The Bridge of Bones (Riel and Trouble's Story)

[EXTREME CONTENT WARNING: This story is an attempt at a police procedural murder mystery, and contains all of the elements included in that genre, including extensive discussion and investigation of murder and death. In particular, this story involves the implied kidnapping, physical beating, and violent murder of an adolescent, as well as discussion of the crime scene and his injuries and dead body. Please protect yourself and read only at your own risk!]

Part I: A Whole Lotta Eyes 

Part II: Connective Tissue

The next morning is biting and chilly; the kind of day where the wind sports little icy fangs and punctures even the best-planned layers, cutting straight to the bone. Riel isn’t used to it—being cold and uncomfortable. It’s laughable to think of it, when Lady Lavinet and the others are waist-deep in dirty swamp water somewhere and Red and Halek are traversing the frozen North, but it’s true: he is rarely placed in situations that cause him discomfort. He stays indoors, in hallways warmed by bright lamplight and cozy, carpeted offices. If he needs to accomplish an errand and the weather is poor, he sends someone else to do it. And he doesn’t even feel guilty about it: he pays them well enough that it’s never a problem.

Beside him, Trouble cups his hands around the end of his charch to protect the ailing flame from the wind. “Knew I should have had breakfast,” he mutters darkly. “Would have had the time, after all. Thought you said the guy was punctual.”

Riel checks his timepiece again: it’s ten minutes past the time Mr. Tantamoq, the watchmaker, usually opens his shop. “He is.”

Trouble throws his cherry-scented charch on the ground and stamps it out fiercely with his boot, grinding the ashes down into the white pavement. A well-dressed, austere woman wearing rich furs behind them—Mr. Tantamoq’s first customer of the day—tuts, annoyed by an Ashtown commoner dirtying her Whitestone sidewalk, but Riel doesn’t think Trouble hears.

“You don’t think,” the sniper says suddenly, lowering his voice, “that he…?”

The melodramatics! The man is ten minutes late, and they’ve skipped straight to believing he was murdered? “There are a dozen reasons we should consider before we reach that,” Riel hisses, his eyes flicking to the woman listening to Trouble as she stands behind them; her eagle-nosed face still holds a mask of disinterested disdain, but he knows how the rich talk. If they want to keep this murder a secret for much longer, they’re going to need to be much more mindful of what they say in public. Especially around people wealthy enough and bored enough to listen in on strangers’ conversations. In Ashtown, everyone is too weary and focused on their own lives to care. It’s part of why Riel prefers working there.

“He could be sick,” he reminds Trouble, striving for patience. “Or he could have run into traffic, or his mother could have asked him for a favor, or any number of things.”

“Or,” Trouble returns, “you-know-who could have realized they dropped you-know-what and decided to pay him a visit to keep him from talking…”

Riel sighs and turns away from him, pinching the bridge of his nose. The cold isn’t the only thing that’s making him uncomfortable. He isn’t used to this: being kept waiting, having a partner, being out “in the field,” as the terminology goes. More than that, working with Trouble unnerves him slightly. Riel prides himself on his ability to read people, on a certain talent for predicting what they’re thinking and what exactly they’re going to do. It’s what makes him so effective in business negotiations—and, he admits, since joining the Shepherds, he’s turned that particular skill into a burgeoning propensity for interrogating suspects.

But, while Trouble is generally honest and emotionally open, he is… unpredictable, at least in Riel’s book. His moral compass is confusing. He is honorable and demanding, scandalized or outraged by others’ lack of compassion; and yet he is also a former criminal, failing to bat an eye at Chase’s open thievery but imposing judgment on Tallys’s occasional workplace indifference. His temper and moods shift like a weathervane in a strong wind; he is reckless, charismatic, intimidating, affable, blunt. His glares can be as fierce as a hawk’s, but his demeanor can also be bearish, warm and inviting. He is a rule-breaker, both a leader and a maverick, prone to picking fights or commanding the instant loyalty of strangers with a single handshake. Trouble and logic seem diametrically opposed; he appears to operate on sheer gut instinct and emotion alone. And yet the work of a sharpshooter relies on mathematics, ruthless calculation and cold assessment. Perplexing. Strangest of all, he is Vice Commander, and yet his propensity for following orders and obeying systems of authority is dubious, at best: not even Blade can make him fall in line, not during his most heated moments. A loose cannon in the truest sense of the word.

Riel feels as if someone had handed him a live grenade and told him to use it to defuse another, larger explosive. It’s not the best feeling in the world, especially standing in the middle of a frigid Whitestone avenue outside of a watch shop that caters exclusively to the wealthy elite of Haven. Trouble isn’t exactly “a bull in a china shop”—not like Ayla or, bless her, Briony—but he’s close, and the prospect of unleashing an unpredictable element like that onto the already-sensitive Hermux Tantamoq wears Riel’s nerves thin.

He fears he is not operating at his best, either, the low anxious thrum of that knowledge threading through his gut. He stayed up all night, until the blush of dawn, reviewing the details of the boy’s murder and familiarizing himself with the case. And all that after a day of grueling negotiations with the Merchants Guild in Sacor, preparing for the opening of a new trade route and a dual-backed tax proposal to the Consortium. His head feels too-light and airy from the lack of sleep. Shery had been so worried (after watching him down cups of khav like water) that she’d nearly wept.

Trouble nudges him sharply, making Riel twitch. “That your man?”

Riel turns to look. Yes, that’s Hermux Tantamoq, hurrying down the sidewalk while clutching a shining top hat against his balding head. He’s a rotund, short man with a long nose, round little spectacles, and a tuft of whiskers—almost a mouse personified, which is fitting, given that his watchmaker’s symbol is of a rodent inside an hourglass. A morbid insignia, Riel has always thought—surely the mouse would drown in the sands of time—but then, some would argue that the Merchants Guild rat, a vermin accused of hoarding and spreading disease, is not much better. Well, he would rebut: he didn’t choose it.

