Gryphon Precinct (Dragon Precinct)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Fanthral’s information was correct. The council voted to disband Sorlin, and the vote carried unanimously. Javian’s in Cliff’s End to book passage to Saptor Isle to retire. Having talked to him—I suspect he might’ve done that in any case. After he led the vote to have me removed from Sorlin, he resigned from the chair.” She broke out of the embrace and turned to look at Torin. “How much do you know about Sorlin? I remember you’d heard of it when we first met.”

  “Just stories I heard during the war. I know it’s located quite a bit south of here.”

  Danthres nodded and she moved to lean against the wall. “It’s on the Kone Peninsula on the southern coast. The rocks on the coastline are vicious. That’s why they settled there—it’s impossible to approach by sea without risking getting your boat destroyed, and the land approaches are all uphill.”

  “Very defensible.”

  “Very necessary—the intent of Sorlin was to be a sanctuary for people who violated elven purity laws, after all.”

  Torin nodded. He considered prompting her again, but she was actually talking, so he let her tell the story at her own pace.

  “When I was a girl, there were three of us who were inseparable: me, Elsthar Javian, and Lilanthria.” She actually smiled, then. “Tharri, Thressa, and Lil. We did everything together, the three of us. All halfbreeds, but Tharri—Javian—was the only one whose parents were with us. The Javians raised Lil and I as their own, though. It was a wonderful place to live—probably as much a paradise for me as Myverin was for you. More so, really, because unlike you, I’d seen the world outside. For the first few years of my life, my mother and I lived on the run, after my father was killed. We were on our way to Sorlin when she grew ill, but she refused to rest, forcing herself to make it all the way south. She died when we arrived, despite the best efforts of the healers. The Javians had already taken Lil in—she was the product of a human soldier raping an elven prisoner. Her mother killed her rapist when she escaped, and made it to Sorlin, where she died in childbirth. Both our mothers—her elven one, my human one—came to Sorlin because it was a place where everyone lived in peace. Our paramount law was always that disruptions would not be permitted. From the moment you entered Sorlin’s borders, you were told that the first law of Sorlin was that anyone who disrupted the society would be cast out.”

  Danthres looked away and then went back to the bed. Torin slowly moved to sit next to her.

  “Tharri was over a decade older than me, so he was already being groomed for the council when I arrived in Sorlin. By the time I was a teenager, he became head of it—he was a natural-born leader, truly. He and Lil also wed. We joked that it was the Elf Queen’s worst nightmare: two halfbreeds marrying. They even planned to breed.”

  Danthres fell silent for a moment. Torin decided to prompt her to continue. “I take it they were unable to?”

  She shook her head. “One day the council was debating some point of law or other. It was going on forever, so Lil and I decided to take a walk along the coast. It was a favorite pastime of ours when Tharri was busy with council business, walking along the rocks, getting sprayed by the spume, enjoying the view of the Garamin—something we’d done a thousand times before.”

  She took a deep breath before continuing. Torin put his arm around her, and Danthres absently reached up to hold the hand that was now draped over her shoulder.

  “It had been a beautiful day when we started, but a rainstorm came out of nowhere. That happens a lot that far south—the rain usually passed quickly. So we kept walking, but this was a nastier storm than usual. There was lightning and thunder. A bolt of lightning hit—hit the ground in front of us. We both lost our footing. I—I managed to grab a tree root with one hand, but all Lil had to grab was a piece of wet rock. I reached out for Lil with my other hand, but I couldn’t reach her. I tried, Torin, I tried so hard, but she was too far, and then she lost her grip and . . .”

  In ten years, Torin had never seen Danthres in quite this emotional state. She’d shed tears in his presence, though those occasions were rare, but this was the first time he saw her on the brink of out-and-out crying.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she tensed up and said, “That was it. She was gone. It was just a stupid accident, but I refused to accept that. I spent every day standing before the council trying to get them to investigate the matter, trying to find out if someone had cast a spell to bring about a nastier storm, to see if someone had made the rocks particularly wet to make it harder to walk on . . .”

