An Import of Intrigue Read online

  “You really think she’s right?”

  “It’s uncanny, I’m telling you.”

  “Let’s see.”

  The crate opened, and she drove her fist into the first stupid face she saw. She sprang out of the crate, jammed her knee into the same man’s goods. He went down, and she pushed past him.

  “Got some spunk in her!” said one man.

  There were three of them at the door, clubs and knives at their hips. No windows, no other way out that she saw, save a dark back room. She wasn’t going to go that way. She spun around and put the wall at her back.

  “Easy, easy,” one man said. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  “Right,” she said. “Because you wouldn’t want to damage the merchandise, right?”

  “Merchandise?” the man asked, sounding genuinely confused.

  “Your little gang of doxy slavers ain’t gonna take me quiet, hear?”

  The man laughed. “You’re right, Keeter. She’s perfect. But it’s gonna be a lotta work. What’s your name, girl?”

  “They call me Tricky.”

  “What’s your name?” He said it with a force that almost compelled her to answer honestly.

  “Satrine.”

  “Satrine,” he said calmly, “We need your help.”

  “Who’s we?”

  He chuckled. “Your king and country.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “Like either of those ever gave a blazes for me. I ain’t your girl. Doxy or otherwise.”

  “You’re the only one who can help us, Satrine.” He sounded so blazing sincere.

  “A corner bird like me?” she asked. “What the blazes can I do for you?”

  He turned to one of the other guys. “Bring her out.”

  Two men went into the dark room, and came back pushing a wheeled table. A table with a girl on it. A dead girl.

  “Blazes, is this sewage?” Tricky asked.

  “This is why we need you,” the man said. “Come take a look.”

  Tricky stepped closer. Then she saw the girl was also Waishen-haired. Another step closer, and she could really see the dead girl’s face. Her own face. Clean and fresh, but still the very face she saw in dirty shop window reflections. “This some kind of sick rutting joke? Why you have a dead girl who looks like me?”

  “We need you, Satrine, because you look like her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one can know that she’s dead. That’s where you come in.”

  Tricky laughed. “What, am I supposed to fake being her?”

  “Yes, Satrine. That’s it exactly.”

  The whinny of the horses pulled her out of the memory.

  Welling had pulled himself up into his saddle like it was second nature. She knew he had started Constabulary in horsepatrol, and he took to riding like a robin to the sky. Satrine knew how to ride—one of the many bits of mannerly education crammed into her skull when she had to learn how to be a Waish quia. She and horses were acquainted with each other, nothing more. She never had the bond that Welling seemed to form immediately with any animal under him.

  “Shh, shh,” Welling said to his mount. “You’re going to get to really run today.”

  “Whistle gallop?” Satrine said as she followed him out the stable on her own horse.

  Welling flashed her a smile, which never looked quite natural on his face. But in this instance, it actually showed hints of genuine joy. “You’re first time doing one, yes?”

  “You would know, right?”

  “Follow my lead, then.” He pulled his Constabulary whistle out of his pocket, and Satrine did the same. “We’ll take Ironheart to Fannen, and then take that north to Linley. Best to stick to the widest roads for this.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Welling was about to put his whistle in his mouth, then hesitated. “One bit of advice. If you should stumble—”

  “I won’t.” She may not love it like Welling did, but she could ride.

  “If you should,” he stressed, “try to spit out your whistle. I’ve seen some gruesome injuries from a failure to do so.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, and placed her whistle in her mouth. Leaving it there, held in her teeth, she took hold of her reins.

  Welling nodded, and then let fly three long, shrill blasts. She followed suit. Having done that, he drove his heels into his horse’s flank, and spurred it into a gallop. Satrine took off after him.

  They pounded together down Ironheart, both blasting their whistles as they charged. People in the streets scattered out of the way, doing their best to clear the road. Pedalcarts and carriages pulled off to the side, and when things couldn’t move fast enough, Welling steered around the obstacles expertly.

