by John Meaney
“Can I help you?” said Donal.
“Um. . . it's about Dr. d'Alkarny.”
“And you are?”
“Brixhan Dektrolis. I'm not sure, but I think that one of my colleagues might be carrying out a postmortem on Dr. d'Alkarny.”
Donal said, “This is the OCML, isn't it? Where autopsies take place?”
“Of course it's—” Brixhan colored. “The person involved is not qualified, and I believe he might have had an emotional attachment to Dr. d'Alkarny.”
“Goodness.”
“Well, yes. It's a clear breach of professional—”
“I'll say. Listen, did you assist my colleague, Detective Ceerling? Alexa Ceerling?”
Brixhan blinked. “Yes, I unlocked the records room for—”
“And cross-checked with the”—Donal was going to say “the correspondence files,” then quickly changed his words—“tags in the Honeycomb? Just to make sure we've got the right body.”
“There's no mistake.” Brixhan frowned, probably trying to look authoritative. “The records are accurate.”
“Of course they are. You people do good work.” Donal let his gaze go unfocused. “Don't care for it myself.”
“A lot of people react that way.” Brixhan sounded smug. “We have the training, though.”
“We certainly need forensic geniuses.” Donal raised an eyebrow. “And people who know how to be professional. I think you're destined to go far.”
“Ah. Thank you, Lieutenant Riordan.”
So Brixhan had already learned Donal's name, though Donal hadn't introduced himself.
“Perhaps,” Donal said, letting his gaze drift toward the steel wall beyond which lay the autopsy rooms, “you'll go as far as Dr. d'Alkarny herself.”
Brixhan's mouth worked silently.
“Take it easy,” Donal added.
He hitched his jacket, being careful to let the butt of his Magnus show for just a second—it made Brixhan take an involuntary half step back—then turned and walked away, letting Brixhan make of his remarks whatever he wanted.
Unpleasant asshole.
But being a creep wasn't a major crime, more like a congenital disease. It had been a long time since Donal let people like Brixhan worry him.
Conversely, Donal knew that making an enemy of Commissioner Vilnar would not be worrying: it would be terrifying. He had respect for the man. But if Vilnar was involved with the Black Circle, then someone had to take him down.
On the edge of the lab area was a kind of antechamber that acted as a waiting room for civilians who needed to identify a body or otherwise assist. Donal had been there several times with relatives of victims—or in one case, in the company of a fat old lady who examined the soapy-looking body of the man thought to be her son, poked it with one gnarled finger, and said, “Looks like a piece a shit, doesn't he? Too good lookin' to be my boy, though. Nice try, Loot.”
He made his way there now, remembering the small acoustically shielded phone booth set against one wall. The room was empty, so Donal dug in his pocket for the seven-sided coins he needed, picked up the receiver, and fed the coins into the slot.
A woman's voice answered.
“Hello? Commissioner Vilnar's office.”
“Hi,” said Donal, realizing that he had no idea what Eyes's real name was. “Um . . . Is he in? This is Riordan.”
“One moment.” Eyes was too self-confident to lie and say that she would have to check. She was quite capable of telling anyone that her boss was too busy to talk. “Putting you through, Lieutenant.”
There was a click and a scrape, and Donal imagined Eyes flicking a toggle switch on her console. Could she listen in on these conversations?
No matter. If Vilnar trusted her, then she could; otherwise, he would have taken countermeasures.
“Riordan.”
“Sir. I'm at the OCML, where Cortindo's body was stolen.”
“You think that's news to me?”
“The theft? No, sir. And I assume you know that Dr. d'Alkarny was killed during the break-in.”
There was a long pause, longer than Donal would have expected.
“Is there any progress on that? On her death?”
“Almost certainly the two suspects we have in custody killed her. I'm expecting confirmation on that shortly.”
“Confirmation?”
“Sir, Dr. d'Alkarny was a Bone Listener. She might have been able to visualize her dying moments in sharp focus, so that the vision could be . . . retrieved. Later.”
