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Twilit Crossroads [P]
Topic Started: Sun Nov 12, 2017 9:02 pm (568 Views)
Ioann
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FOUR BELLS

The ripe smell of fermenting garbage, mixed with a metallic twinge of blood – or dissipated spellcraft – lingered heavily in the mouth of the narrow alleyway. Over the corpse. Orange lanterns flashed silently on and off, on and off, strobes reflecting in shallow pools that formed from imperfections in the cobbles. The fine drizzle that started late in the night was just beginning to wane. Inspector Vigaard pushed past a few on-duty constables cordoning off the scene while her partner, the unfortunately-named Deputy Inspector Karstov, trailed after, rattling through the timeline of the case.

“...found his body just after two bells, and called it in. I got the call just after, and brought in the team to secure the scene. That’s when I called you. Nobody’s touched the body, except for Richards, and then only so far to check for a pulse--”

“--Not everything dead in this city had a pulse to begin with, Deputy Inspector,” Vigaard tiredly reminded him. She crouched over the body, scanning it closely. With practiced authority, she held out her hand. Karstov slipped her a pair of thin leather gloves, which Vigaard donned with little ceremony.

“Yes ma’am.”

Karstov accepted the rebuke without protest. Vigaard sighed and prodded the body with her gloved hands. An intricate tattoo was inscribed in the body’s stony flesh, just above the clavicle. Two coins encircled by a serpent. A gang symbol. No other visible marks. The creature’s carapace would hide signs of strangulation, but there wasn’t any debris beneath the claws either. Whatever had killed this stone-man, it had happened quickly. But the face, all twisted up like it was, was evidence enough that at least it had seen what tagged it.

A little justice, then.

“Smell it, Karstov? No? Whatever magic killed this bastard’ll be impossible to trace now. The drizzle,” she waved her hand in a small circle, gesturing toward the sky, “it erases the stink of magework.”

Vigaard stood and pulled at the collar of her coat to ward off the relentless, inevitable wet that characterized Balefiren mornings in the Morozhen District.

“You should have called me first.”

“...Of course ma’am.”

“Hell, we should thank whoever did this. One less gang-banger to Tame.”

Vigaard suppressed a yawn and called over Richards. The latter, a green constable probably on his first solo route, was visibly trembling. Vigaard let out a sigh and shook her head slowly.

“Mind getting me a cup of coffee, son? This is gonna be a long morning, full of paperwork and empty of leads. Deputy Inspector,” she turned back to Karstov, “anything on the person?”

“We haven’t checked yet, ma’am, as I mentioned...”

Vigaard waved him down. “Right.”

As she patted the body, she paused over the abdomen at the distinctive sound of crinkling parchment. The Inspector slipped her hand into the corpse’s frock coat and pulled out a sheaf of documents. Fine calligraphy decorated each page, with the proper flourishes here and there, wax seals and patterned ribbons. The signatures even looked official. She’d seen these before, hundreds of times. Thousands. But why would a dead criminal have one?

“A Writ of Search and Seizure?” Karstov’s voice, curious.

Vigaard pulled off the gloves with her teeth, felt the heavy parchment and stiff wax seals with her own fingers.

“It is. For the Gloomfyre Manse.”

“The reformist house?”

“The same. Though we don’t have any writs out for it, so far as I’m aware of,” Vigaard trailed off. Her eyes narrowed over the fine script. Its ink was starting to smear in the drizzle. She stood slowly and began to walk back toward the shelter of her cab to take a closer look.

“Ma’am!” Karstov called after her. “What do we do about the body?”

“The what? Oh,” Vigaard waved the question away. “I don’t care. Dump it in the swamp.”



Ioann sat alone in a ratty armchair, nursing a flat beer that had warmed in the hours spent in his hands, replaying the verbal thrashing that Red had given him, now days ago, over and over ad nauseum. This safehouse was one of Red’s smallest, crammed into a corner room two stories above a used book seller in the Morozhen District. But it also afforded a great deal of security. Windows overlooked King’s Cross and Thirty-seventh, just a few blocks north of the Constabulary station. Close enough to allay suspicion but far enough to come and go unobserved. The sturdy fire escape in the hallway that led to the back alleyway was just an added boon.

Three sharp raps at the door. Ioann sighed, set down the drink, and eased up to his feet.

Three more raps. Impatient.

“Gregori, it’s me. Open the door.”

Ioann pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the dull throbbing that had settled there. Then he slid back the chain and threw the three deadbolts. The last had barely slid home when the door swung open.

“He’s been made.” Tossack stumbled in, wet from the morning drizzle, or sweat, or maybe... fear?

“Slow down, Benji. Who’s been made?”

The broad-shouldered enforcer collapsed in Ioann’s armchair near the window. It let out a wooden groan in protest. After shutting and securing the door, Ioann approached her.

“Who’s been made, Benji?”

Her reply was a name, said in the crackling, rock-against-rock voice of the stone-men. “Krnk-krrk.”

Ioann froze.

“You’re sure?”

“I saw the body myself. Not a mark on him. It. The body. Near stumbled into a whole pack of the Old Wolf’s hounds. He’s dead, Ioann. Never made it back to Red.” Tossack wiped a hand across her sweaty brow and shuddered. “It was a Shade that made him. You should’ve seen his face, Ioann. You should’ve seen it.”

“...And he still had the documents.”

It wasn’t a question.

“... I... yeah, he did. He still had them.” Tossack paused, realization dawning. “If the constables find them...”

Ioann sunk onto the patched arm of the chair, heart fluttering.

When, Tossack. When the constables find them...”

He reached for the stale beer and finished it off in a long drag, “...Red is going to kill me.”
Edited by Ioann, Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:06 pm.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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In the western section of the Morozhen District stood an old, family-owned butcher shop just about to close. Inside, the shopkeeper began to put things in the icebox, while down the street a young creature named December raced toward the door. Barely older than fifteen, short, and scrawny, the girl—who was less girl and more demon, given the scaled quality of her skin and the forked tongue that sat inside her mouth—barreled down the block toward the weather-worn storefront. The sign above the door, which read IVAN & SONS, had not been painted for over a generation to preserve the building's character. The bell jingled as she stepped over the threshold, and the sound of her panting filled the empty parlor.

"Sorry, we're—" The shopkeeper looked up. "Oh, it's you."

December slammed the door shut. "Boss in back?"

"As always."

"Thanks, Mitya."

Mitya, the shopkeeper, waved a hand and went back to work. The butcher shop was a cover for the true nature of the family business, but it was his job to keep up the act when the sheriffs rolled into town. Detectives stuck their noses in every now and then, but Mitya knew how to handle them better than anyone else in the family.