  Satrine’s own horse was well-trained, like any Constabulary horse would be, and followed Welling’s lead. She mostly needed to hold on and trust her horse’s instinct, trust Welling’s skill to navigate through the crowd.

  They turned up Fannen, a wide thoroughfare that had always struck Satrine as fancy and clean when she was a little girl. Now it seemed as dull and ordinary as the rest of Inemar, as the rest of all of Maradaine. Stone buildings, several stories high, with storefronts at street level. Iron grates over windows. Steel gates hanging open, so each store showed they were open, but could lock themselves away at a moment’s notice. The people in the street were just as pedestrian, walking with tense caution. No one making eye contact, but everyone keeping their eyes on everyone else. Of course, with her and Welling racing through on a whistle gallop, all eyes went to them.

  Traffic of oxcarts and carriages and pedalists seized up at the crossing of Fannen and High Bridge, as a footpatrolman, clearly having heard the whistle blasts, held the intersection open for them. He gave them a brief salute as they pounded through.

  Past the large thoroughfare, which had once been the unofficial border of Satrine’s life, they were out of an area that was instinctively familiar. The city was still much the same; nothing magical happened to the surroundings now that they were in the northern part of the neighborhood.

  For another four blocks.

  Then, on her right side, things changed. The buildings were built all the same, but the steel gates vanished. Signs were now symbols instead of Trade letters. People changed, with duskier skins and wide straw hats.

  Welling turned right, onto Linley. A good Druth name for a street.

  But she wasn’t in Druthal anymore when they turned.

  Grays and whites of the stone buildings were gone. Yellows and oranges on her right, a cacophony of color on her left. Signs on the right were symbols of one kind, completely different on the left, and yet further differences up ahead on Linley.

  Even the windows changed, the bunting on the awnings.

  And the faces. Suddenly the fair Druth complexions with tawny brown hair were a minority.

  And people weren’t moving out of the way for a whistle blast.

  Welling came to a halt, and Satrine stopped short. She almost stumbled off the horse, but recovered before she would have had to spit her whistle out. Which was good, because Welling probably wouldn’t have let her live that down for several weeks.

  There was a man with a wheelbarrow far larger than he should be trying to push on his own—with his goods covered by raw canvas—blocking most of the road. The man—dusky skinned with thick freckles dotting his face, wearing a wide straw hat and a rough woolen blanket as if it was a coat—shouted something at Welling.

  Welling, for his part, shouted something right back, and seemingly in the same language.

  Satrine led her horse next to Welling’s. “Kellirac?”

  He shrugged. “Racquin. I know a few words from my mother.”

  “She’s Racquin?” That shouldn’t have been surprising, with his given name.

  “Grew
up somewhere over there in Caxa,” he said, pointing vaguely into the canvas-tented alley to their right. He used the proper name for the tiny enclave, instead of the more common Quin Row.

  They worked their way around the impasse, no longer able to race. They were only one proper block away from their destination, though, so it was no longer urgent to press quite as hard.

  “So what did he say to you?”

  “I’m honestly not sure. Something about too many of us.”

  “Constabulary, or Druthalians?”

  “Maybe it’s all the same.”

  The crossroads of Linley and Kainen was the strangest Satrine had seen. Each corner was completely different in style. They had just come through a Kellirac section, and cat-corner from that was recognizably Kieran. The other two were mysteries to her.

  Welling seemed to pick up on that, pointing to the area on their left they had just passed. “The Hodge, they call that. Most of the blocks around here are pretty clearly defined. Dexliari, the Kieran enclave is there. The Tsouljan one, Tek Andor, is there. The Hodge is all a mix, mostly from parts of the world that don’t have much presence here.”

  Tsouljan. That was where they were going, clearly, as several Constabulary regulars were holding a perimeter around one of the buildings. Satrine didn’t know much about Tsoulja, even in the deep depths of her special training.

