by O. J. Lowe
“I appreciate the circumstances you found yourself in, Agent Roper,” Mallinson said as he looked at him. “I really do. They weren’t ideal. I still need to conclude my investigation as promised. You understand?”
Nick nodded to say that he did. Mallinson raised an eyebrow, cleared his throat. He’d been recording the entire thing, Nick guessed. Hence the fiddling with his summoner.
“Yes, I understand that your investigation needs to be concluded.”
“And do you state for the official record that everything you have said today remains the truth of your recollections of the event, that you have omitted nothing that may or may not impact on the outcome for the investigation? This is your final chance to come clean.”
“I do state that.”
“By the power based in me by my office, I’m placing you on leave for a fortnight. You’ll surrender your badge and your weapon and any other Unisco technology or documents you may have about your person, nor are you to take part in no Unisco-related activity for that time, you are not to contact any Unisco personnel in Unisco-related matters. Don’t consider it a punishment. Consider it a vacation. At the end of this fortnight, I will be in touch with the outcome of my investigation. Maybe less if Agent Montgomery can validate your story.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Your property will be returned to you following the conclusion of this investigation, should no further action be judged worth taking.”
“Thank you,” Nick said. “Inquisitor.”
“We have your contact number,” Mallinson said. “I advise you not to change it, or to drop out of contact under any circumstances. I also advise that you leave Salawia as promptly as possible. Agent Saldana is less than impressed with you, he has no desire to see you lurking around his territory as a loose end.”
Nick nodded, his mind already turning thoughts over in his head about how quickly he could leave. Just one thing that didn’t sit right with him over that. “Inquisitor, Agent Montgomery… My partner…”
“Will continue to be cared for under the Unisco funding for agents in this situation,” Mallinson said. There was a surprising hint of gentleness in his voice, something that took Nick by surprise far more than anything else that had been said in this meeting. He’d been expecting the leave to be forced upon him. That was standard policy. Nobody wanted a Unisco agent who was being investigated for excessive force around them while the investigation was ongoing. It made things tricky in the long term, not just opinions amongst colleagues but where the collection of evidence was concerned as well. Despite some of the more unsavoury things that Nick had done for Unisco, they did at least try to follow the law most of the time. Removal of someone was only a last resort and even then, only when approved by someone in the Senate with the power to make that happen. “We’ll make sure to inform you if she wakes up. Do not worry about her. Worry about yourself now, for you’re in far more trouble than she is.”
Nick nodded. “Think I’m going to go home,” he said. It hadn’t taken long to make up his mind. He’d been considering it long before the verdict had been passed down to him. “Back to Canterage, if you need to find me.”
It’d been far too long since he’d been back there. No time like the present.
Chapter Two.
“On the field of battle, no two situations are ever exactly alike in their variables. Two defeats can make a world of difference to two different individuals. There are always those who take something from their losses. There are always those who seek to make enemies of the world for the slight they feel they’ve inflicted. We need more of the former and less of the latter.”
Professor David Fleck at a conference in Haxfold regarding the future of the sport of spirit calling.
Home.
It was only a small world, but it brought about powerful emotions. Emotions that could make you wistful for a past long lost to you or hopeful for a future that had yet to be denied. Home was where the heart longed for. Most spirit callers didn’t have a home. The sport brought about a young breed of nomads, people who went through their youth, going from city to city, cheap motel room to cheap motel room in effort to follow the credits. Nick had learned the reality behind that truth long ago.
There always were credits wherever you were. You just had to be ready to look for them. More than that, you had to be prepared to work for them. Nothing came to you in this life for free. There was a hard way to work and a smart way. You used your legs or your brain. Chasing a fleeting number of credits from city to city, one tournament to another, it was a younger man’s game. Nick wasn’t even thirty yet and he’d already tired of a life which had long since lost any hint of glamour to it.
Granted, his status in the sport had reached the point where he didn’t need to sweep through a handful of smaller tournaments to get an invitation to a big one. The bigger ones invited him along. He’d won most of them in his time, the Quin-C being the most glaring omission from his collection and that might well change in a mere number of months. His qualification had been confirmed for that competition, he’d set himself up to relax for that time before going to Carcaradis Island in Vazara.
No, chasing the credits and the glory were starting to become things he no longer lusted after. He had new desires in his life. The challenge of battle and the urge for conflict, they were dying out of him. On the one hand, it worried him, for that thirst for challenge had been his driving force for a long time. It had gotten him where he was today and without it, he probably would be laid in a shallow grave somewhere. On the other hand, those challenges had been conquered. Conflict was one thing. Laying down roots. Settling. Becoming something more. Now that felt like a challenge he could tackle with relish. He’d never seen himself as a family man before. Now though it felt like he at least wanted to make the effort.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had these thoughts, he doubted that it’d be the last. His memories of Lysa in that hospital bed were still imprinted hard on the forefront of his brain and weren’t going away. He’d never wondered about life after death, whatever happened was going to happen and it was going to come to you whether you worried about it or not. He’d never been repentant. He’d tried to live a good life. If he was judged, he was going to come up sorely short, he had a horrible feeling about that. A life of violence begat more of the same.
