Called to Battle: Volume Two

by Steve Diamond, Matt Forbeck, Chris A. Jackson

  Gorman bit his tongue, now certain the woman was playing stupid with such an inane comment. If he thought her slow-witted, he might talk above her head, maybe say something to incriminate himself. “Yes.” He spoke slowly, playing along. “That is the correct word.”

  “And you invent weapons?”

  “I create innovative alchemical mixtures. The resultant reactions of many of which make them particularly well suited to a variety of applications on the battlefield.”

  “And when you’re creating these alchemical mixtures, do they ever not go as planned?”

  “On occasion.”

  Gorman’s gaze wandered out past the loft’s wooden railing—to the scorch marks on the floor, to the hole in the ceiling, and to the quiet chaos on the floor below. The damage could have been worse. Several of his latest inventions lay strewn about the place in various stages of completion. In one corner, the one farthest from where he stood, a brass still worked at boiling and condensing his latest attempt at creating a more efficient propellant for rockets. In another, shaped charges slow-baked in a makeshift oven he’d constructed out of bricks salvaged from the ruins of his last laboratory.

  He grimaced at the thought of the spectacular loss of the previous place. Establishing a new laboratory always proved such a drain in terms of both time and money, and he preferred to keep a low profile in a city, especially when he was working on new creations. It cut down on the number of hangers-on and spies—and even watch inspectors—whom his gutless rivals often sent to watch over him.

  Although he sometimes craved notoriety when he was hunting for patrons, he detested the kind of attention the explosion had garnered him. If not for that, the inspector would not have come so quickly to investigate the incident tonight. He turned back toward the dead woman and frowned.

  Falks read the look on his face. “Feeling some regrets now, are we?”

  “That’s absurd,” Gorman said. He checked himself, then narrowed his eyes. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  Falks clucked her tongue. “Not yet.”

  Gorman’s eyes widened in indignation, but the inspector cut him off before he could launch into a defensive rant. “How did you know her?”

  That brought Gorman up short. “I didn’t.”

  “Then do you mind telling me how she happened to get into your lab and onto your bed—while you were in it—and die?”

  Gorman hesitated. How much could he tell her without getting into trouble? Could he speak the plain truth and be vindicated by it? Or would Falks use it to weave a rope of lies with which to hang him?

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  Falks shrugged. “I have time.”

  Gorman sized the woman up. From the scar that ran across her left cheekbone—likely left there by a sword—she seemed a woman of action, but perhaps that lay abandoned in her youth. She had grown thick around the middle the way old warriors who hoped to put that life behind them always did, and wisps of grey streaked her shoulder-length hair.

  She seemed trustworthy enough, but Gorman had long ago realized that such evaluations were often meaningless unless rooted in real data—proven evidence—rather than based on gut feelings. He didn’t know enough about her, but then he realized he didn’t care. He’d dealt with enough inspectors like her in his day: crusaders for justice determined to do their thankless job. Most members of the Watch were little more than bodies to patrol the street as crime deterrents, useless except in the simplest circumstances. Inspectors, on the other hand, while few in number, were another matter. They accepted being underpaid and overworked because they enjoyed solving crimes. They were dangerous and implacable when they caught a scent. It was tempting to just offer her a bribe, but he could sense it would harm rather than improve his chances.

  He decided to just tell her his story and not concern himself with what she thought about his guilt or innocence. He knew what he’d done—or allowed to happen, at least—and why. If she couldn’t see that, he’d eventually find someone above her who would.

  Or so he hoped.

  “Having worked for the past sixty hours without rest, I finally gave into my body’s unfortunate limitations and laid myself down for a short nap in the midafternoon.”

  “What happened to the rest of the people who work here?”

  Gorman cocked his head. “How do you mean?”

  Falks glanced to the workshop below the loft as if doing so would explain everything. “This place is far larger than one person can reasonably maintain.”

