by G. T. Spoor
“Berkeley,” Berk shouted, but the ogre didn’t seem to be listening.
“What does he want?” the stone asked.
Meareg thought for a moment, then leaned closer to the console.
“I don’t know.”
There was a long pause before the stone responded. “Ask him, you moron.”
Squeezing out of the gatehouse, the ogre leaned on the hot-top again.
“Why you want in there?” he asked.
“I need to speak to Ross Muller. I’m his cousin. I’m hoping he can answer a few questions related to a crime that was committed.”
Meareg stepped back from the hot-top. He seemed even more confused than when he started. Squeaking into the gatehouse, he hit another three buttons before finding the correct one.
“What is it, Meareg?”
“That man, Awful Broccoli Moses, he’s still here.”
“Yes. Yes. And what does he want?”
“He wants to commit a few crimes with a rusty mallet. He says he’s a muffin.”
“He says he’s a what? Don’t do anything. I’ll be right there.”
The ogre squeezed out of the gatehouse again and leaned on the hot-top. “Mr. Moon will be with you shortly.”
“Yeah. I think that’s probably for the best,” Berk said. As Meareg stepped back from the vehicles, Berk looked over at Emily. “They must be hard up for employees.”
“Come on. Don’t be like that. He’s doing his best.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
The doors to the CEC building opened and a short, wide man came storming out. As he made his way across the yard, he waved frantically for Meareg to go away.
“Sorry about that,” he said when he reached the hot-top. “We don’t usually let him monitor the gates alone, but we weren’t expecting anyone this late in the day. Almost everyone’s gone home. Mind you, nobody tries to sneak in with him on guard.”
He was dressed in the same blue uniform with a name tag that read Moore on the shirt pocket.
“Have you often had problems with people sneaking in?” Emily asked.
“Those religious freaks are always trying to sneak into this place. Caught three of them trying to climb the back wall only last week. They won’t try that way again.”
“So the Church of Gaea has been causing trouble.”
“Yeah, and we’re not the only ones. MRC had a break-in two weeks ago. Seems the only one that hasn’t had to deal with those freaks is TWC. Like to know why they’re immune.”
“Maybe their mining techniques are more favorable to the earth.”
The man laughed. “More than likely it’s because of the slags they hire. Now, how can I help you?”
“I came to speak with Ross Muller,” Berk said.
“May I ask why you wish to speak with him?”
“He’s my cousin. I was hoping he could help me on this case I’ve been working on.”
Mr. Moore stepped back, and a fiendish grin crossed his face. “Okay. Let me see if he’s in.” Entering the gatehouse, he pressed the button that lit the small green stone. “Walter? Walter? Are you there?”
“What is it Rick?”
“Has Mr. Muller gone home yet?”
“No. I think I saw him go into his office a moment ago.”
“He still being a complete vots?”
“Isn’t he always?”
“Thanks, Walter.” Moore stepped away from the console and returned to the vehicle. “So, you say you’re his cousin.”
“Second cousin, actually, on my mother’s side.”
“Good enough for me.” Moore shrugged. “You’ll find him in his office. First floor, room 232.” Moore backed away from the hot-top and waved them through the gate.
“What is a vots?” Emily asked Berk.
“Oh, it’s a… well it’s kind of a… you know it’s sort of—”
“Forget I asked.”
“Probably for the best.”
When the hot-top pulled up outside the entrance, Emily climbed out of the passenger seat. “I’m kind of surprised it was this easy to get in,” she said.
“I’m not.” Sarah grinned. “You heard them. They only let us in to mess with this Mr. Muller. They didn’t seem very fond of him.”
“What kind of a man is your cousin?” Emily asked.
Berk shrugged. “As I said, I’ve only met him once or twice. The first time was when my father tried to get me a job here, but I wasn’t suited for this type of work.”
“Can’t be easy, working the mines.”
“Vir don’t work the mines, not anymore. Only the goblins are down there now. They’re the only ones who aren’t affected by the stray.”
“The stray?”
“The gasses that fill the caves where the mana crystals are. Only goblins can breathe that char without going mad.”
When they passed through the main doors, they were met by another vir in a blue uniform. He was tall and slim with tufts of white hair sticking out from under his hat. The patch on his shirt read Sullen.
“You the ones looking for Mr. Mullen?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s us,” Berk answered.
“I saw him in his office a few minutes ago. He should still be there. Go down the hall, take the first left, and the second right. Try not to wander around too much.”
The corridors of the CEC were spacious, well-carpeted, and lit with the most up-to-date mana-powered lighting. The doors, which lined each side of the hall, bore bright gold-numbered plaques. Emily silently read the numbers as they passed. They seemed to jump around going from single digits to double digits back to single before they reached the two hundreds. It was amazing how anyone could find the room they were looking for. Between the doors, the spaces on the walls were occupied by pictures. Most were abstract designs of colors and shapes, but a few were portraits of men dressed in dark suits. There was even one of a landscape, although it definitely wasn’t anyplace in Eryona, or if it was, it was before the Dusting.
“Hold up, you guys,” Sarah said. She had fallen behind and was now turning around slowly in the hallway. A red glow emanated from her cupped hands. “I think this thing is finally working.”
