“What, Srant?” Sethlon remembered the man Pouchii had told him about. Little traitor.
“That’s the one.” Pouchii grimaced at the mention of the name. Annoying man, that Lieutenant. Bad moustache.
“Driver!” Sethlon shouted, with the air of authority. “Take us to West Saliman Police station.”
“Not South?” The driver’s voice echoed through the velvety walls of the carriage.
“No.” Sethlon rolled his eyes. “West.”
The pair sat back in silence.
“So, do you think Srant knows anything?” Sethlon asked.
“Not really, no.” Pouchii frowned. “But if he does, then it could change the entire investigation.”
“How?”
“Well, if Srant was an accomplice, it means that we could trace payments and the like back to the murderer – I mean, Srant didn’t seem to me to be of the sort who would do something for nothing.”
“You mean Srant was bribed, if anything? Most West Saliman policemen are liable to bribery. It’s the fault of this stupid government. Too busy trying to please one another and play the politics game with the queen to bother to pay policemen a decent wage.”
“And I thought you were supposed to be politically neutral…” Pouchii smiled.
“Well, look at yourself.” Sethlon sniffed in disgust. “A high ranking policeman in charge of one of the largest murder inquires in Saliman at present, and one of South Saliman’s most brilliant DCIs, and you barely have enough money to rent that tumbledown flat. It’s criminal.”
“Too true. Ah well. We live with the lot we’re given.”
“In my case, rather more than yours.” Sethlon admitted, sucking his teeth in.
“I’ll live. Oh, and by the way, do you have a licence for this carriage?”
“Of course!” Sethlon looked affronted. “Do I look stupid enough to invite a policeman onto my vehicle without making sure it has the right documentation to be on the roads in Saliman during the daylight hours?”
“Do you want me to answer that?” Pouchii grinned, devilishly. “Some rich people will try anything.”
“Are you saying I’m rich?” Sethlon acted shocked.
“Well, seeing as I earn just under one hundred Saliman pounds a week, and you were estimated in last years rich list as…” Pouchii let the lord finish the sentence.
“Five hundred billion Saliman pounds. Number four in all the universes.”
“Exactly.” Pouchii yawned.
“Not get enough sleep last night?”
“No, I was too busy dealing with people trying to kill me.”
“Ah.”
“My lord Sethlon!” A shout reverberated back from the driver as the carriage rumbled to a halt. “West Saliman Police Station, Sir!”
“Thank you.” Sethlon let his manservant open the door and stepped out into the daylight. Pouchii followed.
The squat grey shape of the West Saliman police station loomed over them. Pouchii fingered the hilt of his gun. He felt he might need it soon.
They entered together, the manservant waiting with the carriage in the busy street behind them.
Desk Sergeant Crandol was still on duty. That made their job a little easier; as Pouchii approached him, the man leapt to his feet and escorted them up the stairs. They didn’t go into the swanky office this time though – there was a side door to the left that they took, into a dingy corridor lined with blackened cells. Pouchii coughed at the air – it was dusty and inflamed his eyes. It was almost as if someone had taken the time to pump soot into the cells.
Pouchii doubted that, though. Judging by the look of the gaoler, that would have taken far to long and would have been to kind.
“I’ll leave you with our gaoler, then. He’s a little gruff, but I’m sure you’ll find him useful.” Crandol bowed slightly, and left as quickly as possible. Sethlon wished he was going with him.
The gaoler stepped forwards now. He was a fat man in his forties – if their was a breakout, he stood little chance. He had a string of around fifty keys tucked into his belt, but Pouchii could only see about five cells. Odd.
“I want to see the prisoner Srant.” Pouchii said, slow and clear.
“Ok, sir.” The motioned to a cell close to the entrance. “This one.”
“Can I have a key?” Pouchii rolled his eyes at Sethlon.
“Certainly sir.” The man rummaged round his pocket.
“They’re round your belt…” Pouchii pointed out.
“Actually, I was looking for this.” He withdrew a gun and fired it once. In the confined space, there wasn’t a chance in the world he would miss.
Fortunately, he wasn’t pointing the gun at Pouchii or Sethlon. Unfortunately, he was pointing the gun straight into the cell where Srant had just appeared, his little moustache poking its way through the bars. Even as the moustache jerked back, Sethlon stepped forwards, and the gaoler stared down as a piece of Sethlon steel sunk its way straight through his chest.
As Sethlon withdrew his sword and wiped it on the corpse, Pouchii raced to the barred opening to the cell. He kicked it in, his mind flinching with every kick. But it wouldn’t go.
“Allow me.” Sethlon stepped forwards again, and his sword flashed down through the lock, breaking it apart.
“How do you do that?” Pouchii was astonished.
