The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  Armor?

  Bettina scanned them all quickly from head to toe.

  These men must be the guards Jennian mentioned before. She failed to mention the armor. I wonder how strong it is. Perhaps it’s merely ornamental.

  The thick-armed bruiser held a crude cudgel in one hand. The lean fellow with the scar carried a long, heavy staff. Both of the weapons wore at least a few of the angler carapace pieces embedded on their ends.

  Or maybe it’s quite strong and sharp, and presents a new and terrible way for a brilliant young detective to have her career cut tragically short.

  Staying in her husband’s shadow, Bettina reached for her coilgun and clicked off the safety. The capacitor whined as it charged.

  “What was that?” one of the men barked. He fired off questions so quickly it hardly seemed that he truly expected any answers. “You there, who are you? Is that you, Jennian? What are you doing out at this hour? And who are they? Who are you?”

  “It’s me, it’s Jennian,” the girl said. “I was… I was just helping this couple look for their lost son. They’re from down Eichelgate way.”

  The man grunted. “Aye, that’s what Mercy said.”

  “Mercy? You talked to Mercy?” Jennian asked. “Why? Is everything all right?”

  “That’s what we’ve come to sort out.” The bruiser stepped into the grove so that the starlight fell upon his bearded face. He peered at Arjuna for a moment. “Lost your boy, eh?”

  Arjuna nodded with wide earnest eyes. “He just ran off earlier this evening. We had a few harsh words for him for acting up, and I imagine he’s just a bit angry.” The Dumastran made a fair effort to mimic the lyrical accent of the islanders, but Bettina doubted it would pass unquestioned.

  The guard nodded grimly.

  “Cap!” The scarred man waded out into the tall grass and pointed at the depression near the smoking torch. “Look at this. Blood.”

  The bearded captain sauntered over to scowl at the ground. “What is this? Who did this? What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” Jennian said. “We just got here and saw it ourselves.”

  “Did you now?” The captain glared at the girl and then at Arjuna. “Come up from Eichelgate, did you? They don’t talk like you in Eichelgate. And they don’t look like you in Eichelgate, neither.”

  “No, I imagine they don’t.” Bettina stepped out and pointed her coilgun at the captain, and fired.

  The needle struck the man’s exposed neck, and he had only two heartbeats to glare at her, swipe at the needle, and stumble to the side before he collapsed to the ground, unconscious. The other man hesitated only for the first heartbeat, and then attacked.

  Bettina’s gun whined as the capacitor charged and Arjuna drew his sidearm as well. They exchanged a brief glance. His eyes told her that he didn’t like this plan of fighting these strangers, and she hoped her eyes told him that it was too late to be arguing about it.

  Smooth as silk, Arjuna shot the second guard as he stripped the coilgun from his wife’s hand and ran across the grove, plunging into the trees where only his footsteps could be heard crunching through the undergrowth as the scarred man slumped forward and fell on his face. A moment later Arjuna emerged back into the starlight and gave his wife the all clear sign. No other guards lurked in the woods.

  In the center of the grove Jennian stood very still, her eyes very large, and her breaths coming faster and shallower.

  “It’s all right,” Bettina said gently. “It’s all over now. Everything’s fine.”

  “You killed them!” Jennian whispered, her shaking hands going up to clutch at her hair as she began backing away.

  “No, no!” Bettina shook her head. “Not at all. We never kill anyone. They’re just asleep. Really. See for yourself. The needles aren’t poisoned, they’re medicated. Please, see for yourself.”

  The girl hesitated, and then knelt beside the scarred man with the shaggy gray hair and touched his neck, and then his lips. “He’s alive. He’s really just sleeping?”

  “Of course.” Bettina held out an empty hand to help Jennian back up to her feet. “We’re officers of the law. We don’t kill anyone, not even criminals. Not ever.”

  “Not ever?” The girl blinked a few times as she rubbed her face and pushed back her hair and looked over the fallen guards. “But… did you really have to…”

  “I’m afraid so,” Bettina said. “This was a disaster, having them see us. And it only would have been more disastrous if we had tried to explain everything to them. This is better.”

