A Murder of Mages: A Novel of the Maradaine Constabulary

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

“Can I help you?” Satrine asked.

  “Doubt it,” Missus Wolman said. She pointed to the ground. “But I’ve got this one hanging about my skirts here.”

  Satrine leaned over the counter. A Constabulary page crouched at Missus Wolman’s legs.

  “Phillen.” Satrine put on her voice of bemused chastisement. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Can’t let them see me talking to you, Missus Rainey,” Phillen said. “They’ll give me the haze if they do.”

  “I understand, Phillen,” Satrine whispered. She already knew she had a black mark on her name; even though Phillen had to be exaggerating its severity. Still, if he was willing to help her, she’d take it however he could give it. “I need to talk to Inspector Welling. Can you get him out here?”

  “I think so,” he said. He slipped out through the back of the shack.

  “He’s a good sort,” Satrine told Missus Wolman after an uncomfortable quiet moment.

  “Mmm,” Missus Wolman grunted. “It ain’t kidneys.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The meat. It ain’t kidneys. Or rancid for that matter.”

  “Then what is it?” Satrine asked.

  “That’s my secret.”

  Satrine leaned in. “So it’s horse, then.”

  “Don’t you insult me, lady,” Missus Wolman added a mutter. “Horse ain’t cheap, you know.”

  Phillen returned, sliding out of sight under the counter again. “Inspector Welling ain’t inside.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Miss Pyle said he went out on a lead a while ago. She’s actually surprised he’s not back.”

  “A lead on what? The mage killer?”

  “I think so,” Phillen said.

  Blazes. Welling might have already walked into it. Welling might already be dead.

  “All right, Phillen, this is what I need you to do. Get back in there, and give word to whoever. The captain, Miss Pyle, Mirrell, or Kellman. Whoever you can. Tell them that I figured it out.”

  “But if I—”

  “I know, Phillen, but Welling’s life and reputation are on the line here. You’ve got to risk it.”

  “Fair enough,” Phillen said. “So what do I tell them you figured out?”

  “Two things. One, I think the killer is Nerrish Plum, the bookshop owner. Two, I think that Inspector Welling is the next intended victim.”

  Phillen’s eyes went wide. “I’ll do whatever I can. Count on me, Inspector.” He ran off.

  Satrine was surprised at how much her heart swelled at being called inspector again. Even if it was a mistake.

  She did count on Phillen, but she couldn’t imagine getting much help from any of the other inspectors. She had to figure out where Plum would be, where he would take Minox, in the hope of stopping him. She thanked Missus Wolman for her help and left the stand.

  There had to be a logic to the locations: alley, chapterhouse, church. It had to be a set, if it only made sense to Plum. Like the poem, a pattern laid out in the ancient text.

  Perhaps there was a different poem, one that explained the where of the murders as much as the first revealed the murderer and the victims. She started walking to the store, thumbing through the book, hoping to find some secret treasure in the ancient verses.

  She didn’t notice the meaty fist until it connected with her face.

  She fell onto her back, the book dropping onto the ground.

  Satrine’s vision was blurred for a moment, until it came into focus on the pudgy face of Idre Hoffer.

  “Hello there, Tricky,” she said. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”

  Chapter 29

  SATRINE GOT BACK ON her feet as quick as possible, as Idre picked up the poetry book.

  “Still got your nose in this, after all these years?” Idre asked.

  “I’m busy, Idre.”

  “With what? I’ve been on you for two blocks now. The sticks don’t want anything to do with you. Took your vest away.”

  Satrine lashed out for the book, and Idre tried to pull it away, hold it out of reach. However, Idre was no longer an older girl with speed and muscle over Satrine. Satrine grabbed the woman’s wrist and held her fast, plucking the book out of her grasp.

  “I don’t have time for you.” Satrine shoved Idre away, but the large woman did not move easily.

