An Import of Intrigue Read online

  Henk jumped out of his chair, quite spryly for an old man. “Some of my mates are, you know, sleeping off their cider. They’d be pretty cranky if you go back there.”

  Welling raised an eyebrow, and then pounded on the back door. “City Constabulary! Come out and be identified!”

  A sound came from the back room, but it definitely didn’t come from one of Henk’s friends. Or anything human.

  Henk was unfazed. “See, pretty cranky.”

  Satrine was on her feet. “You aren’t keeping kids back there anymore?”

  “No, no, red. I got nothing back there with kids. I tell you, I don’t do that no more.”

  She looked to Welling. “Cause?” A complex question reduced to one word. Legally they had no right to charge into a private residence. Even having been invited inside to one room, they couldn’t arbitrarily go through a closed door. The City Protector would throw out their arrest if they did that. Unless they had cause—a sincere belief that there was active crime or imminent danger that required immediate action.

  Welling responded by drawing his handstick, which she took for agreement.

  “Hey, you don’t wanna—” was all Henk got out before they were at the door, pushing it open. Satrine pulled out her crossbow and took point. She’d been in this place before, after all. She doubted it could really surprise her.

  She took only a few steps into the dim room before her foot slipped. She lurched forward, and realized that there was now a pit dug into what had been an earthen floor. She forced herself back, almost crashing into Welling.

  “Saints,” she muttered, and Welling’s hand on her shoulder steadied her. “What is this, Henk?”

  “I think we’ve found Gregor’s killer,” Welling said, pointing into the pit. Satrine couldn’t see into it very well, but even in the darkness she could see something large and hairy moving about.

  Then it bellowed up at them.

  “A rutting bear?” Satrine asked.

  Before Welling could respond, they were struck from behind, sending the both of them careening into the pit with the bear.

  Satrine landed badly—her left leg still hadn’t fully recovered from getting stabbed during her first case with Welling—but rolled with the impact. Her crossbow fired wildly, striking the bear in its leg.

  Welling landed like a cat, and moved to Satrine to aid her to her feet.

  “Good luck down there, officers!” Henk yelled from the lip of the pit. “He’s probably not too hungry, so you might make it!”

  The bear roared and charged at the both of them. Getting shot probably did not improve its mood at all. Its massive claws swept in at Satrine’s head.

  Before she could move away, the bear’s paw slammed into a patch of empty air as if it were solid steel.

  Welling’s hand was held out in front of him, a blue nimbus surrounding it. The bear struck again, its paw again bouncing off of apparently nothing.

  “Thanks,” Satrine said. Welling avoided using his magic, since he was Uncircled—no Mage Circle would ever cooperate with the Constabulary or take an active officer as a member. It was dangerous for an Uncircled mage to do magic in public, with no legal protection against a mage-fearing populace. Also as an Uncircled mage, he was untrained, using his magical abilities mostly on instinct.

  Sweat beaded up on his brow. “I cannot hold it back indefinitely,” he grunted through tight teeth. The bear growled and pressed against the solid wall of nothing.

  Satrine reloaded her crossbow, took aim, and fired. She hit, center of the bear’s chest. It howled and slammed its paws against the force that Welling was holding up. Welling dropped to his knees, both hands held above his head.

  “Takes more than that to kill a bear, red!” Henk yelled from the top of the pit.

  Satrine grabbed Welling’s crossbow off his belt. “Hold it still!”

  “I will endeavor,” Welling said. Making a noise like a wagon crashing, he came up on his feet and brought up his other hand. The blue nimbus shifted to an angry green, with sparks and snaps flying from his left hand. The bear flung back against the wall of the pit, its arms pinned by the green. Its great maw opened wide in a deafening roar.

  Satrine took her shot.

  The bolt buried itself deep in the back of the bear’s throat. With a pathetic whine, it dropped to the ground.

  Welling did the same.

  “You all right?” Satrine asked him.