  “You were disruptive,” Torin said quietly.

  Danthres nodded. “Tharri was right when we talked yesterday. He told me that the council didn’t have a choice, and I didn’t really give them one. I was impossible, because I refused to accept that someone I loved as much as I loved her could die from something so—so stupid.” She shook her head and barked a bitter laugh. “My father was killed by an angry mob of elves, and my mother and I lived on the run for a year before we made it to Sorlin. I was hunted just because of who my parents were—you would think that I’d have been well versed in the notion of the unfairness of the world. Yet I couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t accept that my dearest friend, my sister in all but blood, was dead. And I couldn’t save her, and I couldn’t avenge her.”

  A tear slowly trickled down her cheek. Torin wrapped his arms around her, and she buried her face in his neck.

  They stayed that way for quite some time.

  ELEVEN

  By the time Danthres and Torin finally made it to the castle, it was three-quarters of an hour past when the timechimes rang seven. That was late even by Torin’s usual tardy standards, and if Danthres actually gave a damn what Grovis thought of her, she might have tried to get him to move his ass faster.

  Sergeant Jonas glared at them as they came in. “You’re both late.”

  “We were already aware of that, Jonas, thank you,” Danthres said.

  Manfred and Kellan were sitting at their desks talking to each other. Jonas had assigned them to Iaian and Grovis’s old desks. “Glad you’re finally here,” Manfred said.

  Torin was staring at Manfred’s sword belt. “You still have the surplus sword.”

  “Yes.” Manfred sounded cranky. “Molano told me it’d be ready first thing, but when I stopped by on my way here, she said she got backed up with orders from the castle.”

  “What kind of orders?” Torin asked.

  Manfred shrugged. “She didn’t say, and she was running around like a crazy woman, so I didn’t get to ask. Why?”

  “Just curious.” Torin sat at his desk. “In any event, did we miss anything?”

  Kellan said, “Last night, I asked around about Del Francit.”

  Danthres frowned for a moment, then remembered that he was someone Sir Palrik mentioned. “What about him?”

  “If he had any friends, nobody knew about ’em. His own father disowned him and kicked him out onto the streets. I can’t see nobody avengin’ him by killin’ Lord Albin.”

  “That was always a long shot.” Danthres let out a breath.

  Jonas shuffled some parchments around. There were times when Danthres believed that they were all blank and he just had them in his hands to make himself look busy. “Aleta and Dru are talking to the magistrate. They’re trying to work out a deal with Gobink, and they need his approval.”

  Danthres found herself unable to be surprised that the Shranlaseth bitch and the still-mourning Dru had messed this one up. “They’re making a deal with that shit-sucking troll?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Jonas said. “He’s still getting the full punishment for what he did—what’s being negotiated is the fate of his family. He’s willing to give up his conspirators in exchange for his wife and children not being boiled in oil.”

  That got Danthres to relent. “That’s a disgusting law in any case.”

  “Agreed,” Torin said. “One cannot hold someone’s family responsible for one’s actions.”

  Manfred sh
rugged. “Well, the king and queen can. It’s one of their laws, not the lord and lady’s.”

  “It’s still disgusting.” Danthres looked past Manfred at her new partner. “C’mon, Kellan, we need to ask Boneen for something. You can get your first experience of being complained to by a wizard older than your grandfather.”

  Kellan chuckled as he rose from his desk. “Ain’t gonna be the first, I can tell you that. I found a dead gnome named Djili in an alley a while back. When the M.E. showed up, I didn’t hear the end of it from him for an hour. Only break I got was when he cast the peel-back.”

  “Which lieutenant caught that case?” Danthres asked.

  Now Kellan looked nervous. “Er, well, no one did. I handled it. That was back when you an’ Lieutenant ban Wyvald were doin’ the Cynnis murder, an’ the other detectives had big cases, too.”