“You mean they're carrying out an autopsy.”
“There hasn't been time,” said Donal, “to get the magistrate's authorization for a PM.”
“And?” Vilnar's tone was dry. He might not be a street cop anymore, but he understood bureaucratic systems and how to bypass them.
“Someone's doing the autopsy right now. Unofficially.”
There was a sound on the line that might have been static, might have been Vilnar exhaling.
“Good. Let me know how that turns out. Good work, Riordan.”
“Er . . . One thing more, sir. Cortindo's body was in stasis.”
“It was? But his death was weeks ago, when you . . .”
“When I killed him. Yes.”
There was more that Donal could say, but this seemed the wrong time to say it. Instead, he added, “But that was just a bureaucratic hitch, I think. It's the dwarves who are the main lead.”
“Dwarves?”
“The two suspects we have in the cells. They're four feet tall, if that, but powerful.”
“Ah.” Papers rustled at the other end of the line: Vilnar checking documents on his desk. “Yes. I see.”
So Vilnar already had copies of the arrest-and-detention reports.
“And the task force? Are they making any other progress I should know about?”
Donal hesitated.
“Commander Steele is very capable, sir,” he said finally. “But one of their other officers was kidnapped and rescued, and none of it looks like it's leading anywhere. I'd say the task force is . . . distracted.”
Let Vilnar think that the trail had stopped instead of leading directly to his office.
“All right.” Vilnar coughed. “Keep me informed.”
“Yes—”
But the line was already dead. Donal listened to the oceanic wash of static hiss, learning nothing. He put the receiver down and left the waiting room, failing to notice the faint misty movement, nearly invisible, against the wall where the phone was attached.
Long wraith fingers curled back, the insubstantial hand palm up. Then the wraith raised her middle finger and gestured toward the doorway where Donal had disappeared.
*Screw you, lover boy.*
Xalia disappeared back inside the wall.
Harald addressed the rest of the team (Sushana excluded—it would be a long time before she left the hospital) with his eyes flatter than usual, his voice toneless. The results of the autopsy conducted by the young Bone Listener Lexar were conclusive as far as the task force was concerned.
Presenting the findings before a court of law would be a different proposition.
Donal leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, unsure why Xalia had moved away from him when he entered the room.
“Surely we can put the Ugly Twins at the scene. I saw them on the roof, for Thanatos's sake, while an unregistered pterabat took off into the sky.”
“A pterabat,” said Laura, “that not only failed to file a flight plan but escaped detection by any surveillance system. None of our launched copters managed to spot it.”
“Damn it.”
“Well, yes. The dwarves' green van wasn't identified for sure either. The only link”—Laura nodded toward Harald—“is Dr. d'Alkarny's dying memory of the dwarves attacking her. If we can retroactively get the magistrate's authorization for Lexar to perform the PM, then we'll be able to submit that much evidence.”
Alexa held out both hands.
“W
ell, then. That is enough, isn't it?”
“To get the foot soldiers,” growled Viktor. “Not the ones who ordered them to kill Mina.”
Harald nodded slowly.
“Shit,” said Alexa.
For a few moments, nobody spoke. Then Donal shifted against the wall. “You said something about a weapon, Harald? An ax?”
Harald shrugged.
“Lexar says it was Illurian.”
“Another connection to Illurium,” muttered Laura. “And you've got contacts of your own there, haven't you?”
Donal raised his eyebrows. Harald said, “I was there for nearly two years. In the military police, seconded from the marines.”
“Yeah, like one ax,” muttered Viktor, “is going to lead you to the shop that sold it. One shop from an entire country. Assuming it was Illurian . . . This Lexar can't be certain, can he?”
“It was ensorcelled in some way,” said Harald. “Coherent flux thingy . . . I can't remember what he said.”
“You weren't taking notes?” Alexa's tone was half joke, half accusation.
