A Murder of Mages (3 page)

“I’m intrigued, Missus Rainey, and the commissioner notes that we should be giving more positions in the
Constabulary force to women.” He shook the letter casually. The commissioner had written that very point, but as an argument to make Satrine a clerk. A position that paid five crowns a week. That salary would put her family on the street; she would never let that happen to her daughters. Her girls would never have to do what she lived through.

Miss Pyle came back in with a tea tray. Cinellan dropped his light demeanor while Miss Pyle was there, thanked her for the tea, and waited for her to leave before sipping it. He sat at his desk, teacup in hand, for some time in silence. Satrine picked up her own, but didn’t drink any, not yet. She didn’t think it would be particularly good, anyway.

“I’ll be frank, Captain,” Satrine said. “I’m not a widow, though I may as well be. I have two daughters whom I am putting through school, a husband who needs caring for, rent, city taxes, and several other expenses. If I’m not bringing home twenty crowns a week, then it all falls apart.”

“Standard pay for Inspector Third Class is nineteen crowns five.”

“I can start with that.” There was enough saved up—especially with what the boys at Loren’s district house had scraped together for her family—to last on nineteen-five for a few months. Come the summer, she would find some way to earn those last fifteen ticks.

“Ambitious, good,” he said. “Still doesn’t sit right, even with the commissioner pushing it.”

“I’d be happy to be put to the test.”

“Hmmph,” Cinellan snorted. “What sort of test?”

“Give me a week,” she said. “Any floor sergeants grouse, you tell them you got pushed by the commissioner.”

Cinellan tapped the letter on his desk. “Which I have.”

“If you don’t think I measure up at the end of the week, you send me on my way. You can tell the commissioner you tried and it didn’t work.”

Satrine’s heart pounded like a hammer, threatening to smash through her chest.

“Fine,” Cinellan said. “Though I got to tell you, it’s mostly so I can pull your old file from the archives and write in it that I solved a twenty-year-old case.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Satrine said. Most of the tension in her shoulders relaxed. Not all, not until she had the job secure. She took a drink of her tea. It was, as she had predicted, awful.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “You haven’t met your partner.”

Satrine was brought to a pair of desks shoved to a far corner of the inspectors’ floor, away from the windows. Two large, rolling slateboards had been wedged in front of the desk, giving it some illusion of privacy. Cinellan knocked on one of the slateboards.

“Welling? Your partner’s here.”

“Don’t have a partner,” came the reply from behind the boards.

“Every Third Class has a partner. That’s how it goes.”

The man behind the boards stood up, though Satrine could only see the top of his head. “Then make me Second Class.”

“Not on the table, Welling.”

“Very well.” The man came out from behind his slateboards.

The first thing Satrine noticed was his eyes. Blue and enormous, almost too big for his head. He stared long and hard at her, unblinking. She then realized that it wasn’t that his eyes were large, but that the rest of his face, while youthful, was drawn and sharp. He wore a crisply pressed inspector’s vest, though the rest of his clothes showed a slovenly disinterest in his appearance. His heavy leather overcoat was splattered with mud, as were his boots, and his dark shirt bore more than a few stains.

He stared hard at her while deliberately flicking his fingers, as though counting.

Captain Cinellan gestured to Satrine. “Welling, this is—”

“Missus Satrine Rainey, wife of Inspector First Class Loren Rainey, currently inactive due to severe injuries.” Welling nodded crisply and extended his hand. “Condolences.” He said the last word with no inflection or emotion.

Satrine took his hand and shook it, though he only allowed her the briefest contact before withdrawing his hand. “Your name is Welling?”

“Minox Welling, Inspector Third Class,” he said. His eyes danced up and down her person, though Satrine saw it was some form of meticulous analysis of detail rather than any kind of lechery. “She has the same rank?”

“Provisionally,” Cinellan said. “I’ll have Miss Pyle bring you what you need, Missus Rainey.”

“Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I won’t disappoint—”

“Right,” Cinellan said, giving her a dismissive wave as he walked away.

She turned back to Welling. “So, Minox, was it?”

“Inspector Welling,” he said. He went back around the slateboards to the desks. She followed him, noting that both desks were covered with papers, stacks of newssheets, used teacups, chalk, ink bottles, a smoking pipe, crusts of bread, and a leather belt with a crossbow holstered onto it. There was one relatively clear section of the desk with only a leather journal sitting open.

“Got comfortable working alone, did you, Inspector Welling?”

“I work better alone,” he said, sitting down at the desk which had a clear view of the slateboards. He gave her another large-eyed glance. “You’re lying to Captain Cinellan about something.”

The frank and dispassionate way he announced it took Satrine by surprise. She recovered her composure, asking, “Why do you say that?”

“It was quite plain on your face in any moment he wasn’t looking directly at you. When he turned back to you, there was a noticeable increase in the tension you held in your cheeks and neck. Yes, like you are doing right now.”

“That doesn’t mean that—”

“It usually does,” Welling said. He focused his attention on one of the pages on his desk. “It scarcely matters to me, though. What matters is if you can do the job and function serviceably as my partner in our assigned investigations.” He glanced up at her again. “Can you?”

“Absolutely.”

Welling nodded. “That was the truth. Have a seat, Inspector Rainey.”

The other chair had a strange device sitting on it, a small contraption of iron and glass. Not getting any prompt from Welling, Satrine took it off the chair and deposited it on his desk. “What are we working on currently?”

Welling took the device and moved it to one side. “Currently, I have one open case that I personally consider ‘active.’ And twenty-four that I consider ‘unresolved.’ My notes are . . . all here.”

“Bring me up to speed, then.”

“Wait.” Welling held up a finger.

“What are we—”

“Shh.”

Two inspectors walked around the slateboards, which Satrine now noticed were covered with scrawlings of names, locations, arrows, and question marks. The older inspector, his ruddy face scowling, spoke first. “All right, Jinx, what is it?” He had the Inemar accent, and the nose to go with it; it must have been broken half a dozen times.

Welling winced noticeably when the inspector addressed him, but responded politely. “I have made a breakthrough, Inspector Mirrell, on one of your cases, as it tied to one of my own. However, before discussing that, I must first address a matter of civility. Inspector Rainey, these are two of our colleagues, Inspectors Henfir Mirrell and Darreck Kellman. Gentlemen, my new partner, Inspector Satrine Rainey.”

Satrine bit her lip to keep from bursting with laughter. Welling’s introduction sounded forced, like he had learned phrases from an etiquette book, and was
repeating what he read like a clockwork toy going through its set motions.

“Inspector, really?” Kellman asked, incredulity in his voice. He was a bull of a man, towering a good foot over his partner, with a thick accent that placed his origins out on the poor west side of Maradaine.

“As of ten minutes ago,” Satrine said, taking his hand in a firm grip.

“Pleasure,” Mirrell said, barely giving Satrine a glance. His attention was fully on Welling. “What case?”

“Your murders outside Oscana Park,” Welling said. Now the forced formality was gone.

Mirrell made a spitting noise. “That case? There was no mystery to solve, Jinx.”

Welling’s eye twitched again at the address, which Satrine realized was not any form of endearment on Mirrell’s part. He held up his finger in front of Mirrell’s face, continuing with his thought. “Two dead horsepatrolmen, found with knives in their chests right on the south side of the park.”

Kellman shook his head. “Yeah, and a noted assassin, infamous for his skill with knives, dead not twenty feet away.”

“Done deal,” Mirrell added.

“An incomplete picture!” Welling cried out. “A canvas with but a small corner painted.”

Satrine was intrigued. “Who killed the assassin?”

“Precisely the key question that is being ignored by our good colleagues,” Welling said. “Though hardly the only one.”