He steps forward and intercepts Mr. Tantamoq as the man hurries to unlock his watch shop, already babbling an apology to his waiting customer, one Lady Linq. “Mr. Tantamoq,” he says smoothly. “If I may have a moment of your time?”

For a moment, he sees that the watchmaker doesn’t recognize him. Context means everything, and the last person Hermux expected to see today was his own guildmaster, standing outside of his shop with an Ashtown man carrying a pistol at his hip. (At Riel’s insistence, they both dressed out of uniform today to maintain discretion, wearing only their Shepherd medallions under their clothes. Trouble could not be persuaded not to bring a gun, however: “I ain’t walking into that lion’s den unarmed,” he’d grunted. Whether he meant the watch shop or Whitestone at large, Riel doesn’t know.)

Then he sees recognition dawn. It usually takes a moment—many people don’t see his slight frame and gaunt, youthful face and think “authority figure”—but then they see the rat’s head walking cane, the cold rings glittering on his fingers, and they remember very quickly. Hermux Tantamoq’s eyes go very wide. “Guildmaster,” he sputters. He dips a quick bow. “My apologies… I’m all out of sorts today, I didn’t even see you…”

He had, but had dismissed them as common rabble at first glance, looking only for his expected customer, Lady Linq. (Ilsa Linq, Riel thinks, dredging the name up from the shores of his deep memory. Her husband is a very minor politician in the Consortium, serving in the treasury.) He inclines his head, the picture of easy grace, and grants the man a reassuring smile. Tantamoq is flighty, easily put off or distracted; Riel wants to set him at his ease, relax him enough to get him to answer a few questions. “No need for an apology, Mr. Tantamoq, I’m aware of how unusual my sudden appearance is. I promise I’ll keep this visit quick, so as not to inconvenience you further.”

Despite his best efforts, the watchmaker’s hands shake as they fumble with the keys for the door. He mumbles about how it’s not an inconvenience at all, not at all, he’ll make tea, and Riel watches him for signs of unusual nervousness—could he be hiding something? The man seems flustered, but not unusually so. Somewhere behind him, Trouble says abruptly, “Could you, uh, stand outside for a few more minutes? Me and my friend here would like a private chat with the good watchmaker. Our ears only, sorry.”

Riel closes his eyes as Lady Linq gasps in outrage. Trouble continues, utterly unrepentant, “It won’t be for long.”

Then, before Riel can turn and smooth over the situation, the sharpshooter bodily pushes him inside and closes the door quickly behind them, shutting out the wind and Lady Linq’s “I never—!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Trouble mumbles to himself. “Write a complaint and mail it to my arse.”

Riel throws him a glare, and Trouble has the cheek to grin and shrug, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets. God preserve him, he would beat him over the head with his cane if the sniper’s skull wasn’t already hard enough to break it.

Hermux Tantamoq is lighting a fire in the little store hearth, mopping his brow with his handkerchief as he putters to and fro. “You must excuse me,” he says, oblivious to whatever’s been going on with Lady Linq. “I’m not usually so late. I pride myself on my punctuality, in fact; I haven’t been this off-kilter in years. But the little ladies were very sluggish this morning, it’s this sudden cold snap… I had to make sure they were well and warm before I could leave…”

Trouble saunters over to the main counter of the shop, leaning against the polished wood and toying idly with the tabletop display of fine watches and chains. “You got daughters?” he asks casually. Riel instantly sees the angle he’s gunning for—if Tantamoq has children, then appealing for his help in solving the young boy’s murder will be all the easier—and he shakes his head. It’s the wrong angle, but Trouble doesn’t see.

“Not daughters, exactly, no,” Tantamoq returns, still half-bent over the sputtering fire. “But I think of them that way, sometimes.”

Trouble frowns, glancing up from a wristband—some ridiculous fashion piece from the far West, where nobles apparently wear their timepieces on their wrists, now. “…Adopted?”

“Mr. Tantamoq keeps ladybugs,” Riel informs him crisply, cutting off this line of questioning before Trouble ends up offending the man. “Those are the ‘little ladies’ in question.”

Trouble’s expression slackens. “What, just for fun?”

“Initially, they were to keep pests out of my garden,” Mr. Tantamoq begins. “But I came to realize that each one is unique—each with a different coloration, a different number of spots, some in perfect symmetry, others as bizarre as constellations. And they have their own personalities, if you can believe it. Some are friendly and eager to be held, others are shy and coy…”

Trouble tosses Riel a look, this one obvious in its meaning: The weird shit you rich people get up to. As if Trouble doesn’t refer to his sniper rifles as if they’re people and shove his hands into rat holes. Riel waves him off and says, “Mr. Tantamoq. While we would love to linger and—no, thank you, sir, I must regretfully decline tea—discuss the little ladies in more detail, I’m afraid we’ve come to discuss a more urgent matter. A watch of yours has recently come into our possession. We would like you to tell us to whom you sold it.”

He watches the watchmaker pause, just for an instant, before straightening from the fire and wiping his hands on a nearby cloth. His sweaty, red face is now alive with a different kind of emotion, not just flusteredness—there’s a wariness there, a cautious curiosity. He doesn’t question how Riel knows it’s his watch: the master of Merchants Guild doesn’t make such trivial mistakes. He only says, simply: “Are you here on Merchants Guild business, sir? Or is this… another matter?” And he casts a look at Trouble, who straightens from the counter.