  “Just need a moment,” he wheezed out. “Mister Henk.”

  Satrine needed no further prodding. She jumped up on the rough wall of the pit—crudely constructed, easy enough to climb once there was no bear trying to maul her. In a matter of seconds she was over the edge of the pit and back in Henk’s sitting room.

  She had her handstick drawn, but Henk wasn’t there. His front door hung open, swinging idly. Not that she could blame him for running. Trying to kill two Constabulary inspectors was going to get him many, many years in Quarrygate.

  Satrine ran out into the alley. Her bad leg twinged, not wanting to work this hard. She ignored it as best she could and pressed on. Henk was stumbling his way toward the street, trying desperately to go as quickly as he could while pulling his pants on. He was carrying his boots in his teeth.

  “Henk! Stand and be held!”

  The old man gave a frightened cry, letting the boots drop to the ground. He tore off, barefooted, into the street.

  Satrine sprinted down after him, pushing through the protests her leg was giving her. As she ran, she felt a small smile creep on her face.

  She was going to enjoy this far more than she should.

  Satrine closed the distance in moments—it wasn’t hard to catch up to a barefoot old man in half-fastened pants—and brought her handstick down on his shoulder. As he tumbled down, she added another shot to his back. As soon as he was on the ground, she pinned him with her knee.

  “Mister Giles Henk, you are lawfully bound,” she said, pulling her irons off her belt. “You are accused of crimes and will receive fair trial.” Shackling his hands behind him, she pulled him back up on his feet.

  “Name my crimes,” Henk said. This was the common response, and lifelong sludges like Henk were familiar enough with the rituals of arrest to know that the specific crimes they were to be charged with had to be identified. Much of the law involved protecting common people from spurious arrests and Constabulary abuse, including this.

  Welling came up, still looking pale and winded. “You are charged with harboring a dangerous animal in residence without license. You are charged with reckless care of that animal, resulting in the death of Gregor Henk. You are charged with attempting to kill two officers of the City Constabulary.”

  “Hey, hey,” Henk said. “I never did nothing of that sort. I just bumped into the two of you, it was all dark in there, and you fell in the pit.”

  “Tell it to the City Protector’s Office,” Satrine said. “You are obliged to come without incident.”

  Henk shrugged and started to walk.

  “You don’t look well,” Satrine said to Welling as they made their way back to the stationhouse.

  “That was draining,” he said. “I’ll be fine once I eat something.”

  Satrine sighed. “I suppose there’s always the fast roll cart outside the stationhouse. Though I honestly cannot fathom how you choose to eat those things. I still can’t figure out what meat she’s using.”

  “It isn’t choice,” Welling said. “It’s necessity.”

  Minox knew it was patently absurd to order three fast wraps from Missus Wolman while Inspector Rainey waited to the side, holding their arrest at bay in irons. Not that Giles Henk was resisting in any way. Minox wasn’t worried that Henk would attempt to escape. He was clearly far too afraid of Inspector Rainey’s wrath.

  Inspector Rainey herself clearly didn’t mind the in
convenience, but she had grown accustomed to the eccentricities of their partnership, specifically with Minox’s eating habits.

  “Looks like you’ve got one there,” Missus Wolman said as she seared the meat on her flat grill. “What’d he do?”

  “That wouldn’t be appropriate to disclose,” Minox said.

  “It’s all a trump, lady,” Henk said.

  Inspector Rainey responded by smacking him across the head.

  Missus Wolman scooped the meat onto fresh flatbreads, and rolled them into old newsprint. “He’s getting what’s coming to him, I can tell.”

  “That’s for trial to decide,” Minox said. He took the wraps from her, passing coins in excess of their cost. “Greatly appreciated.”

  She shrugged, “You’re my best customer, Inspector. Even with that one giving me the eye.”

  “Sheep hearts, am I right?” Inspector Rainey asked.

