by William Ray
Stepping into the arc of the obelisk, Gus looked over the various glyphs graven across the smooth white stone. There was nothing familiar there, although he did not know Elven, so that was not very surprising. If the glyphs were symbolic, their meaning was too abstract for him to decipher by shape alone. He kicked it a few times but succeeded only in hurting his foot; it did not seem hollow, nor did it budge at his efforts.
After a few more minutes examining the alleyway, he gave up on it. Not sure where to go next, he returned to Queen’s and strolled south along the park. The city did seem strangely quiet for what was traditionally a working day back home, but he supposed even in Gemmen, many businesses unofficially idled the day after Temple.
As he neared the intersection with 10th, he could smell baking bread, and a sudden hunger for it made his stomach clench. A half-block down, a small café on 10th was selling baguettes with cream for three bits, a price just shy of outrageous, but he gave in to hunger’s demand and purchased one. He claimed a seat outside and ate slowly while reading through the café’s newspaper.
According to the paper, it was the Queen Mother’s birthday again. Some sort of naval action between pirates and a flotilla of mercantile concerns had resolved. There was also something about another railway expansion planned in Rakhasin. It was a decade late for him to care about that, but it did remind him that the fifth member of the Exposition’s council, Mister Beck, was supposedly traveling there, although he wasn’t mentioned in the article.
As he assuaged the rumbling from his belly, Gus’s thoughts began returning to the false Alice Phand who had gotten him tangled in all this. Who was Dorna Michts? It was probably the next question he needed to answer, but he wasn’t sure where to find her. He considered a visit to the KMC’s gold mine, but Dorna’s father was only there a single day twenty years ago, and Gus had no reason to think she had ever been there.
Dorna Michts was taken in by an unknown wealthy uncle. It was also around twenty years ago that Cornelius Zephyr had died and Miss Aliyah Gale suddenly appeared. In Gus’s experience, the wealthiest families tended to have well known genealogies, and it would have been a strange year indeed when two young girls were both so unexpectedly elevated.
With the various false fronts in the kidnapping, it seemed unlikely Dorna Michts was the end of it, regardless. From what Gus could recall, she was dressed no differently than her fellow Wardens, and with other secret societies he had encountered, the leaders were always bedecked in symbols of office, a particularly important step in a group that usually hid their faces.
If Dorna Michts wasn’t their leader, then maybe it was her ‘uncle’, but given Khanom’s surprising affluence, Gus felt he wasn’t anywhere near to narrowing down the uncle’s identity. It might not even really be a man; if Miss Aliyah Gale had sent her new valet in her personal coach to collect Dorna Michts, he could easily have been mistaken for a wealthy uncle.
Gus wasn’t sure how any of that would lead Dorna Michts to the Wardens or why anyone would be a Warden with no Elves. He could almost chalk that up as just a club with poor taste, but the layers of misdirection in Phand’s kidnapping pointed to someone with experience evading the law or access to that experience, neither of which came easily to the sort usually indulged in secret societies.
The real Wardens went out of business nearly forty years ago, but if the Warden robes were merely misdirection from a criminal enterprise, then wearing the robes in Khanom made no sense. At a loss, he returned to Rondel’s, hoping perhaps a bath and another drink might help him sort his thoughts.
The desk clerk greeted him cheerfully as he entered, which was off-putting until he realized it was not the same gentleman who had arranged the slotted key earlier. Pausing there a moment, Gus asked, “Do you know the Michts family?”
The clerk shook his head and replied, “No, sir. They expected as guests here? If you like, I could pass along your card.”
Gus sighed and shook his head, but rather than explain himself to the clerk, he just said, “If they do, just tell them Gus Baston is looking for them.”
“Oh! Mister Baston? A gentleman just dropped off a note for you.”
Gus hoped it would be from Eli Allen or even another hint dug up by Dolly Dench, but as the clerk passed him the note, the feminine script of Gus’s name on the outside of the folded sheet brought another pair of suspicious characters immediately to mind—the letters D and M. Inside, the note read:
There is an important meeting tonight at sunset in the warehouse on Derrick & Southland.
