While the city's police was busy preventing a panic outside Chukru, the scene on the island itself wasn't the nightmare scenario many would have expected. All across Medala, a city fire would be a major catastrophe. After all, much of Medalan housing was built from wood and straw. Even in Arguna, where most houses were built from stone, if a fire like this were to break out the entire middle and outer city were built so close together that the flames would be almost impossible to contain. Only the silver palace and inner city, with their wide roads and empty courtyards, would remain untouched. However, here the inferno had been contained to a single hall and a few houses around it.
Although smoke still rose from the giant hall, the flames were no longer visible from the outside. The stench of burnt wood still hung in the air, but by now, the sea breeze had begun to reclaim its dominion over Saniya's streets.
All around the giant hall, various holes had been opened in the road. Around them stood workers with special, wax-covered clothes. Soft leather hoses connected the holes to mobile pumps made of wood and copper. As several strong workers operated the pumps, the water sprayed down the sides of the smoldering building, as well as the surrounding houses to prevent a further spread of the fire. At this point, the worst of the worst was over.
“Is this it? Is it already over?” Antaya asked in confusion. They had rushed here right after Tama had called together the ghosts and tasked them to oversee the bridges. Before they had arrived, the loud bang and the dramatic amount of smoke had convinced them that half of Chukru Island would be aflame. However, when they had arrived, everything had already already solved.
“Yes, the fire has been contained very well,” Quato replied, his voice tinged with a deep pride. Although the newly appointed police chief of Saniya wasn't directly in charge of the workers with the pumps, he still seemed eager to show off their achievements. “These are King Corco's newest troops, the fire fighting army.”
While Quato motioned towards the strange workers, Antaya was far more interested in the source of their water. Apparently, her daughter thought the same.
“All this time, I have been wondering why they would spend so much time on the sewer systems. Is this the reason? They installed a separate water system to deal with fires?” Tama asked.
“It might be,” Quato nodded, even though he couldn't really know. Something Antaya had noticed over the past few days was that few people seemed to really understand her master's thoughts. “At the very least, the water is one of the reasons the fire didn't spread as little as it did. I heard from some of the officials in the castle that King Corco was already training firefighters when he was still exiled in the Orient. No doubt he planned for them to defend his own people from flames once he returned home. With this trained troop of experts and easy access to water all throughout the city, fires are no longer a threat for the people. Of course, that only goes for normal fires, under good conditions like today.”
Indeed, the weather had helped them quite a bit. Although it didn't rain like it did so often in Saniya, the air was still humid and the weak sea breeze's direction would have blown the flames into the streets, rather than towards the neighboring houses.
“You say the fire was normal, so they were a natural occurrence? Not a deliberate attack?” Antaya asked, confused once more. While she wasn't well informed on the city's internal affairs, everything she had seen surrounding this incident had made her suspicious. Her intuition rarely steered her wrong, so she was relieved to see Quato shake his head and confirm her thoughts.
“That remains to be seen,” Quato said, while his serious gaze turned to the ruined hall. “While we managed to contain the flames, there is a chance an attacker would have simply underestimated how well Saniya is prepared for fires. The fire was set in Chukru Island, which has been built up only since King Corco took over the city. Any large hall on the island is built mostly with cement, and all the wood and plaster on the outside is only decoration, so there is no chance of total collapse even if the wood burns down. There is also plenty of room left between the major halls, and most of them are very spacious and easy to access from the roads. Together with the new fire fighting army, there is little chance for a fire to spread, whether it was laid deliberate or not.”
“In that case, a deliberate attack is still the most likely,” Antaya concluded. “What was this place?”
At first, Quato looked at her for a second with no answer. After all, details like the position of specific manufactories were considered state secrets. However, in the end he was Antaya's former subordinate, and knew of her loyalty. Thus, he still told her.
“They used to produce the army's flintlock rifles here,” he said.
“In that case, is this not the most important workshop in the entire city?” a wide-eyed Antaya asked. Even she had heard of the power of the southern army and their new weapons.
“It's not as important as the royal laboratory or the foundry,” Tama refuted, “but those are far better protected.”
“In that case, the source of the fire is highly suspicious. The most important building with the easiest access was hit. It must have been a deliberate attack.”
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“There's also nothing especially explosive anywhere near the workshop,” Quato added. “The powder for the weapons is produced far away from here, for security reasons. But there was a large explosion that started the fire.”
“In that case, we should be looking at the building in more detail,” Tama said. “If someone set the fire, there should be traces left.”
“Yes, it looks like the fire fighters have just about put out the flames. Let's go.”
