Joy picked up her pace and continued west, but the feeling didn’t subside. She steeled herself and glanced back. It was one of the laborers from her last interview, a lanky man with a dirty, scraggly goatee. During the interview, he’d said next to nothing, either to her or to his co-workers, and had stared at her constantly like a starving wolf chained up outside a butcher’s store.
Joy recognized that look. She’d seen it on Quintus’ face right before he’d pushed into the supply closet. Regardless of what this man might know, she could not allow herself to be alone with him. All her instincts were screaming “danger,” and she’d be a fool not to listen to them.
Joy wasn’t going to mess around here. She needed to get rid of him, before this situation could escalate. Disrupt whatever plan he had before it started. But how? Joy thought of Madame Zenovia, and it gave her an idea. She began muttering to herself, starting soft and getting louder. Then she added a head twitch, and batted at the air around her head, like swatting at invisible flies. She whirled around and directed a furious “Shh” at the empty space right next to her, tried to walk away from it, repeating “Not in public! Told you not in public. Stop talking to me!” She stumbled around, then walked in a circle, maintaining her weird argument with no-one. Stalker-boy had caught up to her, but now he looked confused. Joy whirled on him.
“You,” she said, presenting him with a rictus grin. “You followed. Do you see it? You do, don’t you! Not like the others they didn’t understand, couldn’t tell, but you—you see them crawling, hopping, swarming everywhere, everywhere, everywhere infestation webs: glowing lines from the rooftops to the sky to the spider-mother, the one in the spaces between worlds between walls between the folds in your brain reaching in and they take take take everything, every memory soul-scrap-shard spirit to him, he’s the one he pulls the threads the Specter Red Specter all praise him none but me knows the truth, I know the truth, I KNOW IT’S YOU RED SPECTER!” Joy screamed back at the warehouses and was pleased to see some droplets of spittle flying off in that direction. “I KNOW! I KNOW! I KNOW YOU’RE THERE! MASTERMIND, FOUL! You don’t belong! You don’t. NOT FOR YOU, THIS WORLD! GET OUT! GEEETTTT OOUUUUUUTTT!”
Through her peripheral vision Joy noted that her shrieking was attracting attention from around the docks. Not that she expected anyone to actually do anything besides stare, but she doubted that Stalker Boy appreciated the audience. She kept up her ranting, while cycling through different languages for added effect, as Stalker Boy shook his head and muttered “crazy bitch,” before wandering back the way he came. Joy dialed down her volume, but kept up her act for another minute or so, until she was sure she’d lost her stalker, and she could go back to normal.
Generally speaking, nobody wanted to deal with a crazy person. Even a predator would think twice about going after prey that was so completely unpredictable. That was her hope anyway, but he’d kept staring, even as she’d gotten more and more incoherent, and she’d been worried that it wasn’t working—that she’d have to rely on her combatives training again. Joy had a feeling he might’ve still tried something if it hadn’t been broad daylight and people hadn’t been watching.
It’s not like craziness was a perfect defense. Madame Zenovia had been walking around acting crazy three nights ago, and someone had tried to grab her—though as Joy thought about it, she couldn’t be sure it had actually been an attack. Maybe someone had been trying to restrain her from wandering into a dangerous area. That matched up better with the fact that someone had hired a pedi-cab to take her home. But she couldn’t be sure of anything until she managed to find a genuine witness.
Joy forced herself to keep walking at a brisk pace, even though her knees felt wobbly. She clutched her purse tight to keep her hands from shaking and took long breaths as she began to cross Shackle Bridge over the Ala-Muki. The stiff breeze coming over the bay helped clear her head, and the scenery was nice as always, with small recreational outrigger sailboats cutting across the blue-green waters, steering clear of the larger flat-bottomed paddle steamships carrying passengers and cargo deeper into the continent. Even the steel struts of the Shackle had been decked out in red and gold for Liberation Day, flags snapping out taut from the wind.