It was unsigned and the paper of decent stock but unadorned. Did she expect him to imagine some anonymous benefactor? There seemed very little chance this was not some sort of trap, but it was the best chance he had to learn more about these Wardens and what they had done with Phand.
On a whim, he sniffed at it, but it only smelt of paper and ink, and he was not sure how he could have told anything about who wrote it by scent even had he detected more. The clerk chuckled at that, so Gus gave the man a stern frown and demanded, “Where is Southland and Derrick?”
A street map was quickly fetched from below the clerk desk, and it showed Southland was within the lower city, on the edge of town closer to the mountains. Cab fare would be a nuisance, and Gus felt a little uncomfortable going in unarmed since the police had stolen his pistol after the last strange meeting he dropped in on.
“Any idea where I could buy a pistol around here?”
The clerk stammered over that one a bit, saying something about restrictions on weapons within the city, so Gus bid his farewell.
The promise of a revealing trap left Gus feeling re-energized about his investigation, but with several hours before sunset, he decided to forgo his bath and instead go confirm Mister Beck really was travelling abroad. Most of the city seemed to slumber the day after Temple, but Gus felt confident a rail company would still have someone in the office.
A bit of luck got him an enclosed cab shortly after stepping outside the hotel, and with traffic so thin, Gus decided to hire him for the day. The driver’s name was Errol. He was youngish, unmarried, and their brief exchange of pleasantries upon his hiring revealed a disappointing disinterest in music.
Errol did, however, know where the rail offices were, although that hardly seemed impressive since Gus had already spotted those on his way into town. The Eastern Rail Company was back at the northern edge of the plateau, adjacent to the main hub.
Staring at passengers loitering around the neighboring platform, Gus contemplated buying a ticket for Doctor Phand. He needed to get the man home to be sure of collecting his reward, but if Gus were rolled again, by the police or otherwise, they’d be less likely to steal a ticket to Gemmen than they would the cash to pay for it. In a tight spot though, still having the thirty peis for a third-class ticket in hand would more useful than an extra ticket.
Deciding to hold on to his money for now, Gus proceeded into the rail office. A brief meeting with Beck’s secretary and a glance at the shuttered office over the man’s shoulder, supported the story of wintering in Rakhasin. A bit of flimflam got Gus the home address, and Errol drove him all the way across town and into the hills to double check that alibi at Beck’s residence.
The railway man’s house would not have looked out of place in Old Park but for the series of telegraph poles erected across the yard connecting a wire to one corner of the house. Unlike Saucier’s home, Beck’s appeared to be thoroughly out of service with all the windows shuttered. Dead leaves clustered in some of the eaves, which meant the shutters were not only closed but also had not been opened for several months.
As Errol waited on the street, Gus took the time to circle Beck’s estate, but there was no sign of any human presence, nor that there had been any time recently. It looked as if Beck really was wintering in Ganbai.
Gus had passed through the Rakhasin colonial capital of Ganbai a few times while in the army, but at the time, it had just been a port
and a decent whore house. He wondered if Beck’s presence there meant that Rakhasin had finally been civilized.
If Beck was really on the other side of the world, then he probably wasn’t the man behind the Wardens. Ulm had been the best lead at finding them, and Gus decided his next move would be to go shake him down for more information. First though, he needed to survive whatever trap Dorna Michts was luring him into.
~
“Jeune Divorce Case”
The hearing on this much talked-of and long-expected case commenced yesterday in Gemmen, in the Court of Divorce before Lord Palvasher and a specially convened jury. The matter has been so frequently mentioned that it is almost unnecessary to say that the question which now came on for trial was not the guilt or innocence of Lady Jeune in respect of the charges of adultery, but of her sanity and capacity to plead an answer to the charges.
