by O. J. Lowe
“Somebody was already in there, you fool! Don’t worry, I got him. He’d been in there for hours. Long before you got here, I’d wager. Did your damn job for you. You’re welcome.”
Baldie put out a hand, stopped it inches from Nick’s chest. “You were, were you? Agent Carling told us to watch out for a Unisco-trained sniper. Would know the regulations. Would be in a hurry, he said. Would try to get past us. We’re supposed to stop you.”
“Agent Carling couldn’t find his own arsehole with both hands and an extra finger,” Nick said. He could feel the vigorous thumping of his heart in his chest, blood was roaring around his system now and he was trying to avoid clenching his fists. The absolute fucking cheek of these two little bastards. “He’s botched this entire fucking thing from the start.”
He didn’t want to give voice to his further suspicions, didn’t want to start thinking what had been going through his head on his way downstairs to the exit. He knew what he’d seen before all this started, before going for Hobb, before the stage had exploded. It was an unpleasant thought he didn’t want to have to consider before he was in front of someone who could investigate it in a much more effective manner. Someone like Mallinson, as strange as that thought might feel. Maybe just someone who could tell him he was being ridiculous. He wanted that so very badly right now. Better to think Carling was incompetent than… Was he though? One didn’t rise to his position without having something about him.
“That’s our boss you’re talking about!” Moustache said. He didn’t sound impressed. “We have our orders. You can come quietly or…”
Nick hit him, drew his fist back and smashed it hard into Moustache’s nose, felt it break under the blow. A brief pang of regret hit him, he pushed it down as Baldie went for the blaster and he had to spin away from it, throwing an elbow back to catch him in the side of the head. He heard a grunt, the clatter of the weapon falling away, didn’t turn to face him just yet Moustache had doubled over, Nick brought his foot up violently into his chest, threw him back into the wall. He hit it with a slick thud, slid to the filth of the alley. He was getting back up any time soon. Baldie hit him from behind, tackled him and Nick stumbled to his knees, hit the ground with jarring force. He threw his head back, tried to catch him and missed, felt Baldie jerk out the way. The weight on his back relieved for a moment, he threw an elbow and hit him in the guts, felt the recoil with satisfaction. Having been hit with an elbow himself very recently, he could empathise with how it felt.
“Hold it!”
That click was the sound of an X7 being cocked, the hiss was the tell-tale sound of excess gas filtering from the barrel ready for the first shot. Nick froze, Baldie did too. He didn’t know the speaker, he was guessing by the look on the shiny-headed man’s face that he did.
The accent clearly wasn’t from Belderhampton, still from Canterage he’d have guessed but decidedly more southern. It had a languid drawl to it, not like the sing-song lyrics of those from the west or the rustic charms of those from the east. It was a command built on confidence, the voice of a woman who was prepared to follow through on implied threats if her demands weren’t met. He’d heard it before. Frequently. She’d built that voice up over twenty years of service.
Nick allowed himself to crane his head, saw the mane of caramel-coloured hair before anything else. Her X7 didn’t waver. He was tired of having weapons pointed at him. He gave her a knowing look. “Am I okay to stand back up?”
She nodded. “Slowly.”
“Madam Inquisitor…” Baldie started to say. “This man…”
“Is going to carry on kicking your arse if I tell him to,” she said. “So, zip it. I don’t want to hear it. Pick your friend up and walk out of here, Yawley. I’ll deal with the two of you later.”
Yawley looked at Nick. The hatred was carved deep into his face, he cracked his knuckles in implied threat. Nick wasn’t impressed. He’d been threatened better. Another inquisitor. That was interesting. Part of the Mallinson Corps as he’d no doubt be calling them given a chance.
“Leave the blaster,” she said. “I’ll see that you get it back when I decide that you’re permitted to carry one again.”
Yawley looked like he wanted to argue, she wasn’t going to let him. “Agent Roper,” she said. “Do you have any compunctions about finishing pasting this little shit all over the alley if him and his irksome partner aren’t gone in the next twenty seconds?”
