by G. T. Spoor
“What do you mean it wasn’t a fire? Can’t you see all the damage?”
“Can you?”
Berk took another look around the room, but Emily knew he wasn’t seeing it. She had a feeling that if it wasn’t labeled in large bold letters, the Merc wouldn’t think it was important.
“Have you checked the debris?” she asked, pointing to the ground.
He looked at her suspiciously, then knelt down and picked up a handful of what was once a couch. Holding the dust in the palm of his hand, he let it sift through his fingers. He still wasn’t seeing it.
“It’s not ash,” she told him.
He looked at the dust again, this time a little closer. “What is it then?”
“Good question. Take a look at this.” Emily stepped back into the room and brushed a wider section of the floor away with her foot. The thin black lines appeared to be streaks and they were converging to a single point. Berk started brushing away more of the floor until he found the center. Like a flower, the black lines radiated outward.
“That’s your origin,” Emily explained. “Whatever happened here, started right there.”
“It’s nowhere near the hearth.” He sounded disappointed. “This wasn’t a fire, was it?”
“It doesn’t mean it still wasn’t an accident.”
“Char! How did I miss that?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. It could have happened to anyone.”
“But you caught it. What gave it away? What didn’t I see? How did you know this wasn’t a fire?”
Emily shrugged. “Well, for starters, there were no signs of a fire outside. For a fire to cause this much damage, you would expect to see smoke stains around the windows and doors. There were none. The same could be said for the interior. There’re no char patterns.”
“Char patterns?” Berk reexamined the room, although this time, he seemed to see it in a different light. “How could I have missed that?” he asked himself. “What else can you tell me?”
“How about you tell me. Look at the furniture.”
“What about it?”
“It’s still standing.”
“I don’t understand.”
Emily approached the end table beside what was left of a wingback chair.
“When a fire rips through a place, it will burn everything in its path leaving only a trace residue. This table, for instance, should look like a lump of charcoal, but it doesn’t. It appears to be a regular table, just gray and chalky, until you apply force.” She tapped on the top of the table and it crumbled adding to the dust already on the floor. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t natural and it happened fast. Something literally sucked the life energy out of everything in this room.”
“Including the victim,” Berk said.
“There was someone in here?”
“A dower by the name of”—he quickly flipped through the pages of his notepad—“Kivras Boulderjaw.”
“Was there any indication that Mr. Boulderjaw was involved in—the mystic arts?”
Berk searched his notepad again. “Nothing about the arts, but he was an engineer working with the MRC.”
“The MRC?”
“The Mineral Reserve Corporation. They’re one of the largest mining companies. Maybe he was experimenting with something and it blew up in his face.”
“Possibly.” Emily took another slow look around the room. “But I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Sometimes it’s not what you see, but what you don’t see,” she said. “What’s not here?”
Berk walked around the room again, trying to solve the riddle. It took him three rounds before he figured it out.
“There’s no equipment.”
“Exactly,” she said. “If our Mr. Boulderjaw was working on something, I’d expect to see the remains of lab equipment or tools or something, but this looks like an ordinary sitting room.”
“Maybe it was destroyed when whatever it was blew up.”
“Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Unfortunately, without seeing what this place looked like before it was disturbed, it’s hard to say what happened.”
Berk cursed again. “And here I am going through the place like an ogre in a flower shop. I really made a mess of this investigation.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Although that wasn’t entirely true. How much evidence did he manage to destroy in the short amount of time he was there?
“And here I was hoping for a nice, simple, accidental fire and it turns out to be—what? An assassination?” Berk asked.
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“And we may never know, thanks to me. I knew I’d mess this up. I knew the minute Captain Petrova handed me this assignment, it was a mistake. I’m not cut out for this stuff, I’m not… smart enough—”
“Don’t say that.”
“Well, it’s true. I missed the smoke in the windows, I missed the char patterns. It was all there and I didn’t see it… well, what I mean is, it wasn’t there, but I still missed it. I’m just not good at this.”
“Your first investigation?” Emily asked.
Berk laughed. “And probably my last. Most of the time, I do buster work.”
“Buster work?”
“Yeah, you know. Bust down doors, bust up people. I do retrievals and guard duty as well.”
“I don’t understand. If you’ve never done an investigation before, why are you here alone?”
“Because this was supposed to be a simple case. Captain Petrova told me to come down here, take a few notes, and classify this as an accident by fire. Make the client happy.”
“But it wasn’t a fire.”
“I realize that now.”
“So, what are you going to tell your captain?”
Berk shrugged. “I have to tell him the truth, I guess. It wasn’t an accident. That there’s a possibility it was a deliberate act. If I’m lucky, he’ll hand the case off to someone else.”