As detailed yesterday, Lord Jeune’s team of petitioners had presented their arguments across the petitioner of Lord Hartwell, acting as guardian for the accused, his daughter. At yesterday’s hearing, evidence and argument was presented by Lord Hartwell’s petitioners that the Lady Jeune’s thoroughly well-proven infidelity was symptomatic of a persistent unsoundness of mind of unknown causation from which she is said to suffer still. If held so by the jury, then Lord Jeune shall be obliged to her continued maintenance as his wife.
– Khanom Daily Converser, 16 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 28 -
Errol assured Gus that no place atop the plateau would sell him a pistol any day of the week, so they passed through the ring of soot into the town below. It seemed honest advice, but the closest he came to success was finding a shop with a new Simpson revolver on display in the window, and all Gus could do was gaze upon it longingly—the day after Temple, the shop was as closed as everything else.
With the sun getting lower and no other likely options for armament, Gus finally had Errol drive him down to Southland. Gus guessed he had a bit over an hour before the sun set, giving him time to look the place over before stepping into whatever trap these Wardens were arranging.
There were other warehouses in the area, but only one stood at Southland and Derrick; across from that were what appeared to be a doctor’s office and some sort of boarded-up shop. It seemed the old white roads were spread further apart down below; Southland was Elven, and starkly contrasted by Derrick’s black surface. Where they intersected, the human-laid tar lapped sloppily over the edges of the ancient Elven tiles.
When they arrived at their destination, Gus quickly discovered that Errol had absolutely no knack for discreet observation—the man parked directly across from the entrance, then turned in his perch to stare directly at it. Missing Louis terribly, Gus quickly debarked and told Errol to drive around the block and wait for him on the corner two blocks down Southland.
The warehouse was a large square building with narrow windows along the roofline that would provide light inside but no view. The sign on the doors read Gotha Aelfua in a fancy script, which meant nothing to Gus.
Circling the building, he found all the doors chained shut and heavily locked, but for one in the front. There was no indication of what was stored there, but that was hardly unusual since an independent storage company would rent space to whoever needed it.
As he looked around, he kept an eye out for anything he might use as a weapon. In the alley between Southland and Marjorie, he came across a discarded tangle of plumbing. It was wet and covered in some sort of grease, but he managed to wipe that off with a bit of newspaper he found nearby. The pipes were rusty, but a decent length of the inch-thick cast iron would make a serviceable club.
Gripping at a section of it, he managed to tear off a one-foot piece of it, although the twist to free that part from the rest left it jaggedly torn at one end. He tucked it into his jacket, jagged point up to avoid tearing his pocket and then returned to the front door of the warehouse. It swung quietly open, and he stepped inside.
Crates were stacked on pallets atop a well-pounded earthen floor but clustered in shipping groups rather than neat rows, which left the interior something of a maze. The boxes smelled of fresh-cut pine, having been recently manufactured somewhere nearby and filled with local goods soon to be loaded into cars at the nearest rail hub come tomorrow morning.
The light from the windows was dim, but he saw no signs of movement nor heard any reaction to his entry. If his assumption of ambush was right, it seemed they weren’t here yet. Going back outside, he tried to find a subtle vantage from which to watch the one unlocked door.
Without a paper, he had a hard time looking inconspicuous, but in the full hour ahead of the ‘important meeting’, no one came in or out of the warehouse, and he began to wish he’d brought a paper just to distract himself. Down the block, he could see Errol had one and was reading it as he sat idle on his perch.
A few people passed further down the street, none seeming to notice him as they turned off down other lanes or entered other buildings. When the lamplighter began making his rounds, Gus did one last circuit of the warehouse. Everything was still locked, with no sign the other doors had been disturbed.
Shortly after the sun settled on the horizon, a light sprung on inside, and Gus cursed at having missed his glimpse of whoever must have stepped inside while he checked the other doors. Placing one hand on the broken pipe in his pocket to reassure himself it was there, Gus entered the warehouse once more.
