by Jackson Lear
You’ve probably never seen terror quite like this kid, not with the two of us walking towards him in a place that was supposed to be his new haven of pleasant dreams and security. He tried to run again, this time forgetting that he was stuck in a barrel. He thumped his knees. “Mister Prig! Mister Prig!”
“Caen. Calm the fuck down.” I turned to Greaser. “If Mister Prig does come, kill him.”
“No problem.” Greaser headed towards the main building, leaving the wheezing Caen and I alone.
“If you call for anyone else, we’ll kill them too,” I said.
The cold piss Caen was standing in probably got a little warmer.
“Let’s talk about Día shall we? You found the note.”
It took a while for the answers to come but once they started they didn’t stop. “Yes.”
“Where?”
He described it to me. There was a corner, half ledge, the note was under a piece of roof tile.
“This one?” I asked, holding up the tile.
More panic. There I was, not just the greatest mage the kid had ever seen but a god-damn sorcerer, able to conjure the impossible through will power alone. Given the dumbfounded look on Caen’s face, there was a good chance that he was going to run off in the morning and become the future captain of the city watch.
“What did the note say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how did you know it was for Día?”
He dropped his eyes as a wave of guilt overcame him. “I just knew.”
“You’re sure she disappeared from there?”
“That’s where she waits for me.”
“And you normally leave work early to meet up with her?”
“No. Mister Prig hits people who leave early.”
“So Día leaves work late?”
“I think so. She usually waits at that corner.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
“You two kiss a lot, is that it?”
“No!”
“You don’t want to kiss her?”
He spluttered through another burst of panic.
Given that Día worked at a tailors, and Caen worked at a dye house, I put to test a theory of mine. “Did you steal clothes for her?”
He hesitated. “No!”
“Did you dye them with no one knowing and give them to her for free so that she could do well by her boss?”
The kid damn-near passed out from that question.
“I see. So she waits for you at that corner every day and you come along with dyed and dried clothes, give them to her, she takes them to her boss and you two walk home together. Is that about right?”
He hung his head, nodding slowly.
I stepped around to the swollen side of his face. “So how come someone punched you?”
Guilt crept over him, consuming him like no rival feeling could.
“Did you pick on her?”
He sniffed. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Why would you do a thing like that to a nice little girl?”
Another sniff. “I don’t know.”
“Did you hate her?”
“No!”
“Like her?”
“… Yeah.”
“So you did try to kiss her?”
Somehow, my fishing around for answers confirmed my mind reading skills.
“Who punched you?”
“Kel.”
“Why?”
“He said this was all my fault.”
“Was it?”
Weakly, he said, “No.”
“Did you see who took her?”
“No.”
“Then why is it your fault?”
Silence.
“You scared her, didn’t you? She asked you about the Eyeless Ghost and you told her a horror story?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever seen the Eyeless Ghost?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“I know it’s real and it eats your soul.”
I asked a little more but he said nothing I hadn’t already heard before. “Why did you choose to leave today? Was it because of Kel?”
He shook his head. “One of my friends said I was in trouble. A rich woman stopped at the orphanage today. She was looking for Día. She wanted to talk to each of the sestas.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess. Was she Día’s mother? Aunt? A tailor? A merchant?”
Caen kept shaking his head. “Someone said she looked rich.”
“She wore a gown? Had a horse?”
More shaking of his head. “I didn’t see her but Clifton did.”
Clifton! The old man in the orphanage. That was his name. It had been bugging me all day. “What did Clifton say?”
“That Sesta Silvia told her about you.”
I held my look on the kid, forcing him to continue.
“She said an old resident was looking for Día this morning. Someone who means trouble. She said you came because your friend disappeared twenty years ago.”
“How did this woman take that news?”
“She wanted your name.”
“Did she ask for the other missing girl’s name?”
“… She already knew Día’s name …”
“I mean Kiera. Did she ask for Kiera’s name?”
“Who’s Kiera?”
A fire roared through me that I wasn’t prepared for. After a quick inhale of a dozen people’s fermenting urine, I returned to why I was there. “Did this woman only ask about Día and me?”
“That’s what Orla said.”
“Who’s Orla?”
“My friend.”
“The one who talked to Clifton?”
“Yes.”
Great. Nothing like second or third hand knowledge to simplify the search into a missing person. “Did Orla say anything else?”
“Sesta Silvia thanked the woman for coming and for being concerned.”
“Did it seem like the sesta knew this woman?”
“I don’t think so.”
A hunch was brewing. A strange one, and one that was likely going to result in an, ‘I don’t know’ from the kid, but it was worth poking at anyway. “Who’s the benefactor of the orphanage?”
I was right. I started to wonder if this is the look I give Lieutenant when he uses fancy words on me.
“Do you get clothes as gifts from someone rich? Food?”
“Yes.”
“Who from?”
“I don’t know.”