Ah. Riel suspected it might come to this. He’s kept a careful eye on how people have treated him, ever since he quietly threw in his lot with the Shepherds. On the surface, he’s kept his duties as guildmaster separate and by all accounts perfectly normal, operating through Aerin as a proxy and meeting the most important contacts on his off-days. But word was bound to spread eventually, if only through the guild’s innermost ranks. And while it’s really none of their concern—the masters of Merchants Guild have always operated as individual and private business entities as well asdirectors and administrators for the guild—it was always going to cast at least some question on his authority. Would a member of the guild who fundamentally hated the Shepherds be obligated to answer his guildmaster… if said guildmaster was operating as a Shepherd officer, not as his merchant leader?

Riel sees all of this running through Hermux Tantamoq’s mind, and for once, he’s not totally sure how to address the question. If he uses his status as merchant leader to apply pressure in a situation where he’s technically acting as a Shepherd, it could unearth some very ugly questions about conflicts of interest. But if Hermux declines to cooperate, it would severely undermine Riel’s power within the guild, regardless of what capacity he was operating under at the time. A lowly watchmaker, refusing the leader of Merchants Guild? It’s unconscionable.

Trouble chooses that exact moment to knock a timepiece off of the display. He fumbles with it, the watch slipping through his gloved hands for a deadly moment before he manages to save it from shattering on the ground like an ice cube. “Oops,” he says with a sheepish, crooked smile. “Sorry about that—butterfingers.”

The color drains from Hermux Tantamoq’s face: the watch that Trouble’s holding is worth at least a month of his salary. No, Riel thinks with a double-take—a year. “Ah… if you could step away from the display…” Mr. Tantamoq begins.

“Sure,” Trouble says, moving to stand behind the counter. “Over here’s good?”

“Ah… perhaps by the door…”

“Oh, fuck.” Trouble’s elbow jostles a coatrack, and he barely catches it before it topples into the fire. “Shit. This little shop’s tiny, huh? Don’t worry, we’ll get out of your hair in a mo. You want to show him the watch, Riel?”

When Riel looks at him, he gives an imperceptible wink before adding loudly, “Wow, that lady outside is looking pissed.” And it’s true: Lady Linq looks positively apoplectic as she shivers outside like a leaf in the high wind.

Did Trouble plan on provoking her temper to add pressure to the situation? Almost smirking, Riel draws the (clean and sanitized) watch out from his pocket to present delicately to Mr. Tantamoq, who leans forward and squints at it, adjusting his spectacles in the chilly autumn light—his earlier hesitation forgotten in the wake of his eagerness to get them out of his shop. “Ah,” he says immediately. “Yes, I made that as a special commission for Duke Sylver. For his son, Calum—it was a Wreath Day gift for the young man.”

Riel feels a little spark of excitement in his chest. Calum Sylver—he’d come across the name last night, when he was cross-checking the registries of Haven’s wealthiest families with any names that matched with ‘C.S.’ So. They have the name of the dead boy. One step closer to finding his killer.

“When did you last see young Calum?” Riel asks politely, not betraying any particular emotion. “Or his father?”

Mr. Tantamoq thinks on it, tapping one finger against his bald head as he thinks. “It must have been this time last year,” he says, “when I delivered the watch to their home. My pieces have long lives: they would not have needed to see me for maintenance for some time.” Suddenly, he frowns down at the timepiece. “How did you come into possession of this, may I ask? Calum strikes me as a responsible young man, not prone to losing valuable objects.”

“It was found by my associate,” Riel returns smoothly, tucking the watch away, “and I am eager to return it to its rightful owner.” It isn’t a lie, exactly. “Their address is on Rareton Lane, correct?” The perks of a photographic memory: he remembers it from the registry last night.

Hermux Tantamoq nods absently. “Yes, that sounds right. If you like, Guildmaster, I can return the timepiece for you: I’m sure you’re busy with other matters…”

Riel dismisses him with a wave of his hand, gesturing to Trouble with a nod of his head. “No need. I will be passing by either way.”

“Yes, but…”

Lady Linq pokes her head in through the door. “Mr. Tantamoq,” she fumes, “my family has patronized your store for over fifteen years, and never—never—have I been asked to brook the indignity of standing out in the cold—”

Flustered again, Hermux Tantamoq dashes over to soothe the lady’s temper; her voice rises to a bird-like shriek as she begins to pry her way in through the doorway. Completely unapologetic, Trouble muscles wordlessly past her, Riel follows—and soon enough, they’ve slipped out as silently and smoothly as if they’d never been there, like sharks barely leaving a ripple in the water. There are other customers waiting outside, now, each watching the commotion with avid interest: Hermux Tantamoq likely won’t have the time to remember them, not until well after he’s gone home to tend to his ladybugs.

Trouble gives Riel a cocky, sly kind of grin. “More than one way to point a gun,” he says, tapping a finger against the side of his nose.

Riel considers telling him that he’s growing rather tired of the firearm wordplay, but instead, he grants him a conceding nod. He does find himself rather impressed.

#

They take his coach to Duke Sylver’s manor: Trouble always looks like the carriage is going to swallow him alive, but he climbs in and sits quietly enough on the ride through the district, staring out at the manicured gardens and topiaries as they drift by. Riel watches him, made curious by the lack of argument. Ever since that time at the Trade Minister’s gala, he’s come to accept that Trouble simply can’t stand to ride in a vehicle that he believes stands for the snobbery of the rich. It’s a bleating declaration of his loyalties, a stubborn pronouncement of his “everyman” roots. Now, though, he says nothing, lost in his own thoughts.

Riel can’t read him, and he never likes that feeling, so he says, “Danar for your thoughts?”