  “I think you and I have different definitions of what’s reasonable, Inspector.”

  She frowned. “So, no one else ever comes in here? Other than women who wind up dead in your bed, of course.”

  Gorman shrugged in a sharp, dismissive way. “I don’t regularly work with other people.”

  “I don’t think you answered my question.”

  Gorman wiped his eyes. “Yes. I do occasionally employ assistants. I don’t let them do anything complicated. They’re more like test—” He stopped and returned to square one. “Do you know how hard it is to find anyone to even talk with who comes close to understanding what I’m creating here?”

  “I’m sure I don’t have a clue.”

  “Congratulations. Just being aware of that little fact puts you in the top three percent of people in this world.”

  “Tell me about your assistants.”

  Gorman groaned. “Is all this really necessary?”

  Falks shook her head. “No. I can haul you to jail right now. We can let the judge discuss this with you instead.” She’d meant for the suggestion to intimidate the inventor, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “You don’t want to know about the deceased woman over there?”

  “Was she one of your assistants?”

  Gorman scoffed. “No.”

  Falks sensed Gorman had cut off the rest of that sentence. “But?”

  “But nothing. I’d have never hired someone so incredibly unwise.” He glanced down at the body and snorted. “Well, not intentionally.”

  Falks’ face flushed red. “That’s enough.”

  She took an aggressive step closer to Gorman. He glanced around for a way to escape but couldn’t find one that wouldn’t wind up with the well-armed and wary inspector knocking him cold or shooting him dead. She had him cornered.

  “Wait,” he said. “I think we got off on the wrong foot here.”

  She ignored his non-apology. “As I said, I know all too well who you are. Word about people like you gets around. It follows in your wake.”

  “I’d like to say I’m flattered.”

  “The words aren’t meant to be kind. I’ve had an eye on you ever since you came to my town.” She gestured at the bed. “If you had your way, you’d have just disposed of her body in one of your kilns here, and that would have been the end of it.”

  “And would that have been so bad?” Gorman leaned forward, refusing to let the inspector threaten him. “Think about how much more efficient that would be—for both you and me.”

  Falks stepped back and rubbed her forehead as if a pain had suddenly stabbed her between the halves of her brain. “I know. ‘He’s mad,’ the people from the Order of the Golden Crucible said. ‘Insane. Just stay clear of him.’ And that’s coming from a group of alchemists I already know are unhinged.”

  “You can still leave,” Gorman said. “I promise I won’t be offended.”

  Falks tightened her lips. “I don’t care if you’re crazy, as long as you’re harmless-crazy. But that’s not the word on you. You’re a crate’s worth of trouble stuffed into a tiny sack. Still, I thought I only had to worry about you burning down half the city.” She glanced at the cooling body. “Not straight-out murder. Crazy, I can tolerate, but this?”

  Gorman nodded his approval. “Fine,” he said. “Agreed. Even were I mad—and I’m not admitting that, mind you, to you or anyone else—I still wouldn’t want justice here to be any other way. A land without sen
sible laws? Well, it’s one I’d have a hard time getting paid in, isn’t it?”

  Falks didn’t laugh. She put her hand on the pommel of her truncheon again and gestured at the corpse with an open hand. “So?”

  Gorman considered the situation for a moment. “How about self-defense?”

  Falks put her hands on her hips and lanced Gorman with a stare of disbelief. “Are you saying this woman meant to kill you?”

  “I’m not just saying it. It’s true.”

  “And what evidence do you have to support this flimsy claim?”

  “You’re not much of an investigator, are you, Inspector?”

  She stepped back to give herself room, then reached into her jacket and drew a heavy pistol from the holster hanging under her left shoulder. Without further ceremony, she leveled it at Gorman’s heart.

  Gorman put his hands up, not in surrender but supplication. “Forgive me,” he said. “I meant no harm. I was only making an observation.”

  “You can explain that to the judge, or you can swing from the end of a rope.”

