“Oh.” Jennian nodded thoughtfully. “I hope you’re right.”
Bettina continued smiling. It seemed the easiest way to reassure the young girl, and at this late hour she was willing to take whatever shortcuts that presented themselves to her. She took another pair of pills and swallowed them down a dry throat with a dry cough, and hoped they would soon alleviate the sharp throbbing in her ankle.
The path curved away from the water and plunged through a thin wall of slender trees and then they emerged once more into the starlight onto a broader, straighter road that ran north and west toward the tall pale towers of the town, but between them and their destination lay a profusion of crooked and mismatched fields all tilled in different directions and not a one of them arranged in right angles to the next.
The road itself only ran straight for a short distance before it too was forced to turn and weave around fields and large stones and old trees and Bettina quickly realized the value of their young guide in navigating the countless meandering paths and trails and would-be roads that criss-crossed the land beneath the shadows of the clouds.
“Will there be any people out at this hour?” Bettina asked.
“I doubt it. If that goose hadn’t knocked right on my window shutter, I probably never would have woken up myself, and I didn’t see anyone all the way back to the Cache,” Jennian said. “Must be an hour past midnight at least. No one around but a guard or two, I imagine.”
“Guards?” Arjuna’s hand went to his holster to check his coilgun. “What sort of guards?”
“Lawmen, like yourselves. Sometimes they wander about at night if the owls are getting a bit jumpy or the weather’s picking up, just to keep folk safe.” The girl sniffed. “Shouldn’t see any of them tonight though. It’s been quiet all day.”
“Really?” Bettina nodded. “I suppose that’s good. It means no one saw Miss Goldstein when she landed here yesterday morning. I don’t suppose you heard or saw anything unusual tonight? Strange birds, perhaps?”
“Not that I recall.”
They strode on through the cool night air, following one winding lane after another, over ditches and around boulders and along tiny knee-high fences covered in prickly vines that Jennian said helped to keep the huge anglers out of the crops… sometimes. As they drew closer to the town, their guide became more and more talkative and Bettina could hear the nervousness in the girl’s voice rapidly fading away as she asked more and more questions about life in Eisenstadt.
“What do you eat for breakfast?”
“How do you make clothes like that?”
“Are horses still alive or did they die out?”
“What’s gold?”
“Have you ever seen paper?”
Bettina let Arjuna answer the girl as she found her own patience waning quickly. Her pills had failed to offer any respite from either the dull aching or the sharp stabbing from her little toes up to her calf and she was leaning harder and harder on her cane with each step. Her husband gracefully took her arm and for a while he helped her glide a bit more smoothly over the rough dirt road.
Their arrival in the town of Risenton was slow and deliberate as they approached from a wide open field that offered a broad view of the small cottages, the misshapen shops, the crumbling stoneworks and the spotty thatching, the lush gardens and the dusty streets, and the imposing black outlines of several larger buildings in the distance, and all of them gently aglow with the lights of errant angler bugs. As the buildings came into view, the young courier identified each one.
To their left stood Melody Hall, the ancient theater where a choir of some sort performed regularly as part of weddings, seasonal feasts, and something that sounded like a fertility festival.
To their right was the town hall, a building that almost mimicked the older palaces of Eisenstadt in miniature, a building of sharp lines and gabled windows, as well as collapsing chimneys and pockmarked masonry.
And in the distance at the far end of town was the University, a positively medieval structure of stone towers topped with witch-hat roofs and defensive crenellations with a great black disc that Jennian identified as the rusting remains of some sort of mechanical clock.
Bettina considered each landmark with a critical eye, weighing each one’s potential as a target for Ranulf Kaiser.
“Melora only said to bring you here,” Jennian said. “Where to now?”
“Where indeed?” Bettina took a long deep breath as she considered her options. “Where are the jewels? The rare artworks? The ancient relics and heirlooms?”
The girl looked partly confused and partly amused. “Jewels? I believe Missus Eichel has a silver ring with a bit of glass in it called a diamond.”
“A diamond? How large?” Arjuna asked.
“I’d say about the size of a strawberry seed,” Jennian said thoughtfully. “Though I’ve only glimpsed it once.”
Bettina felt her whole body deflating a bit. She was approaching true exhaustion, and she still had no clues and no leads on her quarry.
No jewels? No wealth? What on earth could Ranulf want from these people?
“What about relics from the early days when the isle first rose? Something very old, anything at all,” she prodded.
“Sorry.” Jennian shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything like that about. Not anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Arjuna said lightly. “It’s not as though Kaiser could possibly know what he’s looking for. He’s a thief. He came here and looked for a mark. All we have to do is think like him and follow along.” He glanced about at the three largest structures in the town. All were quite imposing in size, but all three also bore the signs of their age, cracked and crumbling from a thousand years of meager repair and maintenance by a few thousand people with more important matters to attend to than the restoration of historic landmarks.
“That one.” Arjuna pointed at the University.
“Why that one?” Bettina asked.