Trouble stirs after a moment. “This part is never fun,” he says. “Telling the family about… the deceased. Especially if they don’t know.” He hesitates. “Especially if it’s a kid.”

Riel frowns, contemplating the polished gold handle of his walking cane, now laid across his knees. He thinks back to his own experiences, the reactions he’s witnessed in response to tragedies. What his own parents would have done, if a stranger came to deliver news about his death.

“It will not be what you’re expecting,” he says finally, with certainty. Arram Sylver, the family patriarch, is a duke, owning more fiefdoms than any noble in Lavinet’s own Winter Court. His duchy is a politically-minor one, of course, and the family has fallen out of the favor of the Autarch in recent times—not shunned, only ignored and cast into obscurity in favor of more interesting and noteworthy players—but that doesn’t mean that the frosty aristocrat’s decorum won’t be firmly in place, the blank composure installed like a funerary mask. They won’t scream or cry or fall on the ground, tearing their hair at the loss of their son. They will sit there in grim, frozen silence, then thank him and Trouble stiffly for delivering the news before having the servants see them out. Even then, surrounded by their staff—any of whom might gossip to the maids and butlers of their peers—they’ll keep their grief confined to the imposing silence of their bedrooms, to hushed arguments and private tears. If they’ll cry at all.

Trouble stares at him as if Riel has suggested that the sky will fall down. “It’s their son, Riel.”

“And he’s a duke, Trouble,” Riel returns. “They’ve already lost an heir: tears will only make their family seem weaker, place them in an even worse position. Then the jackals will move in.”

The sniper whistles. “That’s fucked.”

Riel doesn’t disagree.

The worst part, he thinks as they draw up to the enormous manor with its white, winding driveway, is that the Sylvers won’t give them any information at all. It will be a struggle even to get them to let them into the house; and no matter the fact that Riel and Trouble are trying to find their son’s killer, a duke and his relations are not going to be forthcoming about their own personal affairs, not to the Shepherds, and not in any way that exposes them to potential scandal. And that’s the information that’s most useful, at least when one is investigating a murder. If Calum and his father had been fighting, no one will say. If Calum ran away with someone—a friend, or a sweetheart—they will not offer that information. He either needs a foolproof way to glean the answers from their faces, or he needs another method of extracting their secrets.

If only this will be as easy as having Trouble knock over some more coatracks.

They walk up to the elegant, gold-knockered door, and things proceed exactly as Riel expected. A servant regards them warily from the shadows of the foyer; they are permitted entry when Riel exercises his guildmaster voice, and produces his sun medallion and the watch. Duke Sylver is not home to receive them, and wouldn’t meet them personally anyway. Lucrecia Sylver, the mother, takes the news with white knuckles locked together in her lap: more emotion than Riel was expecting, but she does not cry. She trembles a little—then draws in a breath and says in a low, steady voice, “Thank you for telling me this… this terrible news. I… my husband will be devastated when he returns. He has been out looking for Calum all night.”

Her husband, Riel thinks; she cannot even reveal her own feelings, only refer to her spouse’s. The man of the house, whose emotions and importance eclipse her own. Trouble looks absolutely baffled by her reaction, sitting on the fine silk settee in his worn jacket and scuffed boots, so broad-shouldered that Riel is forced to sit on the very edge of the seat beside him.

“You can come down to the morgue,” he begins, sounding bewildered, “if you want to make sure for yourself.”

Lucrecia bows her head. “Thank you,” she murmurs, her eyelashes cast down. “Yes, I will… we will send somebody. There must be a funeral…” She trails off.

Riel watches Trouble’s fist clench on his knee; the air around him warms slightly, as if stirred by the heat of his anger. He sees him about to say something cruel—he was beat, you know, someone torturedhim, and you won’t even come down to make sure it’s really him?—but then Trouble thinks better of it, bites his tongue. “Was there anyone who would have wanted to hurt him?” he asks finally, his voice a bit louder, impatient. “An enemy of his, something like that?” He does not ask if Calum was known for associating with Mages: that would tip their hand too far. But then, Riel thinks, they’re all going to find out when they see the body, anyway. Perhaps it’s better if they drag their feet.

Lucrecia Sylver spreads her hands, a helpless little gesture. A black silk fan dangles on a loop at her wrist, forgotten. This is about as raw as they’re going to see her. “He is fourteen,” she says helplessly, her glossy mouth small and twisted. “Enemies?”

“Enemies of your family, then,” Trouble insists. “Or of your husband. Political rivals? Could he have been kidnapped by someone, held for ransom?”

It’s the wrong thing to say; Lucrecia Sylver draws herself up, squaring her shoulders. “Isn’t that something you should be telling me, Officer?”

Vice Commander, Riel wants to correct—but now is not the time. He holds up a hand just as Trouble opens his mouth to fire back a response, clearly frustrated by the noblewoman’s… vagueness… but Riel isn’t reading any deception from her: it’s simply the stifled grief he was expecting. And the usual stonewalling. “Did you know that your son was missing, Duchess?” he asks then.

Her pale brow furrows once, then smooths into the forced composure of a proper lady. “Not since yesterday, at breakfast,” she says, remembering her fan now and snapping it across her mouth in a signal of Muted Distress. She is a very young woman, Riel thinks; she could pass for a sister of Calum’s, her dark hair piled on her slender neck and her cheeks pinked with rouge. She must have been, what, fifteen or sixteen when he was born—scarcely older than the dead boy himself when she became his mother. And Duke Sylver is in his fifties. Revolting. “Calum’s maid, Anna, went to fetch him for breakfast and found his bed empty. The staff and my husband have been searching for him ever since.” She hesitates, and the fan flicks to an angle of Unsure Discretion. “I… I knew he must be in danger, he would never leave the estate and worry us so… but I never imagined…” She trails off again.