  Arjuna sighed as he went to each man and collected the tiny needles. “I suppose it’s better than a brawl and a night in a cell, at least.”

  “But when they wake up won’t they just tell everyone?” Jennian asked.

  “They won’t remember much, if anything,” Arjuna said. He plucked the cold, dark torch from the ground and threw it into the woods, and then proceeded to smooth out the gouges in the dirt and to fluff up the trampled grass as best he could, and when that proved futile, he simply dragged the nearest snoring guard over and lay him across the spot so that it would look as though the man had made the mess himself. “Well, that will have to do.”

  “But what about Mercy? And me? There’s going to be questions and trouble, I just know it,” Jennian fretted.

  “Yes, probably. A little,” Bettina said. She patted the girl on the arm. “But if you can manage to avoid telling people about us for a few days, I promise they’ll forget all about tonight and what happened here.”

  “Why? What’s going to change in a few days?”

  Bettina smiled. “Everything. In a few days, our people will start coming up here from the city in droves, all out in the open, all official, and when that happens, a strange couple looking for a lost child will be the last thing anyone wants to talk about.”

  Jennian nodded. “I reckon so.”

  Bettina took her sidearm back from her husband and slipped it into her little black bag. “Well then, I think we’ve tarried here long enough. And I think we’ve kept you from bed long enough as well, Miss Oakley. Thank you very much for your assistance, but I believe we have our trail now and it would be best if you went home for the night. And locked your doors, just to be safe.”

  “No, no way.” The girl shook her head. “I’m not leaving you two alone until you catch this thief of yours and get him away from my home.”

  Bettina blinked once as she studied the courier. The girl stared back, her eyes hard and mouth firm. The detective nodded. “You’re a strong young woman, and your devotion to your home and your duty is admirable. But there’s nothing else you can do for us now, except imperil yourself.”

  Arjuna stepped forward and knelt in front of the girl, which left him a bit shorter then her. He smiled as he fished about in his pocket and pulled out a handful of paper-wrapped candies. “Thank you for helping us tonight, Jennian. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you. But look at that stain.”

  He pointed to the blood partially covered by the sleeping guard. She looked, and the iron in her eyes wavered.

  “That’s what these thieves do to people they don’t like, and that’s just for starters. Betty and I can handle them, but we may not be able to protect you,” he said. “But if you want to help us a bit more, then you can go back to the reservoir and help to guard our machine, the gyro. Keep it safe. We may need it at a moment’s notice if things go wrong. Can I count on you to do that?”

  Jennian’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I need no coddling nor threats to change my mind, but… I’ll go back and keep your machine safe.”

  “Thank you.”

  The courier took the candies from his hand, and then shook the hand. Bettina and her husband stood in the grove and watched the girl jog out through the trees and then across the lawns toward the town.

  “Took you long enough.” Wings flapped in the darkness and a living shadow alighted on a branch overhead.

  “Ah, Mister Scratch.” Bettina t
urned to look up at the raven. “I hope your sudden arrival signals that you have completed the task we assigned you.”

  The raven scraped its claws on his perch. “Call me Kray!”

  “Mister Scratch,” Bettina said softly. “Where is Ranulf Kaiser?”

  The raven cawed and croaked and flapped his wings for several loud seconds, but then settled down again to peer at them. “Kaiser and the woman landed on the west side of the island. They hid the machine and then ran straight for this ugly old nest of apes. I sat high and watched the ants play.”

  “And?” Arjuna prodded him.

  “The woman grabbed an old man in a field,” Scratch said. “The old ape was just standing alone, staring up at the sky. They grabbed him and brought him here.”

  “Did they kill him?” Bettina asked.

  “No.” Scratched raised his wings, stretching in silence. “Not yet. They beat him. They asked questions. They said they wanted treasure. Gold, jewels. He laughed. He told them nothing. They beat him more. He bled. Bled from the nose, from the mouth. He bled a lot.”

