Cleaning up that mess will be the least of Haurice’s problems when the watchmen come up to investigate.
5
IN COMES THE STORM
Massive brooding and broiling clouds have swept in from the bay. The first drops are fat and hesitant and hit me just a few paces from my short walkway. Then, as I hop up the worn steps to my door, the torrent begins in earnest.
I push the door shut against the downpour then trudge up to my office and drop the loot on my desk. I light the lamp and turn the flame up high, higher than necessary, shake my coat dry and hang it on the rack back near the door. I pause before the window on my way back to my desk. The view outside is grey but likely will be so for only a few hours. These storms come with the passion of young summer love, fierce and to the point, and linger for only half as long, ocean-born wind sending the clouds on their merry way in short order.
“What did we get, boss?”
The storm does well to cover the sound of Durmet’s wings, and if he hadn’t spoken, gods above know how long I would have stood there staring into that grey sheet.
I put on a face and turn to find him already pawing at the knot in the pillow case.
“Here,” I say, walking back to my desk and interjecting myself between Durmet and the loot. “I don’t want you ripping it to shreds.”
As I work the knot lose, I can feel Durmet’s gaze on me. I don’t say anything about my visit to the Herchsten Estate, not yet. I still haven’t come to terms with it. I’ve dealt in murder and death, but back there, that was a one-two punch to the soul. First, Anderest, who died in agony, then the young runt, sliced and pared like a moldy piece of cheese.
“Boss.”
The knot tightened during my walk back here, and I’m having trouble getting my fingers to work it lose.
“Boss.”
Finally, I get a lead on the knot and make headway.
“Giddy!”
“What?” I snap, throwing the sack down.
In response, Durmet pushes between me and the pillow case, forcing me to step back. In the span of a sprite’s heartbeat he’s got the knot undone. He steps aside and lets the pillow case spill to the side on my desk.
“I got it started for you,” I say when my frustration dies.
“Sure you did, boss.” He nudges the pillow case with a knobby knee. “Want to tell me why you aren’t ecstatic about us finally getting paid?”
I shake my head. “Let’s go through this stuff then we can discuss the case.”
I know Durmet well, so well that I can see that the impulse to shove his face in the loot I’ve brought back is warring with the rare bout of compassion that his kind are not known to be capable of showing.
“Go on.” I jut my chin toward the loot.
After a moment of indecision, he upends the pillow case and then tosses it aside with a gleeful screech. “We can eat for months!” he exclaims when the bounty spills out before him. “Maybe even get some real light in here.”
He’s right. I probably could have gotten more jewelry in the pillow case, but this take will do for now. Durmet hefts the candlestick, licks his chops, and hands it to me without looking back. He then picks up each spilled piece and either sets it aside or hands it to me to join the candlestick.
When he’s done sorting, we have three piles: valuables to fence and hawk, items for my office, and the two books. Surprisingly enough, Durmet’s more interested in the books. Or one, in particular.
He picks it up and holds it like a newborn babe, running his paw over the dark leather binding. There’s no etching or gilding on the cover or spine and I wonder what he finds so interesting in it.
“What?” I lean in over his shoulder.
He tears his gaze from the book to look up at me. His eyes are glittering and practically dancing in their sockets. “This is arcane, boss. Unholy,” he says in a reverent whisper.
That explains his salivating. Durmet has an affinity for all things arcane. It’s one of our working agreements. If I happen to come across anything arcane in any of our cases, they go to Durmet. I don’t know what he does with them, but he hoards items of dark magic like a dragon does gold. Which is fine by me. I’ve got enough arcane magic running through my veins to last a lifetime. I don’t need more of the stuff lying around in my office in plain sight. A man could get in a heap of trouble with the Magician’s Aristocracy for holding unregistered arcane items.
All that is beside the point, though, as my mind reels with the implications of that book. What was Anderest doing with it? He was definitively holy. He wouldn’t have tarnished his hands with something dark and unholy—my own self withstanding, that is.
“Was Anderest Herchsten dark, boss?” Durmet asks, pulling the thoughts from my mind. “You never mentioned that.”
“I didn’t because he wasn’t.” My words come out with much more force than I intended and Durmet sidles away from the blow. I run a hand through my hair and ease my tone. “At least, he’d never done or said anything to lead me toward that supposition. He tried helping me with my curse, not exploit it. If he researched the arcane, it was because of me. Not for his personal self.”
“Well, this reeks of arcane magic,” Durmet points out, going back to his precious book.
“What is it?” I don’t want to even touch it at this point. If I did it would shatter my memory of what Anderest—who Anderest—was.
He sets the book down and opens it with care. The script is tiny, and from what I can make out, varies from common tongue to elvish to pictographic to some language I don’t readily recognize.
“Best I can tell,” Durmet says as he runs a single claw just over the text, “it’s instructional. I can’t make out some of the writing, but I’d say it’s about gathering … no, wait, stealing power. Stealing energy from magicked items, from hallowed lands, from …” He swallows.
“What?” I urge him.
The look he gives me is loaded. “It talks about stealing energy from people. Vampyric, boss.”