Even if you don’t believe in the Divines, a zent had once said to him as a boy, rest assured that the Divines believe in you. And they will have their turn with you. Once upon a moment in time, that turn will come. Faith won’t save you, but it could well be your salvation should the scales tip one way or the other. Do you really wish to take the chance that your eternal soul could be set to fuel the fires of Ferros’ great furnace?
At the time, he hadn’t known what to take away from that little story. Wasn’t a good one. Ferros was the Divine of Justice and Punishment, if Nick was going to be a believer of old stories, chances were that he’d have to face him in his final day. He didn’t know how that confrontation would go. Ferros was also the Divine of Forges, although that was usually only mentioned in a sidebar to his other duties. The souls of the truly wicked went into the jailer, Analurich, a forge so hot and wild that it had taken on a persona of its own. A living prison of fire and heat, terror fuelling the flames. The same terror that the wicked had inflicted in their lifetime brought back upon them a thousand times over. The punishment for those not so wicked but still deemed worthy of being there were set to work over and over without respite until their bodies broke and bent under the stresses of working the forge to craft weapons in the endless war in the wicked. They’d collapse in heaps amidst the eternal night and sleep would finally be permitted to them. They’d awaken to find that the cycle started again, that once again they would work and work, healed flesh would sear from the very presence of the heat, bones would break, and skin would sizzle and contort as their flesh cooked on their bones. Little implings would scurry around, gobble up bits of cooked fatty flesh that fell away from
them, sometimes they didn’t even wait, scampering up to tear it away straight off the bone…
It was sobering stuff. That everything he had done had been in the name of a law and higher power that he’d chosen to believe in probably wouldn’t cut much ice with those below. They wouldn’t have appreciated the distinction. Gilgarus gave mankind free will, it didn’t mean that he had to like the decisions they made when using it. He’d never thought about religion before, there was nothing like an impending brush with death to make you see things differently. Or indeed, see things at all that you hadn’t wanted to in the past.
Lysa’s beliefs had always been important to her. He remembered when he’d first met her. First thing she’d demanded was to know whether he had any ghosts amongst his spirits or not. He’d been quick to assure her that he hadn’t, and she’d smiled. “You’re okay then, Roper,” she’d said. She’d had that thing back then. Didn’t believe that ghosts should be used for battle. Personal opinions. Religious reasons. It hadn’t mattered why. The fact was that she’d thought that. She had her convictions, she’d stuck to them at the risk of alienating a stranger whom she might have to depend on down the line to save her life.
He could still have failed in that respect. Or he could yet have shown to have succeeded. Only time would tell.
Some Unisco agents did worship Ferros. It was a logical step. Nick had never quite felt the urge to go that far. Those who worshipped Ferros, those who weren’t worthy of punishment, they took up the arms whose creation was fuelled and fashioned by the damned. They used the weapons forged from the blood of their enemies and they fought new enemies. He’d had enough violence in his life without having it after death as well. He could see why they did worship Ferros though. If you were going to kill, better to do it in his name than to risk his ire in the afterlife.
Sat in the Salawia aeroport, ticket uploaded into a data pad, Nick found himself thinking about the meeting with the Inquisitor. Things had gone about as well as could be expected. Realistically, there wasn’t anything Mallinson could find that would be able to see him removed from the agency. Even better, there wasn’t anything that could see legal action taken against him. Everyone gave him a hard reputation, but he wasn’t too bad once you got talking. If he was a constant ballbreaker, he’d get nowhere. Everyone needed balance between who they wanted to be and who they needed to be.
Ever since he’d been in there, ever since he’d mentioned fieldwork and seen the change in the Inquisitor’s attitude, he’d been formulating a theory about it. He’d seen the look of disgust in his eyes at the mention of how Mallinson had never worked in the field, the twist at the corners of his mouth and the way the skin around his nose had flared up a brilliant red. Maybe, just maybe, it was a reminder that nobody could always be who they wanted to be when they started out. He’d never voice said theory aloud, but there were always those who wanted the glitz and the glamour of being the field agents, the go-to guys who got all the glory. And very few, comparatively, ever made the cut. Standards were exceptionally high, justifiably so. Lesser men would lose their heads in the crisis, more than that, they would risk not only endangering the mission but the lives of those around them as well. That was a luxury that could not be afforded for the sake of pampering someone’s ego.
He rejected the thoughts finally, pushed them to the back of his mind. It wasn’t healthy to dwell on what you couldn’t prove. It didn’t matter either way. Mallinson was what he was, just as Nick could say the same thing about himself. He’d said goodbye to Aldiss, managed to avoid seeing Saldana and headed to the aeroport after the meeting.
Going home had been a great idea. Unless he was mistaken, it was just in time as well. His girlfriend was back home right now, doing some charity work back in Canterage that she’d committed to. She was the reason he was in Serran in the first place, she was the kingdom champion, a ferocious combatant in the arena and had a duty to be here in the kingdom. As much as it pained him to admit it, she might just be better than him. Just. They hadn’t tested themselves full out against each other for many years now. Not since they’d started the relationship. It wasn’t worth it; the unknown was their ally in this circumstance. If fate was on their side, they might never have to know. That would be a blessed relief. Nick had ten years of using his spirits to keep himself alive on dangerous Unisco missions where it was always a matter of life and death, he was a sword forged in the fires of battle whereas Sharon always looked like the ability came naturally to her, was always to be two or three moves ahead of her opponent and they hadn’t caught up to her way of thinking yet. If he was the sword, then she was the whip. She’d had an excellent teacher, Nick knew that much. There’d been a time when the two of them hadn’t been able to avoid being photographed together.