“It has the most windows,” her husband replied matter-of-factly. “That means the most rooms, possibly with the most occupants or the most purposes, such as a library or a study or an office. And the iron gates. Anything worth protecting with gates like that is probably worth stealing, don’t you think?”
Bettina nodded. “Fair enough.”
They strode down the silent, shadowed street between the dark windows of the cottages and shops, crossing the town from south to north as the imposing towers of the ancient University loomed ever higher over them. Lampposts dotted the road sides and corners, but the glassy chambers were all dark.
And then a voice hissed from the shadows, “Is that you, Jennian?”
All three of them stopped and spun to look, and Arjuna’s hand went to his holster, but the figure that slipped out into the road behind them was as short and slight as their guide, and Arjuna’s hands went back to his pockets.
“Who’s that?” Jennian whispered, peering at the girl limned in starlight.
“Mercy Chandler, of course,” the reply came. The stranger came a bit closer, though she moved slowly and cautiously, with her hands fiddling nervously together over her belly. “What in the name of the wind are you doing out here so late?”
“Business,” Jennian answered haughtily. She jerked her head at the tall couple behind her. “These here folks are up from Eichelgate looking for their little boy, who ran off tonight. They think he came up here to see the University, or some such.”
Bettina raised an eyebrow.
She’s a clever thing, isn’t she? Confident and assertive, imaginative and quick-tongued. She’ll go far, if they let girls go far in this strange place.
Stop that, Betty! For all you know, women run this entire island. Stop thinking garbage! You read too many magazines…
“Why would he want to see a fool thing like that for?” young Miss Chandler asked. “Hasn’t he seen it on market days?”
“Obviously not,” Jennian replied. “And tonight he ran off to see it
for himself. I imagine some other boy dared him to do it, and he didn’t think twice.”
“Boys.” Mercy Chandler sighed and tossed her dark hair back over her shoulder. She wore a long dress of the same fabrics as Jennian’s trousers and tunic, and tiny ceramic beads shone dimly in her hair and around her neck.
“So have you seen anyone tonight?” Jennian asked.
“No, not a soul,” Mercy said. “I was at the Hall tonight, practicing alone and I seem to have fallen asleep on the stage. So silly of me. I woke up chilled to the bone and was just on my way home when I saw you sneaking about.”
“We’re not sneaking, thank you very much,” Jennian snapped. “We’re in a hurry and have no wish to bother folks who have the good sense to be asleep in their beds.”
Mercy rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn, and then waved a dismissive hand at the other girl. “If you say so. Good night to you.” And she started to cross the street. But then she stopped and turned back again.
Arjuna sauntered a few steps farther on, deeper into the shadows of the next shop along their route, and he turned his face away from the girl. But the girl had no interest in his Dumastran features, or even in Bettina’s violet dress and rose blouse. Miss Chandler fixed Jennian with a pair of narrow eyes and said, “If you need some help, I could try singing a cantata for him. For the boy, I mean.”
Jennian shook her head. “We’ve no time for that. I promised we’d find their boy before he got truly lost or hurt himself.”
“No time?” Mercy’s eyes flashed in the moonlight and she turned to face the empty street as though it was filled with anxious onlookers and adoring fans, and she began to sing. It was a soft little melody and if it was in a true language, it was no language that the Eisenstadters recognized. Mercy’s voice rose and fell almost without pause, and she glided gently from note to note almost without breathing, rolling forever onward like a leaf carried along on a gentle river’s sleepy, rocking waters.
Bettina rubbed her aching forehead and leaned heavily on her cane. She closed her eyes and the darkness swam deliciously through her mind, tempting her deeper into the warm embrace of a dreamless oblivion.
No, no. We’ve no time for this!
She pried her eyes open and was about to speak up for the first time in front of their latest acquaintance when a sudden wave of fatigue rolled through her troubled thoughts, brushing them aside like so many stray wisps of cloud. Suddenly she couldn’t remember what she was about to say, or even that she had been annoyed at the delay. All she could think about was wanting to sit and rest, to listen to the rest of the song, to have Arjuna gather her up in his arms so that they could enjoy the sound of the music all night long beneath the countless stars of Inselmond.
Bettina began to lean back with a deep and contented sigh, and a pair of hands caught her. She leaned her head back against Arjuna’s chest and exhaled, as she closed her eyes and listened to the soft melody rippling on and on from the young girl before them.
“You stop that this instant,” Jennian snapped, clamping her hand over Mercy’s mouth. “You’ll have us all snoring in the street if you carry on like that much longer. We need to find someone, not put them to sleep.”
“Fine, fine, have it your way.” Mercy turned to leave once more but she only managed to go a few paces before she stopped once more to say, “Come to think of it, I did see a light as I left the Hall a moment ago. It wasn’t near the University, though. It was farther out over the west field. Over by the grove. Maybe your boy is there.” Without waiting for a reply, the girl proceeded to yawn noisily as she crossed the street and turned the corner, out of sight.
Bettina felt Arjuna massaging her shoulders and she heard him whispering in her ear. “Darling, we have to get moving. Can you keep going?”