  “Where are they now?” Arjuna asked.

  “The old ape, he bled a while,” Scratch said. “Then he looked up at the stars and smiled, and he told them where the treasure is. In a cave. To the west. They went. I followed.”

  “When?”

  “Half an hour, maybe more.” Scratch flapped his wings a few times.

  “Half an hour?” Bettina raised a critical eyebrow. “What took you so long to report back to us?”

  “There are owls in these woods. I don’t like owls.” The raven shivered, his broken and spiky feathers shaking in the breeze. “And I don’t go in caves, so I came looking for you. I heard your guns. Here you are. Now I take you there, and I’m done with you.” Scratch leapt from his perch and swept away into the dark corridors of the woods.

  Bettina nodded at her husband and the two of them set off into the forest as fast as they could with their weapons in hand.

  Chapter 14. A Gifted Stranger

  Bettina hacked her way through the undergrowth of the forest using her cane, but Arjuna loped along easily just ahead of her and moved ever farther away. Grimacing, she called out to her husband to hurry up and follow the raven, to let her catch up as soon as she could. He glanced back with a stricken look in his eyes, a look that said he hated the suggestion but wouldn’t argue with it, at least not now. He ran off, leaving her in the dark wood.

  Heaving a sigh, Bettina came to stand by a slender tree where she could lean against the smooth trunk and fish out a few more of her little pills. She swallowed them one by one, and then rooted about in her black bag for something else, anything else that might help. Something to silence her groaning stomach, something to sharpen her senses, something to tear the cobwebs of fatigue from her mind. A snort of smelling salts shocked her nose and eyes a bit, which seemed to help, but there was nothing to eat, and she found herself envying the young girl who now had Arjuna’s warm, lint-covered candies.

  Five people have seen us here already, and two of them know our names. And now that Kaiser has a hostage, it seems that at least one more person will probably see us.

  And what about these owls? If they’ve seen our raven, they’ll probably see us as well, and I don’t have any clever tricks for bribing or threatening owls. At least, not without a dead mouse or two.

  This whole case has become a mad fiasco. It makes no sense. No one could rally so many allies, so many resources, in so little time.

  Perhaps Magdalena is the real mastermind here.

  Or the Shadows.

  Or the crows.

  The detective rubbed her eyes.

  The crows? Listen to me. I’m beyond exhausted. Arjuna must be as well. Soon we’ll start making serious mistakes. This is going to end very badly if it doesn’t end very soon.

  The throbbing aches in her foot began to subside, so Bettina strode out into the night again, stepping carefully over fallen tree branches and thick, prickly bushes. Moments later she pushed through a wild hedge and emerged from the wood entirely onto a wide dirt road. She had less than a moment to wonder which way she should go before she heard a faint cawing to her right, and she set out down the dusty lane in search of her companions.

  The little forest continued on her right side, and to her left she saw a dark shadow rise up from the earth almost as a high as a small house, but quite a bit wider. The great mound wore a thick head of tall grass and wildflowers, but no trees that she could see. Her road appeared to arc around this mound to the north and soon she saw a thin scattering of trees on her left as the mound sloped back down to the level of her feet.

  Steeling her jaw, Bettina hurried up the road and then off into the splotchy shadows of the tree-dotted field as she followed the curve of the mound north and west, still following the calls of the raven, and now also the sounds of wings flapping, clothing rustling, and men grunting softly.

  As though someone is being strangled!

  Heedless of her weak foot, which threatened to shake and collapse beneath her at any moment, Bettina ran through the trees with her gun raised, sweeping through the shadows in search of the source of the noise. She spotted a dark movement, a shape tussling on the ground, and a second shape just beside it. The detective burst through a screen of tender sapling branches and leveled her weapon at the men on the ground, ready to bark commands at her quarry, but it was not Ranulf Kaiser nor Magdalena Strauss lying in her husband’s arms.

