Volume 1: Pickpocketing

by R. A. Consell

  Kuro hadn’t considered the absence of the wolf while he was in his cell. Most wizards did not keep their familiars out all the time, so it didn’t seem unusual for Dubois to be without Garmr. Kuro supposed the friendliness that Dubois had been faking might have been undermined by the presence of a large vicious animal. Maybe Dubois left the big wolf out to watch over his subordinates, keeping an eye on the other Hounds. Regardless of Dubois’s intentions, Kuro appreciated that the wolf had been left outside for Graeae’s sake. She likely would have been traumatized were she trapped in a room with that monster.

  Dubois pushed Kuro along, out of the Hounds’ offices and through a labyrinth of polished stone hallways in shades of grey, black, and pink. The Granite Citadel had been well named. Every surface was made of the sparkling mottled stone.

  They boarded an elevator and started to descend, which was an unsettling experience. Kuro would casually hop off a five-story building onto concrete, but trapped in a steel cage and falling at speeds that kept changing made his stomach lurch. He watched the other offices through the crisscross lattice of bars that made up the elevator door to distract himself from the sensations.

  The floors below the Hounds housed the offices of the Peacekeepers. They wore blue coats similar to the green uniforms of the Hounds but shorter, with three rows of silver buttons to the Hounds’ single row of gold. They were the only branch of the Royal Guard that actually spent any time guarding anything, watching over places like the Bytown Market and standing outside important buildings. The elevator stopped long enough to collect a pair of descending Peacekeepers and their prisoner, a wizard who looked to have drunk too much bottled confidence and was raving furiously about his inevitable rise to power.

  A few floors down, they were joined by another mage, this time in an unbuttoned grey uniform coat. Her floor was full of desks occupied by an army of very tired-looking people in matching grey uniforms, furiously working through piles of paperwork—the Ledgers. Kuro had read of them in the Times but had never seen one. From the looks of them, he wasn’t sure if any of them had ever left the citadel. Their uniforms were untidy, they were universally pallid, and they clung to their coffee mugs as though they might walk off if left unattended.

  Below that were floors full of wizards in crisp red uniforms, the Mounties. They were the mounted soldiers of the Guard, all with big familiars, like moose and bears, that they could ride when needed. A pair that joined them in the elevator did not have their familiars with them. This was pretty normal and probably for the best, as the elevator did not have room to spare for an elk or a horse. The absence of Mounties’ familiars drew attention to the fact that Dubois kept Garmr around constantly, even in a cramped elevator. He must be a very paranoid person to worry about missing the scent of a criminal even in the middle of the Guard’s home base.

  At the ground floor, the elevator opened into a veritable circus of colour and noise. Witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, ogres, and more swarmed in all different directions. They shouted about appointments, fines, fees, complaints, missing objects, and objectionable neighbours. Peacekeepers shouted over the din, trying to provide direction to the maelstrom with little success. Kuro’s collection of companions in the elevator collectively braced themselves and stepped into the turmoil of the ground floor.

  Dubois kept one hand on Kuro as if he expected him to bolt for an exit the moment he saw one. Dubois wasn’t wrong. Given a moment unattended, Kuro could have vanished into that crowd. He didn’t try it, though. He barely considered it. Even Phineas had feared Dubois. The knight commander was playing nice for now, and Kuro didn’t think it a good idea to sour his mood. Besides, once the Dread Wolf had your scent, there was no place on earth you could hide for long.

  Kuro saw that he wasn’t the only one who feared Dubois’s wrath. Witches and wizards of all stripes, on catching a glimpse of the Hound, would stop talking, stand up straighter, act pleasant and polite, and move as if they had somewhere urgent to be that was very far from where they currently were.

  Even the other members of the Guard with them on the elevator evacuated with haste upon reaching the ground floor. Another pair of Mounties nearly joined them, but upon recognizing Dubois, they suddenly remembered something very important and rushed off.