Steel rails separated the pedestrian walkway from the train tracks that were the primary justification for the Shackle’s existence. Joy appreciated that the bridge set some clear boundaries for everyone to follow. The world could use more of that. Back when she’d been working at the Journal, before everything had gone pear-shaped, Joy remembered one of her male colleagues complaining about the advantage she had as a pretty woman: she had such an easy time getting attention. Folks would line up to talk to her.
She’d decided to thank him for the compliment rather than launch into a lengthy correction that he probably wouldn’t get. He wasn’t totally wrong, either. She didn’t doubt that those laborers’ initial eagerness to talk to her had a lot to do with how she looked, and she wasn’t above batting her eyes to get a story. The problem was that so much of the attention she got either wasn’t helpful, or actively hindered her, to the point where she was having to waste energy doing improv theater performances in the middle of the street to get out of it.
All she wanted was to do her job, and somehow she’d been forced to devote half her time and mental energy fending off stupid male bullshit. She wondered what it would’ve been like to have to work a little harder to get attention but not have to deal with any of that other garbage—for just once, to be able to purely focus on her work, only that and nothing else. Right now, it sounded like paradise.
Chapter 27
Guards' Lives Matter
It took Joy about twenty minutes to cross the Shackle. She’d forced herself to try to enjoy the hike over, let the stiff breeze clear out some of her stress, and she hadn’t had to wait for the drawbridge at all. The west side of the docks continued on in much the same manner as the east, and Joy prepared to resume her search, but something felt wrong. She had that same anxious sense of being watched, and she glanced back at the Shackle, worried for a second that Stalker Boy really had followed her across the bridge, but of course that was ridiculous.
She’d checked numerous times on the way over. Stalker-boy wasn’t magic, able to materialize out of thin air, like he was the Red Specter or something. No, something else was bugging her. What was it? It was the bridge—had Madame Zenovia mentioned crossing the Shackle on her spirit walk? Joy didn’t think so, but did that mean the medium hadn’t made the crossing, or just hadn’t mentioned it her story? That’d be a weird detail to leave out, but Madame Zenovia had been a weird person, so maybe that’s what happened.
Or else Joy, in her eagerness to put the Ala-Muki river between her and Stalker Boy, had rushed right past the Joanne Spaulding and was now looking in the completely wrong area. Joy stared back at the long steel span of the Shackle, thinking of how far she’d have to walk to double-check all this, and saw the massive leaves of the drawbridge section begin to rise, reaching up to the sky. Well, that was perfect, wasn’t it?
With nothing else to do, Joy started to wander off west. This would be so much easier if she could just get someone to answer a simple direct question. Maybe the dock workers on this side of the river might not be so skittish? Joy looked around for potential interview subjects and saw a reassuring sight: a patrol of four Dodona City Guardsmen, decked out in their vests of hardened black leather over their navy-blue uniforms, peaked steel-and-brass skullcaps, small steel bucklers rimmed with polished brass on their arms, and solid truncheons at their sides. Here were some people who wouldn’t be intimidated by ghost stories or Benny the Shark or whoever.
Joy walked up to them, opening with her warmest smile. “Excuse me, officers, but do you have a minute? My name is Joy Song Fan, freelance reporter. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions about an incident—some sort of fight or small riot—that occurred on the docks three nights ago, somewhere in the vicinity of a ship called the Joa
nne Spaulding.”
The four guards turned to face her, tense and wary. “What was that?” said one of them.
Joy was taken aback at their tone, but she repeated the question and got a row of hard, unfriendly glares in return. What the Abyss was going on here?
“What do you know about that?” said one of the guards.
“Um, very little beyond what I just told you,” said Joy. “That’s why I was asking. Is there anything you can—”
One of the guards started to say something, but another of them, an older man with an air of authority about him, cut him off with a gesture. “I’m afraid it’s against department policy to comment on ongoing investigations,” said the older man.
“There’s an investigation?” Joy asked. “Well, what can you—”
“No comment, which is what I just said,” The senior guardsman spoke in careful, clipped tones. “You do understand Kallish, yes?”
