War of the Posers

by Eric Ugland

  Regardless, I came home to an empty apartment, and it was grand. I walked inside, not caring that I smelled horribly, tore my clothes off, and tossed them into the rather embarrassingly large pile of laundry that was probably on the verge of spawning life. Then I hopped into the shower.

  Running high-pressure hot water over your body solves a hell of a lot of problems, and by the time I was dressed, I felt like a new man. Elf. I meant elf. I felt like a new elf.

  I got dressed, made a mental promise to find a laundry service, and headed downstairs for breakfast.

  Right as I swallowed the second bite of oatmeal, Leofing sat down on one side of me, in full armor, and Nox sat down on the other side.

  “We have been waiting for you,” Leofing said.

  “The investigations have been, uh,” Nox said, “disturbing.”

  “The missing children?” I asked.

  “Correct,” Leofing said. “Nox believes we know what has been happening.”

  “And how to stop them?” I asked Nox.

  “Well, obviously that is a more difficult question to answer,” Nox said. “But I think, perhaps, you might be better equipped to answer that than myself.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, drawing it out and trying to figure out what Nox was trying to say to me. “What do you mean?”

  “He means,” Leofing said, taking a long pull of my milk, “that the best solution to this issue may not be what you are expecting.”

  “Just tell me already,” I said.

  “I think it would be best if you came with us, and saw what we saw,” Nox said.

  “Right now?” I asked.

  “Now would be good,” Nox said.

  “Now,” Leofing agreed, pushing my bowl of oatmeal away.

  Leofing walked in front of Nox and me, causing most people to move out of the way of the paladin in his burnished gold armor.

  “Do you know about Klara?” I asked.

  “I do,” Nox said. “Most disturbing.”

  “Are you, I mean, are you okay?”

  “Am I sad? A little, but I did not know the woman well. I believe she was a good person, and I appreciate what she did for you, and for us.”

  “Yeah, you guys weren’t super, uh, close.”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “What about kobold citizenship?”

  “There is paperwork moving through the system,” he said. “But it will take some time. Also, it is hard to get an accurate count of how many kobolds are currently living with us.”

  “Is that number going up or down?”

  “Up, so far.”

  “Where are they coming from? Just babies?”

  “I have yet to find out. Shae has said she will look into the matter, but that is as of yet undetermined. I suspect there were far more living under and within the city than those we initially found. And as you’ve made a safe home for them, I would expect continued new arrivals.”

  “So we’re going to end up with a kobold city underneath us,” I said.

  “Quite sure they are halfway there already. Have you seen their construction projects?”

  I nodded. “I did tell them to hold off on any more expansions until we’ve had a chance to figure things out.”

  “And you are confident they will listen to you?”

  “Reasonably.”

  “Hrm,” Nox said with his eyebrows raised. Clearly, he didn’t think they would listen to me in the slightest. Which, you know, seemed possible.

  We wove through the city until we got to Linnæuston. It was one of the newer neighborhoods in the latest expansion of the city, south of the Bright and east of the Shade. There was certainly a homey atmosphere to the place, with lots of, well, homes. Row houses lined streets that led to a surprising number of parks, and even a few rudimentary playgrounds. I had the feeling that the playground was a relatively recent introduction to Glaton society, but they were there, and there were even a few children on them. Which, to me, indicated that we were in a middle-class neighborhood. A place that was on the other side of up and coming, perhaps.

  Leofing was still in the lead, the sun gleaming on his armor. He led us along a street, past a bunch of houses until we got to one that seemed to me like every single other house in the neighborhood. They all looked remarkably similar. Tiny yard in front of a narrow little house with two steps up to a wooden door. There were small windows everywhere, with thick curtains in front of them. Leofing pushed the gate open, and hopped up the two steps. He hammered on the door with his steel gauntlet.

  Nox looked over at me. “It would be useful to have a discussion with the man about decorum.”

  “I know what I am doing,” Leofing said over his shoulder.

  “You’re scaring them,” Nox replied.

  “Nonsense. I am showing them the strength and protection I will bring to bear.”

  “You guys been having fun working together?” I asked.

  “No,” they both said at the same time.

  “Odd,” I lied, “you’d never be able to tell.”

  We stood there a moment, and then a woman’s face appeared in the window, looking, to be fair to Nox, scared. But when she saw Leofing, she smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. She held up a finger, Leofing nodded, and in short order she had opened the door.

  “Paladin,” she said, “have you found them already?”

  “Not as of yet,” Leofing replied. “But I have brought an esteemed colleague around to examine your space, if you don’t mind.”

  “Anything you need,” she said, stepping out of the way and letting us inside.

  The home was small, cramped even, and it looked lived in. There was an odor to the place — boiled cabbage, I think. A man was sitting on a chair at the dining table in the kitchen, looking ruined. The woman went and sat next to him, leaving us to our own devices.