  Three floors below ground, Dubois finally pushed Kuro out of the elevator into a deserted and poorly lit hallway. At the end of the hall was a small unattended counter guarding entry into a darkened space beyond. A sign hung above that read “Lost and Found.”

  The chamber past the counter was cavernous. The dim light from the hallway that leaked into the space couldn’t find walls or a ceiling. From the darkness came the musty aroma of neglect and the echoes of fluttering bats, creaking wood, and dripping water.

  Dubois peered into the dark space, trying to find someone to talk to. Seeing nobody, he rang a small bell that was sitting on the counter. The soft ping it made bounced around and returned, haunting and distorted.

  A feminine voice drifted back to them. “Coming!” It echoed around so much that the direction it had come from was impossible to discern, and it sounded like a half-dozen other people answered the same. Several minutes passed before they began to hear clear footsteps approaching at a run, though it was unclear if a small army was coming or merely echoes.

  Finally the woman appeared at the counter, breathing hard and covered in dirt. She wore heavy boots, thick coveralls, and workman’s gloves. On her head she was a hard brass helmet with a bright light shining from the front of it and a pair of goggles that were so greasy she probably couldn’t see through them. Around her neck hung several compasses, and each of her pockets was jammed with maps and notebooks. Her age and features were impossible to discern under the layer of dusty filth that coated her.

  “Sorry about that,” she said brightly. “I was just climbing through the shoe stacks trying to find a match to this.” She held up a woman’s riding boot. “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. I remember seeing it come in. What can I do for—”

  She had pulled off her goggles to clean them while she spoke. She cut off when she saw Dubois and froze. Dubois waited impatiently for her to thaw, and eventually she began to sputter. “T-T-Talen D-Dubois, I mean Mr. Dubois, I mean Sir Dubois. Mr. Commander, sir. What, what can I . . . we . . . I do for you?”

  “Hello, Ms. Wong,” Dubois replied, drawing another panicked outburst from the woman behind the counter.

  “He knows my name?” she muttered to herself. “That’s probably not good. What have I done? What did I do? I don’t remember doing anything. Did someone erase my memory? Did I erase my memory? I don’t remember drinking any potions, but then I wouldn’t, would I—”

  “Emily, please,” Dubois interrupted, but knowing her first name did not help the situation, nor did demanding that she calm down. Eventually he just gave up and explained himself over her babbling. “I would like to requisition some items from your stores, please.”

  Emily reassembled her lost composure. “What?” she said, her dirty brow furrowing around the clean patches that had been left by her goggles.

  “I am not here to arrest you,” Dubois said, sounding artificially comforting and pleasant. “I have a student in need of supplies for school. He does not have the funds available, and I imagine you have some surplus.” He nodded at the dark landscape of lost items.

  “What?” Emily repeated, shocked at the suggestion, her initial fear of Dubois vanishing in a cloud of indignation. “You can’t just take things from here.” She turned and made a sweeping gesture as her headlamp illuminated the nearest piles: several hundred brooms stacked up like a bonfire ready to be lit; umbrellas by the dozen, sorted by colour, pattern, and enchantment; and a set of shelves so long that they vanished into the distant darkness, teeming with so many hats that they looked ready to topple. “They belong to people.”

  Dubois screwed up his eyes and rubbed his forehead in frustration. “I trust that you’ll be able to pi
ck some out that won’t be missed.”

  “I. . . .” Emily straightened up and stood to attention. “Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

  She opened a hatch in her counter to let them in and produced two helmets, like her own, with bright lamps and chin straps. “Do I really need this?” Dubois asked, examining it skeptically.

  “Oh yes, almost certainly,” Emily asserted. “We’ve been having problems with book slides lately. Also, you’ll want to be armed just in case.”

  “In case of what?” asked Dubois.

  “Gremlins, mostly.” Emily examined the list of supplies they would be needing and checked several of her battered maps. She scowled disapprovingly at a couple of the items and grabbed a large boar spear that was resting against a wall near the counter. “This way!” she said brightly and headed off into the gloom.