“Did you alert the Vice Guard, when you discovered his absence?”

She blinks slowly, then shakes her head. “The Vice Guard? No, no… My husband hired men to help in the search…”

Typical. No one goes to the Vice Guard unless they have to: nobles who can afford better and more loyal mercenaries do so instead of involving the police. Besides, information passes through the Vice Guard like a sieve; if the Sylvers had reported their son’s disappearance, the news would have broken out within hours.

But if they had told the Vice Guard, Riel thinks, could Calum have been recovered alive? It’s doubtful—like most people, he isn’t very generous when it comes to the Vice Guard’s competence. And perhaps Calum was already dead by the time his absence was discovered.

But he suspects it doesn’t matter. The question will haunt Lucrecia Sylver’s sleep for the rest of her life. Yet another curse imposed by her status, another bar set in the cage she’s locked herself in.

“Is Calum your only child?” he asks. He already knows the answer—yes—but prompting her to answer easy questions might make her more pliant.

The duchess nods briefly. “Yes.”

“Had he been acting strangely, these last few weeks? Any unusual behavior?”

“No.”

Would you even know if he was? He knows how these elite, high-handed families can be; how distantly they can treat their sons. “Did he go out the day before he went missing? Did he leave the manor, or see anyone outside of the family?”

“He went to school,” Lucrecia says vaguely. “St. Ambriel’s School for Young Men. But he came straight home: his chauffeur picked him up at the school gates. He had dinner, read by the fire. Then he went up to his room and went to bed.”

“Can we see his room?” Trouble asks then. “Was there signs of struggle, a broken lock? Did someone come into his room, or did he go out?”

She blinks again, swallowing. “No.”

“No, what?” Riel could smack him; his lack of deference towards the duchess is offensive, and liable to get them thrown out.

Unfortunately, Duchess Sylver seems inclined to agree. She begins to stand and says stiffly, “I am tired, as you can understand. Perhaps you should address your questions to the staff—our head butler, Kers, is more than up to the task. Then I think you should leave. My husband will return home very soon.”

This is no good, Riel thinks. They haven’t learned anything: where would Calum have come into contact with a Mage with a motive to kill him? How did such a villain gain access to the house—or did the boy leave his sanctuary himself, going out to meet his own death? And is there a reason why they won’t let him and Trouble inspect Calum’s room, other than that they don’t want Shepherd riffraff dirtying what is now a shrine to their lost son, a museum display frozen in time?

He’s not leaving without something more to go on: he just needs a new lead, just one. Riel wouldn’t have taken the time to help with this case if it were a simple murder; it’s a brutal thing, but homicides are not uncommon in Haven, and he doesn’t have the time to solve them all. But he isinterested in averting whatever violence will erupt when it comes out that a high-standing noble child was killed by a rogue Diminished. The ensuing manhunt will be bloody and chaotic, and with the Autarch so ill and so many of their strongest out of the city—Blade, Briony, Tallys, Lavinet, the Hero of Haven—he doesn’t trust that even the Shepherds will be able to maintain order, let alone the Inquisitors or the Vice Guard (in fact, the latter two will probably compound the problem). For all of that, he intends to see this particular case all the way through to its wicked end. And the likes of Lucrecia Sylver—grieving mother though she may be—are not going to stand in his way.

So: time to try a different tactic.

He rises as the lady does and comes forward to clasp her small, gloved hands, startling her with his sudden proximity. Her mouth forms a pink little ‘o’, but she doesn’t pull away immediately; the ingrained noble disinclination against overt rudeness doesn’t let her. Quick as a thought, Riel presses one of his business cards into her hand and tilts her palm upward, so that she’s forced to look at it: at the gold embossments, the neat, perfect print. He says, in a kind, gentle voice he has been practicing in his off-hours: “We are very sorry for your loss, Duchess. If there’s ever anything you need, we will gladly answer your call.” He taps his name on the card: she blinks down at it, frowning as if her vision were a little clouded. “Though, of course, you have your own people to trust, yes? Friends?”

“I—” the duchess says, blinking rapidly. “Yes. Of course.”

“Friends are as good as gold, my lady, and we would like to be friends to you. A queen once said her three most trusted companions were a balm to her soul sweeter than any other. My friend and I have strived to abide by that standard, and we find even the richest duchesses can be in sore need of people to trust. You can trust us, my lady.” He squeezes her hands briefly; through her gloves and his own, it’s like the contact holds no heat or weight at all. “Will you please tell your man Kers that we are acting on your good word and may stay to conduct our business? We would like to be of service to you.” Then he claps his hands decisively, distracting her, and points again to his card. “This is my name, if you should need me. You only need to call. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the duchess says, passing a hand over her eyes. “I do. Well, if you’ll be quick…” She passes him the card back. “Kers will take you where you want to go. Just ask him.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he says, and he gives a deep, courteous bow before turning and sweeping out of the room. Trouble shuts his jaw with an audible little click and has the wherewithal to follow swiftly, remaining silent until they’re well out of earshot of the parlor and are back in the main hall.

“What the Hael was that?” he hisses, catching Riel by the elbow before one of the servants emerges from the depths of the house to meet them. “She’d already kicked us out, just about—what kind of magic did you just work to get her to give us, what, free roam of the whole place?”