The amulet of Osara decided to wake up.
“What’s it saying?” Berk asked.
“It’s not saying anything, but it’s glowing,” Sarah answered. “And it seems to be glowing brighter when I turn in this direction.”
“That’s not the way to Ross’s office.”
“Maybe not, but it’s the way to something.”
Emily and Berk followed as Sarah slowly walked down the hallway. She kept a watchful eye on the amulet and only stopped when the light grew dim. Every so often, she would turn around a few times, comparing the brightness until she was sure she was still heading in the right direction. Eventually, it led them to room 143.
Sarah looked up at the door, then down at the amulet. “Now what?”
“I guess we go in,” Emily answered.
Berk hesitated. “But my cousin’s waiting for us.”
“Actually, I don’t think he even knows we’re coming. But it doesn’t matter. According to Osara, the evidence we’re looking for is in there.”
“Assuming you can trust that magic,” he spat the last word out.
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Emily asked.
He looked defeated. “No.”
Taking a few steps back from the door, he rolled his shoulders and arched his back. “You might want to stand clear.”
Emily jumped in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“What I always do. Bust down the door.”
“Did you think to check to see if it was locked first?”
“Oh. Yeah, that’s probably a better idea.”
“You think?”
Berk stepped past Emily and tried the door. It swung open with ease.
“Come in, come in,” someone called from inside. “I’ve been expecting you.”
A
lthough the room was quite large, it was nowhere near as posh or well-lit as the hall. Bare stone floors, drab gray walls, and crates of supplies were stacked in all four corners. A crudely made desk, with its legs cut off, dominated the far wall. It was covered with papers as well as strange metal devices that bore numbers alongside symbols and dials. Behind it sat a short, round man with a large nose and dark red hair that stuck out in every direction. He smiled when he saw them.
“Come in, come in,” he said excitedly.
“You were expecting us?” Berk asked.
“Sort of,” the man answered. “I was expecting you, not so much two lovely young ladies, but they are welcome if they wish to stay. You are from the Red Wolf Mercenary Company, are you not?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“I knew it the minute I saw the hot-top at the gate.” He shook his head and sighed. “It was only a matter of time before you linked me to that mystic, especially after the damned fool lost his arm. He didn’t have to go after that last dower, you know. I already completed the research. Hardbrew didn’t have anything that I needed. Fact is, that wretched drunk was more a hindrance than a help. I told Boulderjaw to drop him, but dowers stick together no matter what.”
“You’re not a dower?” Emily asked.
The man frowned. “Please, my dear.” He stepped out from behind the desk and spread his arms. “Do I look like a dower? I’m a gnoma, for char sake.”
He was the same height as a dower, the same build as well, although more on the softer side. The only real difference was no facial hair.
“I have to admit”—he pointed at Berk—“I wasn’t very impressed with you at the beginning. I thought for sure I was going to get away with it, but you proved me wrong. Where did I make my mistake?”
Berk shrugged. “Well… it’s…”
The gnoma waved his hands. “I don’t suppose it matters,” he said after a while. “Although I thought you’d be here sooner.”
“We had to work today,” Sarah added.
Emily raised her hand. “Excuse me, sir. Who are you?”
The gnoma looked startled. “Why, I’m Amias Samuel Thatcher.”
“Of course you are, and you knew Boulderjaw?”
“Did I know Boulderjaw? My child, who do you think gave him the idea for the research? Did you seriously think the dower came up with it all by themselves? Mining, crafting, engineering—yes, but this—” He grabbed a stack of paper from off the desk. “This my dear is a work of art. So elegant in its simplicity. They don’t call it the Thatcher Method for nothing, or they will, after today. Boulderjaw, Flintmace, Hardbrew, and I… well, maybe not so much Hardbrew, but the other two, we worked on this for nearly four years.”
“So what happened?”
Amias sighed and pulled open one of the desk drawers. He carefully set the papers inside before closing it again. “You want to know why I did it—why I had them killed. It’s quite simple, really. Greed.”
“I thought so,” Berk said. “You got a higher bid for the research.”
The gnoma started laughing. “Are you serious?” he said. “The CEC hired us to find a better way to mine mana crystals, but Boulderjaw sold us out. He went behind our backs… or actually it was more like he went behind my back, seeing as the other two sided with him. As I said, dowers stick together. He made arrangements to sell it to the MRC without my consent.”
“Are you saying you had them killed out of loyalty to the CEC?”
“Loyalty? To the CEC? My good man, don’t you see how valuable this research is? This shouldn’t be exclusive to one mining company.”
“You don’t want the CEC to have it,” Emily said. “You wanted to give it to all three companies.”
“She understands. It’s the only way. Unfortunately, the others wouldn’t give up their claims to the research, so I was forced to take it from them. Boulderjaw’s portion was more extensive and therefore his rights to the final product were nearly equal to that of mine. I had to remove him from the equation. After that, Flintmace tried to take it to Coaltank. If that old miser had gotten his hands on it, he would have hidden it away somewhere in Talomria, and then where would I be? As for Hardbrew, it’s as I said before. He didn’t contribute nearly as much. I was easily able to reproduce his experiments and even improve on them, so in truth, the Thatcher Method is mine and mine alone. It wasn’t personal—it was simply business.”