A false mirror behind the counter slid away into a hidden back room. The windows were enchanted so that anyone passing by on the street would see, upon looking in, an abandoned dress store with dismal, forgotten clothing scattered about. That was not at all the truth of this room, however. There were no abandoned dresses. Instead there was a round table at which Natasha "The Knife" Markova sat, a dwindling cigarette perched between two fingers and a deck of cards spread out in front of her in a game of solitaire.

"I-It's done," said December.

Natasha "The Knife" Markova looked up. Even now December found herself startled. It was not the ram's horns that curled out of the sides of Natasha's skull that unnerved her, or even the stitches securing her left eyelid permanently closed. It was the third eye, centered in her forehead. Unblinking.

The replacement for the eye she'd traded to get the job done.

"Is that all?" asked Natasha.

"Yes," said December quickly. "I followed the Shade, just like you asked me to. And I watched it kill that stone man. Easy. Didn't even take five minutes."

"Then why did it take you two hours to return?"

"I was watching the detectives."

"Did they see you?"

"No. I don't think so. They found papers. For the Gloomfyre Manse."

Natasha's mouth tightened into a thin line. Taking a drag from the cigarette, she leaned back in her chair and considered.

"I-I was going to search the body, like you told me to! But the inspectors showed up so quickly, it was almost—suspicious. So I stayed back. I-I should have gotten those papers for you, ma'am—"

Natasha held up a hand. December stopped speaking at once. Lowering her palm, Natasha looked down to the cards, and saw at last a move she could make. Piling card on top of card, she took her time thinking while the poor child stood before her. It had been almost a year since Natasha found the orphan and promised to take her in and care for her, if only she would run the occasional errand on behalf of the family.

"It would have been very good if you'd gotten me those papers, December," said Natasha.

"I'm so sor—"

"I wasn't finished." Silence fell between them until Natasha saw fit to speak again. "I wanted the stone man dead so Red would know I was angry about the Manse. I thought it might send him a decent message. But now if the constabulary has papers… what sort of papers?"

"Something about search and seizure, ma'am."

"How suspicious. And Red does have that jarkman he keeps around." Natasha barked a laugh. "The constabulary will trace it back in time. We ought to help them trace it faster. What's the name of that jarkman Red keeps around? Dammit, I can't remember. But imagine taking two birds with one stone, and the one I didn't even have to pay for! Red will let me have the Manse, for all the trouble this will cause him. December, I want you to go to the constabulary—"

"You're starting a war, Natasha." Mitya stepped into the back room and wiped his hands on his apron. "You're asking for all out war."

Natasha frowned. "Maybe I want war."

"Natasha."

"Maybe I'm sick of sharing Morozhen, Mitya."

"You can be sick all you want, but if you do this—"

"What? What will you do, brother mine? Will you leave me to my own devices? You've done it before. And you came crawling back, begging for forgiveness. We are family."

Mitya sighed. "Don't send a child to do this, at the very least. She's done enough for you today."

"Very well." Natasha smothered the last of her cigarette. "December. You know where my sister Agata lives, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. Go there. Her husband, Grisha, will go to the constabulary. We have someone on the inside. He will go to explain we want the investigation tilted in Red's direction. My detective will take care of it from there. Can you handle this?"

"Yes! Yes, of course."

"Good girl. Go on, now, and then hurry back. Mitya must lock up, but you have a key."

December nodded, then scurried out of the room, and out through the front door. Mitya fixed Natasha with a stare of disapproval.

"War, Natasha."

"I gave my eye for a dead body. I'd give more if I had to."

Meanwhile, December delivered the message to Agata's husband: Go tell our inside person to persuade the other detectives to start sniffing out Red. And no sooner was the message delivered than Grisha began heading toward the sheriff's office to do as he'd been told, all too glad for a chance to take Red Viskovien down a peg.
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Mon Nov 13, 2017 5:57 am.
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Ioann
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Ioann jerked upright.

“What?” Tossack asked.

“There may be a way to stop this, but it means doing something very, very stupid...”



HALF PAST FOUR BELLS

Vigaard studied the documents, running a finger absentmindedly over the commissioner’s signature – the falsified signature, she chided herself – as her cab traveled back to the station. Outside the drizzle stopped, but the damp remained, cloaking the city like a smothering ex-lover who refused to move on. Lukewarm steam vented from the sewers, coalescing into a heavy mist that cut visibility in the Morozhen District’s narrow sidestreets.

The craftsmenship on the forgery was excellent. Had the circumstances been different, no doubt it would not have raised even an eyebrow of suspicion. Since the Taming, most of the shoddy and middling-level jarkmen had been caught, tried, and maimed. Only the best – or the most cautious – remained, and their work was hard to stop.

But they didn’t come cheap. Whoever wanted the Gloomfyre Manse had deep pockets.

Vigaard let her mind drift to mostly-remembered dossiers and mugshots, letting her gut guide her to the next step. The Corleones? Not their style... not nearly enough blood. The Blackwitch Coven? Couldn’t be. They’d brainwash the current occupants before trying anything so bold. Lorne Tarrington and his thugs might be plausible, but the Morozhen District was too far from their current territory in the Fens...

She heard the constables driving her cab swear a moment before she smelled the smoke.

“Inspector,” one of them, d’Avrille, she thought, called from the boards. They reined the horse to a stop.

Vigaard pulled the shade. Ahead of them was a pile of broken furniture and a dilapidated cab, stuffed with kindling. It burned quickly and white-hot, sending waves of heat cascading toward them. Thick motes of choking black smoke belched outward, obscuring the path forward.

Shit!”

The flames were magecraft. Too quick and too hot to be anything else.

“Let’s cut across to thirty-seventh, then up to King’s Cross. We can double back to fortieth.”

“Thirty-seventh? That’s barely wider than an alley, Mason! We’ll be ripe for the picking!”

“Apologies, ma’am, but thirty-ninth’ll already be crowded with traffic at this hour. We gotta get back to the station – don’t want to pull in any civies into whatever this might be.”

Vigaard ground her teeth and let out a sharp breath. “Dammit!!” And then, “Do it!”

Mason and d’Avrille turned them about and cut across the alleyway, whipping the horse into a quick pace. Vigaard pulled out her hand crossbow and rolled the revolving magazine. Fully loaded. Good. The alley was short, but garbage choked them back to a crawl. The inspector could feel her heart start to accelerate with dread anticipation.

Just as the cab was about to emerge onto thirty-seventh, another vehicle shot out in front of them, blocking the exit. It was a stout, heavy thing, armored like a siege engine. Before Vigaard could shout a warning, two thugs jumped out, armed with heavy crossbows.

Two quick pumps and the air filled with shrapnel and blood.

Vigaard kicked open the cab’s door and rolled out, into the cover it provided. Mason’s body, riddled with splitter-bolt fire, lie face-up on the wet stone, dead, and above her d’Avrille was shouting. The sharp report of crossbow twangs filled her ears. Vigaard popped up and loosed three bolts in rapid succession. Two hit home but she ducked back before seeing if they were lethal. A pair of fat splitter-bolts answered, slamming through the door of the cab. One stopped less than a handsbreadth from her eye, pinned into the wood and unable to release its deadly spread. She jerked up again, released another two shots but they were wide.