“No, there was a scribewraith writing an official record.”
“Without a time stamp, I hope,” said Laura.
If the wraith had time-stamped the record, it would flag the autopsy as having taken place before legal permission was granted. That would be enough to make the findings inadmissible as evidence.
Liquid waves rippling through a melting human body . . .
The sudden image passed through Donal's mind, and he shook it away, remembering his fellow hospital patient called Andy: the man with an inability to prevent his body from morphing into random shapes. The man who had nearly ruptured his flowing body, almost dying when the healing-field generator on his bed had failed.
“I might have accidentally discharged a sparkler,” murmured Harald, “before the wraith sealed the entry.” He looked at Xalia, and shrugged. “Sorry.”
*That's not funny.*
“I know.”
*No, you don't. You're not a wraith.*
“Sparklers hurt. I know that much.”
Xalia drifted above the floor, making no reply. She obviously disapproved of Harald's using the sparkler to drive the scribewraith out of the autopsy room.
Laura sighed. “This isn't helping, gang.”
“Sorry.”
“Maybe it is,” said Donal, ignoring the strange look that Xalia seemed to be giving him. “Are you saying, Harald, that this ax was unusually ensorcelled? And strongly?”
“Um...Yeah. That's what Lexar implied.”
“So it would leave a strong trace in the Ugly Twins' auras, right?”
Harald nodded. “You're right. We should get Lexar to—”
“No.” Laura slapped the table. “We don't use Bone Listeners to torture living people.”
“Maybe we won't have to.” Donal pushed himself away from the wall. “Maybe there's someone else who can follow the trail. Dig down inside the prisoners' auras.”
His subconscious mind had delivered the memory of the unfortunate Andy melting on the hospital bed. When the healing field failed, Sister Felice had called in the experts.
What was the young genius called? Kyushol? Kyushen?
Something like that.
Xalia drifted closer.
*I want to be there when this interrogation happens.*
Donal tried to focus on her wraith form, but it seemed to be slipping in and out of reality.
“All right,” he said eventually. “If you want to.”
*I do.*
“Then I'll make a phone call.”
For a moment, Donal thought Xalia was going to say something. Instead, she shook her near-invisible head, and then her whole insubstantial form sank down inside the floor and was gone.
“I hate it,” muttered Alexa, “when she does that.”
Laura was staring at Donal.
Now what? Donal wondered.
“I'll see you all in a minute,” he said, and went off to call the hospital.
Sister Felice sounded softly charming on the phone, and for a second Donal wondered why he had not tried to see her after leaving the hospital. But there was Laura, and the suddenness of what he felt for her was still startling.
Sister Felice sounded glad that Donal was well and only a little puzzled by his asking for the young thaumaturge's name. It was Kyushen Jyu, he learned, and technically he was Dr. Jyu—holder of a ThD, not an MD. He never used his title, in case someone thought he was a medic.
When Donal got through to Kyushen, it took a while to persuade him that a trip to the city would be interesting enough to drag him away from his normal work. It was only when Donal mentioned an Illurian artifact—an ax—ensorcelled with hex coherence that Kyushen became interested.
“Coherent hex waves? A resonator blade?”
“Um, yeah,” said Donal. “I think that's what they said.”
“Oh, man.”
“But you can follow the traces inside the prisoners' auras?”
“Auras? Are you on something? There's no such thing as auras, apart from some people's visual metaphors. They're not, like, real.”
“Oh,” said Donal.
“Look, modern thaumaturgical engineering is based on IIH, which makes procedural hex as antiquated as . . . as an antiquity. You know?”
“Do I need to know what IIH stands for?”
“You haven't heard of Image-Inclined Hexing.” It was not quite a question. “Everything in the world has qualia and propensities, and in IIH that's how we model it, in hex. We combine the two concepts, see, instead of separating out the teleological functions from the entities they act on. That's the old-fashioned way.”
