Titanshade

by Dan Stout

  I wiped a hand across my face. The brass was headed in to make their appearance for the cameras. Money and politics.

  The sound of rolling carts got louder. Behind Bryyh’s back the Therreau funeral procession approached. They had caught up with me, the shrouded corpse-wagon pulled by slow-moving tibron beetles twice my size. Methodical and never-stopping, they carried their burden to the mountain.

  Bryyh headed toward the hotel. I rolled my head in a slow loop, stretching the tendons in my neck. The tension in my shoulders was building back up, and the pain in my bones wasn’t going to go away by itself. But I put one foot in front of another, and walked back inside that hotel.

  2

  BRYYH WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE brass. Within twenty minutes of our conversation, everyone over the rank of lieutenant in the TPD began making an appearance. I guess they all went to the same PR class that Angus had attended. They put on somber faces and shook their heads at the crime, then nodded in agreement when each one, in turn, stated their determination to find the killer. Maybe they meant it, or maybe they just wanted to gawk at the victim before going back to their safe homes and comfortable offices, where they could brag to their country club friends about the time they’d gotten a whiff of Squib blood.

  Despite her promise, Bryyh never did find something for me to do. She was immediately swept up in dealing with her superiors and the press, and when I revisited room 430 Angus informed me in no uncertain terms that he didn’t need my assistance.

  “The offer’s appreciated,” he said as he looked over my shoulder at the stream of influential brass entering behind me. “But I’m first on-scene and we should keep it thin up here. Too many cooks and all.” His eyes lit up. “Alvin! Good to see you.” He stepped to the side, distancing himself from me as he welcomed an older man in a dress uniform who I’d never seen in my life.

  Unable to leave and barred from the crime scene proper, I might have been forgiven if I’d simply found a vacant corner and grabbed some shuteye. Instead, I figured that if I couldn’t be relaxing with a drink, I might as well do the only other thing I’m good at. Lucky for me, a hotel is an extremely convenient place to investigate a murder.

  * * *

  Most people don’t know this, but death is a frequent visitor to the hospitality industry. Suicides who don’t want their corpse to be discovered by their families, addicts who want some privacy to get high and end up overdosing, countless illicit deals gone wrong, and secret affairs whose passions burned too bright. You’d be surprised how often death slips past the numbered doors of a hotel guest room.

  Accordingly, hotels have policies to deal with such uncomfortable situations. They cover everything from standardized forms to polite requests for the coroner to come in by the back stairs. This is totally understandable. After all, they have a business to run, and these unpleasant events can be accompanied by headaches.

  Headaches like me.

  The general manager of the Eagle Crest was a petite man with perfect cuticles and a scar on his upper lip. He had returned to the hotel after getting word of what was found on the fourth floor of his fine establishment. Considering how fastidious the rest of his appearance was, I figured that he had some plastic surgery in mind to take care of the scar. I made a mental note to subpoena his bank accounts and monitor for any large deposits that might indicate a payoff. Everyone’s a suspect when you begin a murder investigation.

  “I would appreciate a little consideration,” he said for the third time. All I’d done was ask if he’d seen anyone with large amounts of blood on their person. Granted, I’d asked from across the lobby, but still—he seemed jumpy.

  “I’m sure we can get you the information you need,” he said, “if you can keep your voice down.”

  “Amazing thing about voices,” I said. “The happier I am, the quieter mine gets.”

  I wanted the security video. Somewhere on that tape, mixed in with all the other people who had been in and out of the building, we had the killer’s photo.

  The manager grimaced, but didn’t say anything else as he retreated to the back office. Alone at the front desk I stuck out like a black dog on a snowfield. I was the only cop in the lobby. Angus had directed the tech cars to the rear of the building and was running all the crime scene crews in through the employee entrance. He’s always been very accommodating to management. That’s probably why he gets so many commendations.