  Arjuna knelt on the grass, cradling an older man across his lap. The elderly islander’s eyes widened sharply at Bettina’s arrival, and his thin lips parted in a child-like smile. There was dark blood on his lips, and on his chin and nose, and spattered across his shirt. He was struggling to breathe, and every few moments he would press one hand to his chest and gasp quietly, his face contorted in pain.

  “Arry?” Bettina put her coilgun back in her bag as she studied the injured man.

  Broken nose, split lip, cracked ribs, bruised face, bruised neck. Strauss is an animal. Why batter a poor old man like this? He couldn’t possibly defend himself.

  Is Kaiser really so desperate to find the Inselmond treasure that he would stoop to such miserable violence? This isn’t like him at all. None of this fits his profile!

  “I found him lying face-down,” Arjuna said quietly. “But it looks worse than it is. A few days in bed should have him feeling much better, and just a few weeks more to knit his ribs.” He began opening the old man’s shirt, and then tearing that shirt into long strips, which he carefully bound around the man’s chest over the dark purple bruises.

  Bettina gently stroked the old man’s cheek and his eyes focused on her. Whatever pain he was in, it did not seem to muddy his senses or his mind. He winked at her and rasped in his heavy islander accent, “I knew you would come. Both of you. I knew it.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Piven Ochs,” he said. “I knew the thieves would come, so I waited where they would find me, so they would take me and not hurt anyone else. Although I must admit, they did hurt me quite a bit more than I anticipated.” He smiled and tried to laugh, but the effort only sent sharp shivers through his body, making him groan and shudder.

  “You knew about us? And about Kaiser?” Bettina asked. “How? Who told you?”

  “The stars,” Ochs whispered. “The stars know everything. It’s all written there for us to read.”

  “You’re a starcaster.” Bettina nodded.

  “Starcaster?” Arjuna half-smiled. “Back home, astrologers are about as useful as an itchy palm.”

  “They’re about as useful as almanac writers in Eisenstadt,” Bettina said. “But if he could predict exactly when two thieves and two detectives would arrive from the world below, then he clearly knows his business.”

  “Indeed.” Ochs nodded. “I took the blows and held my peace as long as I could so you would have time to find us, and then I told the thieves where to find the treasure they desire.”<
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  Bettina straightened up and glanced about at the dark trees. She spotted Scratch winging drunkenly through the leaves and the raggedy raven crashed onto a branch nearby. Bettina continued to scan the woods for some sign of where Kaiser might have gone, but there was nothing to see. The raven squawked and shuddered, throwing his broken feathers up into even greater disarray.

  “Owls everywhere,” Scratch muttered. “Some fool calling herself Volekiller took a swipe at my eyes.” He scraped his talons on his perch and croaked. “I’m done with you apes.” He screamed twice, flapping his wings wildly, and then leapt into the air and clawed his way up into the night sky. A moment later he was gone.

  “Probably for the best,” Bettina whispered to herself. She turned to the wheezing man lying on the grass. “Where is Kaiser now?”

  “The ossuary.” Ochs raised a shaking hand to point a knobby finger at the earthen mound behind her.

  She turned to look again, and in the gloom she spotted the deep shadow of a tunnel mouth partly hidden by a clutch of bushes and tall grasses. “So that’s where the treasure is?”

  “No.” The elderly starcaster smiled and shook his head. “There’s nothing in there but bones and ghosts, memories and regrets. And that hole is the rear entrance, a forgotten entrance. The tunnel inside will lead them nowhere except to the resting places of our most ancient forefathers. Not even bones anymore, I imagine. Just dust and shadow.”

  “Well, that was a brave thing you did for us, Mister Ochs,” Bettina said. “Buying us time, leading the thieves here. We have them trapped now. It shouldn’t be much trouble to pacify them and get them off your island.”

  “I hope you’re right.” The islander’s eyes flickered across the heavens over her shoulder. “It’s difficult to know what might happen in the ossuary. It’s a very old place.”

  “It doesn’t matter, as long as they can’t get out.” Bettina patted his hand, but her reassuring smile faded as she watched his eyes growing increasingly lined with worry. “They can’t get out, can they?”