“It won’t last long,” Riel demurs, “and it certainly won’t work if her husband returns, so we should move quickly.” Still, he allows himself to feel a flash of smugness. It’s a new technique, one that doesn’t work well on hardened business contacts or suspicious suspects, but has a high degree of success among the emotionally vulnerable—especially those who want to be agreeable, or who are used to others making the decisions for them. He distracts them with reading his business card, with sounds and movements and gestures and touches, all the while feeding them with the right words: good, trust, friends, as well as service, standard, business, and then a kind of rhyming schema—queen, three, sweet, need, soul, gold. And then he offloads the whole thing onto a trusted figure—like the duchess’ head butler, Kers—and it all makes it very easy to get them to agree with what he wants. A tri-fold strategy, a kind of subliminal battery of attack. It’s not as good as Enchanting magic or anything like that, but he’s been experimenting with ways to help him compete with his Diminished colleagues.

Trouble whistles. “That’s downright villainous. I only ever see Chase conning people like that.”

“It is not a con,” Riel reminds him, a little miffed to be compared to a thief—even one as skilled as Chase, he has to admit grudgingly. “I didn’t lie to her. It’s a method of persuasion, nothing more.”

Trouble snorts. “Makes a guy wonder if you ever use it to persuadeanyone else.”

He’s thought about testing it, in a purely scientific sense, on his peers, but he’s never in suitable circumstances: he has enough authority in the Shepherds and the Merchants Guild that most people just do what he wants without his needing to jump through additional hoops—and stronger-minded souls, like Trouble himself, wouldn’t be susceptible to it. He tried it on Ayla only once, and she’d impatiently told him to stop rhyming at her and fuck right off. “I rarely need to.”

Trouble smirks. “Right. You usually have the run of the place without needing to resort to mind tricks at all.” Still, Riel can tell that he’s impressed; there’s a measure of respect to his gaze that wasn’t there before. Riel is slightly surprised that earning the sniper’s respect is something that matters to him. Normally he doesn’t give a fig about anyone’s personal feelings so long as they do as he says. How interesting.

Kers, the head butler, shows up to escort them around the estate, wearing the usual servant’s blank like a mask and marching as stiffly as an automaton, not like a breathing person, keeping his white gloved hands clasped at the small of his back as he leads them from room to room. He gives no reaction at all to the oddness of letting two Shepherd officers wander around the manor, and his answers to their questions are prompt but mostly unhelpful. Calum Sylver was a quiet, kind boy. His “oddest” habit was keeping rabbits in a hutch in one of the estate’s vast courtyards, where he would let them climb on him or nibble at his sleeves. He read books and played the valke. He was accompanied almost everywhere by a chaperone, as is typical with aristocrats, especially those of his status and age; the family’s head footman, who’s been with them for thirty years, drove him to and from school, and on his rare trips outside of the estate without his parents, he was always escorted by a tutor or governess or servant or bodyguard. No “disreputable persons” ever approached him on these little outings, not that Kers is aware of (and, as head butler, he would be aware of everything). He has never been attacked or jeered at in the street for his family’s wealth or standing: he never left Whitestone, and things like that never happened, not here.

“Did he have any friends?” Trouble asks, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching his way through the vast ballroom.

A muscle in Kers’ cheek twitches. “The young master associates”—present tense, still, Riel thinks; a normal response to sudden loss, and one that clears the butler of much suspicion—“with many peers of his age. At parties and galas, there are many noble children of other families to speak to. And I am told he has friends at school.”

“Did he ever go to their houses?” Trouble asks. “Or did any of them come here?”

Kers doesn’t speak for a moment. “We rarely receive guests on behalf of the young master,” he finally admits. “And he rarely travels to the homes of his peers. Sometimes he will play at the homes of his cousins, but that is usually at his mother’s urging. Beyond that, he is usually content to read and amuse himself at home.”

Trouble shoots Riel a look, a clear question of whether that all sounds normal. Riel, for once, finds that he doesn’t have a definitive answer; he’s not given to tracking the average social life of aristocratic teens, and his own adolescence is a poor example. He had no friends, growing up, and wasn’t even allowed out of the house until he was fourteen. So he brushes the question off and continues interrogating Kers.

They just can’t pick apart this tight-knit vacuum that Calum seemed to inhabit, he thinks as the butler leads them up the winding stairs to the boy’s bedroom. There must be a loose thread here, some snag that they can worry at and tug and unravel—but it’s all so sanitized, so neat. His character is spotless: no secret conflicts, no hints of hidden passions or ugly tendencies. His routine sounds impeccable. Absolutely no room for coming into contact with potential murderers or unsavory characters who could have ingratiated themselves, could have lured him away, or who could have targeted him and climbed in through his window and kidnapped him in the middle of the night. Where could this wealthy boy’s polished, soft life have intersected with that of the person who beat, tortured, and eventually dumped his dead body in an alleyway in Ashtown? It seems impossible: cushioned in the elegant, carpeted gut of this glittering manor, Calum Sylver seemed to operate in an entirely unconnected realm from the one holding the grime of everyday desperation, poverty, disease, madness, and murder. Like the sphere of heaven curving over the sphere of the earth, the poet Verlomi once said. Two axes that never touch.

But there must be something, Riel thinks. The boy is dead, after all. So how did we get from Point A to Point B?

His mind runs over the possibilities, so brief and flickering it feels like a dragonfly skipping over the surface of a deep pond. What are all of the possible points of contact? Random stranger. A skilled Mage or a high-caliber Ket could have slipped into the room undetected and spirited him away, perhaps for political reasons, perhaps for personal. But why him specifically? Sins of the father, punishment for the family, or something about the boy himself? He needs to look more closely at Arram Sylver’s background. What else? A rival noble family locked in a social standoff with the Sylvers? It’s happened before, in the Sun Court’s bloodiest moments: kidnappings, ransoms, that sort of thing. Other Autarchs tacitly allowed it—believing any noble family whose scion was kidnapped by a rival’s deserved the treatment for their own incompetence and weakness—and perhaps, with the current one so ailing, there’s been a resurgence in that kind of behavior? But why leave his body to be found in Ashtown? Well, he thinks—kidnapping’s one thing, torture and murder are another; something could have gone wrong, they could have panicked, could have decided to blame it on the Diminished, history’s easy targets. But it all seems so outlandish, doesn’t it? The simplest answers are usually the likeliest ones. And then there’s the obvious threads: people from school, servants from the household, friends, and family. If it’s not a stranger, not an outsider, it has to be one of those. But how would magic have gotten involved? That’s the thing: all these people are so aggressively Norm, and noble, and mundane. And the crater in Calum Sylver’s chest is not any of those things. The opposite, in fact. So he’s back to the stranger theory. And now he’s trying not to think about the daunting task of tracking down a stranger in a city of uncountable thousands.

