by Dave Dobson
It seemed appropriate now, although bold and daring aren’t exactly central to my nature. I tensed, took a deep breath, and launched myself over the table behind which I had cowered. “Cease your attacks!" I cried. “In the name of the Inquisitor’s Guild! Drop your weapons, and get down on the floor, or I’ll kill every bloody one of you!”
There was a moment of silence. Then a man, the one who’d bellowed earlier, said, “What, then?” A child started to cry, and another, a little girl, said "But we’re already on the floor.” I heard Boog snort behind me.
The man rose and raised the shades on the lantern, illuminating the room brightly. A group of children in animal costumes stared at me from the floor, blinking in the light. One, in a bear suit, was sobbing uncontrollably. The man glared at me. “Children, it’s all right. Keep on romping through the forest. I’ll be back in a minute.” He came over to me. “What’s the meaning of this?” he hissed.
“I, er, I mean, I’m…” I turned to Boog. His hand was still pressed to his chest, but I saw that instead of a bleeding mortal wound, his tunic bore only a smear of strawberry preserves, no doubt left there by the fruity tart he now held. He chuckled and popped the pastry in his mouth.
I sagged, and turned back to the irate host. “Sir, I am dreadfully sorry,” I began. “We’ve made a terrible mistake. Obviously.” I turned to the children. “Sorry, young ones! Please, enjoy your party.” I smiled as broadly and kindly as I knew how. The bear boy wailed louder. A girl dressed like a fairy eyed me suspiciously, then reached for another tart from a pile on a plate.
I turned back to the man. “Sorry, sir, again, sir. We were here to investigate… er… Well, you see, we’re always on the lookout for crimes. Even in the most unlikely places. But we didn’t know it was unlikely. As it obviously is. This place.” I felt a huge hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll be going now,” said Boog. “Please accept our apologies. The tart was delicious.” He pulled me back out the door, and I was happy to go, and to shut up.
We retreated back down the red hall, where we met the short man again. Boog nodded to him. “Wrong party. We’ll head over to Harance.” The man looked ready to protest, but Boog guided me swiftly through the center door. “Nice, Inspector Mingenstern,” he whispered. “Very nice.”
“How was I supposed to know?” I said, my voice higher and screechier than I would have liked. “You were hit… I heard screams…”
“I’ll kill every bloody one of you, you small defenseless children,” mimicked Boog. I had to admit he did a good impression of me. He paused at the end of the hall and opened the door gently.
This room was nearly identical to the other, with the long tables and raised platform at one end in front of a long red curtain. A gaggle of well-dressed children sat on benches near the platform. On the stage, a group of costumed players danced and gestured – a man in fool’s motley, a woman in green woodland garb, and another in a mouse costume, the player’s entire head obscured with an elaborate whiskered mask. We slid softly in and sat in the back. The players launched into a song about a lazy crocodile. They were good, really good, actually. I hadn’t seen many dramatic productions other than the occasional street troupe, but they were as good as I’d seen. I was a bit too busy cringing about my recent death threat to the Sestille party to enjoy it much, though.
They finished their song to raucous applause and pranced off the stage to mingle with the children. Boog leaned closer to me. “What now, brave warrior?” he murmured.
“He said he’d find us.” I didn’t know what to do, other than wait. If Bernot didn’t show up, this was certainly going to rank among my worst days ever. Perhaps it already did - up all night watching men vaporized, then scolded and disgraced by my mentor by midmorning, and, not to be outdone, learning of the imminent destruction of my city shortly after noon, topped off with a generous helping of terrorizing innocent children before suppertime. I felt a strong desire to go to bed before I caused a flood or earthquake or maybe a plague of insects.
Over by the stage, the players were organizing the children into a line, and, as I watched, they began a parade around the room, the jester singing a happy marching tune as the others clapped and followed. That is one thing about my line of work – you never know what you’ll see next.
The parade wound through the tables over to us, and I could tell the jester was surprised to see us, but he showed no hesitation as he strutted along. He and the children filed by with the green-clad maid skipping around the line. The mouse, bringing up the rear, suddenly laid a hand on Boog, miming for him to stand. I chuckled.
