An Import of Intrigue

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  “I suppose we let it be,” Minox said absently. “It’s just another block this way.”

  Two patrolmen—no one Minox recognized, but they looked like fresh-out-of-cadet types—were at the gates to the Tsouljan enclave. “Inspector,” they both said, saluting him as he approached.

  “Gentlemen,” Minox said, noting they were both looking at Joshea in confusion. “This is a special consultant I’m bringing to observe the scene.”

  “All right,” one of them said, though he seemed more compliant than convinced.

  “You are the inspector of record, right?” the other asked.

  “Yes, Inspector Third Class Minox Welling.”

  “As you say, sir,” the second guard said. “Whistle if you need anything.”

  They went inside the enclave, the two red-haired Tsouljans greeting them upon their entrance. “Consultant?” Joshea asked.

  “It’s hardly inaccurate,” Minox said. “Something magical is occurring here, and it may well be related to the crime. You are the closest thing I have to an expert at my disposal.”

  “All right, let’s find that old woman.”

  Finding her proved no challenge at all. They had barely begun to walk through the compound when three blue-haired Tsouljans came up on them, with Rek-Yun in tow behind them. Sevqir Fel-Sed stood in the center, clucking her tongue in disapproval.

  “You have returned, Inspector,” Rek-Yun said from his anterior position. “But not on Constabulary business.”

  “How do you know that?” Minox said.

  Fel-Sed replied, all in Tsouljan, pointing to Joshea. Rek-Yun didn’t get much opportunity to respond.

  “What did you do to him?” Joshea snapped at Fel-Sed. “What gives you the right?” He moved in on her, towering over her slight frame.

  Fel-Sed didn’t seem cowed at his advance, instead she gently placed a hand on his chest. Again she spoke softly. Rek-Yun translated.

  “Wisdom gives her the right. Wisdom you seek.”

  “I’m only seeking—” Minox started.

  “Control.” Fel-Sed responded on her own this time, in heavily accented Trade.

  “You’ve left him without any,” Joshea said. “How dare you?”

  She again answered in pure Tsouljan.

  “The best of bad choices,” Rek-Yun offered. “Until he could learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  Fel-Sed launched into a long monologue in Tsouljan, pointing at Minox’s chest, his head, his bad arm, and occasionally at Joshea. She concluded with a gesture to their surroundings, and finally to one of the huts.

  Rek-Yun stepped out from his position behind the group of Fel. “My apologies, Inspector. Much of what was said is beyond my capacity of understanding.”

  Joshea turned on Rek-Yun, who did startle back in response to his soldierly bearing. “Meaning you don’t know how to say it in Trade, or you don’t understand what she’s talking about.”

  “Both, in honesty, good sir,” Rek-Yun said. “I will attempt. There is something wrong with your . . . river. And your arm is poison. You must learn to dam your rivers so your arm doesn’t kill you, but the trees are the flood.”

  “Well, that makes perfect sense,” Joshea said. He turned back on Fel-Sed. “You need to undo what you did to him.” She clucked her tongue again and spoke at length.

  “If she merely opened his skies, there would be a great storm,” Rek-Yun offered, though it seemed like he thought he was saying utter nonsense as well. “You could be . . . washed away?”

  Minox already felt like he was drowning. The magic was churning in him now, leeching strength right from the pit of his stomach, and going nowhere. He was already famished again. “I need to do something. Can you help me?”

  Fel-Sed spoke, Rek-Yun again interpreting. “We can teach, but only you can help you.”

  She pointed again to the hut, and started to walk.

  “Is this a good idea?” Joshea asked.

  “Probably not,” Minox said. “But I believe I’m looking at the least bad option right now.” No Druth Circle would help him, for certain. The only chance he had to understand what was going on was the Tsouljan way.

  “I won’t let you do it alone.” He gestured to the hut where the Tsouljans were leading them.

  “I appreciate that, Joshea.”