Emily was stunned. The way Amias spoke, he could have been talking about chopping down trees to expand a field. The gnoma had no regret about what he had done.
“You can’t go around killing dowers to settle disagreements.”
“Of course I couldn’t,” Amias said. “That’s why I hired the Inferus.”
“The Inferus.” Berk seemed surprised by the announcement.
“You’ve heard of them?” Emily asked.
“Yeah, but they’re a myth. A shadow organization of assassins and thieves. Stories we told when we were kids. They don’t exist.”
“Oh, but they do,” Amias said. He was moving toward the door on the far side of the room. At first, Emily thought he was going to try to make a run for it, but he stopped beside the stack of crates in the corner. “You have to know where to find them,” he continued. “You see, my child, I couldn’t kill anyone. How could I? I’m an alchemist, a scientist, a man of learning, not some common street thug. That’s how I knew how to make this.” From behind the crates, the gnoma pulled out a small wooden box.
It wasn’t difficult to figure out what was in the box. They had left a similar one with Mira. The one that killed Hardbrew. Sarah had dubbed it the box of death. Now, it would appear, there was more than one.
Amias looked down at the small wooden box in his hands, almost as if he was surprised to see it there. He seemed conflicted as he turned to the door behind him. He was weighing his chances, Emily thought, wondering if he could get through the door in time. Pulling a tyng from her sleeve, she thought it to a three-foot-long staff. She wasn’t sure what good it would do, but there was no way they could get clear of the crystal’s effects should the gnoma prove crazy enough to open the box.
“Why don’t you put that down and we can talk about it,” Emily said.
Amias looked at her and smiled wistfully. “If only I could. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
Without warning, he threw the box at her and ran for the door.
Emily hefted the staff and hurled it at the incoming box, hitting it in midflight. The dead wood exploded on impact and the tyng connected with the crystal inside. There was a bright flash of blue light, followed closely by that of red, then complete darkness. When she could see again, she was standing in a room of ash.
The damage was quick and extensive. Everything the darkness touched was destroyed. The crates, stacked in the corners of the room, were now crumbling under their own weight, spilling their contents of gray across the floor. Whatever they held, was now unrecognizable. The door behind them was gone, and the effects of the crystal fanned out into the hall. Where the darkness touched the carpet, it was stripped of color. Even the mana-powered lights weren’t safe.
The exposed negatively charged mana crystal had drawn the life out of everything in the room, except for where they were standing. It was a perfect circle, nearly six feet in diameter, centered around Sarah.
“Why are we still alive?” Berk asked. He seemed as confused as she was.
Emily looked at Sarah. “Are you all right?”
Sarah held out her hands, showing Emily the remains of Osara’s amulet, which looked more like a chunk of coal.
“I felt it,” Sarah said, flexing her fingers. “It passed through me. It was all… tingly…”
“It must have reacted to the mana crystal.”
“That’s not the only thing.” Berk pointed to the tyng that was lying on the floor next to the remains of the crystal. It appeared unaffected, except that it was now glowing a faint shade of blue. The same thing had happened whe
n Emily deflected the mystic’s attack at the warehouse. Carefully, she picked up the tyng. It didn’t feel any different.
“Is that thing still safe?” Berk asked.
“I don’t know.” Emily thought it to its smaller size and slipped it back up her sleeve. “Maybe Mira can shed some light on what just happened.”
“I know what happened. That little char tried to kill us. When I get my hands on him—”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Sarah said.
She was standing on the far side of the room beside the back door. On the floor in front of her, was the dried-out husk of Amias Samuel Thatcher. He never made it out of the room. “Why did he do it?” she asked. “Do you think he wanted to die?”
Berk shrugged as he kicked at the gnoma’s remains. He scattered Amias’s left leg across the floor. “Probably thought he could make it out in time. Might have too if Emily hadn’t destroyed the box the way she did.”
Chalk up another transgression against the first tenet.
“What should we do with him?” Sarah asked.
“Not much left of him to do anything with,” Berk answered. “So much for closing the case. What am I supposed to show Captain Petrova, a handful of dust? I can’t very well turn that in. I doubt if he’ll believe any of this.”
Emily picked up the dead mana crystal and tossed it to Berk. “You can always give him that.”
“I suppose, although it’s going to take some convincing. Why didn’t I sign it off as death by accidental fire to begin with?”
“Because you knew it wasn’t.”
“Too bad we couldn’t recover the research,” Sarah added.
The research. Amias made sure to place it in the desk drawer before retrieving the box of death. Although it was never in good shape to begin with, the desk had somehow managed to survive the crystal’s effect.
“Dead wood.” Emily tapped on the surface. “Amias must have made the desk out of dead wood.” Pulling open the draw, she removed the papers the gnoma had placed inside. They too were unaffected by the crystal.
“The dower research,” Berk exclaimed. “That’s perfect. Captain Petrova will have to believe me now.”
“We can’t give this to Petrova,” Emily replied.