  While I waited for the manager to return I tasked my weary eyes with finding the complimentary coffee stand. I was headed its direction when a new police cruiser pulled up to the hotel’s front door. The passenger side opened and a woman rolled out, tall and skinny with unnaturally white hair done up in elaborate curls. My old man hadn’t left me with much to remember him by, but one of his sayings came back to me as I watched her stroll into the Eagle Crest Hotel: “Never turn your back on an ice-plains wolf, and never trust anyone who’s hungry by choice.”

  The newcomer was dressed for an evening out, but as she walked she slipped a dark cloak over her shoulders. It had the look of velvet, and was lined with iridescent symbols that disappeared when I looked directly at them. This had to be the divination officer. Seeing a DO was rare enough, but this one was even more unusual—I’d never seen her before, and I’d gotten into screaming matches with pretty much every ranking officer in the department. I decided to introduce myself.

  Stepping into her path, I flashed my badge. “Detective Carter,” I said. “I’ll take you up to the scene.”

  She stepped around me without slowing.

  “No need. I’m to meet Detective—” She glanced at the palm of her left hand, where something was written in ballpoint pen. “—Angus. He is the detective on-scene, correct?”

  I kept pace with her. Divination officers tend to be assigned to high-profile cases, which are the kind that I generally never get near. Accompanying the DO would give me a chance to see a little sorcery being done, and better yet, a way to get back into room 430 to spite Angus.

  “Is he expecting you?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t really matter.”

  We reached the elevator lobby, and she jabbed the call button. As the elevator descended, the DO looked me over for the first time. I was suddenly very conscious of the wrinkles in my suit and the stains on my shirt. I decided to try a different tack.

  “This crime scene,” I said. “It’s pretty bad. You’ll want a—”

  “A respirator. I called and confirmed there’s one available, thank you.” She glanced at the elevator indicator light, then back at me. “How long have you been on shift?”

  I attempted a shrug of indifference. “I had a double yesterday. This call came in right before I rotated out. Thought I’d stick around and help out.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Even though another detective was first on-scene?”

  If I was going to lay it on, I might as well lay it on thick.

  “I’m sort of a team player.”

  “Well. I admit you’ve got the lobby well guarded.”

  The elevator arrived with a ding, doors opening to reveal a gleaming metal interior. She walked inside and turned to face me. Her voice didn’t soften, but she gave me a respectful nod and said, “Go home, Detective. I’ve got this covered.”

  The elevator doors pulled closed, and for the briefest moment I thought I saw someone standing behind her. I wedged my hand into the opening, prying the doors open, and saw my own face over her shoulder. I’d been spooked by my reflection in the polished brass of the elevator cab. Brown eyes ringed by dark circles stared back at me, and a whisker-covered jawline drifting toward middle-aged softness worked open and closed as I muttered an apology. I stepped back, embarrassed. But there was surprisingly no rebuke from the DO.

  “Get some rest,” she said. “There’ll be plenty more to do tomorrow.” The elevator doors drew closed once more.

  I heard a co
ugh from the direction of the front desk and I turned around. The manager was back. He leaned over the edge of the front counter so he could see me where I stood in the elevator lobby.

  “It seems the security tapes have already been confiscated. A young Mollenkampi officer collected them.”

  I ran a hand through my hair, skirting the edges of the bald spot I tried to pretend didn’t exist, while the manager kept talking.

  “You realize that if you’d spoken with your own people, we could all have been saved a lot of trouble.” With that he turned and retreated into the back office.

  He was right. The DO was right. I was dead on my feet—useless. And down in the lobby there wasn’t even anyone I could be useless for. I realized the sensible thing would be to go home, where I could at least be useless to my cat.

  Instead I jammed the elevator button and waited for my ride up to the fourth floor.

  * * *

  When I approached room 430 there was a patrol cop at the door, a Mollenkampi named Cardamom who I knew from the Borderlands beat. She was doing her honest best to stand tall in her crimson uniform, but her eyes showed that mixture of boredom and disgust that comes with standing for hours next to a grotesque display of violence.