Mirrell rubbed his hand over his face. “We’re not ignoring it, Jinx. The man was smashed across the skull, from above. There was a broken staff right next to him.”

“Used by who?”

“The assassin’s partner!” Kellman said. He looked over to Satrine, clearly trying to appeal to her senses. “This guy was known to work with a partner who is almost seven feet tall and strong as an ox.”

Welling nodded. “Pendall Gurond, I know.”

Kellman threw up his hands. “One kills the
horsepatrolmen, then his partner kills him.” He slammed his hand down on the desk in a mime of the killing act.

“Why?” Satrine asked.

Mirrell answered with a shrug. “A bigger share of the fee, most likely.”

Satrine wasn’t satisfied with that. “The fee for what?”

“For killing two horsepatrolmen,” Kellman said, as if it was the most obvious thing he had ever heard or said.

Satrine looked over at Welling. “That doesn’t quite add up, does it?”

Welling glanced over at her, and for the briefest of moments, he smiled. “No, it most certainly does not. The two horsepatrolmen were, if you forgive my saying so, men of little import. Members of the MC in good standing, of no doubt, but not men who would inspire a price being put on their heads, certainly not in the range of several thousand crowns.”

“Those two horsepatrolmen interrupted them doing something else.”

“The question is what,” Welling said, tapping his finger on the desk.

Kellman and Mirrell both stepped away from the desk in obvious frustration. “Does it matter?” Mirrell asked.

Kellman pointed to his partner in agreement. “The patrolmen probably interrupted the two assassins arguing, and got killed for their trouble.”

“Interesting,” Satrine said.

“What’s that?” Kellman asked.

“You have a conclusion in your head, and you force the facts to fit it. I thought it was supposed to go the other way around.”

Welling smiled broadly, which looked wholly unnatural on his face. “I am definitely not displeased with your way of thinking, Inspector Rainey.”

“That’s what he calls a compliment,” Mirrell said. He stalked off, with Kellman right behind him.

“There were three,” Welling called after them.

Mirrell came back around the slateboard. “Three what?”

“Three assassins who worked in partnership, not two. Which would not be significant, as your theory works just as well with two partners turning on the third, rather than a pair turning on each other.”

“What is your point, Jinx?”

“You may recall I had a case assigned to me of four bodies found together in a refuse barge, found the day after your dead patrolmen.”

“Saint Jasper, Jinx!” Kellman snapped. “Will you stop teasing around the point and just tell us!”

Welling appeared legitimately injured by this rebuke. He nodded, and continued. “One of those four I have identified as the third assassin. The other three were mages, all belonging to the same mystical circle, The Blue Hand.”

“Mages,” Kellman and Mirrell both grumbled in unison. Again Welling had the twitch of his eye, same as when they called him Jinx.

“Indeed, and the connecting thread between the assassins and the Circle is Willem Fenmere.” The name was written in large letters on the slateboard.

Both Kellman and Mirrell went pale, their eyes wide.

“Who is Willem Fenmere?” Satrine asked. She could probably guess. The names may have changed over the years, but the stories didn’t.

“Crime boss in Dentonhill neighborhood,” Mirrell said. “He greases enough hands in that neighborhood that the Constabulary doesn’t touch him, can’t prove anything.”

Welling searched through his papers. “But his ties to the Blue Hand are interesting, since I have it on good authority that it and his ties to the assassins lead to a string of—”

“No, Jinx,” Mirrell said, slapping his hand down on the papers Welling was sorting through. “Quick question. Can you prove—not suspect, not ties to, not leading to any string of anything—can you
prove
that Fenmere was involved in the death of the two horsepatrolmen?”

“Well, no, but what
is
interesting—”

“Blazes, Jinx!” Kellman shouted. “What good is it?”

Satrine answered automatically, “Sometimes just knowing the truth is enough.” Of course, in Intelligence, knowing the truth was enough cause to do something about it. There wasn’t any interest in Proof of Guilt or Trial Rights.