The woman took another look at my hair and Vigilance pin, her lips silently repeating my name.
“Aw, fuck, it’s the Firebitch,” someone behind her muttered.
Hisses of anger and muttered curses rose from the press, but nobody was stupid enough to attack me, not while I was holding a handful of flame in a rickety old firetrap like this one.
“Please don’t burn anything down,” Connas hissed. Her eyes met mine. “Not while we’re in it, at least.”
“Hanks’ room?” I pressed. My palm was getting uncomfortably hot.
It wasn’t much, the room they led us to, but it had a flimsy door of its own; locked, although Sergeant Connas’ shoulder made short work of it. I let the balefire slip away, feeling a frisson of relief when it was safely out. I blew on the reddened palm to cool it.
“So, you’re just as careless as people say,” Sergeant Connas muttered, jamming the door back into its broken frame as well as she could to keep the gawkers away.
“I was being very careful,” I objected. “Then and now.”
She muttered something under her breath and turned to look around. Rickety rope bed, pile of dirty clothes, a small table and a single chair. Not so different from my flat, several blocks away in a building a mere cut above this one. She knelt, looking under the bed, and pulled out a narrow steamer trunk secured with a small padlock. I nudged the pile of clothes with the toe of my boot, separating the pieces.
“He spends time with animals,” I said, noting the short russet hair on Hanks’ well-worn trousers and carefully patched shirts. I didn’t see any sign of a pet in the room. I knelt and reluctantly sniffed the trousers, then made a face and sneezed. “Horses.”
“Can bale open locks?” Connas asked, tugging on the padlock.
“No. It’s not a finesse tool.” I sneezed again and backed away from the clothes, wiping my nose on my cuff.
“Me, either.” She pulled out a short knife and plunged it into the leather between the wooden slats, sawing back and forth. In a minute she’d cut and pried the case apart enough for us to take a look inside. “Huh. Take a look.”
A set of iron manacles, a small leather pouch with more money than a man living in a place like this ought to have, a small wooden box filled with a scintillating, crystalline substance.
“Careful!” I dropped to my knees next to her, wide-eyed. “That’s nix.”
“Oh, shit.” She gave it another look, then gingerly replaced the lid on the box and handed it to me. “I saw the memo last month, but I never expected to actually find any.”
“Me, either. But that’s exactly how it was described.” I grabbed one of Hanks’ shirts and tore off a strip, wrapping it around the box and knotting it to make sure the lid didn’t fall off in my pocket. Then I grinned at her, my spirits rising. “I owe you a beer, Sergeant. I’ve been trying to root out the slavers working out here, and this looks like a solid lead.”
“Sure might explain why someone killed him.” She glanced toward the door, lowering her voice. “And why that woman said ‘good riddance.’”
We tackled the rest of the room with more enthusiasm, but there was little left to find other than a well-thumbed pocket atlas showing the streets and neighborhoods of Cislunar. Hanks had marked a few spots, so I threw that into the torn-up trunk. When we were sure we’d seen everything of interest, Connas picked up the trunk and we made our way back out of the building, followed by the resentful stares and mutters of its occupants.
Outside, a newcomer had arrived and was crouched next to the body, inspecting it closely.
“Thanks for coming out so late, Axton,” Connas said briskly as we joined him. She handed the case to one of the constables. “You mind writing up another report?”
“Not at all,” he said, absently. I shot the sergeant a puzzled look. I’d never seen this cully in the medical examiner’s office before, and he didn’t look like any kind of professional. He was a skinny little runt with a sickly pallor, his hair jail-short, nothing more than a dark fuzz over his skull. The hem of his ragged black coat brushed the cobbles and thin black leather gloves sheathed his hands.
“Who is this?” I asked. He flinched, shoulders hunching, but didn’t look up.
“Axton,” she said, a touch defensively. “He lives around here. Locals told me about him; he’s good with bodies.”