Her enemies were cautious now. That’s how she realized d’Avrille wasn’t shouting anymore.

Vigaard jumped up to the step, trying to hide behind what little cover the cab’s door provided. She reached across and grabbed the reigns. They were slick with Mason’s blood, or d’Avrille’s, didn’t matter now. Had to get back to the station. The horse didn’t need much encouragement, but she lashed it without mercy. It surged forward, toward the gap behind the armored carriage, toward thirty-seventh.

The gap was too narrow.

She wasn’t going to make it!

But then the horse was through. Her little cab clipped the rear bumper of the larger vehicle, slamming shut the door she crouched behind, tearing the reigns from her grasp. Behind her, the thugs roared and sent their fury and bolts. One tore through the back shade of the cab and grazed her cheek.

Then they were a hundred paces away.

Two hundred.

Clear.

Vigaard groaned, rubbing where her shoulder had impacted the floor of the cab. She sat up, slowly, but the exhale hurt. Looking down, she saw a spreading stain on her flank.

“Dammit...” she groaned, suddenly exhausted. “Commissioner’s gonna have a field day...”
Edited by Ioann, Sat Dec 2, 2017 2:23 pm.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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Rhys had worked in the office of the sheriff for two decades at the least. As a young man it had been his supreme hope that one day he would enforce the laws of Imythess, but he was no longer a young man and somewhere along the way—as happens to so many on the treacherous, winding curve of life—he had traded nobility for security. Now that he was older he understood the faults of the law, and saw it less as a holy, untouchable doctrine and more as something to mold to his bidding like clay. Laws did not make men good; men keeping each other in check made them good. Several years ago, before the Taming, his son disappeared and a ransom notice arrived on his doorstep. His colleagues bumbled about, unwilling to provide the money requested and equally unwilling to take any sort of definitive action. It was Mitya Markova and Grisha Antonov who sniffed out the kidnapper, beat him within an inch of his life, and delivered his son safely home.

That Rhys's loyalty now lay with Natasha, and not wholly with the detective inspectors, was unsurprising. Nevertheless he hated being called upon at his place of employ, and wished Markova would keep her family's business far away. When the steam lifting from his tea shifted briefly into the form of a wolf, then dispersed, he sighed heavily and rubbed at his face with a meaty palm.

"Taking a smoke break," said Rhys, standing from his desk. "My eyes go plaid if I sit here too long." The officer at the desk opposite nodded once in bland acknowledgement before Rhys left the room, the blinds on the door rattling as it sunk home into the threshold. Since the Taming, there was more paperwork to be done: more criminals required processing, more case reports needed filing, and so the mountain of folders on Rhys's desk grew steadily higher. Before he left the building, he removed a cigarette carton from his coat pocket and tapped one out. It was between his lips as he strolled down the front steps of the sheriff's office, and lit by his own finger by the time he reached the mouth of the alleyway at the corner.

"Pardon me, sir, have you got a light?" The voice was aristocratic, charming. Grisha Antonov was a tall, well-dressed man—mostly man. His body was that of a man's, but his head was thoroughly lupine, complete with heavy black fur and piercing eyes. For Grisha's cigarette, poised with delicate grace between his fingers, Rhys removed a lighter from his pocket. He only used magic on his own belongings.

"Hate when you come to the station, Grisha."

"Forgive me, I know—but under the most pressing circumstances it is faster for me to shadow-travel than to send a courier."

"What's so pressing, then?"

Grisha explained the situation as December had explained it to him: the Shade hired by Natasha to hit one of Red Viskovien's enforcers had succeeded, and the enforcer had been carrying papers—most certainly doctored—regarding the Gloomfyre Manse. One of the inspectors at the scene collected the papers and would return to the station shortly, whereupon it would be Rhys's duty to point her toward Red's gang and—"Domesticate them," Grisha finished with a satisfied laugh.

Rhys gave a long exhale of smoke. "Which inspector?"

"I believe someone named Vanguard?"

"Vigaard. She isn't back yet."

"When she returns, Rhys, of course."

"And you're sure the papers are shady?"

"My dear fellow," said Grisha patiently, "Natasha has had her eye on the Manse for years. Red knows this and swept it up from under her through whatever vile means he has at his disposal. I'm sure you—"

Grisha's ears lifted and his head turned. He dropped the cigarette and stamped it out with a polished shoe. "I must be going," he said. "They're arriving. And I believe I smell blood. Do be careful, Rhys."

Sinking back into the shadows, Grisha melted into the dark and disappeared. A few moments later there was a commotion on the cobblestones as the cab arrived, pulled by a frightened horse. From the corner Rhys watched, aware at first glance that something was awfully wrong. Where were Mason and d'Avrille? Why was Vigaard driving the cab? Dropping the unfinished cigarette into a puddle, Rhys started back to the station, gradually picking up the pace.

"Inspector Vigaard!" he said. "What ha—oh!"

Under the lantern light, the wet stain on her flank looked like spilled ink, but Rhys knew better. Throwing open the door to the station, he called inside, "Inspector Vigaard has been hurt, we need help out here!"

There was a flurry of motion as different constables hurried to the door to see what was the matter, then hurried about to find the medical supplies kept on hand. Through the open door he heard the distant shout of "Dammit, where's Zima?! Doesn't anyone else know healing magic?!"

And then, equally distant, and presumably Zima's voice, "I'm here! I'm on it!"

Meanwhile Rhys went to Vigaard, hands and arms open to assist. "Let me help you in," he said. "My gods, inspector, what the hell happened?"
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Ioann
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“Get off me, Zima!” growled Vigaard, one hand clutching her hemorrhaging flank, the other weakly shoving away the station’s on-duty medik. “Dammit! Just... get me a drink. And the Sheriff.”

Vigaard eased herself out of the cab, but her legs felt weak. She paused halfway in, halfway out, trying to catch her breath. Finally, tentatively, she placed her feet on the ground. After a slow exhale, she attempted to straighten.

“Tripped over a pair of loaded crossbows in the alley behind Zhereg’s, off thirty-seventh,” she wheezed, pulling open the stained shirt over her abdomen. “Mason and d’Avrille...” Her breath caught and her knees buckled. The wound was a ragged, punched-out thing, still leaking too-bright fluid around partially congealed clots. Vigaard sighed and slowly sunk back to the step of the cab. The horse shied nervously, the scent of blood heavy in the air of the station’s garage.

“Worse’n I thought,” she murmured. Her eyes flicked up to Rhys. “Where the hell is Zima with that drink? And you,” she pointed at one of the junior constables, “I thought I told you to fetch the Sheriff. Quit staring at me and go get ‘im!”

