The Amethyst Angle

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  “Knife wound. I guess he got it when he stabbed the arcane mage to death. He’d patched himself up, but looked like it hurt something fierce.”

  “Good.”

  “Sir?” Silverman shuffles on his feet.

  “I mean, good that he’s patched up, not the fact that he needing the patching.” He shakes his head, trying to dislodge the unclear feeling regarding Gideon. From the looks of things, he owes Gideon his life. Maybe this unexplainable … what? Anger? Mistrust? Whatever it is, maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to be in debt to his old partner.

  How in the hells did Gideon take out both the men from the Arcanium on his own? The thug, Trip could see Gideon besting. But an arcane mage? Doesn’t make sense. But that would have to sit for another day. Excusing Silverman, he looks to the envelope in hand and recognizes Gideon’s handwriting. Speak of the devil. Tearing open a side, he pulls out the letter and snaps it open.

  Trip,

  As per our agreement, and against my better judgement, I leave Anderest Herchsten’s murderer alive and capable of being punished by your form of justice. Enclosed is one of a pair.

  Trip stops reading and upends the envelope. A single earring spills to his desk. He reads on.

  I found the one you now have in Anderest’s bedroom the night of his death, likely lost in a struggle between Anderest and his murderer. You will find that the other is still with the murderer, in a jewelry box sitting next to her bed. It seems that all Anderest had done for this city was not enough, or perhaps it was too much, to keep his own blood from turning on him.

  G.K.

  Hmm. Maybe there was a chance for Gideon after all.

  Trip picks up the earring with a thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that. When they’d first made their uneasy truce, Trip honestly didn’t believe Gideon would hold up his end of the bargain. The entire time they worked the case, he’d known that he had to be the one to find the murderer, that if Gideon got to him first, he’d leave nothing left to be tried and sentenced.

  Or, as it turns out, her.

  “Silverman!”

  The watchman is back before Trip’s desk quicker than thought. “Captain?”

  Trip gets to his feet and orders, “Ready the men and the cage-coach.”

  “Yessir.” Silverman starts to turn, but curiosity gets the better of him. “Where are we heading? Who are we arresting?”

  He shows the watchman the earring. “The owner of this. Vayvanette Herchsten.”

  —-

  Urdran pauses two houses down from Knell’s place, a curious look on his face as he watches three men from the Watch carry a small barrel up the steps of a house. An elderly couple opens the door, seemingly as confused as the watchmen regarding this odd delivery.

  “What’s this?” the elderly man asks, a protective arm slipping around his wife’s waist.

  “Kerosene,” one watchman says.

  “But why? We didn’t order any kerosene. That’s got to be enough to last us half a year! We couldn’t even begin to afford that much.”

  “Just doing as ordered, sir,” the watchman says. “You owe us not a copper.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” the watchman says, almost too low for Urdran to catch, “here’s the thing. Captain Standard left instructions for this to be delivered to this address, free of charge. Don’t know why, but here it is. Besides, you’d be doing us a favor if you took it. It’s a nice day out and I’d rather not have to lug it all the way back.”

  The wife takes a small step forward. “You’re sure?”

  “Like I said, you’d be doing us a favor.” There’s honesty in the genial tone of the watchman.

  The husband seems to think for a moment, looking to his wife for support. When she nods, he looks to each of the watchmen. “Well, I suppose if you insist.”

  “We do.”

  “Then you three must come in,” the wife demands with a broad wave of her hand. “Sit a spell and have a cup of perry before you get back to work.”

  The three watchmen share a look and shrug. “Love to,” the lead man says.

  Urdran leaves the curious exchange behind as he heads down Fermenster Street on his way back to the College. When he’s confident he’s put enough distance between himself and Knell’s place, he stops his carefully measured limp and removes his spectacles, putting them back into his pocket and removing the ledger he tucked into the back of his waistband.

  Alsyn had no part in Urdran’s visit to Knell, had no knowledge he had even gone. This little face-to-face was something Urdran needed to do on his own. And it was frustratingly fruitless.

  He looks down to the ledger. Another thing of which Alsyn is unaware. Urdran had been there the night of Anderest’s Herchsten’s murder. He hadn’t lied to Alsyn when he said he wished the old man had not been murdered. Anderest’s mind worked in miraculous ways, and to lose a mind like that was a terrible waste.

  Urdran had gone there that night to coerce the old man to reveal the truth of the amethyst, to verify the whispers that Urdran’s little spies had heard. They’d reported rumors of its existence, and that someone was trying to sell it. Unfortunately, Urdran had arrived too late.