  Gorman winced. “I just meant—you’re not a doctor, are you? Are you even sure she’s really dead?”

  “Is she?”

  “Of course she is, but that’s not my point. You haven’t determined how she got in here. You haven’t even asked me who she is, other than asking if she was my assistant.”

  The heat faded from Falks’ face, but the barrel of her weapon remained trained on Gorman’s chest. “From the shattered pane of punched-out glass on the floor over there, I’d say she came in through the window, as you said earlier. And there’s a dagger next to her in the bed.”

  “But damned little blood, don’t you think?”

  The inspector glanced at the yellowed sheets, on which the woman lay face down. They needed a good washing, but they showed few crimson stains, just a small smear of it next to the blade. “And if I turn her over?”

  Gorman shook his head.

  “What about your neck?” she asked.

  Gorman craned his chin up and felt a dark spot there. He brought his fingers up to his face and stared at the blood on them. “As I said: self-defense.”

  Falks lowered her pistol but did not put it away. She squatted down next to the bed to get a good look at the dead woman’s face. She was young. She might have been pretty once, but her long, thick braid of dark hair framed a countenance that had turned an awful shade of purplish blue.

  “Who is she?” Falks glanced back at Gorman, who’d kept his distance, less out of respect for the dead than for her gun, she felt sure.

  “I’m surprised. You don’t know?”

  The inspector ignored the jab. “Is she from around here?”

  Gorman shook his head. “Ord, I believe.”

  “What brought her here?”

  “She came to kill me,” Gorman said.

  “Is that right?” Falks straightened up and regarded Gorman. “She’s a long way from home.”

  “She really wanted me dead.”

  “And yet there she lies?” Falks said.

  “I didn’t say she was good at it. I had a stronger preference for living.”

  “What did you do to her that would make her want to kill you?”

  Gorman said, “Nothing. Not one damn thing.”

  “Except kill her.”

  “In self-defense,” Gorman said. “That just happened, as we established. You were asking what I did to her initially, to bring her here. To which I said ‘nothing.’ Now we’re up to speed.”

  Falks sucked at her teeth as she strode over to the open window. “Your evasiveness suggests you know more than you are telling me. Why did she want to kill you?”

  “You find it hard to believe that people would want to kill me? You know what I do for a living.”

  The window’s lower sash had six panes of glass in it. The upper middle one had been knocked out, and the latch that sat above it stood open. “You’re a sell-sword,” she said, her voice saturated with disdain.

  Gorman threw up his hands in disgust. “Do I look like I carry a sword around?”

  Falks dismissed this. “You’re a mercenary, or at the very least you supply weapons to them.”

  “You make it sound like I’m some kind of weapons merchant.”

  Falks didn’t say anything do deny this. “Sometimes you employ them on the battlefield yourself. As you are hired to do.” She knew he’d take that in the worst way, but she wanted to provoke him.

  “That’s not it at all. I’m an inventor, not some ruffian for hire. I create the weapons I use. ”

  She spotted something shiny on the windowsill, some sort of unusual varnish, and she ran her fingers along it. It was clear and sticky, and it pilled together as she rolled it between her fingers. Falks wiped her hand off on the leg of her pants, but she could still feel it on her fingertips. “I hear they sometimes even work.”

  Gorman shot her a dark, dangerous look. “They always work. Sometimes they’re just not applied properly.”

  “Through no fault of yours, of course.”

  “Look, these are delicate things. I’m working on the bleeding edge of the alchemical sciences. The nature of such mixtures is inherently unstable.”

  “What happens when they go off prematurely?”

  Gorman waved her away. “That’s the price of progress, isn’t it? We lose a few soldiers now, yes, but think of the things we learn. The advances we can make.”

  “Seems a bit dangerous to do your work in a city, surrounded by innocent people instead of soldiers.”