“Then that would be a mistake,” Emily said. “I think you should see it through. You shouldn’t give up on it. You’re smarter than you think you are. You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”
“Thanks for saying that, but I think it would be better if someone else was put on this case.”
“That’s between you and your captain, I suppose.”
Berk pulled out a pen and scratched a few notes in the pad.
“Death from unknown causes.” He shoved the notepad into his pocket. “That’s all I can do here. I’d better return to the station.”
“Station? As in the one on tier ten?”
“Yeah. The captain will be waiting for this report, although I don’t think he’ll be too happy when he reads it.”
“How did you get down here, anyhow?”
“What do mean?”
“I mean, did you take the lift or the tube…”
“Oh no. I borrowed one of the hot-tops. That’s the only way to travel in this city.”
“Well, seeing as you’re heading back up that way—think you can give me a lift?”
Chapter 9
Another Alley Encounter
Emily’s first day working in the kitchen wasn’t nearly as bad as working the floor. For starters, she didn’t have to wear the uniform anymore. That alone was worth the transition. She was now allowed to wear comfortable clothing, without the fear of parts falling out. She also didn’t have to keep smiling for tips all the time. It was a day’s work for a day’s pay. It might not have been the most glamorous job, but it was honest. Peeling potatoes, cutting vegetables, stirring pots, basically anything Beth needed done. At the moment, it was slicing onions for Beth’s potato skillet, a dish that had become something of a house specialty.
Emily had just started her second basket of onions when she heard Tom in the front room.
“You’re late… again.”
“Sorry, Tom. The trams were running slow… again.”
Tom was right. Sarah did
use that excuse way too much.
Ten minutes and five onions later, Sarah entered the kitchen. She was already wearing her uniform. Emily slid the sliced onion off the board and into the bowl before looking up.
“I didn’t hear you come in last night. Come to think of it, I didn’t hear you leave this morning.”
“You don’t approve?” Sarah asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I can see it on your face.”
Grabbing another onion from the basket, Emily set it on the cutting board and sliced it down the center, making sure not to cut the root. It was an old trick Sangyal taught her back at the monastery. It cut down on the tears.
“So, did you have fun?” she asked.
“It was okay.”
“Did you learn anything new about Brian?”
Sarah’s face turned red. “Sorry,” she said. “That didn’t exactly come up in the conversation.”
“I didn’t think it would, but that’s all right. I have a feeling Brian’s luck ran out.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I returned to the shipyard last night. He never showed up for his shift. I think whoever took him away, might have taken him away for good.”
The red in Sarah’s face was gone now. In fact, most of the color was.
“What’s wrong?” Emily asked.
“Are you saying… you think he might have been… killed?”
“It’s possible. The guys who took him away didn’t seem too happy with him.”
“But… that’s so… final.”
“Yeah. Death is pretty final—that’s one way of looking at it.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it? I hardly knew him.”
“But still. You spoke with him, you went out with him—”
“I never went out with him,” Emily protested. “He led me into a back alley and poisoned me. I wouldn’t exactly call that a date.”
“No… no of course not. It’s just that you were looking for him and now he’s dead. It’s…”
“Yeah, I know. Final.”
“No. I mean, if they had seen you, they might have taken you too. You might have been… you know.”
Emily shrugged. “I suppose it could have happened.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it? If I die, I die. It’s going to happen sooner or later. Besides, they never saw me, so what does it matter?”
“It matters because what you’re doing is dangerous. Don’t you realize that?”
“Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I can let it go.”
“This thing they took from you, is it really that important to risk your life for?”
“It’s not only that,” Emily explained. “Don’t you see? They’ve done this before. The Red Wolves have a board filled with pictures of missing people. How many of those people were led to back alleys and never seen again. How many more were like me. If I had gone missing, nobody would have even known about it. Sure, I want what they took from me back, but I also want to put a stop to this.”
“This is a job for the Mercs,” Sarah said.
Emily laughed. “In case you haven’t noticed, the Mercs aren’t exactly doing their job. You said it yourself. No one is paying them.”
“I suppose, but I never thought it would be this dangerous.”
“Welp, somebody’s gotta do it.”
“But without Brian, where do you go from here?”
“I still haven’t given up on Mira. She’ll come through. She has to. There’s also the man in the green overcoat.”
“You mean the guy who took Brian away and probably killed him? That’s who you want to find now?”
“It’s a lead.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Okay. It’s a stupid lead, but it’s the only one I have at the moment.”
Sarah grabbed her tray and notepad from the counter.
“I’ll let you know if Mira shows up.”
Emily raised an onion. “I’ll be here.”
