The Amethyst Angle

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  “It’s the least I could do,” he pronounces magnanimously for the crowd. “Magistrates serve to help the community, Knell.” He gathers his companion and walks away, leaving me with, “Remember that.”

  As the two make their way to the exit, I look around and catch those patrons who were watching our little exchange suddenly find something of interest in the bottoms of their mugs.

  “Everything all right?” Master Whisken asks as he steps up to my table. His gaze lingers on my freshly-healed lips and eye.

  “Sure,” I say. “I think I need to get back to the office.” I pull out my purse to settle the tab, but Master Whisken lifts a staying hand.

  Embarrassment flushes his cheeks and softens his words. “The magistrates covered the cost of your meal.”

  “Son of a …” I stand up and hand over a silver. “Buy Darcy a mug of your most expensive wine then.”

  “Sure, sure.” He pockets the coin and after glancing to where the magistrates exited, adds, “You take care of yourself, Knell.”

  I wave my response to him and do my best to ignore the not-so-casual looks cast my direction as I make my way to the doors. I’d hoped to steal a few minutes alone with Darcy but after my unwanted visit from the magistrates, I won’t be the most pleasurable of company for her, anyway.

  —-

  The storm’s passed, the wind’s swept the dark clouds further east and inland. The only hint it had blown over are the puddles in the streets, the dwindling trickles from the rooftops, and the brief salt-free petrichor it’s left in parting.

  Though the sun has come back out for a dramatic appearance, the telektric lamps on Fermenster are still on, at least the few that the city has graciously charged. I head down the street, sidestepping the dark pools that I know from years of living here could be ankle deep. My satchel is full of bread and cured meat, as well as a bottle of sailor’s brew, a foul-tasting concoction that does the trick, and it bounces against my hip as I hop up onto the sidewalk.

  A few people are out and about on the sidewalks, filling buckets from rain barrels or sitting on stoops and steps, enjoying the fresh taste of the open air as well as the company of neighbors before the sun finally kisses the horizon. Most people on Fermenster are upper-lower class, which means they make enough to keep food on the table and still have a bit of copper to spare. The buildings aren’t in complete disrepair as most of the rest of the Burroughs, but they aren’t what I’d call easy on the eyes. A broken flagstone here, a drooping overhang there, the barest hint of color in flakes of paint that cling to doors like crustaceans on a hull.

  Like many of its residents, Fermenster stretches its resilient backbone in the light of day.

  I wave to a few as I pass, break off a small piece of one of my loaves for Lizza, the young girl that tends to the stray cats that keep our street relatively rodent-free, and turn down an offer to sit a spell and share a mug of perry with the Willards—a couple that has been married longer than I’ve been alive.

  Even before my walkway comes into view, I know something is off. Warm but unsteady light spills into the greying shadows from the street-facing window of my office. I adjust the satchel, pat my six-spell, and give one more cursory glance around the street before I head up the steps leading to my front door.

  The door’s still locked, magical and mundane, and I disengage both. I reset the mechanical lock behind me, draw my six-spell, and make my way upstairs, silent but sure. Whoever’s been here—or is still here—has left a lamp or candle burning. On top of the grave insult of breaking into my place, the bastard is using up precious oil or wax. I should put a fireshot between his eyes for that alone, except it would cost me twice what I’d pay for a small barrel of fish oil to recharge the ruby in my wand.

  The top two steps announce my presence in a grainy screech, so I drop my satchel and rush my office door, kicking it wide and centering my six-spell and the first thing that moves.

  “Devil’s balls!” I curse aloud when I recognize the figure lounging in my chair with his worn, city-issued boots on my desk.

  “Giddy,” Tripley Standard, Most Honorable Captain of the Watch, greets me in his coarse voice. “We need to talk.”

  7

  TWO SIDES OF A FENCE

  I still haven’t lowered my wand, and seeing that smirk on my old partner’s face only serves to make it that much harder not to fire.