  “It’s safe enough. I do take precautions, Inspector. ”

  “Not enough precautions, obviously.”

  Gorman dismissed her implication with a jerk of his chin. “All that matters is my creations achieve their design specifications with extreme precision. That’s what my patrons pay me for.”

  Falks gave the girl on the bed a meaningful look.

  “Very funny,” Gorman said without a trace of humor. “I know how it is here in this city of yours. In all provincial towns, really. You think every death means something, that it’s a tragedy, and that we somehow need to get to the bottom of each one of them.” He pointed one slender finger toward the window. “Out there, though, in the wider world, we’re at war, and one person’s death is nothing more than a drop in the rising tide of blood.”

  “If you’re trying to justify the death of this woman, you’re doing a rotten job of it.”

  “The point, my dear inspector, is that I’m very good at my job. My services are in high demand, and I get paid a great deal of money for their use. Why would I jeopardize that by murdering a young lady and leaving her to be found in my bed?”

  “You said self-defense. Why did she want to kill you?”

  “Lots of people want to kill me.”

  “But why did she actually try it, as you claim?”

  Gorman grimaced. “I never met her before tonight. Before she crawled in through that window.”

  “But you know why she wanted to kill you.”

  Gorman groaned like something nasty had crawled into his mouth. “Very well. She thought I had killed her brother.”

  Falks’ gaze darted around the room. “I don’t suppose you have another body you’d like to point out.”

  “It was months ago. I’d been engaged by a wine merchant in Ord to help defend his estate against bandits, and the cunning bastards intercepted us before we could reach the client.”

  “You were traveling without guards of your own?”

  “I’m hired to protect people or fight for them,” Gorman said, “not the other way around. Besides, I find that a large caravan only tends to draw larger and more ambitious forces of bandits. The odds actually favor a smaller, sleeker expedition.” He grinned at her. “And that’s how I prefer it anyway.”

  “So, why didn’t you just run away?”

  Gorman frowned. “I’m not normally given to shying away from confrontation. Besides which, I saw this as
an opportunity to run field tests for some of my latest inventions.”

  Gorman cast about for a place to sit. He moved toward the bed but veered away from it when he saw Falks staring at him, aghast. He opted instead for hoisting himself atop the loft’s railing.

  “And it went badly,” Falks said, prompting him.

  Gorman cleared his throat. “Far worse than it should have. One of my young helpers leapt out ahead of the rest of us, apparently eager to take the fight to the bandits.”

  “The dead woman’s brother?”

  Gorman nodded. “I’d taken him on as a porter, although he’d fancied himself more the material of an apprentice. When I corrected his misconceptions, he became morose.”

  “I see. He was so depressed by your dismissal that he threw himself recklessly into combat? Seems unlikely to me.”

  Gorman rolled his eyes. “He was overconfident, thinking he was well armed. I am afraid Reinrik incurred his own fate.”

  “How?”

  Gorman gave the inspector a guilty frown. “He was carrying an experimental weapon capable of hurling my alchemical grenades long distances by use of compressed air. I’d considered using blasting powder, of course, but the manufacturing tolerances I’m currently able to achieve can’t guarantee a good enough seal to ensure that such a launcher wouldn’t explode after a limited number of uses. As you might imagine, the payloads for the launcher were quite volatile all on their own, and to expose them to such a risk could be catastrophic.”

  “But this Reinrik of yours—”

  “Of hers.” Gorman nodded toward the bed.

  “He was using your safer model. The one you actually produced.”

  “Oh, I produced the others.”

  Falks glared at him, and he hurried to amend his statement. “For testing purposes. In my laboratory, of course.”

  “Doesn’t that seem dangerous to you?”

  “A well-lived life is always dangerous. Until you hit your limits, you never know if you actually have any.”

  “Unless those limits happen to be fatal.”

  “Some lessons are wasted on those who learn them, but the survivors can learn from them.”

  “Is that what happened to your assistant?”