Even the darkest of mages shy away from vampyric magic, a practice that can suck the very life energy from a person to fuel magical incantations. It can be disastrous, not only for the intended victim, but for the one practicing the art. A body can hold only so much energy, so much magical essence, and if a mage takes too much in at once, he risks his body erupting suddenly and violently, and there’s no telling what that magical outburst will do to those around him.
No wonder why the Arcanium, illegal by its own right, has banned the practice of vampyric magic. One careless, overreaching fool can kill dozens, possibly hundreds in his desire for more power.
“Maybe you should keep this, boss,” Durmet says with quiet concern. “You might be able to learn something from it, maybe even learn how to control your—”
“No.” I wave my hand. “Take it. Get it away from my sight.”
He searches my eyes—for what, I’ve no clue—but after a moment he nods. Hugging the arcane book to his chest, he disappears from my office in a vacuumed whoosh, taking himself to whatever part of his hell he holds as his own.
My nails still bite into my palms when he returns empty handed.
“It’s safe,” he says, wording it plainly so as to mean “If you want it, I can fetch it.”
“The case,” I manage to say, turning the conversation back to the mundane. “We have a case to resolve.”
“Sure, boss.” He bobs his head. “Of course.”
I drop into my chair and tell Durmet of everything from my visit to the Herchsten Estate, and he only asks for clarification on a few points. I conclude with, “I had doubts to Vayvanette’s claims to murder, but now, with two bodies, I have to agree with her.”
Durmet’s claws make soft clicks on my desk as he paces. “Are you thinking its Haurice?”
“Possible,” I say, my eyes tracking Durmet’s slow circuit. “For Anderest’s death. But the run-to, the runt boy?” I shake my head. “Fingers unstricken with age wielded the knife in t
he boy’s death. Haurice couldn’t have physically done that.”
Durmet heads back the other way on my desk, hand cupping his chin. “Hired thugs, then?”
“Possible,” I say again. “With the promise of the estate going to him, Haurice would have coin and motive to hire someone to go at the boy. But what did the boy have to do with it? How was he mixed up in all this?”
“Could be he found out Haurice’s ill intentions. Maybe he was about to go to the Watch.”
I chew my lip. “If that’s the case and Haurice is behind the deaths, how many other of the servants and live-ins are in it with him?”
“I can’t believe everyone in the estate would wish the old man dead,” Durmet reasons. “They couldn’t know what would happen to them when he died. Surely they’d risk being out of a job, and a home.”
“If Haurice is correct about the will, they wouldn’t be risking much. Haurice would keep them all on after Anderest’s untimely demise. They’re all close as kin. The will would solidify that.”
Durmet stops pacing and looks at me. He thrusts a finger into the air. “The missing will.”
“Exactly.” We’ve been working together long enough to know how the other thinks, and right now we’re thinking Haurice has secreted the will somewhere. But to what end?
“Hmm. If the will goes unfound, does Haurice stay in the estate?”
“He knows the business.” I lean back and reason it out. “The Herchsten estate brings in coin to the city, and with it, sizable amounts of taxes. The Magician’s Aristocracy wouldn’t want to see that well dry up. They need the estate running. If Haurice can maintain the business, the Aristocracy would see him remain there, expressed in the will or not.”
After a moment of silence Durmet suddenly asks, “Wait. Does the Watch know of the missing will?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I’d suppose they do.”
“Then why didn’t Vayvanette go to them?”
Good point.
“I figure she knows of my involvement with her grandfather. Maybe she thinks I have a personal stake in resolving his murder.”
He faces me squarely. “And do you?”
Again, we’ve been working together long enough to know how the other thinks.
I don’t answer. Instead, I say, “We need to focus on what we were hired to do. Find the murderer, find the will, hand it over to Vayvanette, and wash our hands of whatever else is broiling in the Herchsten estate.”
“Where do you want to start?”
My answer is slow to come. “Vayvanette. I want to get to know her.”
Durmet ruffles his wings and before he can say anything I cut him off.
“Like you said, why didn’t she go straight to the Watch? Before I dig deeper, I want to know who she is, why Anderest never mentioned her to me.”
“We’ve never questioned any of our previous clients before, boss. It goes against what you do. What we do. Why start now?”
“Because the more I know going in, the better. And, seeing as I’ve already accepted payment for my services, I can’t just walk away.”
“We,” he grumbles.
“We,” I accede.
He does another slow circle on my desk, walking around and between piles of payment and the lamp and satchel. He still hasn’t asked about the curious leather satchel with my name branded on it, and I gather he’s either peeked inside when my back was turned or he’s coming to respect my privacy.
I put stake in it being the former.
When he settles back in front of me he announces, “I’ll see what I can find out about the woman.”
I keep my face as blank as a brick. I know what he’s trying to do.
“I don’t want to risk you being seen, Durmet.”
In response, he drops down onto all fours and morphs into a cat with fur the color of pristine snow and a tail tipped in the darkest of ink. He sits down and, with a majestic air, twitches his tail before draping it across his rear paws.
“Fine,” I bark at him.
His lips draw back to reveal unnaturally sharp teeth.
“Stop smiling.”