“Here, ma’am,” the medik shoved a squat, heavy crystal glass into her hand, filled with a generous pour of satiny amber liquid. “From the Sheriff’s private stash. Don’t tell him I know where he hides it, ya?”

Vigaard tipped the whole contents back sharply, let it burn her throat, then slowly warm her from the inside. She gritted her teeth. The next part would hurt the most. Her fingers, caked brown with her own dried blood – and probably d’Avrille’s and Mason’s too – tenderly probed the margins of the wounds. It made her breath hitch and she winced, but didn’t stop. She closed her eyes, ground her teeth, and began to strum the air over them, slowly pulling out the shrapnel from the blast of a stray splitter-bolt.

Good thing these splitters were cold iron.

“Are you kidding me?! You could sever your aorta, nevermind your alimentaries! Inspector!! You need to-”

Vigaard ignored Zima’s incessant blustering. One by one, flecks of metal worked their way out of her ruined flesh. It was delicate work – pull too fast and she risked exactly what the medik was blubbering on about, drawing the razor shards into a loop of bowel or cutting through a fancily-named blood vessel. Too slow and she would pass out before it was done, potentially leaving the shrapnel in a worse resting place.

The pieces collected in the space just in front of her fingers, gradually coalescing into a small, rotating sphere. Through the magework, she could feel only one fragment left. It was a big, stubborn thing, offering up a telltale hint of resistance, like it had snagged itself on some chunk of viscera. She risked a glance down at her work, but it only brought a curse to her lips. There was too much blood, bright red mixed with dull, and all of it vomiting out far too quickly. She blinked away the dull, darkening edges of her vision, nevermind the orange spots winking in and out in the center, and paused for a moment.

“Rhys,” she breathed. Shit, maybe this had been a bad idea. “Rhys, in the cab there’s a document for the Gloomfyre- DAMMIT! For the Gloomyfre Manse. Just... take a look at it, will you? And once Karstov gets here, tell him to run this iron by our chronomancer. I want to-” A sharp inhale, a stifled curse. “-I want to know who the hell had the stones to ambush a Constabulary cab three blocks from the station. Zima! Go get me another drink...”
Edited by Ioann, Sun Nov 19, 2017 3:25 pm.
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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HALF PAST EIGHT BELLS

At the edge of the city of Balefire, close to the border with the backswamps, stood a small stone church whose steeple did not rise high enough to penetrate the black sky. An iron fence surrounded the church, and the gate’s rusted hinge caused it to flap in the breeze. Dead, dried out, overgrown plants grew up along the iron poles—someone a long time ago must have poured a great deal of effort into keeping the climbing vines verdant with magic, but had since given up the demanding task of keeping anything alive in a world devoid of sunlight.

Through the arched windows, Cordelia watched parishioners mill about the pews. The service had ended and those who had come were collecting their belongings and their children to leave. One by one the people filed out through the door, down the walkway of cracked, untended stone, and bid each other goodnight at the neglected gate. From there each person in the small crowd went their own way.

Zaxibus was late.

Across the street, seated on a bench, Cordelia glanced down at her timepiece and cursed under her breath. A few days after meeting Ioann, she had sent word to him through a courier where she wanted to meet the promising Speaker he suspected could help her determine the loss of her memories. Sliding the timepiece back into the deep pocket of her coat, Cordelia readjusted the plush scarf wrapped around her neck for the millionth time and settled back against the cold wood.

By now she had begun to wonder if it was a trick. The simple explanation was that Zaxibus, connected to the Ethereal to the point where it scattered his mind, had forgotten about meeting with a woman he didn’t know. Still her mind whirred, expecting an ambush of constables to arrive down the broken street or flood out from an abandoned building at any moment. This corner of Balefire was utterly forgotten—if anyone wanted her, she would have been easy to capture without causing a scene.

A man draped in drab, brown robes left the church and closed the door with great care behind him. Cordelia watched with some measure of horror as he walked down the path to the gate, then (perhaps needlessly) looked both ways before crossing the street toward her. No, no, no, she thought, do not come near me, but this was not adequate protection from his approach.

“Good evening, child,” he said. His voice was old, kind.

“Hello,” said Cordelia. She looked up at him, skepticism in her eyes.

“You have been sitting here for quite some time.” When Cordelia said nothing, and continued to look at him with distrust and uncertainty, he went on. “I saw you sit here fifteen minutes before the service at eight bells began and thought you were gathering the courage to join us. You didn’t come.” Still she said nothing. “There will be another service at nine bells, if you think you would like to try then. We are few, but we would welcome you.”

Is this the trap? Are the sheriffs waiting inside?

“Thank you,” said Cordelia. Her voice was distant, cold.

“All are welcome in my parish, child.” His eyes were too sincere. It hurt to look at them. Cordelia averted her eyes to the church.

He thinks he needs to reach me. Just another lost soul in Balefire he’s trying to save.

“You still have half an hour to think it over. You needn’t be afraid to cross my threshold. I hope I’ll see you.” He bowed his head, then returned across the street. Through the glass windows, she watched his silhouette move through the orange glow of lanterns and candles.

Forty-five minutes she had waited for Zaxibus. Forty-five minutes she had clung to the idea she might know herself again, and now she’d been noticed in this place where she tried to stay hidden.

Cordelia checked the pocket watch again, and felt her stomach turn. If he did not arrive within five minutes she would leave and forget the whole business had ever happened, that she had hoped for anything at all.
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Sun Nov 19, 2017 10:30 pm.
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In the middle of the now deserted street, space wrinkled for a moment, like drops echoing across a pool. And then with a sharp snap, the Speaker appeared. He was a giant of a man, well over two paces, and dressed all in black – boots, knickers, vest, and fashionably unbuttoned frock coat. A single braided silver chain hinted at an expensive watch in his breast pocket, which ticked away the irregular time of some other plane. The Speaker’s face, partially obscured beneath overlarge smoked-lensed spectacles, was shrouded by a mane of heavily oiled black curls and shadowed by an ostentatiously tall stove-pipe hat, also black, that further exaggerated his stature. Thick, full, doughy lips, an exaggerated brow and chin, and a deep rumbling bass hinted at acromegaly. In the crook of his arm he held a decorative cane, much too short for his own use, topped in a formless silver figure that was heavily tarnished. A squat, fat, gray toad perched silently on one shoulder. He smelled a bit like a store full of perfume and candles that desperately tried to hide an acrid, underlying stink of tobacco.

“Your wait is over!” he declared, giving Cordelia the kind of yellow-toothed, too-wide smile that mothers describe to scare their children into discipline. “The great Speaker Zaxibus has arrived!”

The Speaker spread his arms as if embracing the entire swamp. A few trails of shadowy smoke, still clinging to his sleeves after his shadowjaunt, dissipated into the air. After a moment of scanning his surroundings, he shook his head slowly, smile bleeding to a frown.

