A thorough search of the master bedroom yielded several more articles of clothing and all manner of personal effects that Ruban was sure belonged to his uncle. But even if that hadn’t convinced him, the stacks upon stacks of files marked with the distinctive seal of the IAW they found in one of the bedside cabinets would have been proof enough of Subhas’s presence in the house. They contained everything from case notes to policy papers, and other sundry documents very few people even in the highest echelons of the government had access to. There were at least two folders containing all the available data on the SifCo case as well as individual files for the various related incidents at Ghorib, Zikyang and the SifCo compound itself.

Rifling through one of the folders, Ruban wondered why any of this was making him uneasy. The villa belonged to the Kinoh family and Subhas had every right to come live here if he felt like it. Because it was obvious that his uncle had spent considerable time in this house, and there was no reason why he shouldn’t have. Hell, Ruban could completely understand wanting to get away from Ragah every now and then. Much as he loved the city, it could drive a man crazy from time to time.

What he didn’t understand, though, was why Subhas would feel the need to bring confidential IAW papers to what was essentially a backwater holiday home.

And what about the rumours of a woman living in the Kinoh House? Ruban wished he knew what to make of that. Not that he would begrudge his uncle a lover, if that was what this was all about. After all, Aunt Misri had been dead over eight years. If his uncle had decided to move on, Ruban couldn’t have been happier for him. But there was no sign of a woman living anywhere in this house. The only person whose belongings they had found littered all around the building was Subhas Kinoh. And yet Ashwin’s pet pickpocket – Biskut – had claimed there was a woman living in the Kinoh House (a ‘witch’ in his words); as had Luana Lei before him.

Ruban felt as though he were seeing parts of a jigsaw puzzle, but for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what the full picture would look like.

Reaching into his pocket, he fingered his cell phone for perhaps the hundredth time that evening. He should call his uncle; tell him he was in Ibanborah. Tell him he was at the villa with Ashwin. It would be the easiest way to clear up all the confusion. He could simply ask the man if he had been to the southern city recently.

And yet something held him back, made him pull his hand out of his pocket, leaving the mobile ensconced safely within the fabric of his trousers.

He would call Subhas after he had figured out at least some of what was going on around here. Because even if his uncle’s presence in the house was entirely coincidental, the fact remained that some local gangs had found an Aeriel dead outside the villa and dumped it in the river after hacking its wings off. Somebody had to have done that – somebody had killed that Aeriel – and Ruban didn’t see the point of troubling his uncle until he had discovered who it was.

Just as he was putting the file back where he had found it, the bedroom door slid open and Ashwin stuck his head inside. “I found something. I think you’ll want to see it.”

“What is it?” he asked, as the Aeriel led him down the hallway to what looked to be a cobweb-ridden storeroom at the back of the house. Ruban didn’t remember ever having been in this room as a child. Not that he remembered that period of his life with any clarity whatsoever.

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Wordlessly, Ashwin pointed towards the back of the dingy chamber.

There, half-hidden behind a table with a missing leg and a broken washbasin was a safe with gleaming metal doors and an old-fashioned locking system, which consisted of a circular steel contraption not unlike a small steering wheel.

“That safe is far too clean for this place,” the Aeriel said, moving carefully through the debris littering the floor. “The rest of the room is in shambles, and yet the safe looks like it was cleaned yesterday. Something’s not right about that.”

“No, something clearly isn’t,” Ruban agreed, dropping to his knees in front of the vault. He ran his fingers gently over the circular metallic projection at the centre of the steel door, testing for any vulnerability. There was none that he could see.

Had it been a modern design, he might have had a chance at cracking it. They had received some basic training in this sort of thing at Bracken, though not to the extent that the movies would have you believe. The Hunter Corps might have been a subsidiary of an intelligence organisation, but Hunters were by no means trained to be intelligence executives. They were primarily a paramilitary force; more soldiers than spies.

Not that any of that mattered in this case. The design of this particular safe had become obsolete long before Ruban had set foot in Bracken. He didn’t know the first thing about the mechanics of its locking system, strange and clunky as it looked.

His expression must have given away more than he realised, because Ashwin dropped to his knees beside him and, looking intently at the safe, murmured: “I could melt the door if you want.”

Ruban jumped. “What? Absolutely not. You’ll blast half the wall off and destroy whatever’s inside. I don’t think so.”

The Aeriel sighed. “Always so unimaginative. Really Ruban, would it kill you to think out of the box for a change? I’m not as much of a one-trick pony as you seem to think, you know.”

“You’re not any sort of a pony,” Ruban snapped, irate. “You’re a bloody roach – the extra creepy kind with wings. I’d rather not have this house blown off its foundations if it’s all the same to you, thanks.”

Ashwin frowned, lips pinched into what would have been a pout in a lesser being. “Don’t they teach you anything at Hunter school? No wonder mommy dearest has been running you lot ragged for centuries. Aeriels are energy beings, my friend. That means we can manipulate energy. An energy blast is only one of the ways in which that can be accomplished – though it is the most effective in direct combat. But it’s far from the only way one can use raw power. If an energy-shell can be thrown to annihilate a distant target, it can also be held in one’s hand to slowly melt away one closer home.”

“So you’re saying you won’t blow the walls off?” Ruban asked at length, squinting suspiciously at his companion.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes.”

“Okay, go ahead then,” the Hunter flicked a hand towards the safe. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

With an exasperated sigh, the Aeriel extended his hand towards the vault, holding it just below the metallic wheel. As Ruban watched, the air around Ashwin’s hand heated and a tiny flicker of electric light appeared near his extended fingers. The flicker grew until it was the size of a cricket-ball, glowing with the iridescent flare of a standard energy-shell even as it hovered just inches above Ashwin’s fingers, a hair’s breath away from the safe, completely unmoving.

Before Ruban’s disbelieving eyes, a dark stain, like a burn scar appeared on the gleaming façade of the safe, accompanied by the stench of smouldering metal. Soon, tiny ripples appeared on the surface of the steel door and before Ruban could really process what was happening, a small hole the size of a fist had burned itself into the surface of the vault.

Metal continued to sizzle and smoulder with a wounded red glow, hissing and smoking until at last most of the steel had melted away and Ruban had a clear view of the contents of the mysterious safe.

Its job done, the energy-shell disappeared from around Ashwin’s fingers, a few wisps of smoke the only evidence that it had ever existed. That, and the gaping hole in the scorched steel vault before them.

“Well, that was something,” the Hunter said at length, squinting into the vault as they waited for the metal to cool down.

“Wasn’t it though?” the Aeriel grinned, like a cat pleased with its snack.