  Trip’s been weathered by the job. His ebony skin’s lost some of its luster, his sun-parched face shows creases that are normally reserved for the elderly, and his close-cropped obsidian hair shows signs of oxidized silver. His is a title that takes more than it gives, demands more than it offers, and usually ends with a knife in the back or a fireshot to the base of the skull. And if he doesn’t take his boots off my desk—

  “Didn’t you have a bird last time I was here?” Trip says. “A parrot, I think it was.”

  Durmet.

  “It talked too much,” I say with precision. “And it kept making a mess of my desk. So I got rid of it.”

  Trip takes the hint and obliges, removing his boots and planting them firmly on the floor.

  I lower my six-spell and set it at my hip, which draws a frown from Trip. We both know six-spells are illegal. So is breaking into a man’s house and place of business. That makes us even. I retrieve my satchel from the other side of the door and stomp my way toward my desk.

  “Do you mind?”

  Trip groans and vacates my chair to stand in front of the window, his back to me, hands clasped behind him. I put my satchel down and take the chance to check if any of my drawers have been disturbed.

  “I didn’t go through anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He’s still facing away from me. Not that I don’t trust him, but I check the drawers all the same. The six-spell from Anderest’s vault is still there, and I wonder if Trip took a look at it. No use picking up dropped sand, so I put it from my mind. He’s already got enough to arrest me, with or without Anderest’s wand.

  I sit down, slide open the bottom drawer to my right, and pull out two battered tin cups. I pop the new bottle of sailor’s brew and ask, “How’d you get in here?”

  The sound of pouring liquor turns him around and brings him to the chair opposite my desk. I make him reach for his cup. We both take a heavy swallow before I again ask, “How did you get in my office?”

  He raises his cup and grins. “You’re not the only one who can scale the side of a building.”

  I swish my brew around and lament, “You teach a man a thing or two and it bites you in the ass.”

  “As I recall, I did most of the teaching. You were as green as newborn foal when you joined the Watch.”

  “And yet I kept you from getting yourself killed on more than one occasion.”

  We toast to our differences, to our past. None of which can ever be changed.

  “Why are you here, Trip?”

  “Why do you leave bodies in your wake, Giddy?”

  I shoot him a look. If he’s referring to the two men on Commonwealth, he’s in the wrong.

  “One man had his neck snapped,” Trip says, picking up on my look. “Stopped breathing by the time we got a spirit mage to him. Can’t heal the dead. And the other refuses to talk. The back of his head is busted up something fierce. We have him at the station, but he won’t say a word about who or what or why.”

  Neck snapped?

  No way did I hit him that hard; he’d been coming around when I left the scene. Somebody else must have did him in when I fled to Hunden Square, either to keep him quiet or as punishment for letting me walk away.

  I hold Trip’s eyes with my own. “I swear that both were breathing when I left them.”

  “So you admit you were there?”

  “They attacked me.”

  He raises a brow. “Witnesses say otherwise.”

  I sip. And shrug. Then sip again.

  “What was it about?” he asks.

  Sip, shrug, repeat.
<
br />   “All’s hells, Giddy, you have to give me something!” His coarse voice is loud enough to make me flinch.

  I relent and give in. “I honestly don’t know what they wanted, Trip. They’d been keeping an eye on me, and I don’t think it was to find out where I buy my bread.”

  Hs voice drops back to normal. “Did they say anything?”

  I debate whether or not to tell him and he looks like he’s debating whether or not to climb over my desk and throttle me.

  “They thought I had something on me,” I finally give in.

  “What something?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be discussing it with you.”

  “So you beat one of them to death because of something—”

  I pound my desk. “I said that wasn’t me! He almost killed me by shattering my ribs with a windshot.”

  Trip closes his mouth and leans back at that. “Neither one of them had a wand on them.” He gives my balled fist a pointed glance. “In fact, neither had any weapons.” He then adds, “Or coin.”