“Now this – this simply will. Not. Do. Come with me, I know a better place.”

Zaxibus placed a large, clammy hand on Cordelia’s shoulder and then the world stretched gray, objects and people and places blurring around their edges. The Speaker took only a dozen steps but everything whirled by at a dizzying pace, each stride measured in city blocks. When he stopped, they stood beneath the Clocktower at Balefire’s Center Square. Iron hands formed an inverted acute angle over its broad yellow face. Zaxibus gave a nod toward a cluster of delicate metal chairs and tables set before an awning overlooking the square. Little Maurice’s was stenciled in white upon the red-and-black cloth.

“Ah, much better. Best view in town!”

And then the world grayed and they were at the chairs. Zaxibus stretched out lazily and draped one arm over the chair next to him, then propped his legs up on the tabletop.

“Now, please!” Zaxibus smiled again, a greasy, slip-sided thing that was more a showing of teeth than pleasing facial expression. He ran his other hand through thick, well-oiled curls and adjusted the stove-pipe hat to an impossible angle. “Tell us what ol’ Zaxi can do for you.”

A lazy hand signaled the waitress. She clacked over, warded bones against the cobbles, painted skeletal arms swirled in tribal patterns that had fallen out of style a decade ago.

“I’ll have an old-fashioned, and for the lady, make it a bloody Mary,” Zaxibus winked at Cordelia, never making eye contact with the skeleton.

She clattered back. “We don’t serve alcohol here, sir.”

“Then pancakes. A whole stack of ‘em. She’ll have a plate of blood sausage.”

Another wink. He waved away the waitress nonchalantly, but she didn’t move.

“Sir,” the dead voice was strained with an annoyance that betrayed her far too-frequent encounters with the Speaker. Bony fingers tapping a tattoo against the notepad in her opposite hand. “It’s half-past eight bells. We only serve breakfast until one. Do you need a menu?”

“Menu? Please, I haven’t looked at a menu here in ages! Just have Little Maurice whip us up something special.”

The skeleton started to protest but stopped and sighed, the sound of wind rattling dried bones, then walked back into the restaurant, defeated.

“A friend of Ioann Gregori is a friend of Zaxibus. What can I do for you, my little bloodsucker?”
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♥Cordelia Brooks
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Cordelia sat in terror-stricken silence. Eyes wide, lips somewhat parted, she stared at Zaxibus and became fully aware of what Ioann had meant in his warning. She had planned to carry this out somewhere discreet, in one of the abandoned buildings of the Vykup District, assured of privacy. But Zaxibus—Zaxibus, already a word that inspired deep frustration and dread—needed all the wretched comforts of Balefire’s populated Center Square.

There are eyes everywhere.
Anyone could see me
.

While Zaxibus tried to place an order, Cordelia examined passersby in her peripheral vision. Any of them could be a constable off the clock, or a family member to someone she had wronged in a previous chapter of her life. And now, sitting in the open, it was too late to alter her appearance. The ambush had come, but not in the form she expected.

Lifting her gaze to the skeleton waitress, she tried to communicate, with the conspiratorial glance women often shared when confronted by the appalling behavior of men, that she, too, was suffering in the presence of this boisterous man. At last she departed, and Cordelia was left alone to clench her jaw and grind her teeth. Turning a storming gaze to Zaxibus, she regarded him for a long, silent moment before she selected her words.

“You can Speak,” she began slowly, “so now let’s see if you can listen.” Pulling her chair closer to the table, Cordelia set her gloved fists on the table and leaned forward. “This was not the agreed upon place, Zaxibus. I scouted the Vykup District for days before finding it suitable. There is a reason I did not want to hold this meeting in the open, and if you were afraid of being alone with me then you never should have agreed to meet me.”

Anyone. Anywhere. Someone across the street. Someone in a building. I am not safe here. I am so sick of people putting me at a disadvantage when I know what I am doing and the choices I make are sound—

“I want to leave.”

No one in Balefire needed to hear that name. No one in the Center Square needed to see her.

It was too risky. Already her throat felt thick with fear. Dread, like an anchor, weighed her down.

“You will accompany me at once back to the appointed meeting place in Vykup. That was the deal. I won’t be made to do this somewhere I’m uncomfortable.”
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Mon Nov 20, 2017 2:45 am.
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Ioann
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Zaxibus gave her that rictus grin. The toad was still.

“But of course, Mme. Brooks. “

The smile didn’t reach his eyes, and though amusement lingered there, it was divorced sentiment. He stood and stretched, cat-like, without disturbing the precarious pitch of his towering stove-pipe nor crouching anuran companion, and then grasped the vampire’s shoulder lightly.

The return trip was just as quick – though an observant passenger might have noticed the path quite different, as unfamiliar twisted spires and crenellated towers whirled by – but the vine-choked stone church and abandoned street lie quiet as ever. Zaxibus stepped away and looked around them in obvious distaste, mood inverted in an instant.

“Surely you didn’t intend for us to meet on that... bench?”

The tone was all cocklebur and thorn, but buried within its depths, the Speaker’s voice pled. As he spoke, he cupped his hands together and shook vigorously, as if preparing to roll a wager.

“Grant me one indulgence for our conference, Mme. Brooks-” Behind his frown, the seedling of another too-wide smile already taking root. “-for I find my disposition sours without some diversion.”

He twisted his hands apart, releasing a kaleidoscope of ghostlight butterflies, who fluttered up and out, a hundred, a thousand, far too many to have fit between his palms. The creatures dispersed to the sky, casting a pale, scintillating, silvery light about them. A look of such elation passed over Zaxibus that it might have been confused with delirium. A particularly sluggish butterfly, lagging behind its comrades, wandered too close to Zaxibus’s shoulder and the toad lunged suddenly forward, capturing its prey between shallow, grey, pebbly jaws. It munched contentedly for a moment before settling back.

“Now please, I beg of you, for the anticipation of your request is driving me simply mad. What is it you want?”
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Despite the urgency of her command, she hadn’t expected Zaxibus to listen to her. Appearing again across the street from the dilapidated church, Cordelia re-evaluated the Speaker with the incredulous expression of a woman who Life defied at every turn. From the smallest of requests to the most outrageous of demands, she never expected a yes—and certainly not when she’d entered this arrangement believing she would have to capitulate to the rules of his idiosyncrasies.

And still she would, to some degree. But now he asked for her leniency. A butterfly landed on the plush fur that swelled out of the collar and lapel of her coat; startled by the willingness of such a fragile creature, she waved it away, then took Zaxibus by the crook of his elbow.

“How a creature like you has survived this long I have no idea.”

By obeying the law, a voice snapped in her head.

Leading Zaxibus away from the bench and to the corner, Cordelia turned left and walked with him down the street as if they were old friends—though, really, she had a harsh eye fixed on him, aware that even in a district as thoroughly abandoned as Vykup, there were eyes. At last she stopped before a small tea shop with a window so dirty it was impossible to see through, and a name so old it had weathered away. The building itself was purple with a golden door—although the the golden paint had more than chipped, leaving the wood scraggly with mere scratches of color, as if marked by the claws of an animal.