She nearly didn’t answer him. She nearly closed her eyes and let the sweet nothingness take her away from the aches and throbs and worries. But she didn’t. She forced her eyes open and gently stepped away from her husband, placing her weight on her weak foot and letting the sudden blossom of pain shock her back into full wakefulness.
The last faint vestiges of Mercy’s voice still lingered in her mind and the memory of the strange song was already fading as though it didn’t want to be remembered.
Must have been some sort of islander lullaby.
Bettina nodded. “This light in the grove… We should investigate it. Any light, any activity at this hour could be a lead. Jennian, please lead the way.”
The girl set off without a word, and the detectives followed at a brisk pace. They passed through the center of town and crossed along the front entrance of the thousand-year-old University, giving Bettina a few brief moments to appreciate its moss-covered walls and cracked towers before they moved on.
It only took a few minutes to traverse the entire breadth of the town of Risenton and they stepped off the road onto a flat green sward, heading toward a cluster of tall thin trees standing near several broken stones all huddled together in a depression not more than two hundred paces from the walls of the University.
“What is this grove?” Bettina asked.
“Nothing in particular,” Jennian said. “Just a place. Just a circle of old stones, the leftover bits of the old city, but there’s nothing there, nothing at all, really. Nothing to steal, I mean.”
Bettina peered at the dark trees and stones ahead of them. A tiny reddish glow flickered in the darkness, so small and feeble that it cast no light on its surroundings at all.
Fire.
“Yes, well, we’ll know in a moment. Jennian, please stay behind me, and Arjuna, please take the lead, if you don’t mind.”
He nodded silently and drew his coilgun. His smile had vanished and all his attention was focused on the trees and the dying red light. And one by one, they stepped into the grove.
Chapter 13. A Crime Scene
The grove was a wide flat circle of uncut grass waving as high as their waists in the cool night breeze. Slender trees wearing smooth silver bark stood in silent contemplation all around them, fencing them in, hiding the world outside their private space. At the foot of many of the trees stood small stone pillars like the ancient mile markers on the highways that stretched from Eisenstadt across the wide plains to the distant spires of Haebern and the golden domes of Oshen.
Bettina frowned at the lone stick that stood in the center of the grove, thrust down into the soft earth and left to lean away from the breeze. The end of the stick was black with char and a dim red glow hinted at the torch it had been just an hour ago.
“Look at this.” Arjuna pointed to a spot on the ground hidden by the tall grass.
Bettina and Jennian came to stand beside him and look. The grass lay matted and pressed against the ground in a haphazard carpet of green and yellow wands. Around the edge of the depression there were deep gouges in the earth, black grooves and holes where the grass had been torn away and something heavy had struck the soil. And in the center of it all was a dark shining stain.
“Blood,” Bettina said. She pointed to the dark gouges at the edge. “Boot marks. Kicking, clawing. Someone was held here, possibly tied up. They fought back, tried to escape.”
“Were they killed?” the young girl asked in a small voice.
“I don’t think so. There isn’t enough blood,” Arjuna said gently. “And no blood trail. I think the prisoner walked away.”
“Which way?” Bettina squinted at the dark grass for signs of a trail.
“West.” Arjuna nodded at the trees.
“You said the thieves wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Jennian said, her voice laden as much with fear as accusation.
“I said they didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” Bettina said calmly, still studying the ground. “I never said they wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“But why? Why would they?”
“For information,” Arjuna said. “They came, they saw the town, and they realized there were no riches here to steal. So they found someone to interrogate a
nd came out here to demand answers. I’m encouraged actually. I’d expect the notorious Magdalena Strauss to kill a hostage when she was through with them. Clearly, Kaiser is keeping her in line.”
“Maybe.” Bettina nodded. “Come on. We need to get moving if we’re going to catch up to them.”
“Wait.” Arjuna held up his hand for silence as he cocked his head to one side and peered off in the direction of the town. “Someone’s coming. Sounds like two men.”
A moment later they heard the tell-tale sound of boots striding swiftly through the tall grass, the shushing of men’s feet trampling along more in haste than in stealth.
“Then let’s be gone before they arrive.” Bettina took her cane in one hand and her skirts in the other and headed for the trees.
“Too late.” Arjuna dashed across the grove to her side and put himself between her and the two men stepping into the ring of trees and stones.
Jennian Oakley remained in the center of the ancient ring, her hands trembling, her wide eyes turning back and forth from the detectives to the men, and then to the depression of crushed grass and the shining blood stain on the ground.
The men were tall and broad-shouldered. Their faces were lined with dark shadows that pooled around their eyes. One was a bit shorter, with thicker arms, and a thick tuft of black beard on his chin. The other was leaner and craggier, with shaggy iron gray hair and a wide white scar across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Both wore several layers of shirts or vests or jackets with many pockets, as well as a belt or two laden with pouches. On their jacket sleeves Bettina saw many of the dark beetle carapace pieces sewn into the fabric from the shoulders to the cuffs, and they wore a similar array of gleaming insect shells upon their vests covering their hearts and lungs. The lean one wore the strange little plates all the way up to his throat.
The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Page 12