Boog’s eyes widened, and he tried to decline politely. “No, sir, uh, mouse. I’ll just watch.”
The mouse waved a scolding finger at Boog and pulled harder, with both hands. Boog looked at me with growing desperation. I shrugged, trying to contain a smile. “I think the mouse wants you to join the parade.”
Boog rolled his eyes. “I know what he wants, you idiot.” Boog spoke loudly to the mouse. “I’m sorry, I don’t march.” His tone was icy.
The mouse put its gloved hands on its hips and shook its head. Then, quick as anything, it grabbed hold of Boog’s ears and tried to pull him up with exaggerated yanking gestures. The children laughed and clapped. That is, until Boog yelled, grabbed the mouse’s leg in an expert wrestling grip and hurled the unfortunate rodent to the floor. The children gasped. The singing stopped. The mouse writhed. Boog hauled back his meaty right fist to strike.
“Boog,” I said quickly.
He looked up and saw all the open mouths of the children staring at him. There was a tense moment, and then his fist relaxed, and he patted the mouse on the chest. He smiled broadly, but there were beads of sweat forming on his brow. “Hello, kids. Just a little fun with the mouse here. We’re only playing! Ha, ha. Silly mouse. Please, carry on.” He hauled the mouse to its feet, where it staggered a bit, then reached up to straighten its head.
The jester looked rather put off, if ‘rather put off’ can include a healthy dose of barely contained horror. Ever the showman, though, he started up his song again, and the forester maid urged the children along a path directly away from Boog. Not a coincidence, I suspected. The mouse took a few faltering steps and then limped along gamely behind the procession.
I looked at Boog.
“What?” he said. “Shut up.”
I kept looking.
“That’s not fair. You threatened a whole room of children with death,” he grumbled.
“Yes, and you vanquished an overzealous rodent. Boog the Fearless, Slayer of Monstrous Mice.”
Boog put his face in his hands. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t,” he mumbled.
“Fair enough,” I replied.
The children circled the room a few more times, and then the jester produced small gifts for each of them from a patchwork sack. They cheered, and the three players led them to the door, where the entire entourage proceeded out to the entrance. The jester shot us an ugly look as he left.
Boog sighed. “That’s it. I’ve had enough.” He stood. "I’m going home to bed.”
Before he could make good on his pledge, though, the door opened again. I feared that the little man might come in, full of wrath, and I couldn’t really see how we didn’t deserve it. But instead, the mouse came back in, favoring its left leg.
Boog groaned. “Look, I’m really sorry. But you can’t just go around grabbing a guy’s ears.” He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Let’s not make a big fuss out of this.”
“Murrrf fumf!” said the mouse, its voice muffled by the mask. It pulled off a glove and reached up to undo the lacing at the back of its head. The laces loosened, it pulled off the mask to reveal a stubbly face surrounded by rich brown locks matted with perspiration.
“Bernot?” I said, shocked.
“Gaah,” said Boog. “I had no idea it was you. You’re not……hurt?”
“No,” said Bernot. “Not badly, anyway.”
“What are you doing dressing up like a mouse, playing for children?” I asked.
“It’s my day job,” he said. “I really want to be an actor, but they don’t pay enough here, so I clerk at night.”
“But…nobody knows?” I asked.
“It’s not something I advertise,” he said. He held up the mouse head and smirked. “But that’s not important now.”
“Yes, why have you been away from work?” Boog asked. “And why all the secrecy?”
A look of fear flashed in Bernot’s eyes. “You told no one? You weren’t followed? You destroyed the note, I trust.”
“Yes, I tore it to shreds and ate it personally,” said Boog. “With my soup.” I assumed he was joking, but when I glanced at his face, I wasn’t sure. Bernot seemed convinced, at least. “What’s going on, Bernot?"