  “You don’t have time?” Idre spoke with an exaggerated North Maradaine accent, unsubtle in her mockery. She swung a heavy punch at Satrine’s face, but Satrine was more than ready this time. She blocked the punch and countered, square in Idre’s face.

  That felt good.

  Idre barely blinked.

  “Must have thought it was so funny, lecturing me about my boy. Thought I wouldn’t place you, Trick? You think I’m that dumb?” She swung several more punches—surprisingly fast for such a large woman—Satrine could only block and dodge, unable to get her own shot in.

  “Didn’t think you cared that much.” Satrine shoved the book into the waistline of her pants, and dove under Idre’s arm. She didn’t have time for this, she should just run the blazes out of there. The sun would set in an hour at most, and if she couldn’t find Welling—

  She snapped out of her reverie as Idre’s heavy boot nearly connected with her chest.

  “Cared about those six months,” Idre snarled.

  Satrine couldn’t run. She couldn’t hunt down Minox while looking over her shoulder for Idre.

  “Six months?” she said. “You mean your little trip to Quarrygate when we were kids?”

  “Yes!” Idre snapped. She leaped onto Satrine, hands going for the neck.

  Satrine landed a solid punch across Idre’s head, but the woman’s momentum took them both down into the street. Satrine was vaguely aware of a horse braying, the crunching noise of cart wheels coming to an abrupt stop. Shouts rose up from a crowd circling around them.

  Satrine was on her back, Idre straddled over her. She couldn’t get any leverage to force the large woman off her, though her arms were free enough to stave off her attacks.

  “You got me pinched, you rat!” Idre shouted, swinging wildly. “You ruined my life!”

  Satrine landed a hard punch in Idre’s chest, followed by another to her chin. This was enough to knock Idre off balance. Satrine rolled to the side to force her off.

  “Damn blazes I did!” Satrine shouted, getting to her feet. There was a wall of people circled around them, cheering and hollering.

  Idre was up, swinging her fist like a hammer. “I heard you were dead, slag. When I came back, they all said you were dead.”

  “I just went away.” Now Satrine was in her full sense, ready to brawl. Idre wasn’t going to get the better of her again.

  “Ran away, eh? Couldn’t face me.” Heavy, wild punches. Nothing touched Satrine.

  Satrine dashed into range, throwing two hard jabs at Idre’s side. “Never was about you.”

  She didn’t get out in time. Idre got a solid hit across Satrine’s jaw. Satrine lashed back, a hard swing out that connected across the side of Idre’s head. The big woman went reeling.

  The crowd cheered for more.

  Satrine leaped at the dazed woman. Despite Idre’s bulk, Satrine was able to knock hard against her, throwing her further off balance. Idre took another wild swing. Satrine was nowhere near it.

  “All I wanted was you out of my life!” Satrine shouted. “Let it alone!”

  She threw another punch, everything she had left in her arm, knocking most of the sense out of Idre. Her old rival dropped to her knees. Satrine kicked Idre in the back, pushing her the rest of the way to be facedown in the street.

  Two whistles blew all around her.

  “All right, break it up,” the familiar voice of Inspector Mirrell droned. He and Kellman came through the crowd, a couple of foo
tpatrol with them.

  Kellman nudged the insensible Idre with his boot. “Iron and box this one. Overnight for brawling. She gives you trouble tell her we might pink her for interfering with an inspector’s investigation.” One patrolman chained Idre’s wrists, while the other looked expectantly at Satrine.

  “What about her?”

  Mirrell and Kellman both had card-playing faces as they circled around her. She couldn’t get any sense off of them. “What about her, indeed?” Mirrell said. “You boys don’t mind if Darreck and I take something of a personal interest in her, do you?”

  “No, sir,” said one of the patrolmen, his grin a little too wicked.

  “Good,” Mirrell said. “And, boys? Let’s keep her involvement quiet, all right?”

  “Mouse quiet, sir.”

  “Then let’s be about it,” Mirrell said. He grabbed Satrine by the arm, and Kellman took the other side, and they led her off into an alley.