  “I could charge three times this for sheep heart!” Missus Wolman snapped. Inspector Rainey seemed to enjoy this little war she had with Missus Wolman over the contents of the wraps. At this point it was nigh impossible that Inspector Rainey had not accurately guessed the makeup of the meat mixture, but Missus Wolman held fast to her refusals. Thus Rainey made more and more outlandish accusations.

  “You have a good afternoon,” Minox told her. He put two of the wraps in his coat pocket and tucked into the third.

  “Come along, Henk,” Inspector Rainey said, pulling him with them toward the stationhouse.

  “I don’t suppose you could spare me one of those wraps, mate,” Henk said. “I mean, who knows when I’ll be eating something real again.”

  “Spare me your tears, Henk,” Rainey said. “Both the holding cell here, as well as Quarrygate, will square you just fine. You won’t go hungry. Unlike the kids you kept.”

  “Oy, red, that was ages ago. You really are grudging me.”

  Minox had put together a rough sense of what Inspector Rainey’s childhood on the streets of Inemar had been, and from what he had gathered, going hungry under Henk’s negligence was far from the worst of it.

  They entered into the main work floor of the stationhouse, placing Henk on the bench for incoming arrests. “Bringing one in,” Rainey said to the duty officer.

  The duty officer kept his attention on his ledger.

  Rainey slammed her hand on his desk. “One for you to process.”

  The duty officer looked up. “Sorry, Tricky. Didn’t hear any Constabulary walk in here.”

  “Fine,” she said, ignoring his rudeness. In her two months in the Constabulary, she had had to do that on a daily basis. As much as Minox disliked his fellow officers’ attitudes, he understood why they behaved that way. The fact that Satrine Rainey had started her career in the Constabulary as an Inspector Third Class was more than enough to grind any patrolman’s teeth. When it became public that her hiring had been the result of forgery and fraud, the rancor among the Green and Red turned viscous and vicious. Despite that, Captain Cinellan had kept her on at an inspector’s rank, entirely due to her merit.

  As far as Minox was concerned, Satrine Rainey was an officer of remarkable insight and skill, and deserved her position regardless of the unorthodox manner in which she had achieved it. She was the only partner he had been assigned who was worth his trouble. He owed her his very life, and was proud to have her by his side.

  Of course, given his status as an Uncircled mage, something that was an open secret within the stationhouse, he wasn’t much more beloved by the lower ranks.

  She navigated the difficulties of the duty officer ably enough, and Henk was processed and taken off. She also had them send a few patrolmen to Henk’s home to seal it up. She definitely took a bit of glee in telling them to take care of the bear carcass.

  “That’s right,” she said. “A bear. It’s a shame, but we had to put it down.”

  “You . . . killed a bear?” the duty officer asked.

  She just winked at him and left for the inspectors’ floor, Minox leaving with her.

  Minox finished his second fast wrap in the meantime, and started to feel some small amount of recovery from his magical drain. He had been hard and sloppy, which was understandable in the moment, but he wasn’t happy with himself. In the past two months he had been exploring his magical ability, and thought he had gotten more of a handle on how to control it. The messiness of today’s magic, leaving him far more weakened than it ever should have, showed him that he still had plenty of work to do.

  He flexed his left hand. Much of that messiness had come from there, and it was numb again. That had been a recurring problem in the past months, ever since the arm had been broken by one of Nerrish Plum’s strange magic-sapping spikes. The break had healed—quite quickly and cleanly, according to the ward surgeon and Aunt Beliah—but his hand never felt quite right again. He wondered if the spike had had a residual effect on his magical ability, at least as far as his left hand was concerned.

  Those spikes were somewhere in the stationhouse as evidence. Minox would want to investigate them further, but he didn’t even know where to begin. He didn’t have the knowledge base, and anyone properly trained would never speak to him about it.

  The inspectors’ floor was all but deserted, which was unusual, even in the middle of the afternoon. “Everyone out on call?” Minox asked Rainey.