“This woman who came, did she look like someone who was rich herself, or that she worked for the rich person?”
“I don’t know. After she left, Sesta Silvia shouted at Sesta Joa.”
“Because Sesta Joa told the rich person that another girl was missing?”
“I think so.”
A grunt came our way. A man taller than the Captain and looking just as fierce was standing at the top of the stairs of the main building, looking down at me with his arms folded. Greaser slinked back through the shadows, heading towards the exit.
I set my glare back onto Caen. “I’m going to do you a favor now, okay? I want you to shout loud enough so that Mister Prig can hear you. You’re going to say: ‘Get the fuck out of here, asshole.’ Okay?”
Caen’s lower lipped quivered in terrified fright. “I can’t say that.”
“‘Get the fuck out of here, asshole.’ Say it now or I’m going to cut your balls off.”
That did the trick. “Get the fuck out of here, asshole!”
I held my hands up in defense and started backing away. “Tell Prig he owes us money. He’ll know what that means.” I sent a lasting glare at Prig, wondering if he recognized me from twenty five years ago. Somehow he looked taller and stronger than I remembered. He probably had fists like anvils. I arched my chin at him, one final ‘fuck you,’ and returned to the fresh air beyond the walls.
Cha
pter Twelve
Lieutenant and Runaway were waiting for us at the corner where Día went missing. “Hey, guess who sent their head of security to talk to Sesta Silvia?”
“Vanguard,” I said.
“Worse. Kasera.”
That one dropped Greaser and I both to a stand-still. “General Kasera?” I asked.
“The one and only.”
I cast a quick glance to Greaser. He came from the army. He should know what was going on. “Isn’t he supposed to be at the emperor’s coronation in Ispar?”
“If he wants to keep his head, yeah,” said Greaser.
Lieutenant butted in. “Doesn’t mean he himself ordered his head of security to look around. The family could’ve asked her to go or whoever is still stationed here might’ve recommended her for the job. A junior officer maybe.”
“Her? The general’s head of security isn’t a soldier?”
“They have women in the army,” Greaser told me.
“Not on the front line.”
“Not as infantry no, but they’re certainly there as mages. And the farther back you go the more of them you see. Doctors, nurses, translators, assassins ...”
Lieutenant exhaled loudly. “I think you guys are missing the point. Someone from Kasera’s compound heard about Día’s disappearance and came to find out what happened. Kasera doesn’t live in a barracks, he lives on his family’s estate. That estate sent their head of security, who may or may not have spent some time in the army.”
I’ll be honest, the inner workings of a general’s estate wasn’t an area I hadn’t thought much about until now. “Are the Kasera’s one of the main benefactors?”
Lieutenant’s mouth hung open like I had just told him the punchline to a joke he had been desperate to deliver himself. “Yeah. They’re pretty much the only benefactor.”
That tied up what Caen had told me. “Are they getting involved in the investigation?”
“No.”
Another fire started to build through me. “No? One of their kids goes missing and they’re not even going to look for her?”
“Día isn’t one of Kasera’s kids,” said Lieutenant. “Apparently Sesta Joa sent one of the boys to Kasera’s to tell them what had happened, asking for help. A woman came along this afternoon. Dressed functionally. Boots. Trousers. Knee-length tunic. That’s how the sestas described her. The rest of the details come from five year olds so we’re not talking about the most reliable of witnesses. They said she had long brown hair, was nice to them, spoke funny, and gave them some old clothes.”
“How did she speak funny?”
“I’m guessing she has an Isparian accent or something similar.”
I added the Kasera’s loose involvement to the increasing list of peculiarities of Día’s disappearance. “What’s the verdict on her and them? Concerned benefactors or are they trying to cover their tracks?”
Lieutenant shrugged. “The Kaseras are saving face by sending someone to show that they care when they really don’t.”
Runaway nodded. “That’s my take on it too.”
The fire within me refused to die down. “They’d care a lot more if one of theirs went missing.”
Greaser growled at me. “Kasera would send his whole fucking army into Erast to find her if that was the case, and he wouldn’t be polite about it either.”
I looked to Runaway. “What’d you get?”
“A lot of terrified kids, a lot of uneasy sestas. They have some contact with the other orphanages but not much. I asked if they knew anything about the disappearances in Broker’s Wharf. Silvia has heard rumors but every kid sees a ghost at least once in their life. Sometimes it’s a real ghost, sometimes it’s their friend’s imagination getting the better of them. I did convince her that we’re taking this seriously and she did agree that the city watch wouldn’t be of much help.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course, she also knows that we’re not Vanguard.”
“Will that be a problem?”
“She said she isn’t in the habit of jeopardizing the lives of orphans, former residents included, but I wouldn’t test her resolve to its limit.”
“I won’t. Not with the amount of orphans she currently has to deal with.”
Lieutenant waved his hand to the wall we had been looking at earlier in the day. “Anyway, this is where we think Día was abducted.”
