Mermaid Precinct (ARC)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Danthres shrugged. “Just need my partner and my witness.”

  A voice came from the squadroom. “Where the hell is everyone?”

  Poking her head out the pantry door, Danthres saw Gonzal, Jayson, Rodolfo, and Voran, the Pirate Queen’s cook, which was one more person than she expected to see.

  “Rodolfo, thank you for coming,” she said, exiting into the squadroom. “Voran, why are you here?”

  “I have an important matter I must discuss with you and your partner, Lieutenant. It’s not something I can share with my shipmates.”

  Rodolfo looked disdainfully down at the cook. “Which I find impossible to credit.”

  Holding up both hands, Voran said, “It has nothing to do with Rising Jewel. It has to do with my life before I signed up. But it’s something I can only talk to them about.”

  Danthres found this fascinating, especially since Voran hadn’t said much of substance in his interview, nor given any indication that he was hiding anything. To Jayson she said, “Put Cook here in three and Rodolfo in one.”

  Jayson nodded and guided Voran toward interrogation room three on the far end of the squadroom’s south wall. Gonzal said, “C’mon,” and guided Rodolfo to the door on the nearer end, right next to the pantry.

  After doing so, Jayson said, “By the way, Lieutenant, that gnome feller had a message for ya. Said there ain’t no stowaway that they found. Same forty-six people been on the ship the whole time.”

  Danthres nodded, and the two guards from Mermaid Precinct took their leave, passing Torin as he entered.

  “Good timing,” Danthres said. Then she caught sight of her partner’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  Plastering a smile on, Torin said, “Nothing, just a rough night.” He hung his cloak on the pegboard.

  “Everything okay with Jak?” Danthres asked.

  Torin opened his mouth, closed it, then let out a long exhalation. “May we please talk about it tonight, after the shift ends? It’s going to require a rather protracted conversation, and it’s one that will require copious amounts of ale.”

  “Understood,” Danthres said. “And agreed, as we don’t have time for protracted conversation. Having the Rising Jewel in dock is causing all kinds of problems.” She filled Torin in on Mannit’s complaints, the carpenters guild’s complaints, and Manticore Precinct’s report.

  “Five? Well, I suppose being a pirate is preferable to being a prisoner.”

  “And two of our pirates are in interrogation. Besides Rodolfo, the cook volunteered to be questioned. Said he had something that could only be spoken of to you and me and relates to his life before signing aboard with the Captain.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I doubt it. Probably some matter that relates to why he ran away to join a pirate ship. Let’s let him stew in three for a while, I want to get to Rodolfo.”

  “Agreed—how do you wish to handle the revelation of his parentage?”

  “Let’s see how it goes. If he knows, we’ll proceed as needed, but if he doesn’t know, I’d like to be the one to tell him.”

  Torin nodded. “Very well. Shall we?”

  Danthres opened the door to the interrogation room. Rodolfo was leaning on the table rather than sitting in the uncomfortable stool on the other side of it, which was where interview subjects were generally instructed to sit.

  “I like this room,” Rodolfo said with a smile. “The one lantern, no windows, uncomfortable chairs—it’s a clinic in making someone ill at ease.”

  Torin shot Danthres a look of appreciation, then said, “Please, have a seat in the uncomfortable chair, Boatswain.”

  Rodolfo smiled. “I’d rather stand, truly.”

  “Even after walking all the way across the city-state?” Torin asked, sounding surprised.

  Shrugging, Rodolfo said, “I am on my feet most of every day. I’m used to it.”

  “Nonetheless,” Danthres said, “we’d like to sit, and we’d rather you sat as well.”

  “Whatever you say, Thressa.”

  Danthres winced. It was one thing for Rodolfo to be familiar when it was just the two of them in the Rising Jewel wardroom, but in here… “Under the circumstances, I think it would be best if you referred to me by my rank, Boatswain.”

  Sitting in the stool, Rodolfo contritely said, “Of course, Lieutenant, my apologies.”