“Right,” said Donal. “Well, obviously.”
“That makes all the—Look, I'll explain it all clearly when I get there.”
“I'll look forward to that.”
“All right,” said Kyushen. “I'll be there at six A.M.”
“Six? That's a little—”
There was a click, and then the line buzzed. Donal stared at the receiver for a moment.
“—early,” he said.
And put the receiver down.
Laura poked her head around the doorway. “You got through to your contact?”
“Yeah. We're going to try some Image-Inclined Hexing,” said Donal. “I think.”
“Well. That's nice.”
“It's more fun than sex. Or so my contact implied.”
“And does he have a girlfriend? Has he ever had a girlfriend?”
“I doubt it,” said Donal. “And how did you know my contact's a he?”
“A lucky guess.” A smile dimpled Laura's pale face.
“Well . . . you up for some hex later?”
“If you play your cards right, Lieutenant.”
“I'll do my best, Commander.”
Xalia moved from her concealed position inside the solid wall into the corridor where Harald was standing with a sparkler in either hand. Xalia shivered, which was the wraith equivalent of a living human jumping with fright.
*What are you doing here?*
“Watching you drift out of the stonework.”
Xalia floated back a little, wary of the unlit sparklers.
*I don't like those things.*
“And how about Donal Riordan?” asked Harald. “Do you like him?”
Xalia shook her head, stopped, then nodded.
*Like, yes. Trust, no.*
“Alexa said he did a good job.”
Like a slow tornado, Xalia corkscrewed around in the air. Then she untwisted herself and descended closer to Harald.
*He's spying on us. For Vilnar.*
Harald blinked and looked at Xalia with placid eyes.
“That's not good,” he said.
Back in HQ, Donal noticed that Viktor had disappeared. He mentioned it to Alexa, who stared at him for a moment, then said, “He went to the hospital.”
“Oh, Thanatos,” muttered Donal. “I'm sorry. Sushana.�
��
“I know.” Alexa relented. “You've never even met her, but some of us have known her for a long time.”
“Undercover work is dangerous, in lots of ways.”
“You're saying she was crooked?”
“No.” Donal leaned against a desk. “Brave and determined and under a lot of stress. It takes guts to do that kind of work. I'm not surprised that Viktor's with her.”
“He's not with her, not in the sense you mean.”
“Okay.”
“Everyone needs someone.”
“Um, yeah.” Donal hoped Alexa wasn't propositioning him. It had happened before with other women on occasion, and he hadn't always seen it coming. “The thing is, with Laura—”
“If you hurt her,” said Alexa, “one of us will kill you.”
“Ah.” Donal smiled. “I'm glad we've got that clear.”
“Well?”
“I won't hurt her,” Donal said. “And if anyone else does, I'll kill them myself.”
“That's good enough.” Alexa held out her hand.
Donal looked at her, then reached over. They shook.
“What are you two up to?” It was Laura, coming into the main office.
“Team building,” said Donal.
“He'll do,” said Alexa. “Just barely.”
“I'm sorry I asked. Donal, are you sure you want to do this?” Laura held up a long slim envelope on which a stylized silver airplane had been embossed. “Incognito and without official powers, you'll be in a lot of danger.”
Alexa frowned. “You're not talking about undercover work for Donal, are you?”
Donal said, “We were talking about Sushana. But this is different. I'm just visiting Illurium as—”
“The department will never pay for that,” said Alexa.
“Er . . . What do you mean?” Donal pointed at the flight ticket in Laura's hand.
“Ask Laura who booked the ticket,” said Alexa. “Ask her who paid for it.”
Laura put the ticket down on the desk. “Does it matter? Really matter?”
“Come on,” said Donal. “Laura, you didn't pay for that yourself, did you? It'll cost a—”
“I live in Darksan Tower.” Laura looked amused. “You still haven't figured it out, have you?”
“At least,” said Alexa, “he's not after you for your money.”
