Gaunt gingerly touched his bruised cheek.
“Ambassador. You know that carefully constructed persona of being an itinerant wildcard who disobeys orders and has no respect for authority?”
Sir Skallen frowned in befuddlement.
“Yes. You haven’t endeared yourself to Lord Brevvit much. You usually drive me up the wall with your self-discipline and devotion to Free Reign. What was all that about last night, you ending up in the clink?”
Gaunt took a glass of orange juice from a waiter and sipped. It stung his cut lip.
“Brevvit is an officious glutton who is in denial of the danger he is in. What my stint at Zalenberg’s pleasure bought you last night was plausible deniability. You can dissociate me from Free Reign and mark me off as a rogue soldier who has seen too much of war and finally snapped.”
Skallen sighed as he smiled at a passing noble.
“Oh dear. Gaunt, you’re ruining my appetite here. What have you gone and done?”
“If my guess is right, Sir, I think I know what Jonas Reach is after. Since diplomacy has failed, our plan is to beat him to it.”
“What do you mean?”
Gaunt sighed and took another glass from a passing tray.
“I mean Izzy and I are planning to steal the artefact before anyone else does.”
7.
Maeve sat at her tiny desk in her cramped office.
There was plenty of space in the Hall of the Watch, in fact the building was vast, but precious little of it was assigned to Inspector Maeve Scurlock.
In a metropolis the size of Free Reign, there were many local wardenhalls servicing the districts but the Hall of the Watch was the central hub they all answered to.
A thousand years ago it was built as the temple to the god of law and justice, Magar. The Hall of the Watch stood as a vast pyramid atop a sloping hill in the north of the city. At its summit was a watchtower shining a continual revolving shaft of light that scanned the clouds above Free Reign.
Air elementals patrolled the skies around the pyramid like anthropomorphic storm clouds and thaumaturgically powered skyships sailed amongst them, piloted by warden cloudmen. A thousand lights from the building’s tiny windows studded the smooth grey stone walls like jewels.
It was an imposing beacon that rose like a stone mountain above the multi-layered, confusing hubbub of the city.
Like many old buildings however, it was not built for comfort.
Draughty, cramped, and cold were words most often used to describe the Hall of the Watch, which to every warden who worked there, was simply known as The Priory.
Maeve’s office was exceptional even here for its lack of comfort and amenities.
Stacked all around her were files, reports and warrants that nobody else wanted to deal with. Her little forgotten corner of a subsection in a minor department was the black hole that everyone else threw their odd, unsolvable or unwanted cases into.
Maeve was a junior Inspector in the Regulatory Department, and unofficially that meant her career was as good as over. It wasn’t due to lack of performance. Maeve had a talent for crime solving and keeping the streets safe. She had no talent at all when it came to political maneuvering, sycophantic boot licking and nepotism; hence her career had been neatly sidelined by those more skilled in such matters.
Maeve had shone at the training school for entry into the city wardens. She excelled in her written examinations, practical tests and fitness.
She had made a few notable arrests early in her career and one particular arrest that scuppered it. An arrest that involved a city official taking bribes that public knowledge of which the top brass had decided would undermine public trust. Maeve disagreed and as such her opportunities had become severely limited.
The Regulatory Department was not the aspiration of many of the ambitious new recruits that came through the academy.
In a city that was a contradictory fusion of magic and technology, things usually moved along surprisingly well. The mages, technomancers and engineers really knew their jobs and had harnessed the energies that supported the city for thousands of years. What was not often publicized however was that due to the chaotic nature of thaumaturgy, occasionally something went wrong.
Anomalies.
The Regulatory Department’s sole remit was the investigation and correcting of these anomalies, known as balancing the books.
It was often weird work as when thaumaturgy was involved, logic, cause, effect, and accountability couldn’t always be trusted. Intuitive imagination was as likely to solve a case as police procedure and although she was not a magic sensitive individual Maeve had a particular knack for that kind of thinking.
The reality of her department however, was that within The Priory it was seen as a joke, and the place where serious police work went to die.
Maeve looked up from her desk and pinched the bridge of her nose. She closed her eyes and rubbed, easing off the threat of a headache that was beginning.
She leaned back to stretch out her stiffening shoulders and sighed as she surveyed the room. Pile after pile of folders and boxes gathering dust lined the walls. By comparison her desk was a shrine to the principles of law and justice she had always passionately believed in. A moonglobe that housed a scale model of The Priory glowed gently on one corner of the desk, and on the other sat a silver statue of the many armed god of justice, Magar.
In front of her, next to the report she was writing in neat black script, was a pack of the long slim blue rillos Maeve favored, and a half finished bottle of Mugson’s Old Tawny, the tipple she occasionally used to warm up her bones in the draughty stone office.
One other thing stood on the desk, a new addition that Maeve leaned forward and gently picked up between finger and thumb.
The green stone bullet reflected light from her moonglobe as Maeve held it before her eyes and turned it around. She spoke softly under her breath.
“What are you then, little fellow?”
