"Bring a light over," I ordered, and the apprentice fetched a candle.
"A page has been cut out." I leaned in close to the book and pressed apart the pages more to view the gutter. It had been a careful slice, but there was still an eighth of an inch sunk deep into the dip between the other leaves of pressed bamboo sheet.
"That is very strange, ma'am. My master was meticulous about detail. You need to be with glass crafting, and he was one of the best in the city."
I nodded at Marco's words, even though I doubted that Aetius actually was the best in the city. There were artisans living in the higher echelons of Petrasada who created glassware of unequal beauty. I had seen their works when I visited the Priestess' temple and received my Alula.
"You've been employed for six months?" I asked.
"Yes, and a few days more."
"Can you think back to six weeks ago? Did anyone strange come and visit the store? Did anyone come back into this workshop?"
"No ma'am, but I often fetched components for my master and left the shop to do so."
"Where did Aetius sleep?"
"Upstairs. I will take you there." The blood-caked man pointed at a narrow stairway in the far corner of the workspace, and I walked up to the second floor.
Aetius' living quarters were simple and consisted of a small bed, chest of drawers, and wardrobe. I took a few steps into the middle of the room and then spun around slowly to get a feel for the space. There was a single window in the room, and light from the two suns cut through the thin yellow curtains as if it was a midday haze.
"Guard!" I yelled down the stairs, and Marco jumped with surprise. Within six seconds, one of the Petrasada's guards poked his head into the room.
"Yes, Potentia?" The man wore a close-cut beard and a gleaming helmet. The helmet had a diamond shape etched on the dome of the metal to represent the city and the floating rock it was built upon.
"Escort Marco Demaris back to his room. I will return to you after I have investigated this space."
"Yes, Potentia." The guard saluted and motioned for the apprentice to follow him.
As soon as the two men had left, I moved to the bed. I searched the pillow, under the straw mattress, and around the edges of the bamboo frame. I didn't find anything, but I wasn't discouraged. Growing up in an orphanage and sharing a room with more than a dozen other children meant that I had to be very good at hiding my personal things; especially with a brother constantly looking to steal any money, or candy, that I might earn.
The clay wardrobe also concealed no secrets, and I made sure to pry apart each of the pockets on the dead man's pants and coats. Finally, I turned to the chest of drawers and pulled the top drawer out of the slot the entire length before I felt underneath the bamboo panel at the bottom.
My fingers found a single piece of paper stuck to the underside of the drawer, and I almost shrieked with delight. Then I realized that I was a Potentia now, and I wasn't supposed to get giddy when I found a clue. Still, I couldn't help but pull away the piece of paper with nervous hands and glance around the empty room another time to ensure that I was alone.
The paper was definitely the missing page from the ledger book. There were only four lines written:
200 spot flasks due to Rafa Manus. Payment due. Hold with Garon Mitus.
100 spot flasks due to Pruet Carna. Payment due. Hold with Garon Mitus.
150 tall flasks due to Damara Trillion. Payment received. Flasks delivered.
200 tall flasks due to Laramae A. Payment received. Hold with Dust.
"Hmmm," I pulled out my own notebook and charcoal pencil to copy the ledger. A significant part of our training was spent memorizing. Every day, Potentia trainees were required to enter a room, spend a minute inside, and then leave for ten minutes. Afterward, they would be quizzed on the contents and layout of the room. Oftentimes, we would be told to draw the position of a mock body and note where there were painted-on wounds. It was one of the few exercises that I performed above average, and I had no doubt that I would remember these four lines of ledger entry a year from now.
I put my notebook and pencil back in my pocket and raised the original paper to the sunlight. I knew Rafa Manus, and the dead man wouldn't be able to tell me anything about his flask order. Pruet, Damara, and Laramae were unknown names, but that would be rectified easily once I made it back to the nest. We had access to naming records and could cross reference with other nests if needed. The name Dust was also unknown, but perhaps one of my sisters had heard something.