How the hells was he supposed to answer that? “If it’s a direct order,” he said. “I wouldn’t be wholly against it.”
“There you go,” she said. “Nineteen seconds now. Eighteen. Want me to go on?”
Yawley didn’t hesitate, he grabbed the struggling Moustache and both of them made a break for the mouth of the alley while the inquisitor counted down out loud, a big grin on her face as she did. Only when they had gone did she turn her attention to Nick.
“You,” she said. “You, son, are in a whole mess of trouble here.”
“That doesn’t seem to make much of a change,” Nick said, unable to quite keep the weariness out of his voice. “You’ll have to forgive me, Natalia, it’s been that sort of day.”
“It’s not Natalia today,” she said. “Just Inquisitor Larsen, I’m afraid to have to remind you.” The words were gentle but pointed. Just a subtle prod that they were doing formalities.
“Before you go anywhere else,” Nick said. “I feel I should let you know that the body of Lucas Hobb is in there.” He jerked a thumb back towards the warehouse. “I got him.”
“Agent Roper,” she said, with only the faintest trace of a smile on her face. “Lucas Hobb is dead.”
“Yeah, I just said his body is in there…”
“No, he’s been dead for a good year now. Wasn’t killed that far away from here. The silent hunt for him is long over.”
“Want to be proved wrong?” Nick asked. He didn’t take any satisfaction. Inquisitor Larsen’s face hardened. It wasn’t an unpleasant face, he’d take her over Mallinson any day of the week. When it hardened though, any trace of lingering beauty faded from it, replaced with an ugly sense of certainty that he couldn’t possibly be right, and she be wrong.
The chaos had been horrendous, Sharon thought, the scenes of devastation all around her as she strode through what had been scenes of joy scant moments earlier. Stalls had been devastated, their wares shattered, and the people broken. She’d never seen so much errant blood as she had walking the paths, cuts and bruises and broken bones the order of the night. Emergency medical services were in full swing, doing their best to offer aid wherever they could, green and blue uniforms everywhere, treating traveller and guest alike. Some of the travelling folk had already left, headed for their hoverwagons. They had their own method of treatment, they didn’t like outsiders at the best of times. She’d already heard the words ‘bomb, bomb’ filtering through the crowd too many times to be entirely comfortable.
Terrorism was uncommon in the five kingdoms. An explosive attack like this didn’t happen often, not in Canterage anyway. Some parts of Burykia and Vazara were frequent victims of isolated explosions but this was different. They were a complex people with complex belief, a people who didn’t care for contrasting views. A cynical part of her wondered if it was because it had hit closer to home. This could have affected her personally. She hadn’t been injured, had stepped out the way of a piece of lumber that might otherwise have impaled her with practiced ease, but others hadn’t been as lucky.
Beneath all that, she wondered where Nick was, a panic gripping her heart that he might be one of the dead. There had been deaths, she could feel it in herself, too many senseless deaths that shouldn’t have happened. There was too much sadness in the air for there to be otherwise.
“Well,” Larsen said, studying the body. “This changes things.” She’d studied her summoner intently Nick could see she’d drawn up an image on it that was a direct doppelganger for the man on the ground. “This changes things indeed.”
“Lucas Hobb was killed a year ago,” she said. “That’s what our records say. They were filed by the agent-in-charge of this area, he was very clear that Hobb was dead and that he’d killed him personally Let me see your arms.”
“Agent-in-charge?” Nick asked. He didn’t argue with her, removed his jacket and pulled up his shirt sleeves. His arms looked more blood than skin, he winced at the sight. Normally, he wouldn’t describe himself as squeamish. It was different when it was your own body. “Let me guess, wouldn’t be Nigel Carling, by any chance would it?”
She nodded. Larsen had pulled a medipack from somewhere, her fingers already unfurling a bandage. A little bottle of something was in her other hand, she was shaking it, not breaking eye contact with him. “Have you met him then?”
“You could say that.”