The only boon to Maeve’s office was that it was on the outer rim of the ancient temple, and as such was blessed with a window. Maeve sat back in her chair, twirling the bullet between her fingers and taking in the breathtaking view of the city.
The sun was setting and cast a warm orange glow over the lower east Sparkside district below. In the distance the skyline was lit up by the impossibly large vaulted cathedral that housed the elemental forges which crackled with their own internal storms. To the northwest, the mage enclave of Candlehill was silhouetted by the sunset and the many white towers upon their hill stood out like a giant head wearing a crown.
From her high office Maeve could even see the edge of Greensickle Park and its thaumaturgically warped forest of sentient goblin-trees. In the shadows of those trees she could see the dark outline of the Myriad Lake. It still shocked Maeve as blasphemous that whoever had murdered that young girl had left her defiled body there in such a spiritual place as a final insult to her family and the city.
Her thoughts were broken as a knock came at the door, followed almost immediately by the rosy cheeked face of Lemuel Vark. He smiled at her and stood halfway in her office.
“Sorry to disturb you Inspector, but I thought you might want to know that Raugmont is studying the other one of those fancy green bullets. Might be a lead?”
Maeve put the stone ammunition down on her desk and stood up.
“Alright, Vark, let’s see if we can get some answers.”
Ten minutes later Maeve stood in one of the lower vaults of the Priory, with a doctor in experimental thaumaturgy who was scratching his stubbled chin and nodding at one of the green bullets as if it was talking to him.
Maeve glanced between the bullet as it sat on the table and the portly examiner.
“What is it then, Raugmont?”
Raugmont gave an exasperated little laugh and shrugged. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a steaming jug and slurped loudly.
“That’s what I asked myself. I couldn’t make head nor t
ail of it.”
Maeve took a sip of her own coffee and winced as the stale liquid hit her tongue.
“I’ve seen some unusual projectiles, but nothing quite like that. “
The examiner picked it up with a set of forceps.
“I can tell you that the cartridge it was fired from would fit into a standard army issue revolver, but the material? At first I thought it was some kind of jade. Jade is a particularly hard material that can still be worked with the right tools, so theoretically it could be the basis for ballistics.”
“But it’s not?”
Raugmont shook his head. He gestured over to a young blonde man in the blue high collar suit of a state empath.
“No, not quite. So I’ve brought one of our empaths in to test it for thaumaturgy. Colm, would you like to see what you can find?”
The young man smiled and stepped forward. Maeve thought him barely old enough to shave but he had the serious, slightly supercilious demeanor that many natural born empaths carried. Not talented enough to be a mage but skilled enough to sense sorcery when they found it. Colm positioned himself at the table and cupped his hands around the projectile. After he took several deep breaths he closed his eyes and his face slackened. Maeve and Raugmont stood patiently as the young man attuned to the object. They knew how pernickety he would get if they interrupted.
Suddenly he drew back as if burned and stumbled shrieking into the wall. Maeve reached out and steadied him but he stared right through her as if blind.
“Are you all right?”
The young man shook his head and gave a long shivering sigh. He turned to look at the green bullet on the table and regarded it fearfully.
“Don’t ask me to do that again, Inspector.”
“Can we get him a glass of water or something? What happened, what did you get from it?”
The young empath took a sip of water and began to regain his composure. He struggled for words at first and did not take his eyes from the thing on the table.
“That thing absolutely reeks of thaumaturgy. Corrupt, corrosive, rotten magic. I feel nauseated just being near it.”
Maeve glanced over at the strange little projectile.
“What kind of bullet would be that saturated with sorcery?”
Colm ran a hand through his feathery blonde hair and wiped a little perspiration from his face.
“That’s specialist ammunition. It wasn’t designed to snuff out a few robbers in tunnels. It was designed for much bigger game. I’ve heard of this stuff but never actually been close to it in real life. To be honest I didn’t think any of it still existed in the world.”
Maeve offered the boy some more water and he sipped greedily. He was calming down but it was clear his fright had been genuine.
“What is it?”
Colm sat down in a chair and his eyes scanned the floor as he searched for the memory.
“If I’m right about this material, it’s called Grimjade. It’s an absolute sponge for raw death-magic. Historically, or I should say mythically since there are no verified accounts of its efficacy, it was used to kill demons.”
Raugmont raised his bushy brows and huffed incredulously.
“You think one of the old gods is in the city? Come now!”
Maeve felt a feeling of cold dread creep up her legs as she thought of the crimes she was investigating.
“It would explain all the cult activity, the human sacrifice, the girls going missing.”
Raugmont shook his head dismissively but his hands were shaking a little.
“All the wards and protection magic that’s built into the walls and foundations of Free Reign? Nothing could or ever has gotten past that. There are a lot of strange things in this city, but there are no demons. Not for centuries.”
Maeve looked at the two men and then to the bullet.
“Well until recently there were no Wraiths either. Shouldn’t all the wards and sigils keep them out too?”
Raugmont nodded.
“They should. Unless both entities were able to hide inside a person. That might have cloaked them enough to enter.”