That just left Garon Mitus, and the name sounded more than a little familiar.
I walked down the stairs and found a pair of city guards waiting for me. They saluted as soon as we made eye contact, and I nodded to them.
"Potentia Iuna and Potentia Tensia have finished their investigation and instructed us to begin the clean up as soon as you give us the order." The male on the right spoke; his beard was a bit longer than the other man's.
"I want to look at the front room once more," I said, and then I walked past them.
The spot of mud by the door looked like it could have been made by the toe of a boot as it kicked the edge of the threshold. The color was a bit strange. Instead of the ruddy color of most clay on the lower levels, it had a spinach-green hue. The color also seemed familiar to me, but my nervous brain couldn't remember where I had seen the shade before.
"I am finished. You can clean this place now and then alert the Priestesses to the death so they can begin the inheritance process," I said.
"Yes, ma'am," the helmeted men said. I nodded to them and walked out the door.
The crowd was still standing around the shop, but a perimeter of eight city guards kept them at a good distance. Most of my friends seemed to have gone back into Juliana's, and I considered returning there.
My mind was spinning with the clues of this new murder, and I walked across the street to the aqueducts. The tiled streams of water emerged from the Apa Pool at the highest point of the city. They trickled, cascaded, and poured down forty-five paths until they either pooled at the base level of the city or fell off the edge and vaporized before reaching the desert floor a mile below us. The water coalesced into a whirlpool-type fountain about fifty yards from the front door of Juliana's restaurant, and then it continued on its course to the Turus Pond at the bottom of the city.
I cupped some of the cold liquid in my hand and splashed it on my face. I repeated the motion a few more times before I took a drink. It was forbidden to defile the water with excrement or poison, or even to drink directly from the flow of water. Citizens had to either use a ladle to scoop the water into a container or ask one of the standing guards to inspect their container for cleanliness before dipping it into the pool. The laws were strict, and anyone caught breaking them faced exile from the city.
Exile meant being thrown from the base level toward the hanging chains, but I didn't think the nearby guard would question me, and my hands were clean.
"Rough first day?" A woman's voice asked from behind me, and I spun to see my friend Severa standing there. The woman was petite, but her curly red hair sprang from her scalp like a tumbleweed, and the wild mane made her seem twice her size.
"It didn't go as I expected." I opened my arms and embraced the girl like I had thousands of times before.
"You know it is illegal to drink outside of restaurants?" I pointed to the large pint of beer in my best friend's hand.
"Yep. Are you going to arrest me?" She raised an eyebrow, wiggled her freckled nose, and then took a long gulp of the gold-colored liquid.
"No, but there is a water guard standing not even forty feet from us." I tried not to laugh at my friend's bravado. Sometimes she was almost as bad as my brother.
"Eeeeeeh. He just watched you dip your hand into the Apa. He's not interested in picking a fight with you today." She took another sip of her beer and gave me a knowing smirk.
"You are such a pain in the ass." I couldn't hold back the laughter a
nymore.
"Of course! Sorry I was busy earlier, that basehead Miraton challenged me to a game of Drink. I thought we would have been done before your brother brought you to us." She shrugged and then took another sip of beer. My red-headed friend had never lost a round of Drink, and I'd seen her play the game against grizzled ranchers who were three times her size.
"I did get called away for Potentia work, so don't worry about missing me."
"But you are done now?" The woman looked up at each of the suns and then tilted her head. "It has to be an hour or two past midnight. Juliana will probably want to close soon, but I'd bet my left nipple she'd keep it open so that you and I could have a few more rounds."
"I was actually about to find you. Does the name Garon Mitus sound familiar?"
"Hmmmmm," she said and wiggled her lips back and forth. It was as if her mouth was searching for the edge of her pint glass. "Damn, it does sound familiar. It is on the dark part of my brain and won't come into the suns. Oh! I know!"
"You do?" I asked.