The door was unlocked, and inside the room was bigger than its façade suggested.

“Get comfortable,” she said. Clipped tone, no nonsense. “Make as many butterflies as you please, here, in private.” She stepped deeper into the shop, where tables covered in layers of dirty and debris stood lonely beneath a water-logged ceiling. Pulling off her leather gloves, she folded them and set them down on a table, a single gesture of unshielding herself.

Leaning on a chair, rather than sitting, she looked to him and swallowed.

“I have no memories,” she said. She tried to maintain some level of detachment in her voice, but the husk of desperation appeared all too early—she curled her fingers around the back of the chair, seeking purchase against the desire to leap and scream. “Two years ago I awoke in a cave with no clue who I was. I laid there for—hours? Days?—before language came back to me. Before I was aware enough of my body to know I had a body. To know in my hand I held a piece of paper, with the words ‘Imythess, Balefire, Cordelia’ written on it.”

A paper lost to a puddle. As flimsy as her sense of self.

“I had no magic. No power. But I felt, deep inside me, a sense that something had been stolen. Like I’d been carved open and emptied. I’ve got my magic back, but my memories—they won’t come.”

Reuniting with the man who was once her husband had done nothing to restore her. The boy who’d been her son, in another life, the girl who’d been her daughter—mere strangers to her now. And the dearest friend who’d protected her, when she was new to the world again and didn’t know that the law would come for her—

None of them could make her the person she’d been.

“I need…”

Her voice grew deeper. Her arms trembled.

“To know.”

Her jaw clenched. She bowed her head. For a few moments she breathed, unable to speak without feeling that she might burst.

“I need to know if the Ethereal did this to me.”

If I did this to myself.

“Can you do that?”
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Zaxibus laughed. Not a polite, placating chuckle, nor a nervous titter, or even a demure giggle. But the kind of full-bellied, knee-slapping, snot-shooting, tears running down cheeks sort of outburst best reserved for the slapstick and the lascivious.

“You want... you want...” he gasped between peels of shrieking laughter, “you want me to just... ask around?! Hey, Lord of Twilight, or no, wait, even better... Hullo there, Court of the Winter Halcyon... What’s up Duke Halifax... did you, did you happen to take Mme. Brooks’s memories, perchance? Mayhaps? Was a few years back, give or take?”

He bent over at the waist, slapping the table once, twice, thrice, between uncontrollable bouts of hee-haw-ing and ho-ho-ing and whoo-hoo-ing that quickly devolved into intractable hiccups.

“Can you even imagine?!” Zaxibus finally choked out, eyes still wet. After an uncomfortably long silence, his expression, until then still screwed up in a macabre grin, finally fell. A stray hiccup erupted from his lips.

“Wait, are you serious? You’re serious. You’re not serious... are you?”

He slunk into a chair, which protested loudly at his weight, and leaned forward over the sloggy surface of the table between them.

“I’m not sure Ioann explained what I do very well, Mme. Brooks.” As he spoke, he withdrew the silver watch from his vest, shook it violently and with a severe frown, then replaced it in its pocket. It continued to tick away nonlinear time. “I’m a Speaker. I arrange deals between clients of this plane and the Ethereal one, mostly for those who would prefer a certain... distance. On both sides of the planar landscape. I’ll tell you one thing, my dear, the Lords of that domain, just like the Lords here, don’t do anybody any favors. You want something – money, power, information, memories,” he winked at mention of the last, “you’ll have to pay for it.”

Seeing her expression, something resembling pity – had the feeling died and rotted in a forgotten hole somewhere – crept onto the big man’s face.

“You know, the clever ones, they’re slippery and smooth. They’ll give you something. Something nice – something real nice. Then charge you a memory for it. No big deal, right? But then they come back, tell you that you haven’t paid them yet. You don’t remember rightly, so how can you argue? So they take another one. Then another, and another.”

Zaxibus paused, gauging her reaction.

“And pretty soon you don’t have anything left at all up there except dust and cobwebs and some sense that you’ve been robbed. That’s why you need a Speaker – someone to bargain on your behalf! Someone to make sure you don’t wind up addled or limbless or amnesic or worse.”

His grin returned. Conspiratory. Vile. As if some dark thought had coalesced in his brain and he relished its sourness, savoring it as it spilled from his lips.

“I won’t go poking my top hat through accounts already settled, not with the current Lords. But if you want, I can arrange a meeting with someone. Someone who might be able to help you. A...” he groped at the air, “...Shade. Someone who takes out contracts on low planars – murder, extraction, the occasional odd job like protection. I think you two’ll get along famously.”

He rapped the head of his cane on the table.

“The Shade might help you. Might not. But I’d be ready to trade something valuable either way, just for having the meeting. Something real sweet, that you’d rather not part with. I’d... recommend it not be a memory. We don’t want to have this meeting again next week, do we?”
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Trade something!” Cordelia’s voice deepened as she shouted, and her face twisted with appalled disgust. Her brows bent together above her nose, forcing angry wrinkles to crease her forehead. A wild look entered her eyes. “Trade something! I have NOTHING!”

With a burst of temper, Cordelia flung down the chair. It clattered to the floor, clearing streaks of dust and dirt away from the floor. A dust cloud rose into the air, motes spiraling between them in the dim room.

“Maybe the Lord of Twilight would like my gloves!” Cordelia snatched up her gloves from the table and waved them in Zaxibus’ face. “Or this cheap coat you could buy at any market in Striberg!” Stepping away from the table, Cordelia dragged her fingers down her face, pulling down her eyelids and cheeks. Her shoulders heaved with the effort and volume of her outburst as she turned away from him—if she looked at him for a moment longer she felt she might leap across the table and throttle him.

It was not true she had nothing.

The Ethereal did not bargain like mortals of the material plane.

She had her blood. All ten fingers, all ten toes. All her organs, as far as she knew. Every limb. Each of the five senses. Her voice. She would give both her eyes if she thought the Ethereal might find value in them. Any part of her body the Ethereal wanted, they could have: she could live without speaking, without hearing, without seeing. Without an arm or a leg. If they wanted the ring Hearne had forged for her, Cordelia could sacrifice the sunlight—she had lived without it long enough, she could return to the darkness.

But the letters—

No, not them.

Her stomach dropped.

Waterlogged, ripped apart, the ink smudged—the letters were, for the most part, barely legible. Some were in better condition than others. On just enough of them, her name in Eliel’s handwriting was untouched. Dear Cordelia, read the earliest of the letters, which progressed to Cord to Dearest, signed formally at the start and in the last of them with Love.