  I flick my eyes to my full satchel. He does as well, then sighs in understanding.

  “They came after me, Trip. I just made sure they wouldn’t try it again any time soon, on me or any other poor soul walking the streets.”

  “Self-defense?” he says, doubting my words.

  “Self-preservation,” I say.

  He drains his cup and holds it out toward me, so I drain mine and give us both another heavy pour.

  Trip inclines his head in thanks then asks, “What were you doing at the Herchsten Estate?”

  “Working.” I don’t bother lying. His earlier comment about scaling walls and windows was his way of telling me he knew I had been there. I do raise my brow in question as to how he knew. I don’t think Juniper would have given me up.

  “Haurice,” he answers my unspoken question. “There’d been a commotion upstairs while we were talking with the staff and I headed up. Seems someone knocked over a table. And with it, shattered a vase that Haurice claims was worth more than I make in a year.”

  A slow chuckle escapes my lips at that, and I’m surprised when Trip joins in.

  “You should have seen Haurice’s face, Giddy. Like it was his coin that had been lost.”

  “Man acts like he has the run of the place. Serves him right.”

  “I never understood why you two never got along,” Trip says with a slow shake of his head. “Anderest was like a father to you. Hells, I remember when he used to have his servants cook up feasts for me and you when we got the early shifts back in the day.”

  “It’s a long story,” is all I say, even though I do smile fondly at those memories of my younger years. Back when Trip and I were friends, when Anderest was still alive, before the curse inherited from my father’s arcane blood changed it all.

  Trip’s face clouds over, and when he absently clicks his tongue, I know he’s back to business. “The vase wasn’t the only thing broken in that room.”

  I repress a shudder as I nod.

  “You found the boy, didn’t you?” He doesn’t wait for my answer, just rolls on saying, “Haurice seems to think you tortured and killed the boy.”

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “I do. I just want to know why Haurice seems so adamant that it was you.”

  “Deflection of guilt?”

  “We both know he isn’t physically capable of doing what was done to that boy.” He takes a breath. “At least, not personally.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But you’ve put me in a position here, Giddy. I’ve got Haurice saying you were in the room, the same room with the dead runt.”

  “I found him in there, Trip. I walked in on Haurice. Not the other way around.”

  He gestures at me with his cup. “Still. You have to see it from my eyes. You were in the room, you visited the scene of the murder, you chose to enter and leave through unconventional means.”

  “And you can’t possibly believe I had anything to do with either of the murders that took place in that estate.”

  He’s slow to answer, slow enough for my anger to boil.

  “No, I don’t,” he says at last. “It’s not in you to kill someone like that.”

  Like that.

  He’s bringing up something from the past, the incident that drove a wedge between us.

  The bastard is trying to get me angry. I won’t give him the satisfaction. I curl my toes, bite the inside of my cheek, and take a slow, deliberate pull of brew. When I feel I’ve mastered my ire, I look him straight in the eye.

  “If you wish to keep insulting me,” I say through my teeth, “then I’ll see you out the way you came in. Head first, if need be.”

  His cup comes down hard enough on the desk that brew sloshes out. “I came here without leaving word with my men, Giddy. I came here on terms of parlay.”

  “Then out with it.”

  And just like that, we’re looking at each other from opposite sides of a fence.

  “Why did you go the Herchsten Estate? Why did you examine Herchsten’s body?”

  “I was hired by Vayvanette Herchsten, the granddaughter. She suspected murder. And theft.”

  He nods as if he knew the answer already, and I wonder if this was the first time he’d heard about Vayvanette’s existence, as well. Knowing Trip, he wanted to see if I would keep her name out of it. Or, he was doing his job and trying to see how much I already knew about the case. There’s a reason why Trip earned that high-ranking silver bar atop his Watch pin.

  “Why you?” he asks. “Why come to you?”