“Nick,” she said. He winced as the disinfectant coursed across his cuts, stung like a bitch. “I say this not as an inquisitor and a Unisco agent but as a human being who cares about you. You best tell me everything that you know and quickly. Because something isn’t right here…” Understatement, Nick thought. “… And if it needs to be righted, then it must be done as swiftly as possible before those culpable vanish into the winds.”
She was right there, he had to admit as he glanced around. Not sure why. Secure was better than sorry. “Okay, you know what happened to me in Serran with Inquisitor Mallinson?”
Larsen nodded her head. Part of him wanted to rib her, ask her if she was keeping up with his career out the goodness of her heart. Before she’d been an inquisitor, they’d had some history. Just a little. The sort you didn’t forget. She was working away on him now, running the adhesive over the cuts, securing them together. Unisco field medicine. Improvised wasn’t even the word for it. Gratitude flushed through him. She didn’t need to do it, yet she’d been eager to. Saved him a trip to the hospital. He’d had enough of those damn places. “He did send a memo out about it that if you showed up, you were to be kept an eye on.”
He didn’t know whether to feel honoured or insulted. The bandages were coming on now. “Bet you jumped at that chance, didn’t you?”
She narrowed her eyes, shook her caramel-coloured mane. She’d always had great hair, no matter what. “Don’t flatter yourself too much, Nick. Start at the beginning.”
“I came here for the carnival,” Nick said. “I got suspended, my partner was in a coma last I heard, I was on my way home when Nigel Carling approached me about a threat here.”
Larsen’s face didn’t betray any sort of emotion. It remained blank like a particularly inscrutable stone. “Go on?”
“Said that an assassin named Lucas Hobb was here, he’d been seen in the city and he didn’t know who to trust in hunting him down. Said he thought Hobb had a source in Unisco in the city, didn’t want to risk trusting the wrong person. And so, he came to me to try and throw me at him.”
“Even though you were suspended?”
“I did tell him that. Repeatedly!” Nick protested. “I didn’t want a damn thing to do with it. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I wasn’t assigned to this kingdom, I wasn’t on active duty. I wasn’t going to get involved.”
“And then?” Larsen had her summoner out now, no doubt everything he said was being recorded. If he couldn’t trust Larsen, he couldn’t trust anyone. She’d do the right thing, not just the right thing for her, he felt certain of that.
“He put an executive order in front of me. Told me to do lookout duty. If I saw anything, I was to report it in.” He removed his earpiece, held it out in front of her. “Or at least I tried to anyway. If they were operating here tonight, it wasn’t on any frequency he informed me of. I came here to enjoy myself. I ended up looking for a sniper.”
Larsen’s face didn’t change. He thought that he’d gotten better reading her over the years. This display told him how utterly wrong he’d been.
“I saw Carling, you know. Saw him come out from under the stage. He said he’d…” Nick considered his words, not entirely sure how best to say it. How did you come out and say what you suspected about the city’s senior agent? “… He said he’d been checking for explosives.”
“Badly, I’d assume,” Larsen said, inclining her head towards the window. He couldn’t miss the amused note in her voice.
“Then I saw the woophawk,” Nick said. “Sniper’s best friend in a spirit. Tried to tell him. Tried to tell anyone. No sign of him. He’d vanished. Then the travellers attacked me, I had to defend myself, I threw a smoke bomb into the VIP area…”
“That was you? I’d say it’s a good job you did, or this would have been even worse.” She sounded impressed.
Nick said nothing to that. “I got here, engaged Hobb and killed him. Found out his rifle was filled with negative charges. He couldn’t have shot anyone if he wanted to. He tried to kill me with it, would have succeeded if they were live ammunition.” He shook his head. “Then the stage blew up and those two idiots downstairs tried to stop me.”
“You do know you can’t go around punching fellow agents, don’t you?” Her tone was gentle but serious.
“I do but in my defence, I’ve had one hells of a night and I wasn’t in the mood,” he said. Nick reached into his pocket, held Hobb’s summoner out in front of him. She smiled, took it from him, cradled it like it was her child. “Present for you.”