"No, but a sip of beer won't hurt my memory!" the woman laughed and then drained the rest of the mug with an easy swallow.
"If only all my cases could be solved by drinking," I said to the shorter woman.
"Can you give me anything else? Or is it secret Potentia knowledge? Do you think that man killed poor Aetius?"
"I'm not sure. There was green-colored mud by the doorway, and I found the man's name noted in an account ledger hidden in Aetius' room."
"I have it!" The red-headed girl smacked her palm to her head and then laughed. "Garon Mitus is the wharf steward and shipwright for Ver Lake!"
"And Ver Lake has green mud. You are a genius!"
"No, no, no, my dear, dear Anelia. I am no genius. It is all the beer's doing." She pointed at her empty glass and let out a roar of a burp. The water guard turned from his post to glare at my friend, but when he saw me glance in his direction, he quickly faced away.
"I need to go speak with him. We met him four or five years ago, correct?" It was probably a dumb question to ask since she was obviously many steps past drunkenness, but Severa had just remembered Garon, so I wanted to test my luck again.
"Five years ago. We snuck into his son's wedding. Remember?"
"Ahhh, yes. That was incredibly stupid of me." I shook my head. "I shouldn't have let you and Vibus convince me to go along."
"Remember when he found out we weren't invited? He threw your brother into the lake by his neck, and he yanked my hair so hard I cried."
"Yes, I recall now." I nodded and sighed. We had been in the wrong and shouldn't have stolen the man's food or drank his beer. Even if there were over a hundred people at his son's wedding and plenty to go around.
"You should arrest him." Severa's eyes narrowed, and I could tell that she was remembering when the man had yanked on her bushy red hair. "Arrest him for being a bag of donkey shit."
"I can't just go around arresting people who were mean to me five years ago. I'm lucky he didn't report us to the city guards or I wouldn't have been able to wear the Alula."
"But you think he murdered Aetius, so you have to talk with him?" My friend curled her freckled nose and then ground her empty glass into her hand. Her mouth spread into an evil smile, and I tried not to chuckle.
"I'm supposed to be impartial. I just want to ask him some questions."
"So go have your Potentia talk with him, ask him your questions, arrest him, and then get a promotion from your commander."
"Captain," I said to correct her.
"Captain, yes, whatever, and then come back and drink with me. Should take you an hour? Ver Lake is on the other side of the city. Just flap those pretty new wings of yours and get going. We need to celebrate the start of your career, and me drinking alone isn't lucky." Severa winked at me when she finished talking, and I laughed again.
"Thanks for the pep talk. I'll get to work."
"And then drink?"
"And then drink," I confirmed.
"Great, let's see that Alula work. I missed it earlier. I'm proud of you."
I nodded at my friend and felt the cloth of my cloak begin to unravel. Then the wings flapped behind me, and I was lifting into the air. My friend's red hair twitched against the wind created by my ascent, and soon she was just a bright dot far below me.
Then she was lost amongst all the brightly painted clay buildings of the lower Petrasada levels.
I turned my body toward the north and leaned forward. The magical wings understood what I wanted, and I began to fly toward the shores of Ver Lake.
Chapter 5
"Hello?" I called into the empty shipyard.
I had visited Ver Lake half a dozen times in my life, but I had never seen the wharf area empty of citizens. It was after midnight, however, and the suns hung close to their lowest point in the sky. Most of the fishers, mud collectors, and aqua farmers were probably sleeping.
I stepped past the bamboo fence and walked by a worn fishing raft. The vessel looked as if it had seen better days thirty years ago and now someone just needed to put it out of its misery. Most of the small boats in the yard looked that way. It was a scattering of forgotten toys left to bake in the suns by an unorganized child.
I opened my mouth to call out again, but then I realized that there was either no one there or they hadn't heard me the first time. I saw a large building on the far corner of the yard, and its walls were made of stone brick instead of the usual clay. It was a place that the shipwrights could work on their vessels out of the heat of the sun, and I figured that Garon Mitus might be inside.
