“Was it Tenri?” Linna rather wanted to ask him to specify if Tenri was the victim or the killer, but antecedents probably weren’t the primary concern at this point. Lem shot the boy a pitying look.
“... Not as far as I know. The victim is... The victim is Enrique Fenin!” Linna gasped, and Riccio made a sound of despair that was loud enough to draw Bel into the room. Lem plowed ahead with his explanation, his head bowed. “He was killed the same way as Matteo Dimali. The Peacekeepers... We have reason to believe he was killed by the same person as well. I am so sorry...”
..................
She sent them home. She had to, after all: it would be unsafe and unwise to lock two children in her home while she went off to investigate the murder of the uncle of one of them. She left Esmine trapped, however. That boy would have invited himself along, and that was the last thing she needed at the moment.
Especially, she realized, since the corpse of Enrique Fenin was sprawled beneath fresh snowdrifts within a rock’s throw of the Besari family home. She could see a few Peacekeepers interrogating a tall, thin man with olive skin and caramel-colored hair and a woman whose similarly Yebeli coloration was thrown off by her curly hair and full, painted lips. Esmine’s parents, most likely. They had never come around to meet her. A little girl in pigtails sat on the doorstep, watching the proceedings with cautious interest. Linna caught her eyes and waved, and Selette Besari’s round, dark face lit up in a bright smile as she waved back. At least one of them acted the right age.
The dead man lay on his back, his throat cut and a look of surprise and horror on his face. Linna hadn’t liked him, but it still made her sick to see him like this. If nothing else, he had seemed to be a good guardian for Riccio and had taken a particular interest in the boy’s education, which was more than she could say for some parents in the town. Lem knelt beside the body.
“See, the angle of the cut is the same, and it is likely the same weapon as well,” he said softly. Linna nodded and bit her lip.
“What are we dealing with? Some sort of serial killer or...?” She left the sentence unfinished, mainly because she couldn’t think of a way to finish it. Lem sighed and shook his head.
“I would hope not. Whoever it is has killed two Southerners, two respectable men. It’s not unlikely that the killer is a Southerner as well. Perhaps he followed them up from the Capital...”
“There have been some unusual people around recently,” mused Linna, unable to not imagine a tall, dark figure in a hooded cloak bearing down on his victims like a storybook knight. Lem smiled thinly.
“Indeed. We should start our search with the good Doctor Tenri, perhaps.”
“My thoughts exactly. I hear that he is staying at the inn.”
..................
The inn was usually empty, as far as Linna knew. No one came to Haz Gate for tourism, after all, and it was generally easy to find a more permanent place to live. When she and Lem walked in, however, they were faced with more than a dozen assorted strangers. Elias Tenri was draped across a shabby bench, long limbs stretched out and his feet resting on an end table. He looked up as they entered.
“My, my. What brings the glorious representatives of Imperial Law and Education to our humble hideaway?” His words elicited a few chuckles from the other men present. Linna frowned. Lem folded his arms and got straight to the point.
“Enrique Fenin was murdered last night.” His pronouncement was greeted with uneasy silence. Tenri swung himself into a more upright position, his brown eyes bright and interested.
“Is that so? How terribly curious...”
“Good riddance, anyway,” growled a Southerner who was standing in the corner of the room, wrapped in a rough-sewn coat.
“Now, why would you say that?” asked Lem, rounding on the man with a sudden, almost violent movement. The Southerner smirked viciously and glanced over at his companions. There were a few of them all dressed in the same rough, dark fabrics and heavy, tall boots, and Lem cut an odd figure against them, shorter, stocky, and pale like the snow, wearing his gray and white Peacekeeper’s coat and cap.
“The explanation is simple enough, dear sir Peacekeeper,” declared Tenri from his couch, a similar smirk twisting his lips.
“Quite, Peacekeeper,” agreed one of the other Southerners, “Fenin was trash, pure and simple. He and that backstabbing snake that died on his doorstep were two of a kind.”