  As she sat in one of the two chairs, Torin doing likewise next to her, Danthres asked, “How much do you remember of your arrival at Sorlin?”

  “Bits and pieces. In all honesty, my first memory is waking up in Tharri’s arms. Sorry,” he added, “I mean in Elsthar Javian’s arms.”

  “I know to whom ‘Tharri’ refers,” Torin said, “as I met the gentleman a year ago. You were only a month old or so when you came to Sorlin, from what Lieutenant Tresyllione has told me. Have you any memories prior to that?”

  Rodolfo frowned. “A vague notion of being in a cave with the Captain.”

  Danthres asked, “Did the Captain ever tell you who your parents were?”

  “She didn’t know. That wasn’t unusual,” he added quickly, “most of the halfbreed children she rescued had lost their parents or had been abandoned. Or their parents had already been killed by the purity squads.”

  Torin folded his hands on the rickety wooden table that was between the detectives the interview subject. “You told Danthres that the Pirate Queen revealed her true name to you.”

  “Yes, her name was Lillyana.”

  “That is information that is not easy to come by. I joked with Danthres when she told me that every bard in Flingaria would pay all the gold they had to learn the Pirate Queen’s real name.”

  “I suppose. But she seemed to be speaking to me in confidence.” Rodolfo smiled. “Well, truthfully, she told me when she was very inebriated. I suspect that, had she been sober, she would never have dreamt of revealing it. I’m not even sure she recalled doing so.” He leaned forward and talked in an almost conspiratorial whisper. “Forgive me, Lieutenant, but what does my past and the Captain confiding in me have to do with this investigation?”

  Danthres cut Torin’s response off. “We ask the questions in this room, Boatswain, and my next one is simply this: why did you sign onto the Rising Jewel?”

  Rodolfo held his hands palms-up toward the ceiling. “I needed somewhere to go when Sorlin was dissolved. I had sailing experience, and the Captain is the one who saved my life. Besides—” He hesitated. “I realize I’m not supposed to ask a question, but I need to ask this in order to answer yours: how much do you know about nautical tradition in Flingaria?”

  “I’m familiar with the science of seacraft,” Torin said, “but I’ve never actually served on a vessel, so I’m afraid I know only what I’ve heard from working in Cliff’s End this past decade.”

  “Only the second part for me,” Danthres said. “My knowledge of sailing is limited to knowing that wind is involved.”

  “Ah. That explains it.”

  “Explains what?” Danthres asked.

  “Letashia went down in a hurricane. I was one of only a handful of survivors. Generally, those who go down with a ship that is lost at sea are venerated. But if there are only a tiny number of survivors, those people are vilified. They didn’t go down with the ship, and if they were able to save themselves, why didn’t they save others?”

  “That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” Danthres said, meaning it. “And I hear many idiotic things on a daily basis, so I do not say that lightly.”

  “It’s why I returned to Sorlin after Letashia went down. I had no other recourse, at least with a legitimate boat.”

  “An illegitimate boat, though,” Torin said, “was fair game?”

  Rodolfo nodded. “The Captain took me and the others aboard with no questions asked. She knew all of us anyhow.”

  “And she made you boatswain?” Danthres asked.

  “Not right away—I was boatswain’s mate, but I was promoted relatively quick
ly, because I knew my way around a boat. And—” He hesitated. “The boatswain to whom I was mate jumped overboard one night a few weeks after I signed on. We never did find out why.”

  “So,” Danthres said, “you never knew why the Captain confided in you with her real name, you never knew your parents, you never knew why she made you boatswain.”

  “I told you, the boatswain committed suicide, and—”

  “And normally,” Torin said, “a boatswain’s mate wouldn’t ascend until being on board for at least a year, prior experience notwithstanding. After all, every boat is different, and it would take that long for you to master all the procedures on board, especially those that differed from those of the Letashia. Yet, she favored you.”

  “I—I suppose.” Rodolfo seemed confused.

  Danthres decided to go for broke. “So you’re unaware who your parents are?”