“Are you a doctor, Axton?” I asked, suspiciously. He tightened down deeper into his hunker. I looked back at the sergeant, raising an eyebrow.
“Look, Captain,” she said. “I’ve used him twice before, and nobody’s complained. His medical reports use the same words as the ME’s, and he doesn’t mind coming out nights.”
“I’ll bet….” I watched dubiously as the small man thrust a gloved hand into the wound and probed. Then he pulled his hand out with a disgusting sucking sound, stripped off his sticky glove, and repeated the gesture with his bare fingers. I took another step backward and wondered if I should light up a cigar to ward off the stench. My stomach gave a warning twist, so I abandoned the idea.
“He hasn’t been dead for long,” Axton reported, his voice calm and dispassionate. “His internal temperature’s still high.” He pressed down on the corpse’s chest with one hand while his other hand moved around inside. “I don’t believe any organs are missing, although a number have been ruptured. May I have a light?”
I grudgingly moved my balelight closer for him, trying not to watch too closely. The pale, sickly glow turned the blood black and erased the sharp angles of Axton’s face, giving him a strangely youthful look.
“It looks like a relatively clean cut, probably from a knife, given the angle and neatness. The blade went through his shirt and into his abdomen and then tore upward through the diaphragm. The attacker’s unusually strong. No defensive wounds on the victim’s hands or arms. No coup de grace; he was left to bleed out.” Axton wiped his gory hand on his coat as he inspected the man’s clothing with his clean, gloved hand, then glanced at the intestines around him. “This internal spillage looks natural.”
The sergeant was right, I admitted. He did sound a little like the medical examiner, although I’d never seen our ME shove his hands into a corpse.
“Could a transient have killed him?” I asked. I didn’t think so, but the nix and the Line breach both tied this murder to a sentinel, so….
Axton cast me a furtive look, then stood, his gaze fixed on the body instead of on me. The front of his coat glistened with blood.
“I wouldn’t think so.” He tugged his glove back on. “I’d expect more damage from a transient.”
Yeah, that sounded right. Transients came with an abundance of fangs, claws, pincers and horns, and they liked to use them. Still, that breach … I frowned.
“He worked as a coachman,” Sergeant Connas reported, turning back from a short consultation with her constables. “Bragged about driving clients to the Gilded Lily. No known relatives, so unless you’ve got any suggestions, Captain, we’ll haul him to the morgue and see if anyone claims him.”
“That’s fine.” I stepped back as the constables lifted the corpse. Axton joined me, his hands buried in his coat pockets. I caught a whiff of funk hanging around him and wondered if he ever washed his coat or if the fluids of a hundred corpses were infused into its dark fabric. The latter, I expected, from the smell of it. I edged away and my balelight reflected off a set of pale chalk marks half-obscured by the blood that had pooled beneath the body.
“Wait, Sergeant.” I stepped forward, crouched, and studied the marks. “There’s a … oh. Never mind.”
“A hopscotch board,” Sergeant Connas said, standing next to me. I nodded, shrugging, and stood. She remained motionless, frowning down at the marks.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing in particular.” She dragged her gaze away. “Just seems to me I’ve been seeing a lot of them around lately.”
“Were they all under dead bodies?” I joked.
“Well, I saw a dead bird in one a couple of days ago. Neck broken, wings broken, laid out flat, you know, more than just dropped.”
“None of this victim’s bones were broken,” Axton said, quietly. We both shot him surprised glances. “And the position of his body didn’t look staged, to me.”
“No, of course not.” She turned. “I’ll have the trunk and my report delivered to the Bright Street station, Sentinel. I assume you’re planning to follow this one up?”
“Yeah, sounds like it’s going to be one of mine. Do you care?”
“Nope. Less work for me.”
“Thanks.” We shook hands again and I made a mental note to buy her that beer sometime soon. I liked the sergeant’s style, and there weren’t many Watch officers I could say that about. Then I turned to Axton and put a note of warning into my voice. “See you around, pal.”