Cordelia swallowed over a growing knot in her throat. It had been those letters that proved to her she’d had any sort of life before her memories disappeared. It had been those letters that proved to her she could trust Eliel, even if she didn’t remember him. Those letters had anchored her to this plane, promised her that her previous life was worth fighting to know. At one point she had been someone capable of friendship, capable of fondness—not what she was now, emptied of softness, her heart crooked. They were more than a bundle of parchment: they were a whole life.

What does it matter?
A couple letters, to know what happened to you?
It isn’t so bad.


When she tried to think of it like that, it didn’t seem so terrible. But her stomach twisted, and sank, and her thoughts buzzed with a consistent stream of no no no no no no no no no no no no.

“I have something,” Cordelia choked. “I have something I can trade.”
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Fri Dec 1, 2017 1:30 am.
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NINE BELLS

“Just because I look like a child, doesn’t mean I like to play fetch,” the cherubic voice replied, dripping with acid.

Ioann sighed. “Look Bales, I’m paying you. It’s a job, not fetch. Not for play. It’s a... recovery mission. Recover my documents and you get paid.”

He looked down at the pale boy. Soft features rounded out a face of perpetual youth and innocence, marred only by the sharp nubs of teeth protruding over his lower lip. A childhood that would never be outgrown. An overt perversion of vampirism’s immortal dividends.

“Besides, you play fetch with a dog. Do you think that I think you’re a dog?”

“[removed] you, Gregori,” Bales retorted.

“Watch your t-” Ioann swallowed back the patronizing response and pretended that pulling the stiff, stained apron over his head took the totality of his concentration. When it was secured, he looked over at Bales again. “Just get the document, Bales. And please, try not to kill anybody?”

The little vampire smiled darkly, then turned on his heel.



QUARTER PAST NINE BELLS

“Excuse me Inspector, we’ve come for the body?”

The cordon of constables had disbanded, enticed away by other calls or their morning rounds or the ends of their shifts, and only the lone sentinel remained. He slouched against the cab, turning over a small, jagged, roughly spherical hunk of cold iron in one hand.

“Eh? Oh. Right,” the junior inspector replied, balancing his coffee on his cab’s dashrail. He eyed their aprons for a moment, trying to find recognition but when it didn’t appear, he nodded toward the mouth of the alley. “It’s over there.”

Ioann bobbed his head in reply, careful to keep from making too much eye contact, and waved Tossack forward. The burly enforcer, garbed in the matching stiff, stained apron of the Sanitation Department, followed him over to the body of the stone-man. He crouched and laid a gloved hand on the corpse’s chest, forehead, cheek. Dead alright, but confirmation wasn’t why he was here.

“He’s a... he’s a big feller, ya? Not sure we can process ‘im here ourselves.”

Ioann heard the junior inspector let out an exasperated sigh.

“Then why did only two of you come? I called in a full team, told you it was a stone-man. I don’t have all day here, pal,” he snapped back.

“Might fit in the wagon. We could...” Tossack paused and squeezed back the water filling her eyes. “We could process him back at the office.”

Ioann stole a quick glance at the junior inspector. The young man was sipping his coffee again, turning over the chunk of rubbish in his hand and paying them little heed. The jarkman placed a comforting hand on Tossack’s arm.

“Best course of it,” Ioann confirmed. “Ya, best process ‘im back at Central.”

The other man ignored them.

“You wanna... sorry about this Inspector, but you wanna give us a hand here? This gent’s a biggy. Not sure we can lift ‘im alone here.”

The junior inspector sighed again. He pocketed his strange trinket and walked over.

“Yep, that’s right sir, right next to Tossack there, whoa, careful now! Okay, on the count of three, let’s put our backs into it, ya?”

A few minutes later, Ioann and Tossack led their overburdened wagon away from the alleyway. Two streets down, they passed another, larger vehicle marked with the seal of the Sanitation Department. A full contingent of apron-wearing men and women sat on the bench and clung to the siderails. Ioann gave them a curt nod in passing. It was an agonizing moment, and the other drive did a double-take, but then they were past them.

Ioann let a smile creep onto his face. But on the bench beside him, Tossack’s eyes were damp.
Edited by Ioann, Sun Dec 3, 2017 4:42 am.
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“Get back in here, Rhys,” barked Zima. She stood at the side entrance of the sheriff’s office, the door open just wide enough to permit her head and shoulder through. Unbothered, Rhys dismisses her with a wave of his hand.

Now,” said Zima.

“Can a man have five gods-damned minutes to himself?” Rhys turned halfway to look at her over his shoulder, and exhaled a lungful of smoke in her direction.

“We’re working our asses off and you’re out here sm—“

Thinking,” said Rhys. “Take your hardworking ass and tell Vigaard I’ll be back in a minute.”

Unsatisfied but unwilling to argue further, Zima closed the door with a huff. With a shake of his head, Rhys brushed her off. There were more important things to worry about tonight. Subtlety was not his area of expertise, and Natasha would expect immaculate work from him. Thus far he had managed to go unsuspected of any criminal work, but this was trickier—this wasn’t a matter of destroying, deceiving, or forging. For once she requested he tell the truth, and he didn’t know how to go about that without revealing how much he knew.

He knew the enforcer had been taken out by a Shade, hired by Natasha, as retribution for Red’s interest in the Gloomfyre Manse. He knew the papers carried by that enforcer had to have been forged by one of Red’s men.

But how did he get Vigaard to see it was Viskovien, and not one of the other dozen bosses in Morozhen, who ordered the documents? Distantly he hoped, for the first time since their partnership, that Grisha might emerge from the shadows with a plan, but the wolfman did no such thing. Natasha and her family of malefactors were likely cozy as could be, pleased with how fortune had smiled upon them.

The only thing standing between the Gloomfyre Manse and Natasha was Rhys’s ability to successfully persuade Vigaard to investigate Viskovien.

“No pressure,” he grumbled, taking one final drag from the cigarette and dropping it. After smothering it with a foot, he hopped up the three stone steps to the door and entered, making his way down the busy hall with long, urgent strides. With Vigaard in stable condition, the chaos had settled some, but nerves were high. Shortly after her arrival, a team of inspectors had gone out to retrieve the bodies of Mason and d’Avrille and investigate the scene. They had yet to return.

“Too many suspicious things,” said Rhys, entering Vigaard’s private office and closing the door. “But I think I’ve got something pieced together.” Through the glass window of the door, one could still see other officers and inspectors milling about, working on cases unrelated to tonight’s enormous fiasco.

“You get called about a stone-man,” said Rhys. “Murder. Typical Balefire shit. Except the stone-man’s carrying some papers. Not just any papers, but a Writ of Search and Seizure. A little funny, but not urgent.” Rhys paced the room, running a palm over the stubble on his chin. “And your carriage gets attacked on your way back here. We could call that your average Tuesday night in Balefire if they’d tried to rob you, but they didn’t. They just shot at you. Killed Mason and d’Avrille. But I bet it was you they really wanted.”