  They marched through a labyrinth of shelves teeming with assorted items, giving the racks full of old and ornery magic staves a wide berth. They marched past a hundred yards of teacups, took a left turn at a large termite-eaten stagecoach, and continued through a tunnel that had been dug out of endless piles of lost gloves.

  Dubois was often distracted by strange objects and the sounds of distant collapses, and Kuro considered he could probably make a break for it. But looking at the impenetrable maze around him, he thought better of it. He might get free of Dubois, but he’d likely starve to death before he found his way out.

  They took a sharp left around a towering rack full of eyeglasses and stopped abruptly at the base of a black and musty mountain of multicoloured fabric. “First stop, children’s clothes.” Emily gestured proudly at the enormous pile, which stretched beyond the light of their lamps.

  “Where does this all come from?” Kuro asked in wonder.

  Emily bent over and threw her arm over Kuro’s shoulder, pulling him close so Dubois couldn’t hear them properly. “Wizards,” she whispered. “They can’t keep track of anything, and they put so much magic into their stuff that a lot of it wanders off on its own. Most of them are too lazy to go look for it, too. They just get replacements. Anything that gets found ends up here.”

  “What do you mean ‘they’? Aren’t you a witch?” Kuro asked.

  “What? Nah, I’m just a stray. Barely enough magic in me to pass through the veil. Wandered in one day and never left.” Emily planted her fists firmly on her hips and puffed out her chest proudly. “I actually work for a living. Not like those wizards, just magicking up whatever they want.” She winked.

  Kuro stole a furtive glance at Dubois, who just shrugged in agreement and changed the subject. “Which are the boy’s uniforms?” Dubois asked.

  “Over on the left side. This way!” Emily led them halfway up the hill on the left and instructed them to start digging for something that fit. “Now, you can’t take anything too new. Someone could come for it. Anything more than about two years old should be fine. Their owners would have grown out of them anyway. You can tell by the smell.”

  “What’s the difference between boy’s and girl’s uniforms?” shouted Kuro across the rolling hills of grey wool slacks and sweater vests.

  “Unless you feel like wearing a skirt, there isn’t one,” replied Emily, shaking the dust out of a promising find and taking a sniff. “People just seem to feel better if I tell them there is. Try this one on.”

  It was too large, as were the next three, and the fifth turned out to be a raccoon, which hissed at Kuro and fled into the darkness. It took some time and a fair bit of digging, but they managed to collect a good supply of well-fitting outfits that didn’t smell too badly of mildew.

  Similar adventures were had collecting more clothing. They searched through rolling dunes of misplaced shoes, rummaged in the toque hills, and held their noses as they bypassed the valley of the socks. They had to take a large detour around a landslide of pocket watches to get to the pen piles. After ten minutes of failing to find a completely blank notebook to use, Talen found a few nearly empty ones and tore the used pages out, which elicited a cry of horror from Emily.

  Kuro and Emily sorted through bags and backpacks while they waited for Dubois to fight off a small contingent of curious gremlins. A canvas satchel crumbled as Kuro tried to pick it up. “Why don’t you just get rid of some of this stuff?” he asked as he tried to dust the remains off himself.

  “What? Throw it away?” Emily was aghast.

  “Or give it to people. Sell it. Anything really.” The place was a disaster, a weird and wonderful disaster, but a disaster nonetheless. It made the piles of junk that accumulated in Detritus Lane seem like anthills.

  Emily sighed and gazed warmly over her strange domain. “There’s rules. Old rules. Magic that’s soaked right into the bedrock. Someone made this place when the citadel was new. They enchanted it to always be big enough to hold whatever was lost and found again and promised to keep whatever came in till it was claimed. I don’t think they had any idea what they were doing. Typical wizards.”

  Kuro snorted as he tried to stifle a laugh. He’d never heard anyone so brazenly mock wizards. He giggled inwardly as he returned to searching the pile of bags for something suitable. A satchel caught his eye, a fine leather book bag, old, worn, and kind of small. It was simple, just a single square pouch with a flap, but what pulled Kuro to it was a large brass buckle, brown with age, embossed with a large letter K. The satchel almost seemed made for him. He admired the bag for a moment and then looked inside. It was enormous. The light of his headlamp caught the edges of shelves and drawers. The small bag had an entire room inside. Kuro shut the satchel at the sound of footsteps approaching and clutched it to his chest.