“Yawley and his partner are a pain in my arse,” she said, shrugging. “They get referred to me every couple of weeks. Hence why guard duty is about all they’re good for. They carry on the way they’re going, they’ll be lucky to get jobs guarding shopping centres. A good arse kicking might knock some sense in them. If I could legally do it myself, I would have done so already.”
Nick nodded. There was an elephant in the room he needed to bring up and it was going to leave an unpleasant taste in his mouth. “Carling,” he said. “I didn’t think much to his methods.”
“No?”
“I got the impression that this whole thing had been rushed and badly prepared.”
“Really?”
“I thought he was incompetent.”
Larsen only smiled to that. “That’s the one word that doesn’t fill Carling’s file, believe me on that, Nick. He’s a master manipulator. I’d very much like to talk to him. His version of events will be an interesting tale, I’m sure, given what you’ve said and done here.”
Nick nodded, started to gingerly put his jacket on, careful not to catch his wrists against the material. A weak smile played across his mouth. “Thanks for the help, Inquisitor Larsen.”
She winked at him. “I’ll always be Natalia to you when I’m not working, Nick. Stay safe.”
She’d let him go, warned him not to leave town though as a final word. Not in an unpleasant way but he’d been left with the impression that it would be monumentally stupid to disobey it. He didn’t want to leave Belderhampton either. He’d just gotten here. It was exactly where he wanted to be.
It was where she was. The carnage amidst the carnival sickened him, twisted in his guts. He could have done more, he should have looked at what Carling was doing under the stage.
He couldn’t have known. There was no logical way in which he should have suspected him. You didn’t suspect your superiors of being engaged in suspicious activity, you trusted them to be working for the greater good. You couldn’t do that, you might as well not do the job at all.
That didn’t assuage the guilt. Not when he saw people injured by the blast, he saw a pair of paramedics carrying a body bag on a hover lift, his heart fell. How many had died here because of what Hobb and Carling had done? He didn’t want to think about the numbers. Too many, for sure.
Carling had been acting suspic
iously, he told himself. He could have picked up on it. He’d had vibes from the entire situation. Bad vibes. He’d known something was wrong, he just hadn’t been able to place what. If he had…
Things could have been so different. The air still tasted of smoke, slick with the tang of fire and death. You didn’t have to be psychic to know that bad things had happened here. He’d tried to stop the bad things, they’d happened regardless despite his best efforts. Some things you just had to learn how to live with. Didn’t mean they got easier. Just that you managed to put them out of your mind when things were at their worst, as time passed by, you’d hope the memories faded.
He didn’t know where he was going, just where his destination was. It’d be wherever she was. She was where his heart lay. It wasn’t with Unisco any longer, he’d have to give serious thought as to whether his future was the agency. Leaving them would be like bursting out of the womb, he’d been there for a long time, he knew the security that it offered before being cast out into the wild world with no sort of preparation.
Nick couldn’t remember being a civilian. Even when he’d tried it here with suspension, it hadn’t ended well. He’d been roped into breaking a suspension, put in a deadly situation and been a witness to one of the worst tragedies to happen to Belderhampton in a long time.
He patted his jacket, was relieved to find his purchase was still there where he’d left it. If he’d lost that, amidst everything else that had happened, he would have been furious beyond belief. He didn’t doubt that. It might even have broken him in conjunction with everything else. He’d need that package one day soon. Maybe not today, although if the timing was right, who knew what was going to happen.
Part of him felt that he’d know if Sharon had died. Theirs was a special connection. It sounded corny and cliched but that was the way he’d felt for a long time. There was something keeping them together beyond mere attraction. It felt like fate. He didn’t always believe in fate, the idea of being out of control didn’t do much for him, but if some higher purpose wanted them to be together, he was all for it. He didn’t feel like she’d died. He felt like the future was theirs to seize. Nothing like your own near-death experience to put things into perspective.