“Of course I do,” said Joy, biting back the rejoinder: and that should be obvious, since I’m clearly speaking it right now. Instead she tried to clarify. “But I wasn’t asking for specific details of the investigation. I just—”
“Miss, this is a dangerous area,” said the leader. “If you don’t have any business here, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
“What?” Joy felt like she’d stepped off the bridge into some crazy warped mirror-world. “I do have business here; I’m a reporter. And what’s so dangerous here that I have to leave?”
“There’s a lot of unsavory types hanging around these docks. And this area is in a heightened state of alert, due to reasons I am not at liberty to divulge,” said the leader. “A delicate young flower like yourself shouldn’t be wandering out here by yourself.”
“I can handle myself,” said Joy, reminding herself to keep smiling, no matter what. If she lost her cool, it’d all be her fault.
“Miss, I’m afraid we must insist that you allow us to escort you to a safe location, for your own good,” said the leader as all four of them formed a semi-circle around her, an impenetrable wall. “And you need to keep away from this section of the docks, or else—”
“Okay, wait—you can’t do this,” said Joy.
“Miss, as an officer of the law, I have the authority to—”
“You have the authority to cordon off a specific hazardous area or crime scene to everyone, but it needs to be clearly marked,” she said. “You can’t chase reporters out of a huge public space like this. Freedom of the Press means—”
“Freedom of the Press,” sneered one of guardsmen, “That’s the term you people use to justify the lies and abuse you rain on the Sleywie Anden—”
“Brannock!” said the leader.
“—while we risk our lives to keep you safe, nattering gossips of the Journal, hiding safe behind your desks, launching attacks on a faith you couldn’t begin to understand, not a bit of guts among the lot of—”
“Brannock, that’s enough!” The lead guardsman punctuated his admonition with a solid rap of his knuckles to the side of Brannock’s helmet, hard enough to rock him a bit.
The sudden violence made Joy jump, though she recognized that Brannock’s helmet prevented any damage from the blow—it had only been intended to shut him up. But his rant had given her a useful context; it seemed that she’d blundered into the middle of someone else’s argument.
“Um, I think there’s a misunderstanding here,” she said. “I’m not with the Journal. I’m freelancing for the Dodona Gazette, and I’m not interested in attacking anyone. I’m just trying to do a puff piece on Red Specter sightings. And maybe get an interview.”
“You want an interview with us?” said the leader.
“No, with the Red Specter,” she said.
All of the guardsmen stared back at her in confusion, except for the youngest-looking one, who burst out laughing.
“The Gazette! You said you work for the Gazette, right?”
“I’m freelancing for them, yes,” Joy said.
“MacInroy, what’s this about the Gazette?” said the leader.
“The Gazette is a joke paper,” said MacInroy. "My Mom follows it regular. It's hilarious. I've shown it to you a couple times, Chief, remember? They had that story of the two-headed goat whose turds could tell the future. And the one about the hidden lycanthropy outbreak sweeping Dodona--they even had a quiz for that one: Ten Signs You Might Be a Secret Werewolf. It scored you at seventy percent werewolf, Chief—remember that? Had us worried we might need to put you in lockup next full moon."
The chief rolled his eyes while the other guards snickered. "Yeah, that'll be the day. The same day as the lizardmen stage their invasion from the sewers. What did they call that one?"
"Kobolds Ate My Baby?" said Joy. That had been the leading front-page story in the same issue where her weeping saint story had run. The kobolds had been way more popular.
"Yeah, that. So, MacInroy, all those ridiculous articles you shove under my nose are all from the same paper? Can’t believe they actually print that crap. No offense, Miss."
"None taken," said Joy, though inside, a part of her was yelling, they print that crap because people will pay for it. Garai doesn’t give a fig if they do so ironically, as long as they buy it. On the other hand, she did find it comforting to find more of the Gazette’s subscribers who were savvy enough to spot the nonsense. It gave her hope for humanity.
