‘Investigator Rumex Jeryd, of Villiren Inquisition. What’s going on here?’ Jeryd reached beneath his garments to find the medallion, and clumsily displayed it.
The woman’s partner, tall and handsome in his black attire, simply shrugged. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with her. I just turned my back for a moment and . . .’
The woman, who wasn’t far off being just a girl, gestured towards the balcony, and Jeryd stepped outside, as a crowd gathered behind him. The starlight was obscured in patches by cloud, but you could see the harbour, an arc whose rim was defined by street fires and lantern light showing people sifting through the streets, and dogs barking above a wind that seemed to groan as it passed through the city.
And there it was, close to where he was standing, the same substance he’d discovered earlier that same day, a thick white mass dripping from the edge of the parapet up to the roof behind, slick and web-like. A few tables and chairs were laid out, and those nearest were covered in this mucus-like gloop.
He turned back to the woman, whose head was still angled away from him, and then he noted her bracelets and coloured nails, more brash than anything he remembered from Villjamur.
‘Did you see what did this?’ Jeryd pointed to the gloop.
She shook her head, and mumbled, ‘No, but something big was moving out there. I knew it as soon I came out for some fresh air. I felt as if I was being watched. Then . . .’ – a sharp inhalation of air as she choked back on her sobs – ‘then that white stuff just appeared from nowhere.’
‘How much have you had to drink?’
‘Hardly anything!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you believe me? I know what I saw, all right, I’m not fucking pissed.’
‘My apologies,’ Jeryd said. ‘I meant nothing by it. I’m simply trying to build a picture of what happened. Please, you said you didn’t see anything.’
‘I could feel it. Something was watching me, as if waiting. I turned around and this stuff just materialized right by my shoulder – right there, look, as it is now. I may have heard some shuffling of stones, but I don’t know if that was because of anything else.’
Jeryd nodded nervously, believing what she said, and stepped over to draw a blade from his boot. He prodded tentatively at the mysterious substance. He knew in his heart that this was the same stuff he’d encountered earlier. He contemplated what kind of creature could produce something like this, and in such quantities.
Finally he faced the guests huddled in the doorway and for a moment wondered morosely how he’d ended up in a situation so absurd, with a bunch of pissed-up rich nobodies staring at him as if expecting some answers.
He said, ‘All right, back to your drinks now. There’s nothing more to see out here.’
FIFTEEN
They were stupid to leave the entrance unlocked, it thought.
The spider squeezed through the doorway, six of its legs gripping the frame, and eased its body soundlessly into the house. Light from both moons poured in behind it, and it could see its own shadow stretching ahead across the floor.
This was a wealthy family, it instantly decided. Aromas still lingered in the air from some hours ago, so it could sense the quality of their food and realized they were well-fed. Voland would approve of such high-quality pickings. It struggled to make out the patterns on the wall hangings in this dim light, struggled to make out anything but tiny vibrations in the air. It was essential, though, that this business be conducted at night, as its services to Doctor Voland must remain unseen.
It made its way up the stairs with a liquid grace, the hairs on its legs guiding it to the second and then the final floor. Behind the third door to the right – the texture of the air had changed there. That was where bodies lay asleep.
Meat.
In stealth it crept along the corridor and, on reaching the third door, extended one leg to the handle, willing for a minor transformation – and, ripping painlessly through its tarsus and claw, a hand appeared. Hands could sometimes be much more useful than claws, and the door opened effortlessly. There they were, the entire family, amassed in one bed for warmth, two parents, two young children, all in deep slumber. They were quite unaware that they were about to become prey.
It scuttled sideways, flanking the room.
Then, straddling the length of bed, the spider loomed above them, half wishing it could just use its venom to dispatch them with ease. But Voland would say no to this, that it contaminated the end product. It now located the father – always going for the biggest threat first – a thickset man with red hair, snoring. Using a hand and claw together to tilt his head upwards, the spider then prised open his mouth with the gentleness of a lover’s touch.
The man’s eyes shuddered open and he gasped ‘What the devil—?’ But the spider spat inert fibre into his mouth, suffocating him quickly, all the time checking for any change in vibration among the others. The spider flipped the victim off the bed while the others remained silent, then pounced on him again, suffocating him with more of its spittle, while pinning him to the floor with two legs. The man’s eyes bulged in silent alarm, and then in recognition.
Next, came the mother. She lay on the other side of the bed, so it levered itself back up, its abdomen hovering over the bodies of both children. Again it manoeuvred the victim, held her head back, mouth open, spat and suffocated her. Surprisingly easy this one, and the body was placed next to her husband.
Then the spider contemplated the children, a boy and a girl.
The pair lay in a peaceful embrace, as it peeled back the sheets to analyse their tiny bodies. They couldn’t be more than five or six years old, and their flesh was tender but scrawny, with little accretion of fat or muscles. Voland had always maintained that children were worthless: they provided poor cuts of meat.
Stepping backwards, two legs at a time, the spider bound the two parent bodies together with silk. Then dragged their corpses downstairs, thoroughly cocooned in fibre, out through the open door, and into the ice-scarred night.