  The Tsouljan buildings weren’t painted, but their windows and doorways were all adorned with colored braids of ribbon, purples and whites the dominant colors, tied to wooden balusters with intricately carved spirals. Lines of bunting with similar ribbon braids ran down the stretch of Linley, culminating in a spiderweb of strings, right in front of the building the regulars were guarding.

  The poor footpatrol stood out like blood in the street, and not just for their red and green uniforms. Their Druth complexion was notably paler than the nearly golden-hued Tsouljans in their rough robes, tied off with multiple sashes.

  Of course, with the Tsouljans, the thing that caught Satrine’s eye was their hair. Each one, man and woman alike, had their long hair in thick braids, so thick it made the hair stand up. The braids were dressed further with ribbons woven into the braids and then dangling down their shoulders. And the hair itself was dyed in bright, unnatural colors: red, yellow, blue, and green. The red was not Satrine’s Waishen-haired shade, but rather the bright red of a rose petal, which no person would ever naturally have.

  Satrine had heard—many years back when she first saw a Tsouljan—that their natural hair color tended to be very fair, almost white. But she had never seen it.

  “Oy, specs,” one of the footpatrol called. “Over here’s the call.”

  Welling dismounted and handed his reins to the footpatrol. “We’re shy on details. Has there been a murder?”

  “Quite a murder.” Captain Cinellan emerged from the doorframe of the building, which was clearly the largest structure in the Tsouljan part of the Little East. The gray-haired officer often looked worn out, but in this moment his pallor was more sallow than Satrine had seen it. He looked like he had lived five years since this morning.

  “Big enough to have us race over, Captain?” Satrine asked.

  “It’s . . . I don’t even know.” He gave a chuckle, devoid of any amusement. “Remember how I threatened you two with the strange ones? This is where I make good on that.”

  Minox felt like he had been transported somewhere utterly foreign—even in the context of the Little East—as he crossed the threshold into the Tsouljan enclave. If it weren’t for the uniformed Constabulary officers, the illusion of leaving Maradaine would have been complete. The inside was not a building at all, but a sprawling open-air courtyard, a garden of pebble paths, finely trimmed shrubs, and small pools. A series of small huts—wooden domes—dotted the area. The most notable features were the trees, since they were clearly not native to Druthal. The leaves were so dark they almost looked blue, and they were in full bloom with bright violet flowers.

  Two Tsouljans flanked the inside of the threshold, both with red-dyed hair and coarse robes. They bowed their heads upon each person’s entrance, saying the same phrase each time: “Qhat nek dav.”

  Captain Cinellan waved them off as he passed. Minox nodded back to them, as did Inspector Rainey.

  “I had no idea this was here,” she said quietly. “What is this?”

  “Near as I can tell, they call it Rev Tak Mel,” Captain Cinellan said. “I think it’s a temple of some sort. But I was hoping you’d be able to tell me more.”

  “Me?” Rainey asked.

  “You’re the only inspector I have who has any real experience with foreign matters. We almost never have calls out here, and . . .”

  “We don’t,” Minox said. Full investigations, especially ones where they were made such a sizable presence, were highly irregular in this part of the neighborhood. “So that, in and of itself, is notable as odd.”

  “Everything about this is odd, Welling,” the captain said. “And, not to put too fine a point on it, you are my expert on odd.”

  “I will take the compliment.”

  One of the huts was clearly the location they were focused on, as the Constabulary officers, as well as the bodywagon men, were concentrated around it. Also Inspectors Kellman and Mirrell were interviewing a yellow-haired Tsouljan. From the looks on their faces, they were not pleased with how their interview was going.

  Being in this place gave Minox a sensation he couldn’t quite understand. He felt like the place itself was exuding calm—there was a quiet to the place, and every aspect of the garden seemed like it should lend itself to serenity. But what he was feeling was anything but that. Instead, he felt agitation and unease, and he had difficulty understanding why.

  It was not unlike the moments when his magic slipped out of his control.