Maeve absent mindedly put a rillo in her mouth until she saw Raugmont shaking his head. She left it hanging there as she stared at the Grimjade bullet.
“Demonology. Death magic. Wraiths. I truly thought we’d left these days behind us. So that means our Vigilante isn’t just some lone lunatic with a grudge. He’s a demon hunter.”
8.
The night was still in upper west Sparkside.
Merchants, bankers and doctors made their homes there. It was a tucked away corner of high hedges, walled gardens and large purpose built mansions. Hidden in their own little enclaves, few people really knew their neighbors.
At the end of a long drive lined with marble statues and surrounded by a high gated wall, stood a large three storey manor in a faux baronial style.
In this manor nestled in a sleepy little cul-de-sac in a respectable area, one of the city’s most prolific drug barons had made his claims to legitimacy.
Vagranz leaned back in his chair and thumped his feet up on the desk. He flipped the gold coin in the air and caught it in his beefy gnarled hand with a sneer.
“As if this city didn’t have enough fucking weirdo’s already.”
His right hand man shrugged and nodded with a bitter expression.
“Full of undesirables, boss.”
Vagranz grunted and continued his rant.
“It certainly is. Slimy little frogs hopping about the streets. Half of them are fucking venomous you know? If you licked one of those rainbow coloured bastards you’d shit yourself dead in a day.”
“Why would you lick one of them, boss? Under what circumstances?”
“Under unusual circumstances you contrary prick. How should I know? If I knew I’d be dead wouldn’t I?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Then there’s spooky unhallowed Fallen skulking about with their fucking dead faces. It’s a disgrace to let those things wander about unchecked. Vultures, that’s what they are. Pecking at the dead.”
“They eat souls I hear. Got an entire restaurant dedicated to it in Fallen Willow.”
“See? Weirdos. Wonder what my soul would taste like, eh Broskott?”
“Chicken presumably.”
“You calling me a chicken?”
“No boss. Course not.”
Vagranz flipped the gold coin across to Broskott, who caught it in a clumsy bear-pawed way. He looked at it in the light then bit on it to test the quality.
“So that’s what we got left of the Spawnday Heist. Picked that up out a gutter. Had some shit on it.”
Broskott blinked a couple of times and removed the coin from his mouth. Vagranz folded his arms and looked out the window at the crackling chimneys of the elemental forges that lit up the skyline.
“And now we’ve got this…gunslinger…this Vigilante. Creeping about in the sewers. Like a rat.”
“As I heard it he’s more like a bird, boss. Face like a crow I heard.”
“Crow in a sewer. Man can’t even choose his animals right. Should be a rat face. Am I right? That’s what I’d choose.”
“Careful with that one boss. No one in our game wants to hear anyone wants to be a rat.”
“First you called me a coward chicken now you say I’m an informant? I’ll make you chew that shitty coin till your teeth break.”
“Sorry boss. I can’t say nothing right today. Just nervous. Don’t like ghosts. That thing that follows him. They say it’s a Wraith.”
“There are a lot of strange things in Free Reign, Broskott, but there is no such thing as ghosts.”
“I believe in them boss. My aunt Petunia, she used to commune with the spirits when I was a lad. She had the gift.”
“Gift of gobshite. Everyone had a crazy cat-collecting auntie as talked to spirits. For a price.”
“What about Opaque. We deal in the stuff, boss. A lot of consumers rely on our mark of quality. Ain’t tha
t what it does? Sends you to the spirit world?”
“Hah. It sends those junkie bastards into a blubbering stupor is what it does. Trying to get once last tug off their dead girlfriend. Desperate idiots.”
“So what do we do boss? About this lone gunman?”
“He’s been set on sending us messages these last few days. So that’s what we do to him. We send him a message. A message he won’t forget.”
“We don’t know where he holes up though boss. He travels the warrens. Ain’t no one gonna go looking for him in there.”
“So we don’t go for him direct. There must be something or someone that’s precious to him. We target what he loves. Everyone loves something.”
“He seems to mainly love shooting our men and making sculptures out of them.”
Vagranz rubbed his peppery stubble.
“Nobody is just one thing. There must be more to him. Dig deep. Find out who he is. He’ll be somebody we wronged, someone with a grudge against us.”
Broskott threw on his leather duster and put his game face on.
“I’ll backtrack everyone we put in the ground in the last year. Find out if they had family, people that would try to get revenge for them.”
As Broskott opened the door to leave, Vagranz raised a hand.
“Look for soldiers. People who seen war. No way could a civvy take down so many of our boys.”
Broskott chewed his moustache nervously.
“If that turns out to be true boss, then I think we’ve got a problem.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Our boys are getting nailed to walls.”
“I was in the army seven years boss. This fella ain’t no card playing squaddie. He’s some kinda special unit. And he’s declared war on us.”
Vagranz snorted and lit a cigarette.
“Guerilla warfare eh? Well let him come. I’ve got a bullet here just for him.”
9
Maeve sat back in her rickshaw and lit a rillo.
SMOKE AND BLADES Page 5