We stared at a wall which rose up straight, angled inwards slightly at waist-height, then went up straight to the roof two stories above us. The note had been left under a broken bit of a gray roof tile. I filled them in on what Caen had told me, that Día would wait for him here at the end of the day. He’d bring clothes along that had been dyed on the down low at work, she’d take them back to her boss, then they’d walk home together. Yesterday he arrived, Día wasn’t here. From what Joa told me, Caen carried on to the orphanage, then headed back here when he heard Día was missing. She’d been gone a whole day now. It was time to thump on some doors and see who saw what. It led to a wide range of answers, given that Lieutenant was a pretty boy, Greaser has a lot of army blood running through and has forgotten how to smile, Runaway looked like a kid in grown up’s clothing, and I had the perpetual look of someone who was ready to stab first and ask questions later.
The eighth door I tried led to some success. An old guy who hadn’t bathed in some time received me. “You’re Vanguard?”
I told him I was. I asked if anyone had been lingering in the area, if there had been any break-ins, if there were any empty rooms along the road.
“There’s a couple of places,” he said. He shuffled at a snail’s pace towards the street. Once there he stretched one finger out and pointed left and right, then a dog-eared point to the right again. “Down there, where Jalia used to live, yes? Well, next to there. Double doors. Been empty for sometime, I think.”
“How far down?”
“Oh, not far. Just a minute’s walk or so.” That could’ve been anything from three doors away to a hundred. After another dozen questions I had enough information to find the place on my own.
I checked out the other empty places as well but none of them resonated with me. I wanted somewhere off the main road with either no windows or ones which were boarded up. That left me with one possible location.
The whole street twisted and dipped like the roads were inspired by a raging river. Half was because of some ancient law in Syuss that we started to take a little too far. The silverwood tree was second holiest of creations, ranked behind the anointed one who was chosen at birth and no doubt lived a life of blessing newborns and answering life-changing questions with philosophic riddles. The silverwood is responsible for our misshapen roads. In order to expand their territory, the land owners planted every stupid tree they could find and claimed they were all silverwoods. Roads and buildings twisted around to give these trees a clear berth. There was no way to tell if a young tree was a silverwood or not for some years, and by the time they were proven false, the roads and buildings had already been built. Given that the whole city is now bricks and mortar with not a single tree living in freedom, it goes to show how the empire dealt with the old land owners here.
The empty location I was most interested in offered a unique frontage. It was on the ground floor and had a double-door entrance. No windows to speak of but the doors looked like they could open from the bottom half, top half, or as a whole unit. I pushed and pulled on the doors. Both locked. I knocked on the door. No answer. I asked the neighbors. The place had been empty for years. Had anyone been here in the last couple of days? No. Who had the key? They had no idea. Who owned it? Desten the Leaf. What happened to him? They had no idea. Haven’t seen him in years.
If he was known as ‘the Leaf’ then he was either a specialized farmer or he came from a healing background. Doctors often prescribed leaves to cure an ailment. Cabbage for bowel movements, rhubarb for bowel movements, fennel for bowel movements. I find that doctors often have a one-track mind.
Surgeons want to look at your organs, healers want to look at your stool.
I studied the door once again. The lock from this side was nothing more than a horizontal slit cut into the wooden door. Just above it was a thick iron bolt holding both doors in place. It didn’t seem enchanted but you can never be sure. The important part of the key would’ve looked like an ‘m’ with one of the outer legs extending out to the handle. You’d slide the ‘m’ in through the slit in the door, rotate it ninety degrees, fumble about until you found the two holes that the rest of the ‘m’ fit into, pull the key towards you, then slide the bolt to the other side of the slit. The security came from the ‘m’ shape. You never knew how far apart each of the legs were. The flaw in the design was that if half of your income came from thievery then you knew the weakest point on any door came from the hinges.
I slid my blade between the wall and door, pried the nail-shaped bolt holding the hinges free, lifted, and heard the satisfying clink and clink as they both struck the ground. At this point if anyone was inside they would no doubt have realized that someone was breaking in. Normally that didn’t matter since I liked to use scare tactics as my weapon of choice, but on this occasion I was sure I’d find someone inside with a knife against a girl’s throat.
I pushed the top half of the door open, blade in hand. The door slipped free of the lock and crashed to the ground with a heavy thump, drawing attention to me. Inside was a large single room. Empty. Not just empty of people, but utterly bare of everything except dust and half a door.
I got a not so polite comment from a concerned citizen across the street. I glared back. He retreated inside. I went to question him, asking if he knew anything about a kidnapped girl that had been held hostage in this room the day before. The color drained from the guy’s face. I grilled him a little further, getting angrier at his lack of attention to detail. He apologized profusely. I asked if he knew who owned the place. Desten the Leaf used to. Where did he live? Five Corners. Was that anywhere near Miller’s Den where Día used to live? He had no idea.