  Saint Limarre’s Church was not, strictly speaking, on Satrine’s route home from the stationhouse. More often than not, though, she found herself walking past there at the end of her shift, just as evening services were about to start.

  Sometimes she allowed herself the luxury of taking a moment for herself in the pews in the back. Small acts of selfishness were a ministration her closest spiritual advisor had recommended, and a few minutes in the church, listening to the sermon without any specific responsibility of work or family served that purpose, if just for a few moments.

  This night her usual spiritual advisor was on the front steps of the church, but Sister Alana was not welcoming people to come in for evening services as she typically did. Tonight she was sternly admonishing a young novice—blonde girl with an angry face. The girl seemed to be taking her rebuke with silent furor. Satrine couldn’t hear the details but recognized the tone of voice Sister Alana was using. She hung back at a respectable distance until Alana dismissed the girl.

  “I’m not the only one having a bad day,” she said once Alana noticed her.

  “I am being tested,” Alana said, her voice straining. She approached Satrine warmly. “The saints are testing my faith with that one.”

  After a quick embrace Satrine laughed. “I’m guessing she’s much like we were at that age.”

  “She would have owned Jent and Tannen in our day,” Alana said. “That girl has fire that would put ours to shame at any point.”

  “But she isn’t going to work out?”

  “Are you perceptive or just prying?”

  “Bit of both, comes with the vest,” Satrine said.

  Alana smiled ruefully. “I’m not sure. For all her temper, she has faith like nothing I’ve seen. She puts some of the eldest cloistresses to shame. And me, especially as I was when I was nineteen.”

  Memory washed over Satrine at that. “I was just thinking about myself at nineteen early today.”

  “In what way?”

  “In how I got handily slapped around by a Lyranan spy back then.”

  Sister Alana’s face lit up. “This sounds like a worthy story to tell your absolution confessor.”

  “It probably is, but this isn’t the time.”

  Alana sat down on the church steps, inviting Satrine to do the same. “Is there something you need to talk about?”

  Satrine sat down. “I thought by now it would have gotten easier.”

  “The work?”

  “No, that’s going to be a horror, just by its nature. Yesterday had a mauled body and a dead bear—”

  “I heard about the bear.”

  “Old Giles Henk, running a bear fight out of that basement? Can you imagine?”

  “I’ve tried to forget about that basement,” Alana said with a shudder.

  “I’ve given up on forgetting,” Satrine said. “Blazes, that’s the one thing about this job that’s been . . . I wouldn’t go so far to say a blessing, but—” She let the thought hang. She wasn’t sure how to say what she was feeling.

  “You’re finding the person you are at the center of your spirit.” Alana shrugged. “This place forged that spirit.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s what I mean,” Satrine said. “I’ve been so many people. My memory is a jumble of truth and fabrication, and . . . this job, this place . . . it reminds me who I actually am.”

  “So what isn’t easier yet?”

  “The people in the stationhouse, mostly.”

  “That’s not goin
g to get any better, Satrine. I don’t know why you thought it might.”

  “I’ve been proving myself—”

  “You lied and tricked your way into a position and stepped on a lot of necks. Saints may forgive that sort of thing, but most people don’t.”

  “It sounds like you don’t either.”

  “You didn’t wrong me, so my forgiveness is irrelevant.” She glanced back at the church doors. “And whatever arrangement you make with God and the saints that intercede for you is your business.”

  “Aren’t you praying for me?” Satrine asked.

  “Every damn day,” Alana said. “Blazes, I did that before I even knew you were still alive.”

  “Does the reverend know you talk that way, Sister?” Satrine teased.

  “Unless he’s gone deaf.”

  That made Satrine laugh, which was what she really needed. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to find here, Alana, but I’m glad I found you again.”

  Sister Alana glanced up at the clock tower above the church. “I would think you need to get home.”

  “I should,” Satrine agreed, coming to her feet and dusting off her pants. “At some point I’d like to have you come to the house, meet my girls.”