  “You keep asking me that, Thressa!” Rodolfo’s voice had raised considerably, and he stood up. “I’ve been very patiently asking your very invasive questions, most of which have nothing to do with the Captain’s murder.”

  “Sit down, Rodolfo,” Danthres said in a very quiet tone.

  To Danthres’s relief, Rodolfo was properly cowed by her tone and sat quietly.

  “Now then,” she said, “please answer my question. Are you unaware of who your parents are?”

  “I am, in fact, unaware, as you well know, Lieutenant, because I believe I was fairly consistently referred to as an orphan during my time in Sorlin. And it didn’t matter, because the community of Sorlin raised me, including you. So no, I’m not aware of who my parents are, nor do I give much of a damn, because they don’t matter. My father provided a pelvic thrust, my mother carried me for nine months, but those are as nothing compared to the lifetime of support I got from the community. And you should know that, Thressa!”

  An awkward silence followed. Torin sat waiting, she knew, for Danthres to say what obviously needed to be said.

  She almost didn’t want to say anything, but she had come this far.

  “Rodolfo—Lillyana, the Pirate Queen, was your mother.”

  For several seconds, Rodolfo simply stared at Danthres.

  Then he burst out laughing.

  “Something amuses you?”

  After catching his breath, Rodolfo said, “I believe this should challenge the absurdity of a taboo against sailors who failed to die at sea during a hurricane as the most idiotic thing said in this room today.” He laughed some more. “The Captain could not possibly have been my mother.”

  “And yet,” Danthres said, “all the facts support it.”

  “What facts?”

  She started to enumerate points on her fingers. “Fact: before bringing you to Sorlin as an infant, the Captain was in hiding for ten months. She claimed it was to avoid someone out to kill her, but someone was always out to kill her. However, it was enough time for her to not be seen while pregnant. Fact: she told you her real name, something she has never shared with anyone else, as far as can be known. Fact: she made you boatswain ahead of schedule. Fact: you have the same eyes as the captain, and the same jawline.”

  “But— That just—” He shook his head. “Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

  “Because,” Torin said, “being known to have a child would be a vulnerability for her. You’d be a target for anyone who wished to get at her through her offspring.”

  “Also,” Danthres added, “I’m fairly certain that your father was Kerestha. He and the Captain were lovers, and he died after you were conceived but before you were born. You may have been a reminder she didn’t wish to have of his death.”

  Rodolfo looked down at the floor. “I just—I—” He stood up. “This is madness! Why would you tell me this now, Thressa?”

  Danthres stood up and put her hands on his shoulders. “Because I wasn’t sure if you knew. And if you did find out, and find out that she kept this from you, it’s a reason to have killed her.”

  “Killed her?” He shrugged her hands off and backed away from her into the corner of the interrogation room. “You’re mad! I loved her as much as I did all of you! Even not knowing she was my mother, I adored her as much as I would have my mother, and as much as I did everyone in Sorlin! I would sooner kill myself than kill her!” Tears started to well up in his black eyes and streak down his prominent cheeks. “And I had no idea she birthed me.” Palming away a tear, he added, “Though now that you spell it out…”

  “It makes sense. I actually figured it out years ago, but I assumed the Captain had her reasons for keeping it secret.”

  “Pardon another question, but what happens now?” Rodolfo asked as he collapsed back onto the stool.

  Torin rose. “Now you wait here. Danthres?”

  Danthres hesitated, and then followed Torin out of the room.

  Once she closed the door behind her, she regarded her partner. “I don’t think he did it.”

  “I’m still not convinced he didn’t.”

  Danthres was about to question her partner’s skepticism when Dru came out of his office.

  “How’d it go?” the captain asked.

  “Still not quite sure yet,” Torin said. “You wouldn’t happen to know about naval traditions, would you?”

  Rolling his eyes, Dru said, “More than I ever needed to. Hawk wanted to buy a boat, remember? And he used to go sailing with his grandfather. So yeah, I heard all about every sailing custom in the history of Flingaria. Why?”