The lights were in the back, so he crept quietly that way through the maze of pallets until he could see the lanterns illuminating a space at the end of a corridor of boxes. They spotted him almost immediately, and Gus began walking slowly forward. As this was to be an ambush, he expected someone to close in behind him, but strangely that never happened.
Altogether, there were six Wardens gathered in a semicircle in that light, their green hoods drawn up to render them a menacing sameness, punctuated only by angry eyes peering out at him through triangular holes cut into the veils that covered their faces. It was a decent number for an ambush, but it would have made far more sense for one of them to close off his escape route, and he wondered briefly at the degree of that incongruity with the planning of Phand’s kidnapping.
At the center of the group, one of the Wardens reached forward to remove the hood of another Warden standing at the front of the group. Gus recognized Emily immediately; she looked disheveled, and the Wardens had tied a gag beneath the hood. She kept her hands behind her, and he realized they must have tied them.
“Emily!” he exclaimed, and her bright green eyes perked up with an intense fury. Clearly, she did not appreciate her involvement in this caper, and Gus wondered how they had gotten her all the way to Khanom. She tried to say something, but her words were lost behind the gag.
The Warden that had unmasked Emily gripped her shoulder, and when she spoke up, Gus immediately recognized the voice of the false Alice Phand. “We will no longer accept your interference, Mister Baston! You’ve made an enemy of the Wardens!”
Glancing at the group, Gus noticed that even though Dorna was talking and holding Emily hostage, the other Wardens still seemed tense. Someone who felt in control of the situation, someone trying to project menace to keep things calm, would stand tall and try to seem authoritative. Instead, even in their robes he could tell they leaned slightly forward, and their eyes were fixed on him. Judging by those stiff postures, the four other Wardens still expected to spring on him and were just awaiting the signal.
From the attacker’s perspective, Gus knew that a fearful-looking man seemed like an easier target than an angry one, so he scowled and stepped forward, not wanting to look cowed by their numbers. If they all piled on at once, the broken piece of pipe in his pocket wouldn’t amount to much, but few men would want to be first into a fight, knowing they’d be sure to be hit before their numbers overwhelmed him. So long as he didn’t look too vulnerable, they’d wait for their signal, whatever that was.
“I was out of your way! You came to me! You involved me in this mess, then you killed my friend, and now—now you’re kidnapping my receptionist?” Gus gave it all the incredulous indignation he could muster, hoping that bluster might yet carry the day. If they had gone to the trouble of kidnapping Emily, then they must not want him dead.
The Wardens remained tense, but Dorna didn’t yet give them whatever order they were waiting on. “You mean the cabbie?” she replied, and he could hear a fatigue behind her words. “You … you killed my friend too, you know. The one you shot. He was the one who … who took care of the cabbie back in Gemmen. You’ve already had your revenge.”
In the army, Gus had fired on a few men but, as far as he knew, had never actually hit one, not a living one anyway. He’d been in some tight scrapes since but never had a death laid at his feet. The news rocked him a bit, and he struggled to maintain his composure. “What about Phand?”
“No, he must stay with us. That’s just money to you though, right? We’ll give you your girl back, and you’ll go away.”
She seemed to be looking for an excuse to let him go, and while he had no intention of abandoning the case, he nodded slowly in agreement. Seeming satisfied with that, Dorna pushed Emily forward a step.
The other Wardens watched quietly, but their tense readiness remained even as Emily crossed the few steps between them. They were still planning to jump him, still waiting on the signal.
Emily repeated something into her gag as she walked slowly forward, the intense outrage in her eyes seeming increasingly out of place as she moved away from her captors. Another step, and she repeated herself again. Gus wondered for a moment if it was supposed to be some sort of warning; she seemed pretty upset about it.
Then he realized the fearful expression of an imperiled victim was entirely absent from her face. She stalked forward with a stiff intensity that screamed out warning to him more clearly than whatever it was that she kept urgently reciting into her gag. When her unbound hands swung out from behind her back, Gus was in motion even before she raised the knife that was clutched in her fist.