He didn’t want to think about Ruud Baxter either. That was a part of her life that she’d assured him was over. He took her at her word for it, they’d moved past it. Now she was back in Belderhampton, the city where Nick had grown up. That couldn’t be a coincidence, he’d thought at the time. Her work had taken her there, now it looked like his had driven him back there. It had been a snap decision but one that he wasn’t going to regret. He’d show up, surprise her, maybe they could go to the carnival as well.
The Belderhampton carnival, he knew all too well about. One night a year, three nights from now to be precise, if he had the right of it, the city went wild as the travelling community that lived there put on the show to end all shows. When he was growing up, it had just been a local thing, in recent years it had exploded into a massive event where people from all over the five kingdoms showed up for the experience. That it was a limited event, that one night a year and no more, made it all more special.
He hadn’t been there since he was a teenager, but he could remember the sights, the smells, the sounds, all of it culminating in a wild and exotic night that had gone on well into the early hours of the morning. He’d had his first time with a woman that night, a dusky skinned travelling girl who’d been all wisps of silk and lace to cover her modesty until they’d gotten into her wagon. She’d been naked underneath, he’d been delighted to discover. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet as her. She’d been doe-eyed, very wrapped up in her shroud of innocence but very willing. She’d known what she was doing, her demeanour had been deceptive. It had been a night he’d never forgotten.
Going back there, it’d be an experience. Recent years, he’d not had the time or the inclination, his time split between one job or the other. Honestly, there’d been times when he hadn’t wanted to. He preferred to remember that girl the way she was, not risk bumping into her and having those memories irrevocably shattered by the way life had changed around them. The past was never the way you remembered it, harsh realities were eroded by the attrition of time. It’s never so good as it was in your memories, a fiction you edited to change the things that you didn’t want to dwell on.
Thanks to Mallinson, he didn’t have the excuses to avoid it. More than that, he felt like he needed to go back there. Everything happened for a reason, the sort of impulse decision he’d found missing from his life in recent months. It might just be the thing to take all his thoughts of what might have been away from him, thoughts that had been bothering him way too much in the last day. A distraction would be good.
He leaned back in his seat, took in the aeroport around them. It was larger than average, some stations were little more than refuelling towers with a waiting room and a ticket office stuck on the bottom, but not this one. There were a few restaurants towards the back of the terminal, the whole area larger than some shopping malls if he was honest, at the base of the twin refuelling towers. A few markets to acquire any essentials for a long flight. Serran to Canterage wasn’t the most gruelling flight anyone would ever make, but still there were ways to make it easier.
Early afternoon, there were plenty of people about, some of them no doubt going cross-kingdom, some of them going to other kingdoms like him. Canterage, Burykia, Vazar
a or Premesoir. The cold, the exotic, the hot, the rich, as people liked to colloquially call them. He’d never bought that. Canterage was no colder than some parts to the north of Serran, Burykia was no more exotic than Vazara or Serran, Vazara wasn’t much hotter than areas of Burykia or Serran, Premesoir wasn’t any richer. People viewed things how they wanted to see them, he thought. That made all the difference in their eyes.
He'd spent time in all of them, some more than others, that much was always true. You could see things you wanted to, you could turn a blind eye to those that you didn’t, and it might as well not be there. Human nature was as stubborn like a mule and twice as unyielding. It took a lot to change a negative opinion, be it of a person or a place.
He hated waiting. Unisco training had preached the importance of it, but there was a difference between doing it on a mission and while waiting for a flight that was still an hour away. On a mission, patience kept you alive. Here, it got you bored and sent your mind wandering into places it didn’t want to go, places that he’d dwelt enough.
That did it. He stood up, grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, jerking it about to adjust the weight accordingly. Everything he currently possessed, the total accumulation of a year in Serran, he’d shoved in this bag. There were other things of course, but not on him, they were locked away in the house back in Belderhampton.
As purchases went, he thought as he strode towards the back of the terminal, that house had been an impulsive one but not one that he regretted making. Sharon was living there currently, he’d insisted. He wasn’t going to the food places or the mini-markets, he walked straight past them. He needed to blow off some steam, take out his worries on someone else. It had been more than a purchase, it had been an investment. It had been a reminder to himself that there was a future and he intended to make it there. He’d already realised how much the travelling lifestyle was getting to him even back then. Though the house hadn’t been lived in by him yet, everything he owned that he didn’t want to carry about with him was there. All his medals and his trophies, the total accumulation of years of tournaments. He wasn’t worried about break-ins or home invasions. He’d taken advantage of the Unisco benefit for their agents, put his house on their list to be outfitted with the best available security at employee rates. He’d pity anyone who broke in.