“Sethlon steel.” The lord’s voice was cold. “Now, how is this man?”
“He looks just about alive. Dieing, but alive.” Pouchii frowned, as he knelt down to speak to Srant. “Can you here me?”
“Yes.” The body spasmed slightly as it croaked out the word.
“Good. Now, I want you to answer a few questions. Can you do that?”
“No.” He croaked again.
“Come on, Srant. Even you can’t stay loyal to that lot. They’ve just tried to kill you.”
“And you won’t?” Srant grinned, feebly.
“No. Now, where did you find the body?”
“I didn’t find it. Was given to me…” He collapsed into a fit of coughing which brought blood up onto the cell floor in even greater rivulets.
“By who?”
“By whom, surely.”
“Yes, yes. I’m sure you’re right. But who was it?”
“Some assassin bloke. Just last week.”
“No-one you recognised?”
“Nope. Now, if you don’t mind, can you just leave me to die in peace?”
“In a minute. One last question. Is ‘Srant’ an illegitimate branch of a noble family? Von Strankt, for example?”
“Not illegitimate.” Somehow, Srant found it in himself to laugh slightly. He stopped when the blood started to bubble up through his mouth. “Undercover.”
“So you are a Von Strankt? That’s an old family name.” Sethlon interrupted.
“Yes.” Pouchii mused. “So, are you here because of the viscount’s death?”
Srant nodded, weakly. The light started to fade from his eyes.
“So do you know who ordered his killing?”
Another nod. His eyes began to close for the last time. With his last, ragged breath, he spoke a few disconnected syllables. “M…Von…Fshh…” and he crumpled, like a punctured balloon. A red one, at that.
Pouchii grimaced. Hardly enough evidence to stand up in court. A man with an odd moustache says he’s a Von Strankt and dies, incriminating someone with an “M” and “Von” somewhere in his name.
The pair emerged from West Saliman police station a few minutes later, as policemen started to file in with equipment and crime scene coats buttoned up. Pouchii sighed. He should have talked to Srant straight away. Not that he would have told the DCI much at that point, but it would have still been good. It would have made him feel better.
“What next?” Sethlon’s voice permeated his circle of thought. “I mean, which lead do we follow up next?”
“Good question. Do we visit Von Strankt, or try to follow up on these assassins?”
“If it
is Von Strankt, we don’t have a motive, or any evidence, so I think that alarming him by asking him some questions would probably not be the best of ideas.”
“You’re probably right. So, if I leave Graider in charge of the investigation here, and tell him to dig up some dirt on Von Strankt, then we could go and try and trace these assassins?”
“Good plan. We’ll go to Erodium. No other planet in all of the four universes has more assassination groups.”
“You think they were Erodium assassins?”
“Well, if they weren’t, then the Erodium assassination groups will still know who the assassins were. Nothing goes by without them knowing.”
“Fair enough. I suppose with your vast resources, you can get us to Erodium?”
“Yep. It’s only a few hours by jumpcraft.”
Pouchii nodded. He didn’t really understand what jumpcraft were, to be honest, except that they could get you through the vast expanses of space quicker than anything else and that they worked on burning obsidite – the stuff that could corrode virtually anything, but burnt like nobodies business. They were one of those things which just were, and you didn’t really worry how they worked or why they worked. If Pouchii had bee an expert, he probably could have told you that jumpcraft worked through the process of accelerating massively, faster than anything else that exists, and then slowing down for a few seconds, then accelerating again. Quite why they did this would have taken an even more knowledgeable specialist, who could have told you that staying at such speeds breaks up even the best built jumpcrafts, so slowing down is introduced to counter this. And if he were even more of an expert, he could probably have said that the difficulty lies in trying to get obsidite to burn slowly in the slowing down periods. Of course, Pouchii was none of these, so he just presumed that the strange jerking motion they produced was simply to discourage people from travelling too often.
Pouchii climbed into the carriage, radioing Graider as he did so.
“Graider, it’s Pouchii here. Yes, I want you to investigate a nobleman called Von Strankt. Yes, the one with the big nose, who was lampooned in “The Watchtower” the other day as a stripper. You know.”
Sethlon raised his eyebrows. He must’ve missed that particular cartoon. More’s the pity. Von Strankt was a stuck-up bastard.
“Anyway, me and the Lord Sethlon are off to Erodium to trace those assassins. Don’t tell anyone else. This is to be a secret. Is that clear?”
Sethlon clicked his fingers and the carriage set off, even as Graider confirmed that he understood the necessity for secrecy in such a loud voice over the radio that Sethlon could still hear him even though his ear wasn’t pressed up tightly against the receiver.
“Oh, and sir?”
“Yes Graider?”
“There’s someone who wants a word with you.”