  Danthres was about to get angry, but then she remembered the Cynnis murder. It was at the same time that Iaian and Grovis were looking into corruption in Mermaid Precinct and Dru and Hawk were looking into a fraudulent Temisan priest. All three were politically sensitive cases. Arra Cynnis was a girl of noble birth about to marry into the Grovis family, the lord and lady were on a fight-corruption kick, and the Temisan bishopric was very influential. Anything that came up during that awful period was left to the guards.

  She supposed that this Djili bastard could’ve done worse than to have Kellan looking into her murder. Not a lot worse, of course . . .

  They proceeded through the corridor adjacent to the squadroom to the staircase that led down to Boneen’s lair in the basement.

  However, when they got to the bottom of the stairs, the door to the sanctum had been removed. Looking through the now-open doorframe, Danthres saw that there was nothing in the space at all. The shelves, the tables, the potions, the crystals—they were all gone.

  Danthres stared at the empty room for several seconds.

  Kellan stared at her. “I’m guessin’ that this ain’t usual for Boneen’s place?”

  “Your grasp of the blindingly obvious remains strong as ever, Kellan.” Danthres spoke in an unnecessarily snide voice, but right now she cared about her partner’s feelings not in the least. She stormed past him. “C’mon, we need to talk to our esteemed captain.”

  Without bothering to see if Kellan followed her, Danthres went upstairs and back to the squadroom, making a beeline for Grovis’s office.

  Torin was talking with Manfred about something, but he looked up at Danthres’s arrival. “That was fast.”

  “Boneen’s gone.”

  “What?” Torin stood up at his desk. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  “Just what I said,” Danthres said tightly.

  “The whole room was completely empty,” Kellan put in. “Didn’t even have a door or nothin’.”

  “That bodes ill.”

  Manfred said, “We could just be getting a new magickal examiner.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Danthres went into the captain’s office to find Grovis reading over a scroll. Kellan didn’t follow her in, the coward, but Torin did.

  Grovis looked up. “What is it the pair of you want?”

  “What happened to Boneen? We need him to cast a peel-back on Lord Albin’s office.”

  Getting to his feet, Grovis said primly, “I’m afraid that the Castle Guard will no longer be employing the services of a magickal examiner. If you had actually shown up for roll call as you are supposed to, you would have found that out.”

  Torin put his hands on his hips. “You couldn’t have mentioned it at roll call—Manfred and Kellan were unaware of it.”

  “Of course I didn’t mention it,” Grovis said, “but you would have during roll call, at which point I would have saved you a trip downstairs.”

  “Why in the lord and lady’s name have we gotten rid of the M.E.?” Danthres realized her voice was carrying, but she also realized that she didn’t give a damn.

  “You have, in fact, Danthres, put your finger on it regarding the lord and lady. It is Lord Blayk who has released Boneen from his duties.”

  Before Danthres could shout again, Torin jumped in. “Did he give a reason for this imbecilic course of action?”

  “The lord of the demesne believes, quite rightly in my opinion, that, as useful as the magickal examiner is, it’s a waste of a wizard’s valuable time to be spent as an errand boy for the Castle Guard.”

  Danthres screamed this time. “You shitbrained idiot!”

  “Mind your tone, Lieutenant!”

  “No, Captain, I don’t think I will!”

  Torin stepped forward, interpolating himself between Danthres and Grovis. Only then did Danthres realize that she had moved forward in a threatening manner and was almost nose to nose with Grovis.

  “I will not be spoken to this way!” Grovis shouted.

  After giving Danthres a nasty look, Torin regarded Grovis seriously. “Captain, with all due respect, the Brotherhood of Wizards also thinks the M.E. is a waste of time.”

  “All the more reason to be rid of it, then, don’t you think?” Grovis asked snidely.

  “The only reason the Brotherhood agreed to assign Boneen was because Lord Albin blackmailed them into it, in exchange for our keeping secret about the fact that one of their most respected wizards was a murderer three times over.”

  Grovis’s mouth fell open into one of his classic fish expressions and his eyes goggled. “What?”