*
As Jeryd reminisced about the previous night’s activities, while snacking on some breaded crabmeat he’d just purchased from a grubby street vendor, something else caught his attention.
There were two crates wobbling dangerously on a horse-drawn cart, and he watched with fascination as both finally fell off. Frightened by the racket, the horse bolted, charging through the wide streets of the Althing district. No one seemed in a hurry to stop it as it disappeared north into the sea fog that had rolled in overnight. Jeryd pushed down his hat to sit firmer on his head and advanced towards the two men who were busy retrieving the spilled contents of the crates.
‘What’ve you boys got in there?’ Jeryd asked them.
The two men glared at him suspiciously, and stood in front of the crates, to block his view. They were both redheads, and the one on the left had tattoos covering his neck. ‘Fuck you want to know for?’ said one, and the other folded his arms belligerently.
‘Oh, I’m just a curious investigator.’ Jeryd pulled out his medallion. ‘You know how the Inquisition likes to gather a few facts now and then.’ Well, this one does at least. Glances were exchanged, an uneasy change of expression at the law’s presence. For a while neither said anything.
‘How much?’ one of them finally asked.
‘How much for what?’ Jeryd grunted.
‘How much you want to, uh, go away, like? You know – and we know – the policy.’
This attempt at bribery only made Jeryd more determined to find out what was contained in the crate. ‘I’m afraid I’m not like the other guys. I only want an answer. What’s in there?’
The young men conferred in whispers. ‘Meat,’ the one with tattoos explained. ‘We’re taking it from the slaughterhouse to the irens. Boss’s orders.’ Then he added, ‘And our boss is Malum, leader of the Bloods, someone who don’t take kindly to having his men hassled by the Inquisition. You know what I mean?’
Jeryd knew what they meant. M
alum was the most influential man in the underworld. A violent sociopath by all accounts. Jeryd had been hearing far too much about this man since his arrival in Villiren. His name was whispered every other day in the Inquisition headquarters, more in awe and fear than otherwise. This individual had myth wrapped around him so tightly that Jeryd wondered how he could even breathe.
He glowered at them both, then at the leaked bits of offal that had slipped onto the cobbles, then back at their street-warrior faces. ‘I don’t need paying to go away,’ Jeryd declared. ‘As I said, I’m not like the others – if you understand what I mean.’
*
Jeryd had to pass the gaol cells in the Inquisition headquarters in order to get to his office. Despite the fact that crimes were rarely investigated properly, it seemed that prisoners were still being herded in daily, all types, including many that did not look like typical prisoners. Jeryd made enquiries.
‘Just between you and me, right,’ one of the aides confided, a short, skinny individual with a mop of blond hair, ‘we arrest such people as get in the way of Lutto’s progress. You know, he wants a street cleared to let the army pass through, and people disagree and protest, he calls it a crime, and suddenly we’ve got our cells filled. He wants traditional traders disposed of to make space for more profitable ones – ones that can offer cheaper goods. When the politicians clear ’em out, it makes for a free market. But you know how it is, some folk don’t like change, and want to kick up a fuss, don’t they? And space is precious here, you see. City’s got to make money, like. And those miners who lost their jobs and started getting violent during their protests . . . well, they came straight in here too. Meanwhile we got murderers running much of the show out on the streets. As for being a criminal – well, I s’pose it’s all a matter of perspective, right? Anyway, just doing my job, like, so don’t you complain to me about it. And this stays between you and me, all right – not worth my job, this.’
Jeryd was growing more and more disillusioned with this city as each day passed, and as he entered his office was inhabiting a deeply reflective state.
Nanzi was already waiting for him.
‘Morning, Nanzi.’ Jeryd placed his hat on the desk and slumped into his chair with a thundering sigh.
‘Good morning, investigator,’ Nanzi said. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘No thanks, I had a big breakfast on the way here.’ He rubbed his face to make himself more alert. ‘Now, it transpires we have some leads.’
‘Clues?’
‘Yeah, from the Citadel party. I found an interesting and unusual substance there. I’m slowly becoming convinced it’s a step in the right direction.’
‘What kind of substance?’ she demanded coolly.
‘No idea yet. I’ve already given a similar sample to the commander to analyse yesterday – he has a cultist working with him who might know something about it. I’m not sure if it’s linked to the disappearances.’
‘Investigator Jeryd, you seem to take these cases so seriously. It is an admirable quality, but do you not need some time off? You must have a personal life that needs attending to. I can follow things up with the commander and give you some relief.’
‘Yeah, you could be right, lass. I do take it seriously.’ He didn’t have the heart to explain just how much he felt he owed to life. He was devoted to his wife, and his conscience was dedicated to seeing that there was a little good put back into the world.
How could he explain to her that he was transferring his secret guilt to every single action in his life? That incident with his wife back in Villjamur had changed him. He had tried hard to put it to the back of his mind, but the after-effects were still there, asking questions of him.