  If this was what they wanted, Satrine wasn’t out of fight yet. As soon as they were out of sight from the street, she wrenched herself free from Mirrell’s grasp and pulled up her arm to drive her elbow in his face. He caught her arm again before she could deliver the blow.

  “Hey, hey,” he whispered. “None of that, now.”

  “You think I won’t fight back?”

  “Blazes, Tricky,” Kellman said, letting go of her arm. “We already saw what kind of fight back you can give.”

  “Then . . .”

  “Kid said you think Jinx is in trouble. Bookshop guy is the killer?”

  Mirrell nodded. “So tell us what you’ve got.”

  Satrine pulled the book out of her waistline and started to explain.

  Consciousness came slow and ugly for Minox, pain coursing through his head. Bit by bit, he became more aware of his circumstances. He had been stripped of his clothes. He was strapped to a metal table, hanging head down at an uncomfortable angle. He felt the same draining sensation he had experienced when he had come into contact with the killer’s spikes, but he did not feel like any spikes had been driven into his body. He wondered if the magic effect of the spikes was so profound as to cause actual numbness.

  When he finally opened his eyes, he was surprised to see sunlight. Glancing around, best he could, he could not quite determine where the light was coming in. He was in a stone chamber of some sort. The masonry reminded him of his earlier trip through the sewer system.

  He finally spotted the source of the sunlight. There was a mirror, lined up with a chimney shaft of some sort, aligned to send the light at him. Meticulous. Ritual. The killer—Nerrish Plum—had his fourth victim.

  Minox found his voice. “Plum! Where are you?”

  Plum’s face appeared in front of Minox’s eyes. “No need to scream, Inspector. Also, no purpose. No one other than me will hear you.”

  “So your purpose is to kill me in another of your ritualized murders,” Minox said.

  “Indeed,” Plum said. He moved around so he could sit on the stone in front of Minox, as if they could have a friendly chat, despite Minox hanging nearly upside down. “You do have a sense of what I’m doing.”

  “I have a sense it means something to you,” Minox said. “But killing four innocent people is nothing but senseless.”

  “Innocent, really?” Plum gave an uneasy chortle. “I’ll grant that you, dear Inspector, probably do not deserve this fate. But the others? They could hardly be called innocent.”

  “So they did something to deserve what you did?”

  “More or less.”

  “That’s why it was easier to kill them, correct?” Minox knew he was trying to catch a rabbit out of the hutch attempting to reason with the man, but he had little other choice, not if he hoped to survive.

  “Easier than what? I mean, Harleydale was a challenge, sawing through those hands. Took longer than I thought. But it had to be done. All has to be done.”

  “But you’re hesitating with me.”

  “Hesitating? Saints, no, Inspector. I’m waiting. There is a difference.” He pointed to the mirror. “You have until the sun sets.”

  “Why, Mister Plum?”

  “Well, the ritual has to happen at sunset. I don’t make the rules.”

  “But why the ritual, Mister Plum? What purpose does it serve?”

  “Yes, of course,” Plum said. “Even facing death, you need to figure out the reason behind it all. It’s only natural, I suppose. And an answer is the least you deserve.”

  Minox struggled to keep himself awake, the draining feeling threatening to pull him back down to inky blackness. He had Plum talking now, and that bought him some leverage. And he did have a morbid curiosity to know how all the murders made sense in Plum’s mind.

  “Do you know how my wife died, Inspector? It was three years ago, during the Circle Feuds. It happened right on those steps of the Light and Stone house. You did know several local people had been killed in the crossfire of mages fighting each other on the streets.”

  “I knew, but I didn’t know details,” Minox said. “So that’s why you killed Jaelia Tomar there. Where your wife died.”

  “Well, that’s what it had to be, of course.” Plum got to his feet and walked out of Minox’s field of vision. “Met and married, dead and buried. That’s what I figured out, you see. She died on those steps. Not that anyone was held accountable.”