“What do you mean?” Linna asked, her hands balled into fists in her pockets. Speaking had attracted a number of surprised glances, and she tried her best to look professional and respectable, which she hoped wasn’t a lost cause for a young Hazi woman surrounded by men she didn’t know.
“My, my. Haz does keep its secrets well, does it not?” murmured Tenri, fixing his strange eyes on her. “What is meant is that that family has more than its share of skeletons in the closet, and all of them are there due to the... complicated politics of Pansey.”
“Dimali was a Councilman, but I was not aware that Fenin was a politician as well.” Linna glanced over at Lem, who shook his head. He hadn’t known either, evidently. Tenri steepled his fingers.
“One need not be a part of the Council to be entangled in the web of intrigue that is the Imperial Court, dear lady Professor. I do not doubt that even the boy–”
“Fenin’s brat, whatever he’s calling him now, is as much a part of this as the dead men,” announced one of the other Southerners, evidently growing tired of Tenri’s speech patterns. “They belong to the Tyrant, blood and soul!” There was a roar of agreement in response to this, and Linna couldn’t help but withdraw a step. Lem’s hand flew to his saber hilt.
“What about you two fools? Do the snows of Haz blind you to the Tyrant’s evil?” Lem’s lilac eyes flashed dangerously.
“You speak like traitors! It is well within my purview to arrest you all!”
“However, you shall not, dear sir Peacekeeper,” replied Tenri, unexpectedly calm amidst the chaos in the room. He had gotten up and now laid a long-fingered hand on Lem’s arm. “You shall leave this place and conduct your investigation elsewhere. Rest assured, even were you to fail, no great crime has been committed.”
Linna had to practically drag him out of the inn while Tenri tried to pacify his fellows over shouts of tyranny and death. This had not gone as planned. It had not gone even close to as planned. Lem straightened his cap angrily.
“Treasonous scum, the lot of them. We will bring them down, mark my words!” Linna hoped he was right. In the past few days, everything she had known to be true about Haz Gate had been shattered. She just hoped she could have faith in the Peacekeepers now.
..................
Riccio didn’t want to stay in the house. Not now. The servants had served his uncle exclusively because he had paid them, and they had never paid too much attention to Riccio, but now they were actively ignoring him. It didn’t matter. He had snuck out and snuck people in often enough, so it was very easy to do it again. The tears he wouldn’t admit to crying stung his cheeks as he waited at the crossroads, trying to figure out where to go.
Esmine. He had to find Esmine. The Professor hadn’t believed him, but Esmine would because Esmine was clever enough to figure out the truth. Riccio was sure of that. It was broad daylight, so Esmine was probably at home, doing experiments in his room or in the back yard, so Riccio set his jaw, dried his eyes, and walked resolutely towards the Besari house.
At least it wasn’t snowing anymore. The storm had ended, and the sky above him was a brilliant blue. He liked sunlight. It made everything look so much clearer. Even Esmine admitted that one could see the most details in the sun.
..................
Professor Nyx’s house was silent. As annoyed as Esmine was at his predicament, he had to admit Professor Nyx had picked a good cell for him. He couldn’t undo the latch from inside the room, and there was no other way out that he could find. Furthermore, she had left, taking Bel and Riccio with her, leaving
him completely without potential assistance. With a tired sigh, Esmine kicked the door one more time, then settled down to think. He had nothing better to do, after all.
Matteo Dimali was dead. Enrique Fenin was dead. The reports were stolen, perhaps twice over? He personally had certainly stolen them once, but it was not unlikely that whoever had broken into the manor while he had been fighting Fenin had stolen something as well. Obviously, there was something to do with that house, and those documents.
And Tenri. Who was Tenri? It sounded like a Panseyan name. Was he one of the Southerners who had come up on the train recently? Esmine recalled seeing an increase in their numbers. Just adult men, too, which had struck him as odd even at the time. Usually when people came to Haz Gate, it was families or women with children. Riccio and his uncle had been outliers. So were these men.