  The girl, the granddaughter, had already started her binding spell, knowing nothing of what she was delving into. Urdran stood by the door, hand on the latch, listening to the girl fumble through the incant. He nearly burst into the room, intent on taking control of the situation. He readied an incant that would use the demon the girl had conjured for his own purposes, turning her spell upon herself, when he heard a pained shout from within.

  “Gideon Knell!” Anderest screamed. “Find Gideon Knell!”

  Sadly, those were the old man’s final words.

  Curiosity stayed Urdran’s hand and his thoughts were spinning when the young boy startled him. At Anderest’s final scream, the boy rushed from a small room next to the bedroom and crashed straight into Urdran.

  In the boy’s hands, a book.

  Quick as a snake strike, Urdran paralyzed the boy with an arcane incant, caught up the stiff body, and dragged him into an empty room down the hall. Closing the door behind him, Urdran rounded on the boy, wrapped his mouth with a binding of air, and released the paralyzing spell.

  “What is this?” Urdran asked, plucking the book from the boy’s grip. Of course, the boy couldn’t answer, not with the knot of air around his mouth. So Urdran opened the book to find it was the old man’s will and testament. It was dated six weeks prior.

  Urdran turned his attention back to his captive. “If I release your mouth, you will not scream. Yes?”

  The boy nodded eagerly, fear making him pliable.

  Urdran let the boy go, and the runt quickly scrambled away until his back hit a closet in the corner. Urdran stalked him the entire time, reveling in the fear.

  “Now,” Urdran said when the boy could retreat no farther. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Th-there’s a map,” the boy squealed. “Folded up, in back.”

  Urdran opened the back cover and found a folded paper. Unfolding it, he found a crude map, like the boy had said. It had the Herchsten Estate as the beginning point, and some residential building on a street labeled as Fermenster as the ending point.

  “Why are you taking it there?”

  “Master’s orders,” the runt said. “If anything happened to him, I’m to take that book there. Said if his granddaughter came back before week’s end and something bad happened, then I should sneak away with the book and deliver it to that address.”

  Curious. “He didn’t tell you why?”

  “No sir!”

  “Are you lying to me?” Urdran pulled himself up to tower over the boy.

  “No sir!”

  Urdran sighed. “I’m sorry, but in my line of work, one cannot take another person’s word as truth. It begs treachery and false information.”

  “But I’m not lying!” the boy whispered harshly. “I’m only supposed to deliver t
hat book. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

  It turned out, the boy was telling the truth. Urdran bled the boy until he heard every dark secret the child held, but none of those secrets involved the will and testament or the amethyst.

  Which, Urdran now thinks as he continues walking back to the College, is another mystery altogether. He opens the ledger and flips to the page showing to whom the amethyst was bequeathed.

  Gideon Knell.

  Why? Why did Herchsten leave the amethyst to Knell?

  And more pressing, where was it?

  Urdran had used his guise to get into Knell’s place, to see if he could search for the amethyst. He thought he had found it, saw it sitting plainly on a shelf next to a clock behind the so-called detective. So Urdran pretended to stumble, and as he did he whispered the incant to the glasses he was wearing. A few items on the shelf glowed with ambient magic, but the amethyst was as dull as a rock.

  That one, too, was a fake.

  Slipping the ledger back in his waistband, Urdran keeps walking forward. He tries not to let setback this frustrate him. There was much more yet to do in Wrought Isles. Magic’s failing, Anderest’s amethyst, Gideon Knell. They are all tied together somehow. And it will be up to him to find out how. It seems he’ll have to ensure Gideon Knell continues breathing, just as he’ll keeps Alsyn Offren as Head Magistrate.

  At least, for the time being.

  —-

  Gideon Knell’s office is empty for the night, the partners downstairs in a heated argument about priorities. One claims liquor, the other, sweet pies. All is still, save the occasional rustle of a folded note beneath a broken wand on the desk, tickled by the wind through an open window. On a shelf behind the desk, there is a delicate glow, emanating from the gifted diamond sitting between a clock and an amethyst, bathing both in a lavender light from its charged glow. The subtle tick of Anderest Herchsten’s clock is the only sound to be heard in the office, and with each passing second, the diamond loses a fraction of its glow.

  It will be just before midnight that the diamond has given up the last of its charge, losing its glow entirely and leaving the shadows to swallow up the shelf.

  Until the amethyst emits the faintest of flickers, soft enough to be a dying man’s final heartbeat. Or determined enough to be a newborn’s first.