  I sidled up next to her and muttered from the side of my mouth, “Anyone run out to puke yet?”

  Her eyes perked up as she recognized me. “Not lately,” she said, the words coming from the small opening in her throat. “But give it time and it’ll happen.”

  I laughed and asked about her family. Cardamom was a good cop stuck on a crap detail, and she appreciated even a brief distraction. A Mollenkampi was a natural choice to choose as a guard, as they weren’t affected by Squib smell, but it still wasn’t pleasant standing with your back to a slaughterhouse while the detectives came and went like visitors at a freak show.

  I was about to crack a joke when the door opened and a human jogged out wearing a respirator. He yanked off his protective shoe covers as he passed, trying not to tread blood on the hotel carpet. I couldn’t see the face behind the mask, but from the pace he set I figured he was looking for somewhere to be sick.

  Cardamom watched the sickened man stagger down the hall. “Told you there’d be one sooner or later.”

  Laughter tinkled through the rows of needle-sharp teeth lining her speaking mouth. Mollenkampi’s expressions are conveyed by their eyes, their tone of voice, their body language. Clear enough if you knew what to look for, but to humans farther south the Mollenkampi were stone-faced warriors, a baffling blend of delicate, songlike speech and the intimidating sight of heavy biting jaws erupting from the taut skin of their faces like some mythical creature shedding its human skin.

  In Titanshade the general greed and economic plenty of the oil boom had worked to smooth over relations, but tensions still simmered. From skin tone to favorite sports team, there’s never been a shortage of excuses to hate other people—human or otherwise.

  I pointed at the departing detective. “No shame in it,” I said. “Just shows he’s not dead inside.” I glanced over Cardamom’s shoulder, through the now-open door to room 430.

  The crew was mostly Mollenkampi, with a few respirator-masked humans in the mix. The DO was there, a respirator flattening the curls in her shock of white hair. She paced back and forth in white slip-on booties already stained scarlet. Those were standard issue in high-contamination sites. Disposable, waterproof slip-ons that would be discarded each time an officer left the scene. There needed to be a store-case of them nearby; a few paces down the hall sat a plastic bin. Lifting the lid, I found respirators and slip-ons rolled in pairs. I snagged one of each and turned back to Cardamom.

  “Listen, I know Angus told you not to let me in . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “He told me not to let specific people in. I don’t know who you are behind the respirator. All I see’s a human with a badge.” Her eyes crinkled, and her mandibles twitched.

  I smiled back and slid my respirator on. A moment later I walked into room 430.

  Angus was splitting his attention between showboating for the DO and bullying the junior detectives present. A plastic tarp stretched across the floor, piled with the Squib’s remains. Trying to be inconspicuous I stayed close to the entryway, where the gore hadn’t quite reached. Beneath my feet, through the clear plastic laid out to protect the crime scene, I could see imprints on the carpet. A sharp curve and two short, straight lines. I pushed at them with the toe of my shoe. Something heavy and round had sat there recently, maybe with a pair of wheels. Any further observation was cut short when Angus raised his voice.

  “DO Guyer is going to conduct a reading of the body,” he announced to the room, lecturing like a tenured professor.

  Behind him the DO stared at the contents on the tarp.

  “Is this all that’s left?” she said. Angus nodded and she shook her head. “Well, Hells below, I need more than this.”

  Angus was silent, though one mandible twitched. He was probably about as tired as I was. Poor baby, I thought.

  The DO stared him down. “I’m serious. Reading entrails involves reading entrails, not random chunks of Squib. I have no idea what I’m going to get from this.”

  Angus jerked his chin at her—a truly intimidating gesture when backed by Mollenkampi incisors– but dropped his gaze. “Do what you can. This needs to be wrapped up ASAP.”