“But what I don’t get is what this Red Specter business has to do with three nights ago, or the Joanne Spaulding,” said the chief.
“That’s where and when several witnesses spotted the Red Specter.”
“Spotted him? Isn’t he a character in a comic strip?”
“Apparently, the Red Specter was a folklore figure before the comic started,” said Joy. “And trust me, I’ve spoken to a lot of people today who are certain that he’s real.”
“And they said they saw him three nights ago,” said the chief. “How many witnesses?”
“I’ve got five names,” said Joy, “but I’ve only been able to get any info from three of them.”
“Were they drunk, on Spike, or just plain crazy?” MacInroy asked.
“Um…” Joy took a second to mentally review her sources. “…one of each?” All the guardsmen chuckled at that.
“Well, I can’t comment on the case, but I can tell you I was in this area at the time, and there were no comic-strip folklore ghosts running around,” said the chief, and….
…Wait. The guardsmen kept calling him “Chief?”
“Um, sorry,” said Joy. “But is ‘Chief’ a nickname, or are you actually Chief Gallach, the head of the City Guard?”
“You’ve got me,” said Chief Gallach. “That a surprise?”
“Yes, I’m surprised you’re out on foot patrol, instead of coordinating everything from behind a desk.”
“Oh, I do that,” said Chief Gallach, “But spend too much time behind a desk, and you lose touch with the day-to-day realities of the streets. So, every now and then, I hit the beat with all my boys. Keeps me grounded.”
“That does make sense,” said Joy, though something about it nagged at her. Apparently he’d been doing that same work three nights ago, and very late? He’d just said so. That seemed like a bit much for keeping “grounded.” Well, it wasn’t her concern. She had to stay focused on ghost-hunting.
Speaking of which…
“Well, since we’ve established that I’m not here to slander you or interfere with your investigation, am I free to go?” Joy said. “I really could use the pier number of the Joanne Spaulding—see if I can find any better quality Red Specter sightings.”
“You really need to do that?” said MacInroy. “I thought you just made everything up.”
“We do real interviews,” said Joy. “People like to see their names in the paper. My boss is big on that.”
“Wellll… here’s the thing,” said MacInroy. “We’re not saying this area is dangerous just to give you a hard time.
You know who owns the Joanne Spaulding? It’s Ben Li Fang, otherwise known as—”
“Benny the Shark,” said Joy. “Yes, I’ve heard the name. Is that a problem, though? That he owns the ship?”
“To be sure. He’s Triad, Miss, through and through,” said MacInroy. “And he’s the bane of this city. Smuggling, gambling, prostitution, drugs—it all goes back to him. Keeping it all under control is like bailing out the sea, though that won’t stop us from trying.”
“You know he’s doing all this, but you can’t arrest him?”
“It’s not what we know,” said Chief Gallach. “It’s what we can prove in a court of law. Benny’s got sharp lawyers and connections. You’ll be surprised, Miss, at how eager these posh high-society types are to pal around with a gangster—so long as he has money. They throw out all notion of decency, while spitting on honest flatfoots like my boys here. And Benny knows it. He’s shrewd, trying to use the papers to turn the public against us.”
“He’s using the papers?” Joy said, astonished. “Do you mean the big ones, like the Journal and the Chronicle?”
“That’s how it is,” said MacInroy. “For the past few weeks, not a day goes by that some bit of lies doesn’t get printed about us: we’re corrupt, we’re thugs, we’re foreign cultist loons. Benny’s the one profiting off this city’s misery and suffering, but to hear the Journal tell it, we’re the bad guys.”
“Wow,” said Joy. She’d really lost track of current events. She needed to get over her resentment and start reading the papers again, at least once a week, if she didn’t want to keep getting blindsided like this. “Wait, you said they called you foreign cultists?”
“It’s discrimination,” growled Brannock, looming over her. “You reporters call yourselves ‘objective,’ but you’re full of your own predjudice—the fastest to slander that which you don’t understand. You—”
The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1) Page 17