  Danthres had stepped back a bit and managed to almost compose herself. “It was Torin’s and my first case together. When it was over, and we’d gotten a wizard named Myk Dourti to confess, the Brotherhood gave us Boneen so they could handle Dourti themselves.”

  Torin shook his head. “You’ve just given away one of the most important resources the Guard has for no benefit except to toady to wizards who won’t appreciate it.”

  “Well, you could say we’re doing them a favor . . .” Grovis sounded dubious even as he said it.

  “Yes,” Danthres said snidely, “because the Brotherhood is known for their generosity.”

  “I—” Grovis gestured helplessly.

  “You’ve crippled our effectiveness and made it that much harder to solve our cases. Well done, Grovis.” Danthres actually patted his shoulder in a mock-friendly gesture. “And only your third day on the job. Imagine how much damage you’ll do in a week!”

  With that, she turned and left Grovis’s office, Torin following only after giving the captain one last doleful look.

  Danthres fell more than sat in her chair and stared angrily at the scrolls on her desk. “I’m this close to quitting.”

  “And what will you do then?” Torin asked as he sat at his desk, abutting hers.

  “I don’t know. Maybe go with Javian to Saptor.”

  Torin snorted derisively. “And what would you do after a month when the novelty wears off and you’re bored to death?”

  “You’re right, I should definitely stay here so Grovis and Blayk can make me crazy enough to kill someone. Then I’ll be hanged and put out of my misery.”

  Kellan walked over to sit on the edge of Torin’s desk. Under other circumstances, she might have been amused by the fact that he wasn’t suicidal enough to try doing that on Danthres’s desk. “Well, until you actually go on your homicidal rampage, what do we do next?”

  Torin looked at Manfred. “Can you make some inquiries regarding that Keefda stone that was used in the Beffel case?”

  Manfred frowned. “I thought we were off that.”

  “Whatever inclination I may have had to do as Grovis says was removed by our most recent conversation,” Torin said dryly. “I want to know where that stone came from. Check all the magick shops and see who might have such a thing. Start with the ones in Dragon, they’re the ones most likely to have high-ticket items such as that. And see if you can find anything out about Beffel.”

  “Okay. What’ll you be doing?”

  Smiling at Danthres, Torin said, “Aiding my fe
llow detectives with my ability to speak to the nobility without strangling them or quivering in fear.”

  “I don’t quiver in fear!” Kellan cried out, standing upright.

  Danthres found herself grinning quite against her will. “It certainly looked like quivering to me.” She also stood. “You go with him, Kellan, you might learn something.”

  “Where will you be?” Kellan asked.

  “Grovis said that it was a decree from the lord and lady that released Boneen from his obligations as M.E., but I suspect that it’s only the lord who made that decree. What’s more, I doubt the lady knew a damn thing about it.”

  “You plan to talk to her?”

  Danthres shrugged. “She specifically asked me to take on this case. I think I’m completely justified in talking to her to fill her in—and telling her how the lack of an M.E. is complicating the case.”

  Two hours later, Danthres finally got in to see Lady Meerka. She had been in a meeting with some bankers. Danthres considered the efficacy of barging in on the meeting, but given that the largest bank in Cliff’s End was owned by Grovis’s father, that was probably not the best idea. The new captain was already making her life miserable, there wasn’t much point in giving him more ammunition by having dear old Daddy bitch about that half-elf detective who interrupted his important meeting with Lady Meerka and could Amilar be a good son and fire her, please?

  That would be the perfect ending to this week, wouldn’t it?

  When the lady did arrive, she was surprised to see Danthres there. “Has your investigation borne fruit, Lieutenant?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That is a very evasive answer, Lieutenant. Please, come into my chambers and we will discuss it more directly.”

  Danthres followed her into the office, which was just as well organized as it had been the last time she set foot in it.

  “I hope you weren’t kept waiting long. I was discussing the new security procedures that are now required by law for all banks to have. Harcort Grovis was rather tiresome on the subject of how expensive they were, but that awful business that led to your Lieutenant Hawk being killed could have been avoided if the banks had proper protection. I will not have the citizenry’s money so vulnerable.”