Rhys clapped his hands together and gestured toward Vigaard with his palms and fingers still connected. “Someone didn’t want you to get back here with those papers. Take a glance at them and everything’s in order, but the longer you look…” Rhys continued his pacing, using his hands again now to allow gesticulations to fill in the gaps of his speech. “So we’ve got to think: who would want the Manse bad enough to kill you over it? Whoever it is, they’ve got to be able to pay a jarkman of this talent a steep price. And they’ve got to be able to organize a decent amount of people fast—as soon as they realized you had the papers, they blocked off your usual route back here and then ambushed you.”

He paused at last in his pacing. With one hand on his hip, he lifted the other into the air and began to count off on his fingers. “First we’ve got Natasha Markova. But she runs a family business, and we got half of them in the Taming. Got her jarkman and half her thugs, so she hasn’t got the talent or the muscle to pull this off. She hasn’t caused any trouble in a long time, though. This could be her comeback.” A second finger went up. “Then there’s the Hawthorne Pack. They’ve definitely got enough ears for them to find out there was a problem with those papers getting where they needed to be. And they’ve got enough muscle to trap you in an ambush. But a stone-man doing any work for the Hawthornes? They’re more likely to have killed the brute than work with him.”

A third finger went up as Rhys mentioned the Blackwitch Coven, and a fourth as he suggested the Corleones, but both he dismissed as unlikely. Then a fifth finger went up, leaving his whole hand open, fingers splayed wide.

“There’s Yuri Viskovien. He’s got the money and probably the people, too. We didn’t get many of his in the Taming. This was sloppy as hell, and gods below—what would a man they call Red do to his people if they screwed up so badly that we ended up with those papers? No wonder they’d ambush. He’d do worse than kill them.”

Rhys ran the back of his wrist along his receding hairline, wiping away a sheen of sweat that collected while he thought aloud. His underarms were pricked wet.

“Problem is, we don’t know who killed the stone-man, or why, or who he might have worked for. For all we know he stole the papers for the Manse from someone else. I’ve got to tell you, Vigaard, this has the Hawthornes written all over it—except for the way that stone-man was killed. You said he had no visible marks on him, right? They would have hacked him to pieces with their claws and teeth.”

Frustrated, he sighed, as if each theory came to a dead end. “It’s not adding up, Vi.”
Edited by Cordelia Brooks, Mon Dec 4, 2017 6:19 am.
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Ioann
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Vigaard sighed and buried her face in her hands. Her flank wounds throbbed in tune with her head, only sharper.

“You might be on to something,” she finally said, looking up at Rhys. “’Red’ Yuri Viskovien.” She tasted the suspect’s name in her mouth for a moment. “Brought him up on racketeering charges a few years before the Taming – I was just a deputy inspector then – and then on illegal immigration after the Old Wolf’s mandate. Others have gone after him a few times since, but it’s never stuck. I’d always chalked it up to some back alley deal with the Lady Petrovskaya, despite her office’s denial. But maybe... Maybe he’s just got a good jarkman.”

She looked over at the Sheriff. He was tall, lean, and blessed with the mask-like face of the ancient dead. Gray, milky eyes stared back at her, their distant look belying the cold, calculating mind within. He unlaced two fingers from where they lay intertwined atop his stone desk and tapped the surface once, firmly.

“And the shrapnel?” His voice was gravel.

“Had one of the constables run it over to Karstov on their way to the streets. Should be with the chronomancer as we speak. As long as we can keep the old chrono in this plane, he’ll be able to trace their weapons. And once we ID their supplier, we’ll find ‘em. Only a matter of time. And then we’ll nail the bastards high enough the whole district’ll see their corpses.”

The Sheriff said nothing for a moment, only stared at her with those penetrating, unblinking gray eyes.

“See that you do. And examine the body of that stone-man, Inspector. It could prove... insightful.”

“One step ahead of you, sir. Sent a Sanitation crew over a half hour ago. They’re probably on their way to Central now. There is one other thing, sir. About the body. It had tattoo. A snake wrapped around some coins. I thought it was a gang symbol, but I couldn’t find one like it in our database. You ever seen anything like that?”

The Sheriff, in a rare display of emotion, narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.

“Twisted like this?” he asked as he drew a figure-of-eight with his finger on the desktop.

“Yessir.”

“Not a tattoo, Inspector. A brand. Whatever Shade killed your stone-man signed its work.”

Scuffling and shouting drew Vigaard’s attention from the Sheriff’s revelation. She watched a constable jog up to the door and rap it firmly, averting her gaze from the window out of respect.

“Mind getting that?” she asked Rhys.

The constable was breathless when she stepped into the Sheriff’s office. Sweat was dripping down her forehead, but whether from nerves or exertion was hard to place.

“Sir, ma’am, sir, doc,” she nodded at the Sheriff, Vigaard, Rhys, and Zima in turn. “We ah... we have a little problem.”

“What is it, Aldrich? Spit it out!” Vigaard barked. She regretted the fervor as wetness dampened a strategically placed hand overlying her flank. Zima had been one season away from finishing her physicker’s apprenticeship before joining the Constabulary. Apparently that was the season they’d planned to teach proper wound closure.

“The evidence... it’s, uh... it’s been stolen-”

Vigaard jerked to her feet, pushing away the sharp pang that lanced through her flank. “Stolen?!”

The constable swallowed. “Yes ma’am.”

“From inside the station?!” she whirled on Rhys. “Where did you leave it? We need that document.”

“Uh, ma’am? We saw who nabbed it – some little kid. A few of us ran after him, but he was moving so fast...”

Dammit!” she slammed her fist against the wall of the Sheriff’s office. “Rhys, figure out who Viskovien’s jarkman is and pay ‘em a house call. I’m going to find the little shit who just compromised our investigation.”

She stepped past the constable with a wince, hand pushed against her leaking side.



“There’s something on him.”

“Sit down on the bench, Benji,” Ioann warned. “You’ll draw attention. What kind of Sanitation clerk checks on her cargo?”

Tossack complied, but with a frown that creased her heavy brow. “It’s on his collarbone. Some kind of mark, a wyrm all twisted up with some coins. He didn’t have it last ni- before, I mean.”

“We’ll look at it at the safehouse.”

“Which one? We can’t go to Thirty-seventh – nowhere for the wagon to go.”

“I know. We’re going over to Kristiliin.”

“Purgatory? That one’s too close to your place, Gregori.”

“Only one close enough that’ll hide the wagon. It’ll have to do. After we work over Krnk-krrk, I’ll have to slip out and meet Bales,” Ioann murmured. “Time has passed for caution, Benji. Everything about this feels like a setup, but I don’t know who’s behind it or what they want. Whatever’s happening, it’s happening fast, and I don’t want to be on the other end of Red’s temper when all of it inevitably goes to hell.”
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