~~~***~~~
After the onions, it was back on to the potatoes. Most of the side dishes served at the Bird and Bay required potatoes. With every one she peeled, she couldn’t help but wonder where they all came from. The Chimney wasn’t known for its rich, fertile soil. In fact, Emily hadn’t seen anything growing in the city, probably due to the lack of sunlight. When she asked Beth, the cook told her they came from a lorry. It would seem Beth’s world didn’t extend much further than the doors of the Bird. It was an interesting mystery, but she had enough mysteries to occupy her mind. For starters, who was the man in the green coat? Who did he work for? What was Brian supposed to deliver? Who killed Mr. Boulderjaw?
“Emily!”
“Sorry.”
Beth was watching her from the other side of the kitchen. She had six pots boiling on the stove and both ovens filled. How she ran this place by herself for so long was anybody’s guess.
“I hope you’re not the daydreaming type.”
“Sorry, Beth. I guess I was a little preoccupied.”
“Well, I can’t complain. You’ve already peeled me more than enough potatoes to last me a week. Do you think can dump these buckets in the trash bins out back? We have to empty them regularly; otherwise, the smell gets too strong.”
“Can do,” Emily said, getting to her feet.
There were two old buckets in the corner, and they were both filled with scraps of leftover food. Back at the monastery, they would have been dumped on the compost heap, but here, there was no such convenience. The scraps were destined to go out with the rest of the trash. Carrying the buckets to the back door, Emily paused on the threshold. The alley was dark. The only light came from a couple of flickering streetlamps, which caused the shadows to dance about, giving the illusion everything was swaying. It was almost like being back on the airship. As she watched the shadows, she couldn’t help but feel the shadows were watching her. She wasn’t alone; somebody was out there.
Crossing the alley, Emily casually removed the lids from the waste bins and proceeded to empty the contents of the buckets. She moved slowly, so as to not startle her visitor. She didn’t know where he was and needed him to make the first move.
A shadow emerged from the wall behind her.
Emily tightened her grip on the lid of the waste bin. All she had to do was pinpoint his location.
“Why do we—?”
Spinning around, she flung the lid. The shadow dropped to the ground as the flying metal disk came within inches of his head. It ricocheted off the back wall and landed in the alley.
“Are you insane?” Sinclair shouted.
“What are you doing here? Who sent you, and why are you following me?”
Getting to his feet, the young man dusted off his pants, straightened his tie, and brushed back his hair. He seemed cleaner than the last time she saw him.
“A simple hello would have sufficed.”
“Answer me,” she demanded.
“For your information, I wasn’t following you and nobody sent me. I came because… well… I didn’t properly thank you for saving my life.”
“So, you thought it best to sneak up on me in a dark alley.”
“I wasn’t sneaking up on you. I was waiting for you to come out.”
“Why didn’t you come inside like a normal person?”
“Let’s just say I have my reasons.”
Emily laughed. “In other words, you haven’t paid Marka back, and he’s still looking for you.”
“You might say that.”
“How did you find me, anyway?”
“Oh, that wasn’t too difficult. A friend told me he witnessed a petite young woman with silver hair beat the crap out of three mill workers. I figured it had to be you. Saw you arrive this morning and well… waited around until you came out.”
“I find that a little hard to believe.”
“What, that I would w
ait all day to see you again?”
“No, that you have friends.”
Sinclair staggered back. “That hurt.”
“Yeah, well. You thanked me. Now you can leave.”
“I kind of thought we could leave together.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was thinking maybe dinner tonight, then possibly—”
“Not interested.”
“That was quick.”
Retrieving the lid, Emily secured it on the bin. She picked up the empty buckets and headed for the back door of the Bird and Bay.
“Wait,” Sinclair called out. “At least tell me why—”
“Because I have no interest in going out with someone like you.”
“That’s not—what do you mean someone like me?”
“I know your kind, Mr. Sinclair. You think the world owes you something. You play fast and loose with people as well as the rules. You’re always trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else, trying to play the system. You don’t believe in hard, honest work.”
“If you truly believe that, then why did you stop Marka?”
“Because that’s who I am, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. “It’s the third mark of the Way—compassion. To help those in need.”
“Are you saying you only helped me for the sake of helping me?”
“That’s correct.”
He chuckled. “You are an odd one. I can’t figure you out. There’s more to you than meets the eye.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Wait,” he called out again. “When I asked you why, I meant, why were you down in the twenty-fifth district to begin with?”
Emily turned and studied the young man for a moment. He was interesting, educated, and fairly good-looking. The only problem was he knew it, and that’s what made him arrogant; but being arrogant didn’t make him malicious, only annoying. He didn’t seem much of a threat, but then neither did Brian, and look how that turned out.
“If you must know, I was looking for someone,” she answered.
“Who?”
“It no longer matters.”
“I might be able to help you.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I have connections.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