Together, the three people walked past the firefighters who were still dousing the surrounding walls and turned around the building, into the back alley behind the complex. Although the hall was a potential crime scene and thus off-limits to non-essential personnel, Quato made another exception for his former masters, even more so since Antaya and Tama had helped him out with their tips earlier. Now that a deliberate attack seemed more and more likely, there was a decent chance that even worse might have happened without the ghost warriors present at the bridges.
As soon as the three of them reached the back of the manufactory, they could see – and smell – foul play.
“I know we were looking for clues, but isn't this too obvious?” Tama asked with a raised brow.
Antaya could only agree. Breathless, she stared at the half-collapsed back wall of the building. The cement had crumbled like dry sand and opened the hall up to the elements outside. At this point, only the steel rods embedded in the wall held the surrounding structure upright. Clearly, something had caused this collapse. Violently. The black residue all around the hole made the type of attack as obvious as the strong sulfuric smell in the air. Not even all the water from the hoses had managed to wash away the stench.
“Someone tried to blow up the building with gunpowder, and they were very sloppy about it,” Quato determined. Unlike the mother and sister who looked confused at the messy work, the police chief looked upset. After all, public order was his responsibility, so a deliberate bombing attack on the kingdom's core manufactories would reflect poorly on him and his troop. Aware of his difficulties, Antaya was determined to help out her former subordinate.
“Chief Quato, you said this place was not using any gunpowder?”
“Yes, that's correct,” he replied in a sour tone. Whoever planned the attack had procured the powder from elsewhere. Although it was a fault of their security, at least it was a way to start. “We will need to check every powder storage and every powder production line to see if anything is missing. So much damage was caused in an open area, the necessary volume is far too great to go missing unnoticed.”
“Yes. And you said that this shop produced rifles, so there was nothing flammable inside?”
”They had no powder, but they were still working with wood for the gun stocks. So there was always plenty of sawdust in the air, which would have made ignition a lot easier.”
“The contents of the shop would have burned well, so long as the attacker targeted a section that worked on wood,” Antaya continued with a shallow smile.
“Among all the island's manufactories, this one would probably be one of the easier to ignite.” Quato understood right away. Excited, he turned to one of the police behind him. “Officer Killari. Go and find out what was behind this wall. If the area behind the wall contained a lot of flammable products, we know that the attacker has to be someone with access to the building. That would reduce the number of suspects by a lot.”
“No need to be so cumbersome,” Tamaya said, and before her mother could scold her, her slim body had disappeared through the opening in the wall. In a panic, both Antaya and Quato walked up to the hole and spied through.
Inside the room on the other side, the ceiling and walls were still dripping with water, which flowed into dark-gray puddles on the floor. All around the room were accumulations of dark-gray and black pulp, remnants of wood chips being burned into almost nothing, and then doused by the waters from outside. There were no windows in the room, and the door to the outside looked firm.
Or rather, whatever was left of it looked like it had been firm once. Now, the door lay on the ground, blackened and crumbly, thrown from its hinges by some force, though whether it had been forced by the initial explosion or the subsequent inferno seemed impossible to tell.
Tama was crouched down in the middle of the room, and fished a piece of a blackened wooden board from a shallow puddle, no doubt the leftovers of a shelf. With a triumphant face, she held the board up to the speechless duo outside.
“Seems like this was a storage room of some kind,” she said. “Destroyed shelves and crates, as well as leftover pieces of wood everywhere. That makes this a pretty clear-cut case I would say.”
“Tamaya, do you know how expensive your dress was?” In distress, Antaya looked at the dark stains on her daughter's satin robes. How was this any way for a lady to act? No wonder she still hadn't found a husband yet.
“Not to worry, mother. My salary is quite good. I can just buy a new one if I need to.”
As she talked, Tama made her way back out of the room and somehow managed to ruin her dress even more in the process.
“That doesn't matter! What matters is your reputation,” Antaya insisted, but her daughter refuted her again. While she brushed off the worst of the muck on her body, she answered in a sour tone.
“No, what matters is finding the culprit.”
“Well, we already narrowed it down to all the people who worked inside this manufactory, and people who have access to or know how to make gunpowder, right?” Quato tried to steer the conversation in a more productive direction. “I can simply send my guys out and interview all the craftsmen who worked here for clues.”
“But aren't that still far too many?” Tama asked. “What if there is a second attack before we identify the culprit? What if the search spooks the attackers and they go into hiding in the city?”
“Lady, do you have any suggestions?”
“Of course I do,” a proud Tama replied. “Let them come to us, the whole lot. I have a feeling that whoever did this wasn't acting alone. So for now, the best idea is to wait and observe, until we find out their plans and who is involved. After all, there's no reason to spook our prey early, is there?”