  “It’s upstairs,” Leofing said. “Follow.”

  Going up the stairs was tight. Especially because Leofing was not a small man. His pauldrons very nearly scraped against the walls as he walked, and he had to duck to make his way up without bashing his helm into the ceiling.

  Once up to the second floor, we walked around a short corridor and up another set of stairs to the third.

  There were three rooms, two obvious children’s bedrooms, and one that could have been a bedroom, but was being used as a playroom.

  I walked through the space, my head nearly touching the ceiling, looking for whatever it was the guys wanted to show me. The beds were unmade, with blankets tossed aside. The window was open, and there were tears in the curtains.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked.

  Leofing stayed by the stairs, but pointed to Nox.

  “That was what we had to ask ourselves at first,” Nox said. “There is little to indicate what happened.”

  “Now would be a good time for you to tell me, instead of making me guess.”

  Nox Kvist, researcher and academic, sighed loudly, clearly hoping to have a little Socratic fun. But we just didn’t have time for that.

  “Every window in the house is locked,” Nox said. “Save, obviously, these ones. But they were locked when the children were put to bed. So someone had to unlock them from the inside. The children were removed from the house via the window.”

  “No ladder marks below the window in the yard,” Leofing said, “nor on the house.”

  “Which has been consistent at every home we’ve visited,” Nox added.

  “How many homes have you gone to?” I asked.

  “Every one that has lost children,” Leofing said, his face hard.

  It made sense, then, why I hadn’t been seeing the two of them around. And I couldn’t imagine the emotional toll that kind of work had taken. That many destroyed families, having to investigate and come to the realization these children probably weren’t coming back.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said.

  Leofing shook his head. “It is a job that needs doing.”

  Nox cle
ared his throat. “To continue,” he said, “inside each of the homes, we found similar elements. Claw marks here and there, torn beddings and bedclothes.” Nox walked over to one of the beds, and moved the torn bedding out of the way.

  Deep scratches in the floor.

  There were also grooves in the wall near the window. I put my finger in them. They were deep, but the ones in the floor were smaller. Shallower, and almost looked like it was a creature trying to stop itself.

  I leaned out the window, looking around at the other homes.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nothing seemed, I mean, this house looked just like every other one on the street. And there were a lot of homes. With my hand on the sill, I felt something on the outside, underneath the sill. I bent over to look.

  “Found ‘em already, eh?” Leofing asked from inside. “Took us a few houses ‘fore we found ‘em.”

  More claw marks. Especially deep, but short. Like a creature had been grabbing onto the sill with talons. Maybe a giant owl or bird holding onto a perch before it leapt off into the air.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “What are we looking at?”

  “Multiple creatures,” Nox said. “Multiple creatures are summoned into these bedrooms. They must bewitch the children, then take the children, open the window, and fly them away.”

  Leofing nodded his agreement.

  “Not only does that account for the size differences in things like claws,” Nox continued, “but it also explains many of the other issues. These children are not harmed in any way. There has been no blood at any scene, nor any indications the children are being eaten. Not one of the parents has heard a thing, nor any neighbors have heard anything. There is no one creature that can do all of these things together. Nor have we ever heard or read of any creatures who might do things of this nature working together.”

  “Which can only mean there is someone—“ Leofing said.

  “Or someones,” Nox added.

  “Right. Multiple people working together to control multiple summoned entities in order to steal children from their homes.”

  “Which then,” Nox said, pushing me just a little out of the way so he could stand at the window, “helped us start to understand why these particular homes have been chosen. Outside, if you look that way, just a bit, you will see construction. The roof has yet to be put on, and there seems to be a bit of a platform.”

  He pointed, and, sure enough, there was a construction site three blocks, ish, over. I could see the workers currently working.

  “We have a bit of a demonstration,” Nox said.

  Leofing nodded, and stood by the window.

  “Come,” Nox said, and he and I headed downstairs.

  We moved quickly through the few blocks, then got to the construction site. There was a portly man standing at the base of building, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigar looking thing.

  “This him?” the man asked as Nox came closer.

  “It is,” Nox said.

  “Who’s this?” I asked Nox.

  “Building owner,” Nox said.

  “Ah. Thanks for letting us look here,” I said.

  The guy nodded a bit, and gestured for us to go inside. The building looked like it was a single-family home being transformed into apartments. The owner went with us up a single flight of stairs, but then it seemed like he petered out of energy, and just sort of nodded at us as we went by. We finally stopped at the fifth floor, where we were out in the open air. A cold wind came down from the mountains, threatening to bring down the rain clouds.

  The workers were clearly waiting to go back to work, and were holding back at the base of the stairs. They all glared at us.

  “We had to ask them to hold off,” Nox said. “And I fear the owner pocketed the gold we paid to make that happen.”