  Guyer sighed and pulled off her latex gloves with a snap. A tech held up a plastic bag, and she tossed the gloves inside. “Well, this is where it gets messy.”

  She held up a vial and I recognized the substance inside immediately.

  Manna is the only liquid that shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow, an ephemeral effect like an oil film on a puddle of water. That tiny vial of manna probably cost more than a year of my salary.

  The DO took a breath. I was glad I couldn’t smell the reek of cinnamon through my respirator, but thinking of it made my stomach gurgle.

  “What’s his name?” Guyer asked.

  Angus consulted his notepad and read, “Garson Haberdine.”

  I recognized that name from the desk registry.

  Guyer nodded and dipped a finger into her manna vial. She touched a drop to her lips then spread it across them with her tongue. She rubbed the manna into her hands, stretching the precious material as far as it would go. A hundred years ago there’d been enough manna to fuel engines by the gallon. After the Shortage left the world with a fixed amount of manna it had become increasingly valuable. What stores remained were closely regulated by governments and a few wealthy private concerns. That scarcity combined with advances in magical theory meant that a small amount could—and needed to—go a long way.

  Spreading her arms, the DO threw back her head, her cloak billowing out like the fins of a great sea creature. The cloak’s runes were easily visible now, dancing with tiny sparks of light that trailed afterimages across my retinas. With all eyes on her no one noticed me sidling in for a better look.

  Bending, she shoved both hands into the mass of viscera and raised her arms. Coagulated chunks of the victim rained down in an arc.

  “Speak to me, Garson Haberdine.” Through her manna-touched lips her voice took on a richer timbre and echoed more than it should have in a thickly carpeted room. “Speak through this fellow walker of the Path. Make my hands your own so we may seek justice in your name.” She leaned forward and spread the entrails around like a toddler playing with finger paints. Several of the spectators pulled back, disgust or decency making them turn their heads. I stepped in closer, my desire to see the results of the spell outweighing the twinge in my gut as Guyer handled the entrails. I realized I was on the verge of pushing past Angus and forced myself to step back.

  The scattered viscera formed a pattern as it passed through the DO’s manna-laced fingers. Angus looked over her shou
lder and asked what we were all wondering.

  “What’s it say?”

  The DO snorted. “It says dick-all.”

  Angus blinked, then looked from the bloody smear on the floor to Guyer.

  “What?”

  Her eyes tightened, and I thought that if it weren’t for the respirator she would have spit in the middle of the remains. “It’s gibberish. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  She pointed at the beginning of the pattern. “Here it says ‘In my time I know the way,’ then nonsense, then ‘the patch the broken spear.’ And this—” She poked at a particularly random-looking blob. “This isn’t even words. This is . . .” She picked up a bloody piece of the mess and stared at it before flicking it away. “That’s a toenail. Dammit, I told you this is an incantation to read entrails.” Guyer glared around the room. “Toes aren’t entrails, are they, Detective?”

  She straightened and stormed away from the mess. I looked in the direction of the discarded flesh and tried not to think about whether Garson Haberdine had any family and how they might feel if this scene had played in front of them. You have to compartmentalize your emotions to stay sane in this job. It comes easier to some of us, I guess.

  “Someone give me a towel.” Guyer snatched a terrycloth piece of fabric from a young Mollenkampi detective and scrubbed the mess off her hands. She tore off the respirator and tossed it and the towel aside. The younger detective snagged them out of the air and handed them to the tech with the bag. The kid had fast hands.

  Angus rounded on her with as much vitriol as I’d ever seen him show a superior. “So what? You’re saying you can’t do anything?”

  “Oh, I’ll get the answers. But I’ll need fresh blood to do it. Right now, I’ve got a dinner party to get back to. I’ll see you tomorrow, Detective.” She pushed past me on her way out and up close the electric power of the manna radiated from her like heat from an open oven. Anyone could use manna to power a machine, but sorcerers had the ability and training to focus it, amplifying and transforming it into something extraordinary.