“Who says I’m smiling, boss?” he purrs. “Besides, I can move about unhindered, not relegated to the two-step shuffle you humans have yet to evolve beyond.”
To prove case in point, he disappears with the slightest hiss and vacuum of air and reappears on the other side of the desk, where he paws at the candlestick, sending it rocking back and forth.
“Plus,” he says, “it’ll give you some free time to hawk this. Get us something to chew on other than old leather and have at least one of the lamps recharged.”
“What do you care about the lamps?” I grumble. “You can see in near-darkness.”
He gives me an indignant twitch of his black-tipped tail. “It’s the principle of the thing, boss. What message are you sending to possible clients if you can’t afford proper telektric lighting in here, hmm?”
I reach out toward him, tempted to wring his fluffy little neck, but at the last moment I choke the candlestick instead. Durmet doesn’t even have the sensibility to flinch. I walk around my desk, open the top drawer, then upend the leather satchel and drop the six-spell in it. Something else falls out from the satchel into the drawer and I immediately recognize it as a spare round of six crystals, designed to replace the cartridge already screwed onto the ivory-handled wand.
Anderest had gone far beyond illegal when he had this six-spell manufactured.
I slide the drawer close with my thigh, drop the candlestick into the satchel, and look up to find Durmet eying me with curiosity.
“It had my name on it,” I say in regards to the six-spell. “Wouldn’t have done to have left it there in the vault.”
“Sure, boss. Sure.”
I head for the door. “Just see what you can gather about Vayvanette. I’ll see about getting our bellies filled and some of our bills paid.”
“Any idea where I should start?”
I look back over my shoulder at him. “She said she’s a teacher for the underprivileged. Can’t be that many schools in the bad parts of the city.”
“Got it, boss.” And he’s gone in a whooshing vacuum.
I leave as well, though not in such a dramatic display. I wrap my coat about me and lock up. The storm’s still pelting the city, and I’m seriously wishing I had personally evolved beyond having to “two-step shuffle” my way hither and to.
—-
One good thing about the driving rain: it keeps the delicate people indoors and the streets clean of all sorts of unwanted trash. Dodging from patio to overhang to recessed alcove between stone and wooden buildings, I trudge my way along Commonwealth, a two-cart-wide affair that bisects the southwestern section of Wrought Isles like a scar across wounded flesh.
Most of the shops on Commonwealth are narrow and deep, some almost as old the city that’s sprung up around them. Over the years, as the population surged, so did the demand for street-side property. New places of business grew, using the older buildings as backbones. Why pay for four walls to be built when you could just slap two walls and a roof between the front and rear of two existing shops and call it a day? The result was a misshapen cityscape, the rooftops as uneven and broken as a rock-gnawing troll’s ignorant, toothy grin.
Everything ranging from lace and silk to wooden mageworks-driven or metal gear-driven toys for children could be found on Commonwealth, where sometimes barter was more prevalent than coin. The local neighborhoods overflow with men and women eking out life on what coin they can scrounge up, children wearing handed-down rags, families pulling together to make a better life for the next generation. They are the real citizens of Wrought Isles, the broken and unoiled cogs that keep the city running. The high-class citizenry don’t muddy their feet here. They haven’t in ages.
I’m here almost every day.
Hunden Square, accessed through an alley between a cooper’s shop and an herbalist, is one section where coin passes hands wi
th few questions between the involved parties. That’s my ultimate goal, but first I need to have a little one-on-one with the two men who have been following me for the past five minutes.
I’d spotted them somewhere back near Jack’s Jacks Tavern; they’d been on the other side of the street in the middle of the raised sidewalk, casually looking away from me. I wouldn’t have taken immediate notice if not for the fact that every other soul out and about today is doing their utmost to keep as tight to the buildings as possible to avoid the downpour. I’ve been around long enough to know hired thugs when I see them, and it’s clear they aren’t coming to ask me how my day’s going.
I pick up my pace, hoping to gain me some time to figure out who they are or what they want with me. I’d like to think it has nothing to do with my current case, that they’re two cutpurses out to look for an easy score. But there are several people out braving the weather, many of them better dressed than I am. And, though I’m not all too intimidating to look at, I’m clearly not the easiest mark on the street. Which means I’m their target.
I round a corner well ahead of them and run across the street to the other sidewalk. When they come around the same corner at a half-jog to make up ground, I know they’ve singled me out for a reason and don’t want me slipping loose. I press the satchel tight to my side and try to come up with a way out of this. I can’t help but think of the murdered boy at Anderest’s place and wonder if one of the anywho’s following me enjoys using a knife.
I glance back to find them on my side of the street, three shops back and closing. It’s cutting it close, but I finally reach my only chance at turning the tides on the two. I duck into a dry goods store, shake the weather from my coat, and make my way to the low-lying back counter. The shopkeep, a burly dwarf woman half my height, takes note of my approach and greets me with an upraised hand that’s nearly as large as my own.
“Back door,” I say.
Her hand and genial smile drop and her bright red brows meet above her broad nose like caterpillars in heat.
“I’ve got friends behind me,” I tell her. “I don’t want them to be.”
The Amethyst Angle Page 5