“Tell them I’m busy.”
“She said if you said that she’d stop any little trips you might be planning.”
“She knew I was going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not good. Tell her I’ll meet her at the airport. Who exactly is it?”
“The viscount’s wife, Hestia Masala.”
“What does she look like?”
“Radiant as a goddess, sir.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t here that, Graider.”
“Sorry sir. Aristocratic with a big nose and an imposing aura.”
“Like all the aristocratic women in Saliman, then.”
“This one’s different, sir. You’ll know her when you see her.” Graider hung up.
The carriage bumped up and down a little.
“I see you’re talking about my sister.” Sethlon turned with a resigned look to the DCI.
“Sister?”
“Yes. Hestia Masala is my sister. She was married to Takka many years back, by my father to the viscount, who wanted to ally himself politically to one of Saliman’s big political families.”
“But the Sethlons aren’t a political family. Not any more.”
“Quite. I think that was why the marriage didn’t exactly work out. Takka resented her the second he realised he’d married a wealthy but unconnected third child. I think they hadn’t lived together for twenty three years now.”
“So she won’t be of much use if we want to know who his friends were, what agreements he made, debts, loans, and the like.”
“You haven’t met my sister, have you? I suspect there is very little she doesn’t know about him. She always was a schemer.”
“You’re not keen on her?”
“I wouldn’t say that. We have our differences, however.”
Pouchii forced down a smile. He suspected that Lord Sethlon was a bit more of a schemer himself than he let on.
The carriage rumbled on, over the cobbled streets of West Saliman, approaching the airport. All around them smells and sounds permeated the thick velvet draped curtains that kept them in the cool darkness. Spices wafted through, making Sethlon turn his nose slightly. Shouting filled the air, as they passed a street market.
“Kathlol! Kathlol! Baj vondor!”
“Sath! Sath randlil!”
“Keridos! Keridos granles!”
“Tanka kana! Vetlat ‘zet veton’!”
The last one made Sethlon smile. Elvish, which practically no-one but the aristocracy and a few scholars spoke these days. Mind you, the trader knew what he was doing. Roughly translated, he had said ‘Youthful animal! Opposite of many monies!’ Which was quite an impressive sentence construction, considering. Perhaps next time the trader would have learned enough to specify the animal species.
The carriage rolled on, through what was becoming a hot day. The sun shone in the sky above them, and the DCI could feel the heat prickling against his skin. Outside the shelter of felt walls, the food on the stalls started to decay. The animal didn’t smell too youthful now.
“Heftun above.” Sethlon swore. “What’s that stench?”
“Decay. We are in West Saliman, after all.” Pouchii wrinkled his nose. “And don’t take the name of the goddess in vain.”
“Heftun’s not a very important goddess, is she though? I mean, Rosium is the main goddess.”
“Yes, but it’s always best to stay on the best side of them all.” Pouchii traced the circle of Heftun in the air to ward off evil spirits. “After all, you don’t want to meet any vengeful divine beings in Erodium.”
“The gods steer well clear of Erodium.” Sethlon shuddered. “Only the mad go there.”
“So they say.”
“Sirs!” A shout wafted through from the outside world. “We have arrived at the airport.”
“Thank you, driver.” Sethlon straightened himself and waited for the door to be opened for him, before stepping out into the sunlit air. Pouchii didn’t wait. He stepped down of his own accord, and waited for Sethlon to descend the little step of steps. They both strolled, together, across the cobbled street towards a large concrete and glass building, with planes sitting around the base of it, like battered birds. The propellers looked far too rusty for the lord. Pouchii caught him shivering slightly with dread out of the corner of his eye. It made him smile slightly.
The pair stepped through a revolving door that glinted with brass, into a large arrivals hall, sculpted from white marble, with the words “Saliman International Airport” emblazoned in brass from a board which hung from the roof.
Sethlon did not make for the second set of doors, where a man waited to take them out on to the tarmac runway and the plane. Instead, he made a beeline for a figure standing alone in sombre tones of grey and black in the centre of the room.
She turned to face them as they approached. Her head was swathed in black lace, but Pouchii thought the features that stuck out from behind it looked arrogantly sharp. Her nose was pointed, and her cheekbones looked like steel plates from a helmet, or some sort of mask.
“Marcus.” Her voice sliced through the air, and made Pouchii’s teeth stand up on end. �
�Come to console me about the death of my husband?”
“Hestia.” Marcus Sethlon smiled casually. “I didn’t suppose you needed consoling.”
“Well, you’re right there. I’m rather glad he’s gone.”
“Father would be deeply shocked to hear that.”
“Well, I think he should have thought before packing me of to some minor lordling who’s only concern was advance in politics.”
The Viscount Connection Page 4