Where these things connected? Unusual Panseyans, bringing their conflicts from home up the train lines into the mountains of Haz. Had those conflicts dissolved into murder? He could imagine it easily: Dimali, cornered by a faceless traitor, who attacked him and slit his throat; Fenin, encountering the same man, with the same knife, who coldly repeated his crime in the midst of a snowstorm...? But why? It was always a question of why. Everyone acted for a reason, even wild animals and children. Why had those two been killed? He didn’t know yet.
Esmine sighed. It wasn’t just the lack of reason to the crimes that was bothering him. Something else didn’t add up, but he couldn’t see it clearly. He was tired, he was annoyed, and his head hurt, and nothing new was coming to him. He didn’t even know how Fenin had died, did he? It wasn’t as though the Peacekeeper knew what he was doing. If only they had let Esmine see the body...
He didn’t know what sound jerked him from his thoughts, but he drew up against the door and put his ear to it. There were hesitant footsteps in the house. Someone else was there with him, and it certainly wasn’t Professor Nyx. Too soft, too unsure, too light. Esmine took a gamble.
“Bel? Is that you?”
..................
Riccio had started out walking quickly, but by the time he had reached the Besari house he was moving at a full out run, or as much of a run as his boots and long coat would allow, kicking up the fresh snow around him. In front of the house, a little girl with pigtails was building some sort of snow statue.
“Hey, Selette! Is your brother home?” He liked Selette. She wasn’t as interesting as Esmine, but she was a lot less scary, too. And she was smart, not like the girls who always giggled behind their hands and flounced around. She could climb trees and chase balls just as easily as the boys could. As far as younger sisters went, Riccio thought Esmine had gotten lucky.
“No... He didn’t come back yesterday, either...” Selette frowned at her artwork for a moment. “The man who died, he was your uncle, wasn’t he?”
“... Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” Selette said softly. “Is that why you want to see Esmine? To ask him about it?”
“... Yeah.” She nodded at this.
“Let’s go find him. He’s probably doing something silly again.” Riccio thought that that could have been the nicest description of the things Esmine got up to ever in history, but decided not to voice that opinion. Instead, he followed Selette away from the house.
“Where do you think he is?”
“Where the body is, probably. He likes dead things...” She didn’t sound too happy about that. Probably, in terms of big brothers, she had been unlucky. Riccio shivered. On the road ahead of them, a man knelt at the crime scene. Odd, he wasn’t dressed like a Peacekeeper. Riccio stepped forward.
“Hey, mister! Who are–” But his question was cut off by a shriek from Selette as someone grabbed her and jammed a burlap sack over her head. Riccio had barely processed this when he found himself similarly incapacitated, tied up, and then slung over someone’s shoulder. He struggled, but to no avail.
“Wriggly brats, both of them. What should we do?” Riccio wriggled all the more vehemently, and was swung upside down for his troubles.
“Knock them out. We need him alive, remember?” He was swung right side up again. Their captors were walking now. It seemed like the one carrying him wasn’t in charge.
“What about this Yebeli grub?”
“She could be useful too. Bring both.” He tried to kick, but failed miserably, and the next moment he felt a sharp, blinding pain in the back of his head, and everything went black.
..................
The man on the train frowned to himself. It was irrational to be annoyed at coal power, but his years at the capital had found him getting too used to the steam-powered machines that had been developed and perfected there. The south’s steam-machines got more and more rare past the Yebel river, mainly because it got too cold for steam power to be feasible the further north one got, so the Yebel-Haz trains ran on smoggy, foul-smelling coal.
The conductor was approaching again, announcing their imminent arrival in Haz Gate. About time. The traveler’s bright blue eyes narrowed. The storm had kept him from his destination for too long, and he had a pressing job to do. He sized the conductor up lazily. Yebeli, mid-thirties, trying for a respectable life. Recently engaged, too, and likely to a northern girl.