  “And your husband.”

  Satrine winced. There wasn’t much of Loren to meet. “He’s not really there, you know.”

  “The most important part still is, Satrine.” Alana must have sensed she was making Satrine uncomfortable, as she waved it off. “But you should be off, and I should make sure Sister Myriem hasn’t broken anything in a rage.”

  “Good luck with that,” Satrine said, taking her old friend in an embrace. She watched Sister Alana go into the church, and after taking another moment for herself, headed over to the Upper Bridge.

  The sky still had the warm haze of the lazy summer evenings, the setting sun dappling the water downriver on the Maradaine as Satrine made her way across the bridge. Plenty of the folk seemed to be taking their time, strolling across the bridge. Satrine matched their pace, but more out of exhaustion rather than the idle fancy the rest seemed to be in. She wondered what their days consisted of that they could be so carefree. It wasn’t as if they didn’t all also have money problems, illness, and saints knew what other maladies in their lives.

  But Satrine was reasonably certain they didn’t have dead bodies, foreign nobilities, and old spies in their lives.

  The lamps were finally being lit on the street as she approached her home. She had barely gotten her key in the lock when the door flew open from inside, and she was confronted with the face of Missus Abernand.

  “There’s a visitor here for you.”

  This was not Missus Abernand’s usual face or tone. There was none of her usual put-upon air, her presumptive wisdom of her elder years, or disdainful sighs.

  The look on her face was one of terror.

  Satrine drew out her crossbow and signaled for Missus Abernand to step aside. The woman did without hesitation, her hands trembling.

  Satrine raised up her weapon and strode down the short hallway to the main room.

  “Put that away, Inspector.”

  The voice, the accent, the face were all unmistakable, there at Satrine’s table, seated in between Rian and Caribet.

  Pra Yikenj.

  Chapter 12

  “WHAT THE BLAZES are you doing here?”

  Yikenj smiled, like a hairless cat might. “Now, now, Inspector, there’s no need for that.”

  “I’ll decide what there’s a need for in my home.” This woman, this nightmare from years ago was at her table, right between her daughters. To their credit, neither of them looked as frightened as Missus Abernand, or as terrified as Satrine was. Rian was on her nerves, more caution than fear. Caribet looked scared, but a child’s fear of a stranger. There was a bald, gray-skinned woman in her home, and she didn’t know why. “So why are you here?”

  “Inspector, you’ll frighten the children.” She reached out and stroked Caribet’s hair.

  Satrine fired her crossbow right at Yikenj’s heart.

  It didn’t land, as Yikenj’s hand snapped in front of her faster than the blink of an eye. She had caught the crossbow bolt.

  “Now, Inspector. Be so kind as to sit down,” she said, placing the bolt on the table calmly. “There’s no need for further theatrics.”

  Satrine sat down across from Yikenj. “Girls, go upstairs with Missus Abernand. Right away.”

  Rian moved like an arrow, on her feet and grabbing her sister, pulling her away from the Lyranan woman.

  “They really are lovely girls,” Yikenj said. She gave a glance at Caribet. “I imagine you are the very picture of your father, aren’t you?”

  Caribet gasped and pulled back, Rian holding her protectively. For the first time Satrine saw real fierceness in her eldest daughter’s eyes.

  “Let them be,” Satrine said.

  “But she,” Yikenj said, pointing at Rian, “in this house, she is all yours.”

  “Go,” she said to her daughters, and they scurried off to the back stairs with Missus Abernand.

  The remnants of Yikenj’s smile vanished. “You remembered.”

  “Clearly you did as well.”

  “Who do you think wrote the letter addressed to Satrine Carthas Rainey?”

  “Did you come here to reminisce, Yikenj?”

  She got to her feet. Sitting at the table no longer suited her without the dramatic image of being flanked by Satrine’s children. “Your daughter, the one who favors you, she doesn’t know?”