Bernot took a deep breath and set the lifeless mouse head on a table. “Five days ago, I was working the night shift in the evidence room. It wasn’t a busy night at first. All I checked in was a bloody dagger from a tavern brawl gone ugly." He swallowed and continued. “A little after midnight, two people, a man and a woman, came in. They said they were from the House of Marron, and they were there to collect the count’s family heirloom. It was the pendant you two checked in a few weeks ago – you know, the case Sophie put on impound?”
I nodded, a vague, unpleasant feeling rising in my gullet. If Marron had the pendant now, Sophie must be involved. Bernot continued.
“I told them I had no authorization to release it, and they produced a note that said they could take it, signed by Sophie. It didn’t look quite right, though.”
“Not right how?” asked Boog.
“Sophie’s signature looked strange, and regardless, this isn’t how she does it. She signs the book for impounds – always has, the few times I’ve seen them. The whole thing seemed off.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I told them this wasn’t proper procedure, and that they’d have to come back and get it in the morning, when Sophie was available to release it." He glanced nervously at the door. “They weren’t, uh, impressed with that. They challenged me, and looked very threatening, but I figured they would never do anything in the headquarters. I mean, one yell and I'd have guards and inquisitors running to save me.”
“Or at least to witness your murder,” said Boog, with a grin.
Bernot didn’t seem to find that very funny. “Finally, they insisted that I contact Sophie immediately to resolve this. I really didn’t want to get her up, but there was a chance that the note was legitimate, and I didn’t want to mess up.”
“You woke up Sophie in the middle of the night to ask about a clerical issue?” Bernot was either braver or stupider than I was, to be sure. Maybe both.
Bernot looked unhappy and more than a touch defensive. “I’ve never dealt with this kind of thing, and you know Lia. She's really hard to work for. I figured that was the only way to be sure I wasn’t messing up. I had the note, but it wasn’t standard procedure.”
“What did Sophie say?” asked Boog.
“Well, I locked up, took the note, and walked over to the residence.” Sophie lived in the Inquisitor’s Residence, a modest but comfortable house across from Headquarters. One of the benefits of her position. “After I knocked several times, Sophie opened the door.” The corners of Bernot’s mouth bent downward. "She wasn’t happy.” I could imagine. “But I showed her the note, and I'm nearly certain she’d never seen it before. She looked really angry, and just stood there holding it for a long time.”
A forgery? But why? And why so clumsily done? Maybe they assumed Bernot would be easier to bully than he turned out to be. I had to give Bernot credit there. But, if it was forged, what had happened to the amulet? I was becoming very confused.
Bernot continued. “Finally, Sophie folded up the note and just said, ‘Give it to them.’ I asked her if she was sure, and she said she was. She told me not to discuss this with anyone, not even Lia.”
That didn’t seem like a workable plan. Lianna was very thorough, and Sophie knew it – Lia’s annoying attention to detail was actually one of her major qualifications for her job. Maybe Sophie had figured on fixing the situation somehow before Lia caught on, but that didn’t sound right either. This wasn’t making much sense, but it was also looking depressingly as if Sophie had been bought by Marron's gold.
“I returned to the evidence room, and I should say, I can walk very quietly when I want to – all the theater training – and I have very good hearing." He looked very proud of this, so I smiled encouragingly. “Marron’s people didn’t hear me coming, and as I was walking down the hall, I overheard them talking. The man said that with the amulet back, they would be back on course. The woman said they had Sophie Borchard wrapped up and under control. I don’t know exactly what that meant, but the man laughed, and said, yes, just a few more loose ends to tie down. I really didn’t like the way he said that – it sounded like a threat.”
I glanced at Boog, and he looked back at me, his face grave. “So, what then?”
Bernot continued. “I came around the corner, and they looked a little startled, and then a bit angry. Well, more than a bit. I told them that Sophie had approved, and they waited while I collected the amulet and recorded the transaction. The man, the leader I suppose, put the amulet in a pouch on his belt.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
Bernot squinted, trying to remember the details. “He had blond hair and a beard, no mustache. Probably thirty years old, maybe more. In a black robe and cloak, no obvious weapons, but a Marron heraldic sign on a patch on his shoulder.” Our wizard from the warehouse? It made sense. He’d been involved with Novara as well. Obviously a close associate of Marron. “The woman was shorter, darker skinned, with mostly short black hair but a long braid coming down off the left side. No insignia at all, but she must also be with Marron. Very muscular, graceful, in chain armor with a short sword with a jeweled hilt – small garnets, or something similar, in rows along the guard.”
