10
Felix leaned low over his desk, words blurring past his eyes. The dark gathered deep beyond his office window.
Regrettably, it was an exercise in fishing needles from haystacks. Most of the scrolls from the time were overwhelmed with reports of the Elysius theft.
Executed this day, he read, squinting at the faded print.
Cassia Adel Salah, for breaking, entering and theft.
Myria Cadessa, for theft and assault. Condemned this day to tenebris aeterna—Lysander Arkadios, of Xantheus, for forced arcanic entry and theft.
Well, it’d be a fine joke if she’d been involved in that.
Nothing had caught his eye in the last five hours of searching. The crime must’ve been a dire one for the Magisterium to have closed the records. So far, though, the news reports and prefecture files had revealed no more than the common run of thefts and murders, frauds and affrays.
It can’t be any of this rubbish, he thought, rubbing his eyes. Someone went to no small lengths to hide whatever she was involved in. Even paid off Aurium to make the old man say he’d been robbed.
Far off, a lone chime echoed from the Christium clocktower. Felix shook himself. Tomorrow, already?
Go home, he told himself, stacking up the papers. His body was awake, but his mind wasn’t. In that state, he wouldn’t see the answer if it knocked him on the head.
His gaze fell on the topmost news scroll, and he half-smiled at the print of Elysius Tower. Diana had found the scandal highly entertaining when she’d first joined the academy. There’d been all sorts of wild theories about the crime, stoked up by the strange scarcity of details in the press.
What intrigued him more, though, wasn’t how the thieves had done it. It was how they’d failed. They hadn’t triggered a single alarm, and the treasures had vanished by the time the prefecture arrived—yet somehow, the force had still swept up four of the culprits at the scene.
The delights of criminal endeavor, he thought, sliding the papers into his drawer. Someone must’ve sold them out. Hadn’t the guard at Haideum said as much?
Sold them out.
His hand paused. He slipped the scrolls back out and checked the date of the last article. Two years, ten months ago.
Her sentence was three years, but they said they’d given her early release. Three months, minus a month for the trial . . . it’s the same date.
Perhaps some things were too large to be seen. He’d dismissed the thought at once, but now it came tilting back into his mind, tenuous and strange.
An informer. They sometimes closed files to protect informers, didn’t they? His sense of probability kicked back at once, but he hushed it down.
Think. One of them could’ve lost their nerve at the last minute.
They couldn’t just withdraw, though. Not on the grayside.
They’d have to run to the law for protection if they wanted to survive the night.
The prefecture could’ve struck a deal. Information in exchange for a light sentence, a new name and a false record to cover it . . .
Felix frowned and ran up his arcanic screen. After a ten-minute battle with the piece of therical devilry, he was into the records.
They never found those treasures, he thought, and straight out of jail, she disappears for hours, then goes to Carysium Street and walks out with a stack of lyrin. I wonder . . .
At length, he found the string of cryptic symbols that spelled Elysius, and hesitantly tapped the screen. The machine gave a reproving blare and regurgitated a few more hieroglyphs at him.
Magis . . . Magisterium access only? he translated. But that was nonsense. There must’ve been officers in that very building who’d worked on the case.
He sat back, arms crossed, frowning. The nearest news scroll caught his eye again, and he looked at it anew.
Strange. It suddenly occurred to him that there were no pictures of the accused.
The court reporters usually delighted in splashing lurid images all across the page.
Come to think of it, though, he hadn’t seen any court reports at all.
Closed court? he thought. No press allowed inside? I wonder . . .
He slid a statute book from his shelf and flicked through the Magisterium Act 1012. As he’d thought, the court had the power to close proceedings in the interests of the empire.
And they used it, Felix thought. So what else did they hide?
Well, that’d done nothing to settle his suspicions.
Half his mind urged him to find Deputy Commissioner Regis at once.
If Miss Rosara did have anything to do with the Elysius theft, there was an outside chance she knew where they’d hidden the stolen goods.
For that, they needed someone far abler than him.
Nonetheless, doubt arrested him. He couldn’t set a thing like that before his master based on suspicions thin as mist. He knew how it’d look—a bored man, desperate for intrigue, making a wildfire out of a spark.
Then find some evidence. Watch her. Watch everything she does.
If Miss Rosara was more than she appeared, he’d given her a vast head start. She’d had three days in which he’d scarcely paid attention to a thing she did. On the bright side, he’d have done a fine job of lulling her into a justified sense of security.
Play the fool a little longer, he resolved. Make her think you’re off the scent, then see what she does.
Then, one last notion took him. He turned to the watchhouse lists and scanned for any recent disturbances reported in Lumenia Street. There were a few parking fines, an escaped kyrie and a breach of the peace by one Octavia Lucentia, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Perhaps it’s nothing, he thought again. Or . . . perhaps she outfoxed you entirely. Deceived you with your eyes wide open.
The thought flicked an irrational smile across his face. It’d been six long months of frock coats and surgeons, paperwork and quiet despair—always filled with restless energy, and nowhere to spend it. Now, at last, he had something. Not quite a battle, but something like it.
He had a hunt.
In the days that followed, Miss Rosara behaved well enough to bore a virtuous widow.
She wrote letters of inquiry for employment and cheaper lodgings, and smiled at everyone she met.
Each day, though, her appearance grew plainer and sharper.
It happened by such small degrees that he’d never have noticed, had he not been looking for it.
Soon enough, though, the week was over. He walked his charge up from dinner on the last night, where they parted at the door.
“Good night, Miss Rosara. I hope you’ll fare well,” he said. “You’ll have funds enough to manage?”
“Oh, I’ll muddle through,” she answered sweetly. “There’ll be places in the manufactories, if I can’t find anything better.”
“Manufactory work?” He feigned a concerned frown. “Surely that’s beneath you.”
“You’re very kind, sir, but I’m afraid very little’s beneath a lady after three years in jail.”
“For a crime you committed under compulsion. The sentence is protective, not punitive.”
“If only the rest of Carintheum shared your view! No. I’ll have common employment and be glad of it. It’s a chance to start anew.”
Suspiciously virtuous.
“I admire your fortitude, Miss Rosara,” he said, “and I hope for better on your part.”
“I thank you, but you needn’t,” she replied, pressing his hand. “I have my liberty. I’m content with that. Good night, sir. I hope we meet again.”
“And I,” he said; and part of him did. The part that had left the wars, but never learned the ways of peace. The part that still dared hope his story hadn’t ended on that Hjelvak battlefield.
They exchanged one last bow, one last curtsy, and parted. As Felix turned from sight, the first hint of a smile touched his face. The chase had begun.