They reach Calum’s room, as innocuous a chamber as there ever was. Richly-furnished, devoid of dust, warm wood and the deep blue and red finery of the Sylver family (having actual silver in their actual family crest would have been too trite). Kers leaves them to their investigations, though he must be hovering only a few yards away in the hallway, and Trouble makes a beeline straight to the wall of large, multiple-paned arched windows, flinging aside the curtains and letting the watery winter light burst in.

“No broken locks,” he grunts as he examines each of the panes in turn; Riel moves towards Calum’s desk, still wary of interruptions, of Arram Sylver’s return. There’s another carriage outside, he sees, but the driver isn’t wearing the livery of the family servants, so it must be someone to see Lucrecia, some sympathizer or friend. Good: it will keep her even more distracted, buy them more time to poke around. “No broken glass, either. No scuffs or footprints on the ledges.” He bends to check the carpets. “No mud or dust that I can see. So if someone came in, Calum either let them in—or someone left the window open beforehand, without his knowing.”

“I don’t see any signs of struggle,” Riel notes—though the bed has already been perfectly made, damn the servants and their compulsive need to tidy things up. Still, none of the furniture is scuffed or scratched; nothing has been overturned. “And someone would have heard something, if there had been one in the first place. So I think we can rule out that someone came in against his will and manhandled him out. And even if he had been unconscious, and they could have collected him in silence…”

“They would have needed to know the layout of the place,” Trouble says. “Pretty intimately. And unless they translocated, like Red can do, it would have been a colossal pain in the arse to bundle him out the window from three stories up and make it off the grounds. No, I don’t think anyone stole him away in his sleep.”

“Unless, again, it was a Mage who could translocate into the room and out again,” Riel comments. “But they would have needed to have visited this place beforehand, memorized it, understood the layout thoroughly. And I think the Sylvers would have remembered letting someone like that into their home, let alone into Calum’s room.”

“Could be one of the servants in disguise? A Mage pretending to be a maid, or something?”

“Families this old and established rarely hire new staff—and the staff they do hire are vetted extremely aggressively. They need dozens of referrals and are often direct blood descendants of servant families who have served the same noble lineages for generations. But I will look into their dossiers for anything noteworthy.” It will be hundreds of files to go through, he thinks; hours of blinding work. He’ll need to get Aerin to help. Probably Shery, too.

“We can get access to those?”

Well, he can through Merchants Guild—the guildmaster has access to all kinds of archives and registries. The Order of the Shepherds could, too, but it would likely involve a lot of strongarming and legalistic threats. It all depends on whether they want to get things done the fast way, or the orderly, transparent way. He has an inkling which one Trouble would pick—and he’s in agreement. There is at least one nice thing about working with a loose cannon: neither of them are going to quibble about playing strictly by the rules.

“It seems more likely that Calum left the manor himself,” he continues, running his eyes over the boy’s bookshelves. School ledgers, adventure novels: the standard fare. “Either without anyone knowing, or they did know, and are concealing that fact for reasons of their own.”

Trouble is prowling back and forth, checking the sightlines through the windows; there are no nearby neighboring buildings that can see into the manor, and the estate walls are as high and tall as any other in Whitestone. “You think a fourteen-year-old could have snuck off without any of the servants realizing?”

“It’s easier than you think,” Riel replies, “especially if you’re working from the inside out rather than the reverse. He would have known their routines, their habits, how to avoid detection. I’m not saying he climbed out the window and scampered along the rooftops to freedom. He could have simply taken an unused hallway, some servants’ passage he’d know was deserted after midnight, and gone out through the kitchens and away through some side gate.”

“All right.” Trouble stoops to peer under the bed. “Then why?”

Riel approaches the boy’s desk, hoping to gain an understanding of his state of mind. The desk holds a few scattered papers, a half-finished letter on a piece of expensive vellum, and a slim, leather-bound journal. He flips through the journal, moving lightly and delicately with his gloved hands, but finds nothing of note: it seems Calum fancied himself a budding artist, and there’s nothing in the pages except a few etchings of leaves and a blocky sketch or two, unrecognizable due to the lack of features. The boy gave up easily on things, he notes; it indicates an unconfident, quieter nature. The unfinished letter is addressed to a Mr. Rincol, seemingly an instructor at Calum’s school—something to do with the man’s wife, who is apparently in poor health; Calum writes about how sorry he is to hear it. A sweet boy, Riel thinks, who cared enough about a teacher to write a letter of sympathy upon hearing that his spouse was ill. More empathy than most noble boys ever care to extend. And for the first time, he feels a little nudge of… something. He glances at the adventure novels again, thinks of the well-fed rabbits in the hutch outside. The Shepherd apprentice Caine will turn fourteen next year. In another life, Riel wonders if he and Calum would have been friends. If the boy had been allowed to associate with more common folk, with people outside of his celestial sphere—would he have been less lonely?