I commended Bernot on his observations and asked for a few more details – scars, accents, and the like – but he had little else to give. I thought about the ramifications for a bit, but couldn’t make much sense of things. I didn’t like where my thoughts led.
Boog broke the silence. All right, so this all sounds out of the ordinary and all, but it still seems as though you resolved it. I don’t understand why you’ve gone into hiding and are sending me secret notes.”
“As I said, I had a bad feeling about the two of them and their intentions towards me,” Bernot replied. “They took the amulet. I had noticed one strange thing when I collected it. In the inventory book, the item was listed as ‘amulet, moon and sun, with gold chain,’ but there was no chain. I looked everywhere. I was trying to decide whether to tell them this, but then the woman grabbed me by my shirt and told me that under no circumstances was I to speak of this with anyone, or I’d wish I hadn’t.”
“You’re talking to us, though,” I said.
“I was scared, I’ll admit. Both Sophie and this man had told me to keep quiet, and I was quite willing to do so.”
“So did you mention the chain?”
“No, I was pretty scared then, and I just wanted them to leave.”
“So why are you telling us now, if they were so scary, and you were under orders not to?” Boog asked.
“I carried on as normal for a few days, but the day before yesterday, something happened. I came off my shift and headed home for some sleep. I slept for a couple hours, but I’m a light sleeper, and a noise outside my door woke me. It sounded like someone was outside my house. I went over to the door, and I could hear faint metallic sounds from the door, like someone fiddling with my latch.”
Boog rubbed his chin. “So, you thought they’d come for you?”
“I couldn’t think of any other reason, aside from burglary, but nobody in my part of town has anything worth stealing, m
yself included. I got scared, and I dropped into my root cellar, which I share with my neighbors the next house over. They never keep their trapdoor latched, so I was able to come up through their house and get out into the street. It was mid-morning, so the street was busy, and I pulled on my hood and risked crossing over to the other side of the road to get a view down the alley towards my house. It’s pretty secluded there, but in front of my house I saw the woman from Headquarters – the one with the braid, who’d threatened me. I remembered them talking about loose ends, and I was fairly certain that I’d become one.”
I thought about this for a while. Threatening an inquisitor was a crime, and certainly breaking into Bernot’s house was as well. Given that I’d personally observed these fine upstanding citizens turn two people to powder and blow up Stennis, not to mention whatever they'd done to the poor blue lady in the box, I conceded that they might not be so concerned with the mundane details of the criminal code. “So why tell us? Why not tell Sophie?”
Bernot looked uncomfortable. “I hate to say it, but I’m not sure what side she’d be on. For all I know, she could have told them where I live. You two were the ones who turned in the amulet, and I’ve heard from Lia and others that you’ve still been following up on the case.” He gestured toward Boog. "Plus, I could use somebody intimidating on my side, I think.”
Boog smiled grimly at this. I considered for a moment being offended, but I’d be kidding myself if I thought that anyone found me intimidating. I asked, “So, where are you staying now? And why are you still working here?”
“Nobody from the Guild knows that I work here, other than you two now, so I thought it was still safe. I spent last night at an inn, but I don’t have the coin to keep that up for long. I’m in trouble – real trouble, aren’t I?”
I couldn’t disagree. I looked at Boog, but his face was impassive. I thought for a bit, then replied. “It’s not a good situation, to be sure. Why don't you stay in hiding for now, until we figure things out? I can give you what I’ve got on me.” I fumbled in my coin purse for the little money I had. I heard some noises outside the door –– perhaps the other players were returning. “That should keep you for a couple of days. We can meet here again the day after tomorrow. Boog and I will try to feel out Sophie and decide on our next step.”