I gently opened the side door to the building and slid into the large shadowed space. My eyes took a few moments to adjust to the relative darkness, but, once they did, I saw that the base of the building was cut downward into a series of steps that formed a trench. Inside the pit squatted three vessels in various stages of construction. One looked as if it was only waiting for a mast, one looked as if it needed the top deck nailed on, and the last one looked like a dead bird, with its bamboo ribs protruding into the air.
My nose was assaulted by the scents of plant glue, paints, and bamboo clippings. It wasn't an unpleasant smell, but I had not spent much of my life around the lakes at the base level, and the scents were alien to me.
I saw that one end of the dark building was filled with work benches, tools, and a legion of stacked crates. There were too many of the boxes to count, and I guessed that the reason Aetius' ledger had indicated to 'hold with Garon Mitus' was because of the vastness of the wharf manager's storage space. I noticed a raised stairway at the far end, past the crates, and I guessed that it would be Garon's office.
"You need to take care of these issues," a voice said in the distance. I had reached the first stack of crates in the building, and I crouched behind them reactively.
"I wouldn't call them issues. They are just complications," another voice said. It sounded as if they were speaking on the far side of the crates by the foot of the stairs. I took a nervous breath before I moved to the corner of the next closest crate stack.
"Two of mine are dead. It isn't a complication," the first voice said.
"What is yours is mine. Without the money, this endeavor would not have left the ground."
"Without my connections, you'd have to get your bits and pieces from more obvious sources. Does this assassin work for you? Am I going to be next on his list?"
"No and no. I am working on finding him. Do not worry." The second voice was lower in timbre than the first, and I stepped silently to the next stack of crates. My heart drummed in my chest and beat in my ears almost louder than the sound of the two men's voices.
"It is hard not to worry when my partners are being removed. Aetius already fulfilled his role, so the plan won't be harmed, but I will need to find a new distributor because of Rafa's death," the first voice said.
"I am working on that. Stay the course."
"Simple for you to say. Whoever the assassin is, h
e knows our operation. It is one of your people." I guessed that the first voice was Garon's, and I moved to the next stack of crates. It sounded as if they were only a few more rows over from my position.
"That is doubtful," said the unknown voice.
"We are the only two who are--"
"You do not know the full plans. You play a very small role in this world. Do not forget that. I will find the murderer and kill them, and then you can continue to collect my money while you do very little work. Am I clear?" The second voice had cut off Garon, and his words were almost venomous.
"Yes. Fine. Now get out of here. My workers will arrive in a few hours, and I need to fill these flasks with the product," Garon said in a surprisingly calm voice. "It takes forever to do this because you won't let me hire anyone, and I can't get the shit on my skin."
I'd heard enough of the conversation to feel as if I could apprehend both men. My stomach did a dive when I realized that I was about to make my first actual arrest, but I took a deep breath to calm my nerves before I walked to the end of the crates.
"You are both under arrest," I said when I stepped out from behind the last stack of boxes. Both men turned in surprise, and I pulled my shoulders back so that I stood taller.
Garon Mitus looked as I recalled from our brief introduction five years ago. He was a large man with dark leathery skin and hands as big as my face. His hair was filled with more gray than I recalled, but it had been many years, and I wasn't surprised that he looked older. The shipwright wore a muddy tunic under a surprisingly clean white apron. The other man stood tall and lean and had a face full of wrinkles. His hair was also gray, but it flowed as long as mine, and he wore it tied back in a ponytail. His clothes were strange. They were the thin type of garments that a citizen of the lower base levels would wear, but his pants were very clean, and his tunic was dark blue. My eyes focused on his shirt, and I knew immediately that the man came from the upper levels. His garments may be thin, but blue was an expensive clothes dye, and I'd only seen a handful of citizens ever wear the color.
Wings of Justice (City of Light Book 1) Page 4