He once thought that the only way to cope with the dark events in his life was by helping other people, but maybe that was wrong: maybe he was running away from them instead, viewing their world from the other side of his desk, resisting his problems with a medallion and a thousand hunches and a wrap-around theory.
‘I’m not sure what I’d do with any time off. Spend it with my wife, most likely going on some trip, but there’s sod-all places to visit in this ice age anyway, and we do go out regularly in the evenings. No, all I have is my work – and I’m determined to find out why so many damn people keep vanishing from these streets.’
‘It seems a most impossible case,’ Nanzi declared. ‘There are easier crimes we could solve, ones where we could put criminals in gaol and make some progress. There’s the trade in pirated relics . . . another man lost his arm yesterday, one of the lucky ones. Just before you arrived in the city, a child set one off in an iren, killing three other people besides himself, and injuring dozens.’
‘It is indeed a tragedy,’ Jeryd agreed. ‘But a good investigator refuses to give in even when it seems nothing can be done. Sometimes there will be a clue, the tiniest discovery that’ll give you massive consequences. I don’t know. It just seems so odd that I know so little about this case – and such a lack of control makes me feel uneasy.’
Nanzi smiled softly at him. ‘When will we see the commander again? I’m interested in hearing what news he has affecting the city.’
‘You and me both, lass.’
SIXTEEN
The main island of Folke certainly wasn’t how Randur remembered it. There should have been carts full of something or other trawling back and forth through the day, farmland communities trading with one another, people travelling between villages, but instead there was nothing.
In between the open vistas was the familiar sight of forests, providing some shelter from the elements – abies or betula trees – but there was now something that suggested the people who worked the land were seldom here any longer, either having died from the cold or moved on to more temperate regions.
And Randur himself had changed since he’d left here for Villjamur. He’d grown used to throwing sweet lines of chat at the women in the Imperial Residence, the soft sheets and subtle lighting and gold-trimmed furnishings. Warmth and good food and decadent surroundings. It had very nearly corrupted him, turned him into something he despised and, if he was honest, it was difficult for him to now cope with the harshness of life on the road: finding his own food, trying desperately not to allow water to seep into his boots.
Eir, on the other hand, had blossomed in the absence of her former power. It was as if the strictures of Villjamur had stopped her from feeling truly free. She dressed more like a boy these days, which was ironic considering the comments Randur used to get from others about dressing like a girl. She’d become tougher and more resilient. The realities of life out here had very quickly shaved away the accoutrements of her former wealthy existence. She had developed the ability to fight and showed it with confidence.
The enforced celibacy of being out on the road was not for him. Rika had already killed the mood more than once when he thought he’d stolen a rare moment alone with Eir. The Empress would have wandered off on some solitary contemplation, braving the cold like a she-bear – even when you meditate, you can tune the cold out, she would declare – and then he’d lie down in some shelter, Eir in his arms, groping under her clothing, feeling the warmth and . . . Then Rika would step back into view, after her soliloquy to the heavens, and his arms would snap back to his side.
A man can only take so much.
The territory of Folke was a collection of three islands, comprising one major land mass, and two sparse little outcrops in the sea to the south, Folke Mikill and Folke Smár. Apparently communities of banshees lived on one of those islands, the only group of them outside of Villjamur, and people said they lived deliberately alone, away from other human or rumel, so they could remain in peace, since on their own they would not have to announce so many deaths. But how could a group of women survive so long without producing children to keep the line going, without it dying out? Randur had often fantasized about what it would be like to be the only male there . . .
Eir nudged him in th
e ribs, as if telepathically channelling his thoughts. From behind him, on horseback, she pointed across the line of forest towards a collection of rooftops appearing in the distance.
They were travelling along the western shore. To their left the sea, choppy again today, met with a murky grey horizon; to their right extended a forest, arcing gently towards a low range of hills. Having not seen a soul for days, this promise of human contact was mildly unsettling, a sudden reminder that they weren’t the only people around.
‘Drekka,’ Randur muttered through his smile of recognition. ‘Gets its name from the old word for drink. Used to be considered a bit of a party town. I’ve been there once or twice, though not from this route.’
‘Can we stay somewhere here for the night?’ Eir asked.
‘I would’ve thought so,’ Randur replied. ‘Agricultural town, mainly, but does a bit of trade doubling as a port. A few travellers pass through, but I’m not sure how things are with the Freeze.’
*
It was a town where dreams lay down to die. Places like this didn’t much like change, their nature going against the fundamental laws of development or decay. The further you went from the largest towns, notably Ule, the further you moved from anything approaching cosmopolitan. In Randur’s memory he’d only been there a few times, all during his late teens; there had been super-strength local vodka, and local women who were not shy in the least. Each time he had visited he’d sworn never to return. But there was always a girl, wasn’t there, some reason to make that extra effort, to ride across the island in search of sensual fulfilment.
The cultural centre lay just where two straight thoroughfares met. Here, the taverns conducted a roaring trade, serving up equal measures of gambling and debauchery. A haven for card sharps to work their route around the various settlements. He wondered vaguely if rooms would be available at the Bitches Brew inn, one of the quieter places in the town, just off the main street.
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