“Captain Lorencz.” He stood awkwardly as I whistled up a balesteed and left.
Nix, a breach in the Line, manacles, the Gilded Lily, and that odd little cove, Axton. I grinned and fished out a cigar. Sounded like I had some research to do, and research meant — the Hall of Records. I becked a small flame, lit the smoke, and ordered my spectral steed uptown with a cheerful heart.
It was late, but the hall’s door was unlocked. I led the steed dissipate, pushed inside the dark lobby, and called a balelight.
“Hello?” Nobody answered. I slipped past the desk and through the door to the stacks. Sure enough, Elliot Chime was back there sitting cross-legged on a table, chewing the end of a pen as he read in a puddle of lamplight. Ink covered his fingers and stained his shirtcuffs and wool trousers. His spectacles were propped on the end of his nose, ready to fall off at any moment, and he’d carelessly pushed his shoulder-length brown hair behind one ear.
He was absolutely adorable.
“Good evening, Elliot.” I put on my most charming grin. He started and looked up, his glasses slipping off his nose.
“What?” He grabbed his spectacles and pushed them back on, leaving a streak of black on the side of his nose. It wasn’t the first. “Oh. Hello. I didn’t — what time is it?”
“Dinnertime. Everybody else is gone.”
“That would explain why my stomach’s been growling.” He carefully wiped his hands on his trousers before closing the book and sliding off the table. “I, um … I’m sorry. I must have gotten sidetracked. Did you send a note? Was I supposed to have pulled something for you?”
“You forgot our dinner date?”
He blinked a moment, taken aback, and then huffed and gave me a mock glare.
“We do not have a dinner date. And just in case you forgot — there’s no smoking permitted in the stacks.”
“Right, right.” I pinched out the cigar. “Are you sure? Maybe it just slipped your mind while you were being so intellectual.” I waved at the books on the table. “I mean, a brain can only hold so much information….”
“No, I’m reasonably certain I would have insisted on dinner at a place where they don’t let you in looking like an Ankham killkiddie.” He gestured disparagingly at my ensemble. “So, how can I help you this evening, Captain?”
“Maybe I’m just here to see you.”
“You’re never just here to see me.”
“Not true.” I tucked the cigar into my pocket. “Sometimes I make up questions just so I have an excuse to drop by.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Charming. Is that what you’re doing tonight?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I’ve got a handful of requests. Transient-related crimes, slaver rings, the Gilded Lily, and any records you’ve got on a cove named Axton; don’t know if that’s a first name or surname.”
“If you’re looking for any kind of taxonomy or theory of transient-related crimes, you’d do better in the Vigilance’s library,” he said at once. “If you want news reports about murders ascribed to transients, I might be able to help. We keep paper archives, but you’ll want to narrow down your timeframe and figure out which publications you want to look at.”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I only read the Morning Chronicle and the People’s Shout.”
“Hmmmm. All this time and I didn’t know that about you. So, you’re a progressive?”
“Do I look like a conservative?”
“Well, you work for the Cislunar Watch….”
“Believe me, it wasn’t my choice.”
“Then why do you do it?”
I made a face. “How about I tell you over dinner sometime?”
He chuckled as he picked up the lamp, walking into the stacks. I tagged along behind, feeling cheerful. As long as he wasn’t shutting me down, I still had a chance of winning him over.
“As far as the Gilded Lily goes,” he said as he walked, “We have records on Lily Liselle, if that would be of any use.”
“Sure. Maybe she’ll go out to dinner with me.”
“On a Watch captain’s salary? I think her tastes are more expensive than that.”
“Are yours?”
“I’m more impressed by character than money.” He stopped in front of a box-heavy set of shelves and gestured. “Alphabetical. Please don’t get them out of order. No balefire, and no smoking.”
“Thanks.” I eyed the shelves. “You got records on me up there?”
“Of course.”
“What do they say about my character?”
“A folder full of reprimands, writs, admonishments, and arson-related trial transcripts? That you’re a dubious character, at best.”
