role in the worst ways. Instead of protecting the people of the outer district, he made numerous agreements with the various gangs to keep their abuse to what he considered reasonable levels. He split up the outer district among a dozen gang leaders, told them to get along, and set rough limits on their activities to keep violence and resistance to a minimum. Smelt considered it a good trade-off to keep the drugs, murders, muggings, and extortion to levels that didn't require significant guard intervention, allowing him to focus on his other duties.

  As a bonus, he made a tidy sum extorting the gangs himself.

  Smelt's indiscretions were not exactly unknown to the other lieutenants. When Fritz was captain she would advocate behind the scenes to have Smelt ousted from his position, but the Regent and the courts did not see enough evidence to do anything serious. Or, more aptly put, the evidence only pointed to issues with people they didn't consider citizens of Beorne in any real way, so why should they care? He protected the roads and merchants fine, he addressed the concerns of the farmers feeding Beorne and the mining camps under the Regent's control, and he kept the concerns of the outer city from bleeding inwards. Why should they care if some gangs were being extorted on the side? If they were left alone the crime situation would likely be even worse.

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  Thus, for quite a number of years, a criminal enterprise matured in the slums of Beorne. It had support from both the guard lieutenant in charge of their area of operations as well as the Regent at the top of the legal food chain.

  When Noman came to power he was aware only of Smelt's corruption. He had seen Fritz attempt to do things the legal way to no avail and had no plans to be as lenient with him as the law was.

  It was the first point where Noman properly highlighted his brash nature to Beorne. He received intelligence about a meeting Smelt was planning with the Black Arrow Gang, a group wanted for several assassinations of notable figures in the north. Using underlings he trusted from his time as the mid-city lieutenant, he raided the meeting and slaughtered everyone inside, including Smelt.

  The official story, backed up by all guards present, was that they found Smelt already dead at the hands of the Black Arrow Gang. No one believed him, but Smelt's situation was hard to argue in favour of, so it passed by with minimal questioning.

  Henry Noman would meet with Lord Braven once a week. The Regent did not take charge of legal proceedings, delegating that to the Chief Barrister and Chief Judge to prosecute and convict criminals, but he was technically responsible for them. Noman was interested in streamlining the justice system, improving cooperation between the guard corp and the barrister's office to present criminals for judgement more quickly. He wanted guards to be able to collect evidence, present testimony, and recommend charges for the lawyers to pursue, freeing up much of the time they spent on grunt work to focus on more complex issues.

  While it seemed to Noman that Braven was receptive to these ideas, he really only tried to half-implement most of them, and mostly in ways that short-changed investigative powers and shuffled people in and out of prison more easily. It wasn't to the point of lawlessness, but even the citizens within Beorne's walls were growing concerned about their safety. The safety they sought from Noman's presence felt more distant than when he was a lieutenant.

  Braven, for his part, felt more safe than ever: crimes were barely investigated, and that meant his involvement in the odd bit of corruption was even less likely to come to fruition.

  Noman did all he should to put the citizens at ease, but when his guards were arresting the same lowlifes week to week he felt like he needed to do more. He needed to go farther. If the justice system refused to serve justice then he would.

  The men he put in charge of the outer and mid city were previously trusted subordinates of his, and they trusted his orders implicitly. So when he ordered them to raid a group of bandits hanging out in a basement slum they did so without question. Every bandit who didn't surrender and confess was killed.

  The same happened with smugglers operating near the mid-city gates. The same with a trafficker working out of a mid-city apartment. The same with a brothel running out of the rear of an inn.

  The same with a group of teenagers loitering outside the guard headquarters, whose flight from the scene was taken as resisting arrest and a threat to the guard corp. The youth were vagrants, their absence was hardly noted, but it was unequivocally an act of tyranny.

  Henry Noman's mission warped into a bloody melee with a silent but disturbing tagline: obey the law or die. Most people failed to notice this shift, but his lieutenant in charge of the inner city, a career guardsman by the name of Even Svalbard, knew well that eventually Noman would go so far it would break out into the public. He would have justification, he knew, but it would not be enough to be forgiven.