  I hold back a reply about the Watch and how the last few years have seen them becoming more and more influenced by the Head Magistrate and her Aristocracy, instead saying, “She knew of my history with her grandfather. She came to me because she figured I’d have a personal stake in seeing this through.”

  “And do you?”

  I squeeze my cup until my knuckles turn white. “History or not, Anderest was murdered, and by the gods, he didn’t deserve it. Cursed sure I’m going to see this through.”

  Trip is made of forged steel, and he’s butted heads with some of the wickedest creatures Wrought Isles has to offer. Even so, he shrinks into his chair at the venom in my voice, at the sight of the tin cup that’s on the verge of being crushed in my hand.

  He recovers enough to point out, “This is personal.”

  I don’t say word.

  He pulls himself forward, and when he speaks, it’s in a low, professional voice. “Did she hire you for the murder or to recover the missing will?”

  His inquiry is too direct and specific to be routine. I know him, know how he thinks. I’m careful with my answer. “The murder.” I add, “She wasn’t as concerned about the will.”

  “A lot of coin at stake,” he offers, attempting to sound casual.

  I pick at minuscule dust particles on my desk. “Maybe she’s a little concerned about the will. But I figure the murder and the theft are one and the same case. Solve one, find the other.”

  “I can’t have you busting heads. I won’t have you busting heads. I won’t stand by and let your emotions get the best of you. Not again. As it is, I should bring you in for what you openly admitted you did to those two louts on Commonwealth.”

  “Why don’t you do something about it then, Trip? As it is, you’ve got half of the Watch out to make my life a living hell. They pester me whenever they get a chance, trying to get me to hand over my six-spell, trying to rile me up to hit one of them so they have a lawful reason to slap some iron around my wrists.”

  “Most of them see you as no good. Not because of what happened back then, but because you left the Watch. You just don’t do that, definitely not when things were as bad as they were. They despise you for that, and I won’t be the one to disagree.”

  My office grows stifling, the here and now drawn into the tiny space occupied by myself, Trip, and the desk between us. I half expect the lantern flame to smother.

/>   Trip cuts through the oppression by saying, “We both know I couldn’t keep you behind bars for long, so let’s put that aside. I want to see this through, Giddy. The murder, the missing will, the theft. Something is brewing in Wrought Isles, and I fear Anderest’s murder was the just the beginning.”

  I wonder if he’s feeling the weight of his title, if the Aristocracy has something to do with this unconventional meeting between the two of us. Last time he came to me, it was with a polite knock on my door and a question about a new player in the mind flaying trade down in Carpers District. That specific case earned Trip the Captain’s Bar, and earned me a mutually beneficial relationship with Maanzethelin, who, because of my direct actions, has since risen to be the brood master of nearly all the mind flayers in Wrought Isles.

  His thoughts must echo mine because he says, “You can go places I can’t, where the Watch can’t. For some reason, the magistrates are taking an active role in this case. I don’t know why, but with them looking over my shoulder, I’m starting get to the impression the Aristocracy doesn’t want this case solved.”

  “At least not by you,” I say. “Or me.” I tell him of my unwanted visitors and the warning to me to back off.”

  “I was right, then.” He runs a finger along his cup, pensive and quiet. “They want this case but can’t outright take it over because they have no legal standing to do so.”

  “Never stopped the Aristocracy before. They’d just change the laws, bend them in their favor, and bring you to heel.”

  My last statement triggers something inside Trip. He pulls his hand back then looks me dead in the eye. “You keep me informed of what you find, no matter how small or trivial the information may be, and I’ll keep you from staring out a window framed in iron.”

  Desperate, indeed, to offer such a truce.

  “At least until this is over,” he belatedly adds.

  I give no answer, one way or the other. If he wants my help, it’ll be on my terms. Still, if it gives me some breathing room, I won’t dismiss the idea altogether.

  I finish my drink and cap the bottle. He takes the hint and drains his cup.