  Dubois rounded the pile, filthy and complaining to Garmr. They looked exhausted from fending off the assault by a band of curious and hungry gremlins. “Why,” he asked as he caught his breath, “are there monsters living unchecked inside the Granite Citadel?”

  “That is a very good question,” Emily replied. She looked at Talen with wide eyes through her large goggles. “Do you think you could get someone to do something about it? I’ve been sending requests for ages.”

  “Not my department,” the Hound muttered defensively.

  “You would be absolutely shocked how often I hear that,” said Emily, defeated. “The Peacekeepers told me that citadel security is a military matter and to talk to the Mounties. The Mounties say it’s a problem for monster hunters, and I should talk to the Hounds, and the Hounds sent me to the Ledgers, who assure me that my complaint has been properly filed. Meanwhile, there’s a small legion of goblins building a fortress out of old books and arming themselves with misplaced cutlery.” She looked to the Hound with desperation in her eyes.

  “I’ll, um, . . .” Dubois stammered. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Emily pumped her fist in the air victoriously.

  Kuro was really starting to like Ms. Wong.

  Dubois scowled. “Found a bag yet?”

  Kuro nodded slightly and indicated the satchel.

  “That won’t do,” scoffed Dubois, prying the bag from Kuro’s hands. “It wouldn’t hold even one of your books. You need something much—” He cut off mid-sentence, having opened the flap. He looked inside with a mix of wonder and wariness. “Well, I see why you liked it, now. You’re lucky you didn’t fall in, or get your arm bit off by something nasty. These things are often trapped, or haunted, or both. Nope, sorry. Here, use this.” Dubois tossed Kuro a dusty red canvas backpack. It was too large for him and hung down to his thighs. “You’ll grow into it,” Dubois said.

  “If that’s everything,” Emily interrupted loudly, “I’d like to get out of here before the chimera finds us.”

  “What’s a chimera?” Kuro asked fearfully, scanning the blackness around them for signs of the beast.

  “Nasty thing,” replied Emily, gripping her spear tightly. “Three heads, big claws, breathes fire, bad temper — lucky it’s so damp in here or the whole place would have burned do
wn by now.” She checked two maps and three compasses and started to lead them out of the cavern.

  The trip back to the counter took nearly an hour. By the time they emerged, sweaty and filthy, the citadel had grown quiet. It was well past quitting time, which Ms. Wong was happy to remind Dubois.

  Dubois promised to send someone to look into the monster problem as an attempt at an apology, then he dragged Kuro and all his new belongings back through the now empty and silent halls of the citadel.

  Kuro was placed back in his makeshift cell along with a late dinner. His possessions, Dubois said, were to be laundered in preparation for the next day. “You’ve a ferry to catch, so get a good night’s sleep. I need to go home and get scowled at by my wife for being late again.”

  Kuro sat and ate, being pointedly ignored by Graeae, who was upset for having been abandoned. He had trouble sleeping that night, but not for the normal reasons.

  His regular nightmares were replaced by the imagined terrors that awaited him at school. Having never been to school, his mind was free to fabricate horrific scenarios of punishment at the hands of the teachers and torture by the other students.

  Kuro found that he preferred his normal nightmares. When they woke him, he knew that they were in the past. These new horrors were things that awaited him when morning came, and so he resisted waking from them, for fear of finding them to be true.

  Seven

  The Ferry, Princess

  Kuro woke with a start to the offensive cry of an alarm clock that hadn’t been there when he had fallen asleep. It rang and rattled around on top of an old blue steamer trunk that had also been left in his room overnight. A brass plate on the trunk was embossed with his name. On top of it sat a plastic container full of holes, meant for carrying cats; a freshly laundered uniform; and a note.