  “If a sailing ship goes down in, say, a hurricane, and most hands are lost, are the few who survive ostracized?”

  “Oh yeah. Hawk told me this story his grandfather told him about a ship called the Roobin that got sunk, an’ three people survived. They all died poor, ’cause nobody’d hire ’em.”

  Torin nodded. “All right then, I’m starting to come around to the notion that he didn’t do this. However, I’d like to check the nautical records, see if we can verify what he said about the Letashia.”

  “What about the Letashia?” came Dannee’s voice from the doorway. She was entering the squadroom with Aleta.

  “You know of it?” Danthres asked.

  Dannee nodded. “My mother was in a performance of The Wreck of the Letashia.”

  Rolling her eyes, Danthres said, “Of course they made a theatrical production of it.”

  “Do you know anything of the real story of the ship?” Torin asked her.

  “Oh yes. Mother always researched every part she did as best she could. The Letashia went down in one of the great hurricanes. Only four people survived, and three of them were dwarves. The play is about the three of them.”

  “What about the fourth?” Torin asked.

  “The play doesn’t really do anything with him. He was a half-elf.”

  “I don’t suppose you recall his name?”

  Dannee winced. “I’m afraid not, Lieutenant, sorry.”

  Before Torin could say anything else, Dru interrupted. “It’s fine—what about the peel-back, Boneen get anything?”

  Aleta said, “He got everything, in fact. He’s creating a crystal with the image of the perpetrator in his lair right now. Once he provides it, we’ll show it to the victim’s brother, see if he recognizes him.”

  “Good.” Dru then turned to Torin. “Now then, how’d that really go?”

  “In light of your verification of naval legend and Dannee’s verification of the fate of the Letashia, I’m more inclined to believe his story that he didn’t kill her—and he definitely didn’t know she was his mother.”

  “You think his surprise was genuine?” Dru asked. “I’m guessin’ he at least acted surprised?”

  “He did,” Torin said, “but it wasn’t that that convinced me, it was his complete lack of caring of who his parents were.”

  Danthres added, “Sorlin is—was a very inclusive community. We didn’t have family units, the entire community was one family. We all took care of each other.”

  “Rodolfo never learne
d who his mother was because it wasn’t a fact that interested him,” Torin said. “He’s sufficiently intelligent that I believe he would understand her motives for keeping his parentage secret, and he was sufficiently cared for by the people of Sorlin that his not knowing wasn’t a deception that would have scarred him enough to motivate him to commit homicide.”

  “So not our guy,” Dru said. “What about the cook?”

  “I suppose we can talk to him now,” Danthres said, “but I can’t imagine he’ll say anything useful.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Torin said with a grin.

  They went into interrogation room three and saw Voran, picking away at one of the splinters on the wooden table. He looked up and seemed relieved to see the two detectives enter. “Finally. I was starting to worry that you forgot about me.”

  “My apologies, good sir,” Torin said, “but we had requested Rodolfo’s presence. We had very specific questions for him that required immediate answers. Now that they have been provided, we shall turn our attention to you. I’m Lieutenant Torin ban Wyvald, and I believe you met my partner, Lieutenant Danthres Tresyllione, on the Rising Jewel.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m Voran.”

  Danthres sat down on one of the chairs, though Torin remained standing. She said, “Yes, the ship’s cook.”

  “I’m afraid I’m much more than that. You see, my work as the ship’s cook was a cover for my true purpose on Rising Jewel. I’m not actually from Treemark, I’m from Iaron, and I’m part of a group called the Cabal for a Better Flingaria.”

  Danthres had to admit that this was not what she had expected. Though it was kind of the cook to provide himself with a perfect way to make himself an ideal suspect, especially since they’d pretty much eliminated Rodolfo as one.

  “Our goal was to convince the Pirate Queen to take her proper place on the Silver Thrones in Velessa.”

  For the second time in this conversation, Voran said something Danthres did not expect. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You see, the Pirate Queen’s real name is Lillyana—the older sister to Queen Marta, and the rightful heir to rule the human lands.”