“Are you going to require assistance with your belongings, sir?” The conductor’s speech was a mixture of at least three dialects and Imperial standard. Easy to understand, but odd-sounding nonetheless. The traveler smiled slightly.
“I shall need assistance in removing this box to the station. Would you be able to provide that?” The box was large and awkwardly shaped. There was no way for the traveler to wrangle it on his own. The conductor’s dark brown eyes flickered between the box and strange traveler with his pitch-black hair and pale, freckled skin, but he decided not to ask.
“Yes, sir.” The traveler smiled again, showing slightly elongated canines.
“Thank you kindly.” With a keening whistle, the train began to pull into the station.
..................
Bel apparently was either more competent or more loyal to him than Esmine had originally anticipated. Despite managing to get lost in Professor Nyx’s house for a few minutes, he had freed Esmine with limited difficulties and even remembered to re-lock the front door and replace Professor Nyx’s spare key under her gate guardian statue. All in all, the boy was justifiably proud of himself.
“Esmine, you’re okay?” Bel had latched onto him the instant he was within reach. Esmine only tried to shake him off a little.
“Of course I am. Now let’s go, we have a crime scene to investigate.” Bel nodded vehemently. His glasses seemed to be in danger of falling off again, so Esmine adjusted them for him. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
Together, they set off into town. Esmine decided that a crime scene wouldn’t be too difficult to find, even without information and significantly later than would be preferable. Haz Gate was a small town. There wasn’t much room to get lost in.
CHAPTER FIVE
..................
“I need to take another look at the crime scene,” Linna decided, frowning. She and Lem had just spent the better part of an hour at the Peacekeepers’ Headquarters in town, debating suspects and motives. Lem suspected Tenri and Tenri alone, while Linna was more likely to expect a conspiracy of Panseyans. Neither had much proof.
“We had the body taken away already, you know.”
“I know, I want to see the area. There has to be something we missed.”
“Fair enough.” They kept arguing as they went. Lem was in the process of explaining why there couldn’t have been a conspiracy, with his main arguments consisting of Haz Gate not being a good place to put a conspiracy, when Elias Tenri intercepted them, out of breath and missing his usual coat.
“Lady Professor!” He looked panicked. “Lady Professor, sir Peacekeeper, something awful has occurred!”
“Calm down, man!” Lem snapped, glaring at Tenri viciously. Linna s
tepped forward quickly. They couldn’t have a fight over her head, she hoped, and Tenri had addressed her first.
“Please, tell me what happened. You look terrified.”
“That which– Oh, Rot take it! Those men from the inn, they are headed for Mount Yad. They kidnapped that child, Riccio Fenin, and a young girl from the scene of the second murder. They need to be stopped!” Linna’s blood ran cold.
“How do you know this?”
“I saw them. Please, Professor– these are your students in trouble. I do not know the mountain paths, and neither do they, but the two of you are locals and...” He gestured helplessly. Linna nodded.
“We can pick up their trail easily. No one climbs Yad at this time of year.”
“Linna, we cannot trust this man–” Not with that again. Linna glared at him.
“You are armed, aren’t you? Come on!” She took the lead, running up the narrow mountain path, following the heavy clumsy footprints of her prey. Tenri kept up with relative ease, his long legs making too-long strides in the snow. Lem brought up the rear, his distrustful eyes fixed on the back of Tenri’s neck.
At least they were chasing something solid. Wind-breaths and demons didn’t leave shoe-prints.
..................
Esmine frowned to himself as he led Bel down the street. The inconsistencies in the case were still bothering him. It wasn’t neat, and it didn’t make sense. Bel clung to him in his usual vaguely distracted way, lilac eyes half-closed, seemingly unaware of anything going on outside of his head. He didn’t know how the other boy could function like that.
“Bel. If you were to kill someone, why would you do it?” Bel looked at him sideways uncertainly. He probably wasn’t the best person to ask, but Esmine was rather at a loss anyway.
“... Professor said to protect someone precious...”
In the Snows of Haz Page 4