Damn. But still, he’d taken the time to read my records … that meant he was interested, at least.
“I’ll go see if I have anything on the Gilded Lily itself,” he continued. “And I’ll pull out anything I can find on slavery in Cislunar.”
“Thank you.” I becked a bit of balelight across the Line. Its unforgiving pearl-grey glow surrounded us, highlighting the scuffs on the stone floor, the battered wooden shelves, and the ink stains on Elliot’s face and clothing.
By the time he returned with some construction blueprints and a box of pamphlets, I’d pulled Axton’s and Liselle’s files and was sitting on the floor, reading. Elliot handed me the map, promised to look in on me later, and left to finish whatever chores he hadn’t gotten done while his nose had been buried in a book. Without any better prospects for the evening, I buckled down to my job.
Axton’s file was thin, and contained only the one name, which was unusual. An old form indicating his acceptance as a charity student to the Cislunar University — chiurgeon, which made sense. A note saying that his trial transcripts had been redacted and were being held at the Ministry of Justice. I narrowed my eyes. Two forms from Hellsgate prison — admission, dated about ten years ago, and release, dated about three months ago. Nothing to suggest that he’d ever paid taxes or held gainful employment.
I shook my head and set the file aside. Redacted trial transcripts, huh? Now his name was ringing a bell, like maybe I’d read something or heard something about his case. Some kind of scandal, maybe? Ten years ago I would have been finishing up my studies at the Vigilance, though, and I doubt I’d been paying close attention to anything but my books. Might be worth a query to the Ministry, I mused, just to make sure Sergeant Connas wasn’t making a dangerous mistake.
I flipped through the box of pamphlets Elliot had left — political and religious tracts warning about the evils of domestic slavery. Not too useful, although I noticed that the printer was the same one that did Jim Hanks’ pocket atlas.
I liked Lily Liselle’s file a lot more. Her history read a lot like mine, poor girl done good, if you figure being a madam to the aristocracy is “done good.” Although I know plenty of folks would argue that there’s not that much difference between a wagemage and whore, and I’d be willing to bet Lily made more money and had more friends than I did.
According to her financial records, one of those friends was Tegeus Droit; or at least he was a minority owner in her club after bailing her out of some debt about three years back. I shoved the file away and lit a gasper, hoping Elliot wouldn’t sniff it out. Smoking helps me think; all the oxygen that can’t get into my lungs goes to my brain, instead.
Tegeus Droit, huh? I was willing to bet they didn’t talk about that arrangement in public.
The Gilded Lily had a decent if not entirely respectable reputation for providing escorts and a private gambling salon to the bourgeoisie. Records indicated she ran a clean house: no drugs, no disease, no violence. Some of her ladies had even married into society. So why would Jim Hanks, recently deceased coachman and possible slaver, have been building a clientele around her club? Was that where he’d gotten his hands on nix? I touched the box in my pocket just to make sure it was still there. Nix crystals were a form of fixed bale, which meant they were outrageously rare and incredibly valuable, the result of a highly ranked sentinel’s hard work.
I’d been incredulous when I’d first read the reports suggesting nix was being used on the streets. It’s got a few therapeutic applications — nix wipes out memories, although not with enough precision to make it particularly safe for, say, forgetting that stupid thing you said yesterday to your commanding officer. More like forgetting the last few months or a year because you’d spent them being tortured or something. So who’d take it recreationally?
Slavers, maybe. And, just maybe, Tegeus Droit. That psycho slasher had committed every crime and abomination imaginable, if you believed half the stories told about him. Which made him a funny person to be working with an apparently respectable lady like Lily Liselle. I stubbed out my cigar and checked the shelves, but there was nothing under “T” or “D” for him, so I headed out to find Elliot.
Arcady — You were busy reading so I went home for the night. Lock up when you leave, said the note pinned to the front door next to a key. Arcady, huh? I locked the door behind me, tucked the note and the key into my pocket, and grinned as I headed out into the cold night.