  “Charges were filed, and successfully prosecuted—”

  “For the whole feud, not for the lives lost, Inspector. Not the individual, precious life ripped too soon from me!”

  Plum was agitated. Minox needed to change the tone of the conversation. “Met and married, you said. You met her in that alley?”

  “Six years ago. Would you believe, both heading to the backhouses? What a way to start a romance.”

  “And married at Saint Limarre’s?” The locations all made sense now, fitting the mad logic behind the killings. All that remained was his own death here . . . and buried. “Where are we?”

  “The underground world beneath our city is fascinating, Inspector. I must confess, I’ve only scratched away a tiny portion. But this mausoleum dates back to, I think, the fourth century. I may be wrong. And to think, it’s a mere thirty feet underground, nearly below my shop.” He moved back into vision, taking another look at the mirror. “I will admit, it makes timing the sunset a challenge, but what can you do?”

  “Your wife wasn’t buried here,” Minox asserted.

  “No, not originally,” Plum said. “But she’s been here long enough, I would think.” His eyes went to a spot under Minox’s head. Minox strained to crane his neck to see. On the ground underneath him lay a shamble of bones, laid out over a chalk-drawn symbol. The symbol, drawn with long, elegant lines, had four points marked with circles. Glass jars sat on three of the circles: two with hearts, one with hands and eyes.

  “What the blazes are you doing, Plum?”

  “Two hearts, on wings of fire. Hands of stone, eyes of light.” Plum approached Minox and ran a finger along his bare chest. “No circle keeps us apart. Body and blood.”

  The man had clearly lost his mind.

  “Mister Plum, I realize that you’ve suffered a great loss, and it’s understandable you wish to enact vengeance upon the Circles that caused your grief. But this won’t change what has occurred. Killing me won’t bring your wife back to you.”

  Plum crouched down, face to upside-down face with Minox. “Oh, no, Inspector Welling. That’s exactly what it will do.”

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Mirrell said.

  “I don’t disagree,” Satrine said.

  “It’s batty as all blazes,” Kellman said. “But it does kind of work, you know?”

  “It sounds like one of Jinx’s theories, is what I think,” Mirrell said. “But these mage murders have been s
o strange, it would need a Jinx theory to work.”

  “I’m not saying the poem is anything more than a love poem,” Satrine said. “But an unhinged mind might have sought meaning in it, and came up with action to match it.”

  Mirrell raised an eyebrow. “So you’re arguing that this crazy idea is sensible because the killer is crazy?” He glanced over at Kellman.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Kellman said.

  “All right, then,” Mirrell said. “Let’s check out the bookstore.”

  The door was latched and shades were drawn when they arrived. Satrine looked at the sun. It would be setting in less than an hour. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “That may be,” Mirrell said. “But we’ve got limits of what we’re allowed to do based on a crazy hunch. Shop is closed.”

  “It is odd for a shop to be closed this early,” Kellman said. He looked around the street. “Nothing else is.”

  “Odd, sure,” Mirrell said. “But not actionable. Sticks got to play by the rules, Tricky. We can’t just go into a house or shop without just cause.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not a stick anymore,” Satrine said, taking off her coat. She wrapped it around her hand and punched through the glass. She reached through the broken pane to unlatch the door.

  “Why, Inspector Kellman,” Mirrell said in a flat voice. “It appears we are observing a possible robbery in progress.”

  Satrine opened the door and entered the shop. It looked much the same as it had this morning.

  “It certainly appears that could be the case,” Kellman said from the street outside, matching his partner’s tone. “Perhaps we should investigate more closely.”

  “We would be negligent in our duty to do otherwise,” Mirrell said, and entered the shop. “Anything?”

  Satrine scanned the floor. Something caught her eye, and she picked it up. “The proverbial nail in the shoe.” It was the broken nib from Welling’s pipe.

  “Not distinctive or damning enough,” Mirrell said.

  Satrine’s eyes went back to the floor. Lines in the dust. Something heavy had been dragged into the back room. Something like a full-grown man.