  There was a rudimentary frame around the floor, looking like the building was going to have at least one, if not two extra floors added. It would be the tallest building in the immediate area. When Nox pointed, I could see Leofing’s armor reflecting in the window as he waved. It was a perfect line of sight into the kids’ windows.

  Nox pointed to the wood framing the window.

  “Holes here and here,” he said. “I asked, but the workers say they did not make them.”

  “You have an idea?” I asked.

  “A lens,” he said. “Mounted here to allow easier viewing through the window. And though they tried to clean it up, you can see on the floor here — etchings and drawings.”

  He knelt and traced his finger across the raw wood. Sure enough, there was a bit of chalk left in the woodgrain. Not much, certainly not something you’d see unless you were really looking for it.

  “Summoning circles,” I said.

  Nox nodded.

  “Can you tell which creatures they’re for?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “There are so many varieties that it would be impossible.”

  “What if I had a book of summoning circles? Could you compare them?”

  Nox gave me a look, and slowly raised an eyebrow. He smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You forgot?”

  “I guess I did. What?”

  “You gave me a selection of books to look over, ones you had liberated from an Iron Silents lair when you, um, what was it?”

  “Was being spawn-camped.”

  “Yes, that. A sack of books from, um, a secret closet or something along those lines?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I took the liberty of examining those books one night, and there were, in fact, several dealing with summoning. Some demons, some devils, some elementals, some other things. A rather impressive variety, and—“

  “Get to the point.”

  “Right, well, in looking at those, and then finding these, I did what you just suggested. I compared the remnants of what I found, what we found, to the drawings in the books, and I began to find similarities. No, similarities is wrong, copies. Exact copies. I would be willing to bet that these summoning circles here are from the books the Iron Silents had.”

  “Which means the Iron Silents did this.”

  He held up a hand.

  “It is possible—“ he started, but I was already shaking my head and walking down the stairs.

  “They did this. I don’t one hundred percent know why they’d do this, but they’re the ones stealing children.”

  Nox hurried to follow, catching up to me a flight down.

  “I’m not disagreeing,” he said, “but—“

  “Because no one else would have the depravity to do this on a scale like they’ve been doing.”

  “That is not what I am asking. What are they doing with the children?”

  I just kept walking, hoping Nox would understand that I wasn’t super keen on talking about this around all the workers in the building.

  He did not.

  “Clyde,” he said, calling after me. “What—“

  “Let’s wait and have this talk later,” I snapped.

  One of the workers said, “Ooooh.” I flipped him off.

  I waited until we had retrieved Leofing before I stopped to talk about things.

  “One,” I said, “I know the Iron Silents are more than happy to summon devils and demons for essentially everyday tasks. Two, I know they have no qualms about killing anyone, so I doubt they care much about kidnapping children. Three, they work with the White Hand who, if I remember correctly, are rather fond of selling people down the river to be slaves in Carchedon.”

  “The children are kept alive then?” Leofing asked.

  “That’s an assumption,” I replied, “but that’s my guess. Why else would they be doing this?”

  “Sacrifices to power a major working,” Nox said.

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. “That’s a thing?”

  “That is a very possible thing.”

  “Whatever they’re actually doing with the children,” I s
aid, “This is something we need to take to Matthew and Titus immediately. We can’t let the Iron Silents get away with this any more.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  We went straight home as fast as we could, which meant hiring a wagon that could hold the three of us, and then paying additional coin to get the horses to move faster.

  I practically burst through the doors to the Heavy Purse, like I was walking into an old western saloon ready to throw down at high noon.

  Matthew was sitting with Titus in the corner, a set of blueprints on the table between them.

  “We solved the missing children thing,” I said, striding forth.

  “Wait, what?” Matthew asked as he was getting to his feet.

  “Well, that’s not exactly true,” I said, “I had nothing to do with it. It was all the brilliant work of Nox and Leofing—“

  Leofing had his helm in the crook of his arm. He shook his head.

  “We also had help from a strange guard,” he said. “Claimed to be Murder Police, which is a phrase I had never heard before.”

  “That is true,” Nox said. “Interesting man, with some very interesting ideas regarding investigation. He was very helpful.”

  “However you want to divide the blame,” I said, “it’s been solved.”

  “Enough grandstanding,” Matthew said. “Who?”

  “The Iron Silents.”

  For the first time, saying the name actually brought about silence.

  “You want to explain?” Matthew asked.

  I gestured for Nox and Leofing to give their spiel. They gave Matthew and Titus the short version of their presentation. It was just as convincing the second time around, and I could tell both Matthew and Titus were of the same opinion as me.

  “I agree,” Matthew said. “Iron Silents are working with the White Hand to sell these children into slavery.”

  “Boom,” I said. “There we go. Problem solved.”

  “Oddly enough,” Matthew countered, “I don’t think it is quite that simple.”

  “Not with that attitude it’s not.”

  “You do realize there are quite a few factors at play here, right?”