  “No,” Satrine hissed. “It will stay that way.”

  “That is not my business here,” Yikenj said. “But you should thank her, Inspector. It’s thanks to her that you are still alive.”

  Satrine had expected Imachan to be hot—a sweltering, deathly heat where she would desperately claw for a drop of water to sate her thirst.

  It certainly was warm, but it was nothing like that. Though any place would feel warm after Waisholm. Not two weeks since her mission was declared finished—the Rainstorm clan securely on the Waish throne—that she was returned to Maradaine, only to be shoved back into a boat for a new mission.

  “Short term,” she had been told. “Nothing like the last one, Agent Carthas. Go in, gather information, and get the blazes out.”

  There had been something somewhat thrilling about being called “Agent Carthas.” Despite years of being “Quia” or “Her Grace” she never let herself grow accustomed to that. “Tricky Trini” was a girl she hadn’t been in a while. Agent Satrine Carthas had a lovely sound to it.

  This mission, though, consisted of little more than a rough map, a contact in Kiad, and the instructions, “Scout where that map leads you, report what you find.”

  Her contact had been an old man on the outskirts of the city who gave her a basement to sleep in, a hot meal, a change of clothes, and a lot of weapons. The basement was actually an obscene arsenal, and he just shrugged and said, “Take what you need.” His only other advice was to approach her destination at nightfall, which was what she had intended.

  Armed with a crossbow, a bandolier of darts, and as many knives as she could strap onto herself without making noise when she walked, she slipped out into the twilight. The map led her to a farmstead, and she began her investigation.

  She didn’t know a damn thing about farms. There seemed to be only one crop growing, a tall grass shoot. Nothing odd about that. She crept her way to the buildings, figuring whatever she should be looking for was there.

  Most of the buildings seemed to be barracks of some sort, likely for whoever worked this place. She didn’t bother with those. The building that stood out was much larger, and as she approached, gave off a distinct hot, sweet smell. Not quite like honey—but heavier, more oppressive.

  She drew out her crossbow
and slipped into that building. Inside the heat was intense, scorching. This was the sort of heat she expected from Imachan. But it came from massive metal vats—nothing was boiling in them right now, but they still had heat pouring off of them.

  Satrine took two steps closer when her feet were swept out from under her.

  She rolled to one side and fired at her attacker before she even had her footing. The shadowy figure—a woman—moved like lightning, grabbing the bolt midair.

  This was trouble.

  Satrine threw two of her darts at the woman, half wild. That was only a feint as she dove in with her fists.

  Nothing connected as the woman fluidly dodged and blocked everything Satrine gave her. Satrine couldn’t say the same, as three punches landed on her chin and sternum before she was even clear where they were coming from.

  She didn’t let herself get dazed by that. She’d been hit harder plenty of times. This woman had finesse, Satrine had street-sense. Satrine wasn’t about to give her a proper fight, but a brawl.

  She dove at the woman, grabbing hold of her outfit, and tried to pull her down with her weight. This seemed to confuse the woman long enough for Satrine to grapple one arm.

  Satrine had every intention of twisting that arm behind the woman’s back, but the woman flipped her body over in a seemingly impossible way, wrenching Satrine’s arm up. Suddenly she found herself in the position she had planned for her attacker.

  The woman shoved her against one of the vats—hot metal snapped Satrine into the severity of the moment. She pulled a knife with her left arm and drove it backward, getting a piece of the woman. That gave her enough latitude to push away from the vat and turn back around.

  The woman still had a grip on her arm, and Satrine brought down the knife on her. That forced her to let go, and allowed Satrine to get a few steps away.

  “Not bad,” Satrine said, knife held up defensively.

  The woman gave no rejoinder. Instead she closed the distance, grabbing Satrine’s knife hand and slamming her against a wall. One hand was firmly around Satrine’s neck. It was only now, helpless, that she got a good look at the woman. Grayish skin, bald head. Lyranan. Her eyes took in Satrine.