He is immediately disgusted by his own sentimentality. He has never—never—let emotion get in the way of his work. That’s Trouble; that’s Chase, that’s Ayla and Briony. That cannot be him. He must remain welded to fact, to cold and ruthless logic. If he doesn’t, this entire investigation will tailspin into the blind thirst for revenge they’ve been working so hard to prevent.

Trouble has moved on to riffling through the boy’s wardrobe now, moving as gingerly as if he expects someone to leap out at him and accuse him of dirtying the fine silks and cravats. While he works, Riel moves into the room attached to the bedroom—it’s a small reading room with a hearth, which would have turned into a kind of practice receiving room or parlor when Calum was deemed old enough to entertain his own visitors in a more official capacity.

Not much of note here: just a rug, more shelves of books, a lounge and a settee to recline on. Above the fireplace hangs an arrangement of fine paintings and portraits, all of them depicting Calum, his family, or his distant ancestors. The sober, hard-faced man with the auburn mustache must be Arram Sylver, the father. There’s Lucrecia, looking very young as she sits with a baby Calum in her lap, a tawny cat curling around her ankles. The largest painting is a family portrait depicting all three of them, and it must have taken place on or after Calum’s Wreath Day: Riel can see the thin gold chain of Hermux Tantamoq’s timepiece, the gift his father gave him, painted in loving detail at his breast pocket. Many of the other paintings are more recent, too, depicting Calum closer to the age that he is now. Calum standing straight and tall, smiling shyly as he poses for a portrait commemorating his first day at St. Ambriel’s School for Young Men. Calum sitting under the shade of a tree with a group of three other boys, seemingly enjoying a picnic during some sort of celebration or party—likely a relative’s summer birthday.

Something strikes him, then. Riel runs his eyes over the portraits again to be sure, then calls out to Trouble: “When you found Calum’s body…”

The blond sniper appears in the doorway, trying in vain to flatten his hair; God knows what he was just doing to get it into such a disarray. “Yeah?”

Riel nods up to the portraits. “Was there a ring like that, on his smallest finger?”

Trouble frowns and steps closer, the gloom of the reading room—Riel didn’t disturb the curtains—emphasizing the strange ring of gold around his pupils. He scans the paintings for a moment, then says softly, “What do you know. He wasn’t wearing a ring.”

“And you’re sure?”

Trouble’s jaw sets: not out of offense, but a sense of growing determination. Like a hound who’s set his teeth on a bone he’s decided he likes and wants to keep. “Positive.”

“I haven’t seen a ring like that around here. Have you?”

“Nope.” He nods up at the portraits. “And it seems like it was pretty important to him. He was fond of wearing it.”

The ring appears in every portrait after Calum’s Wreath Day. It’s an innocuous thing, worn on the smallest finger of the boy’s right hand, where rings of allegiance—usually to schools, clubs, social institutions or private circles—are usually affixed. Silver, with a small blue gem glowing in the center. No insignias or markings. But given how consistently he wore it, Calum clearly treasured it. And if it’s not around here, in his rooms…

He and Trouble look at each other. Then, all at once, they’re talking.

“What are the chances he was wearing it, when he went out?”

“Good chances, though not absolute. But let us follow the thread as if he were. You said the state of the body was impeccable. That someone—most likely the killer—had gone through trouble of arranging the clothing, of making his repose seem dignified.”

“Yeah, it was all neat and pretty. Had his tie done up all nice and knotted. His bloody hair was brushed. The watch must have slipped out, gotten carried away by the rats, or the killer dropped it by mistake, but—”

“But nothing else seemed stolen or missing. There was still money in his coin pouch. If it was about looting, or selling off his valuables, that would have been gone—and more of his clothes would have been in disarray.”

“Right. But if they only took the ring, and maybe the watch—”

“Then the ring would have been significant. Perhaps, like the timepiece, they feared that it would lead us to something. Something that would have identified Calum, or…”

“Or identified them.”

The door to the bedroom opens; they both swing towards it, prepared to start shouting at Kers for interrupting them at a critical moment. But someone else steps into the room, someone wearing a crisp uniform of blood red and coin gold, and Riel feels his face still into an expression of startled dislike. The newcomer is someone he knows, someone he hadn’t expected to see again—certainly not in this context—and he has always hated being surprised. The unpredictable, the chaotic. His eyes move to the medallion hanging on the man’s chest, and his own suddenly feels as heavy as a noose, even hidden away beneath his thin suit.

“Edric Alden,” he says, his voice very calm. “An Inquisitor, now.”

His old enemy stares back at him, thin nostrils flaring in disdain. “Riel Syndran,” he returns. “Do I need to ask why two Shepherds are rifling through my deceased cousin’s private rooms? Or should I state the obvious: have I caught you tampering with the evidence in order to protect your Diminished friends?”

Trouble starts forward, an outraged expression on his face as he opens his mouth to protest—but suddenly a gun leaps in his direction, black and vicious as a cobra. Edric’s cold eyes never leaves Riel’s face as his pistol hangs in the air between them. “You have bullied a grieving mother into granting you free roam of her house,” he says softly. “Something she would never permit while in her right mind. You have abused your power, and now you are interfering with an open murder inquiry, and you have strong motive to obscure the identity of the Mage killer and to pin the crime on the wrong perpetrator.” He makes a soft clicking noise with his tongue. “It would look very good for your cause if this death was as simple as a family member, some depraved Norm aristocrat, being the murderer—but we all know the truth, don’t we? Magic did this. And you hid that from Calum’s mother, never told her that her son’s chest was blown open by a Diminished. And now here you are.” The gun makes an ominous clicking sound, and Trouble makes a low growl in his throat. Edric is unmoved; in fact, he smiles a little, as if daring them to try it. “So. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you now.”