  Nyla Pyle—the inspectors’ floor’s secretary officer, as well as Minox’s cousin—came out from one of the back rooms. “There you are. I was about to send pages out on an All-Eyes for you.”

  “We were on our assigned case,” Minox said. Nyla walked past them both to her desk at the floor entrance. “Is something going on?”

  “I don’t know what, exactly,” she said. “But it was big enough that the captain went out there.”

  Captain Cinellan rarely went out on the streets himself. The situation must be either dire or delicate for the captain to take direct action.

  “Is it a murder?” Inspector Rainey asked.

  “I think it is,” Nyla said, though she addressed her response to Minox, never looking directly at Inspector Rainey. Nyla had taken the revelations of Rainey’s subterfuge and fraud far harder than anyone else in the stationhouse. She somehow managed to perform her duties administrating the inspectors’ floor while avoiding all direct contact with her. She even left Rainey’s tea on her desk for her every morning without a word.

  “And he wants us, specifically, to go out there?” Rainey pressed, despite Nyla ignoring her.

  “Inspectors Kellman and Mirrell are already out there,” Nyla said, still directing her eyes at Minox. “As well as Leppin and his team.”

  “Leppin has a team?” Rainey asked Minox.

  “There’s that boy who does the charcoal sketches,” he offered.

  “And a slew of patrol officers,” Nyla continued. “Despite that, a page delivered a note from the captain telling me to send you two—by name—out to Peston and Linley as quickly as possible.” She took the note off her desk and handed it over. Minox scanned the captain’s note. It offered little more to elucidate the nature of the investigation, but it did make the urgency clear. They were to requisition horses from the stables and come up at whistle gallop.

  “Did you tell the stables—” Minox started.

  “Two racers at the ready for you,” Nyla said. “Just head on down.”

  “Efficient as always,” he told her as they went toward the back stairs.

  “Don’t you forget it!” she called after them.

  “Peston and Linley,” Rainey said absently as she restocked her quarrel of crossbow bolts. She must have grabbed them as they passed their desks. “That’s up in the northern part of the neighborhood, right?”

  “That’s right,” Minox said. “Deep in the heart of the Little East.”

  Chapter 2

  THE LITTLE EAST wasn
’t part of Satrine’s world when she was growing up in Inemar. Her corners were Jent and Tannen, down near the southeastern tip of the neighborhood, close to The Lower Bridge. Until she was fourteen, she’d barely ever gone north of Upper Bridge Road, or across the river. Even going west of Promenade had been a rarity.

  The Little East had been little more than rumors and wild speculation amongst her people. A few kids she’d known would wander up Fannen, and come back with crazy stories. Multiple enclaves of foreign people, with their strange appearances, food, languages—Fuergans, Imachs, Racquin, and who even knew exactly what else, all living just a few blocks away.

  Another world from her corners.

  Four of them had grabbed her, as she had slipped down the alley to the backhouse. They had been waiting for her there, but they weren’t the usual rats who hung about in Inemar. These were men. She gave them as much brawl as she could, but they moved quick and hard. A hood went over her head, her hands bound behind her, and then she was in a wooden crate. It all happened in a few clicks.

  She could feel the crate being loaded into a wagon. She cried out, kicked and thrashed, but it didn’t do any damn good. It was rolling off to saints knew where. She had heard stories like this. Girls her age being grabbed and dragged off to be doxy slaves. Enough boys in the neighborhood wanted her with her Waishen red hair, so she’d imagine the degenerates who bought young girls would be interested. Creeps.

  She wasn’t going to go easy, though.

  In the dark of the crate, she took deep breaths and bided her time. Her hands were tied up, but that wasn’t going to keep her. They hadn’t done it all that tight, so she was able to work her hands free. Then she had the hood off. They’d open the crate and whoever was there would get a face full of her fist. Then she’d fight like blazes to get out, or make them kill her before she was ever sold.

  The wagon pulled inside somewhere, she could hear, and came to a stop. The crate was taken down and put on the floor. She heard voices—men talking.