  “Can you give us some particulars, sir?” Rainey asked. “Like you said, we don’t get called out here much. Is this place an embassy? Are we on Tsouljan ground right now?”

  “It is not,” a slightly accented voice said from behind them. A green-haired Tsouljan, barely more than a boy, was on his hands and knees. At first Minox thought this was some form of supplication, but then he saw the truth: the boy was pulling tiny shoots of grass out from the pebble path. “This is a place of Tsouljan making, but it is every bit Druth soil.”

  “Well, that clears that up,” Rainey said. She crouched down in front of the boy. “Your Trade is pretty good. How long have you been here?”

  The boy looked up from his work. “I was born here.”

  “So what is this place?” she asked.

  The boy scowled. “It is not my place to say. My place is to maintain.” He went back to his work.

  Cinellan pulled them a few steps away. “Jurisdiction is not an issue. In fact, it was the residents of this . . . place who called us in.”

  Minox pointed to the yellow-haired Tsouljan being interviewed by Kellman and Mirrell. “He reported it?”

  “That’s right,” Cinellan said. “Went to a whistlebox, brought a patrol officer over, and told him to summon the Inspector Captain. He knew what was going on was . . . huge.”

  Rainey spoke up. “Sir, if I may, you’re being needlessly vague. Beyond the murder occurring in this Tsouljan temple enclave, what is so unique about this murder?”

  “The victim, primarily,” the captain said. He pulled out his leather notebook. “Let me try and get this right. Hieljam ab Wefi Loriz lek Lavark.”

  “Fuergan?” Minox asked, recognizing the format. In his time frequenting his favorite tobacconist in the Fuergan section of the Little East, he had gained some familiarity with the culture. ‘Hieljam’ would be the family name, and ‘Wefi Loriz’ his given names.

  “And that’s the short version of his name, apparently,” the captain said. “But the important part for us to note is the ‘Lavark’ pa
rt.”

  Inspector Rainey suddenly gasped. “That . . . no, are you sure about that, sir?”

  “Quite,” Cinellan said.

  “Enlighten me,” Minox said. His experience had not taught him what “Lavark” meant.

  “It’s a rank of nobility—well, not exactly, because Fuergans don’t have quite the same—that doesn’t matter.” Inspector Rainey whistled through tight teeth. “What matters is it looks like we have a Fuergan equivalent of an earl, murdered on Druth soil.”

  Chapter 3

  MIRRELL AND KELLMAN STORMED AWAY from their interview and closed the distance to Minox and Rainey, but their focus was purely on Captain Cinellan.

  “These blasted tyzos aren’t giving us a damn thing we can use,” Mirrell said. It was no shock to Minox that a man like Mirrell would call the Tsouljans here “tyzos.” He gestured vaguely to the man they had been talking to. “That one is the only one even telling us anything.”

  “And who is that, besides our prime witness?” Minox asked.

  “That’s Burekuti,” Mirrell said, glancing at his scratch pad.

  “No, no,” Kellman said. He put on an exaggerated Tsouljan accent. “Bur Rek-Uti.”

  “Some decorum, gentlemen,” Minox said. “He’s the one who found the body and reported it to Constabulary. We should be grateful.”

  “Very grateful,” Mirrell said. “These tyzos kill a feek, and then tell us about it.”

  Mirrell was, as always, an inspector with no knack for investigation. He came to immediate conclusions and held to them with rock-solid certainty. When a case was clear-cut, he was usually correct, but he saw every case as clear-cut.

  Minox spoke up. “In your estimation, someone in this enclave is responsible for the death of Hieljam?”

  “Makes sense,” Kellman said, stepping forward in a vain attempt to intimidate Minox with his height, as was his usual pattern. “Who else is around here? Blazes, the only ways in have got a couple red-hairs—sorry, Tricky—red-hairs bowing and muttering every time someone enters. They’d have seen anyone else coming in. But they ain’t talking.”