Chapter 47

When you’re at an impasse, and the trail is going cold, bring in someone new. They can sometimes see clues everybody’s been overlooking because familiarity obscures the oddly colored stone that breaks open the case.

- DIC manual

Byrony came out of the Master Investigator’s office, with Haran trailing behind. The human seemed calm and curious, while the spikes on the head of the usually calm dragonkin were cycling between the colors of anxiety and fire. Those who had known Byrony for any length of time knew that that was not a good sign. At least he was keeping his wings from fluttering. If that had been happening, a few of the people might have run for the exit.

“Would...would you like some more tea? I can get some spice from Tansy if you think it’d help,” Rust said.

Byrony shook his head. “No tea. I just finished a cup. Just give me a few minutes. Everything will be all right.”

Yosh walked up to him, and dialed back some of his assertiveness. “So when’s the old man coming out to tell us what’s what?”

“He’s not,” Byrony said, shuffling through his files.

“He’s not?” Yosh asked, surprised. “Then how are we supposed to know what to do next?”

“It seems I’ve been designated as working team leader,” Byrony said.

A murmur went through the gathered investigators. Yosh gave him a hard look and crossed his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the Master Investigator tells me things, and I come out here, tell you what he wants you to do, make sure you have what you need to do it, solve what problems need to be solved, and in return, you pass your reports of what you’ve managed to come up with and anything else you need to tell me, then I go to Master Investigator, and let him know. And in return, he takes all this and goes and fights with Grimsbeard and the council so you don’t have to.”

“So you’re our creche keeper.” A smile began to creep over Yosh’s face. It wasn’t a pleasant one. “Are you going to tell us a story?”

“No. You’re going to be telling me one.” He opened a file. “You, Yosh, you and Harit are to head to Harani and the Gray Lands to see if you can turn up anything about the murders, the death of the Zefed Drumlin of Sinter Acquisitions and any connection between that and the attack a few years ago on Xendo’s Freehold.”

Yosh grabbed the file out of Byrony’s hand. “Excellent.”

“Let Rust know whoever else you want to bring in on the investigation. You might want to start small and build up. And be sure to bring desert gear. Look up Albite Hessin when you get to Runi Blahn. He’s too good to be at an out-of-the way Dragon Web station.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Yosh waved to Harit. “Let’s go make a list.”

The two men ducked into a side office.

He gave the team of Rowan and Rastin their assignment to Brightwater, and Charbon and Grab to Meridae first, and any other place the Financial trails would lead them. Charbon, too, was rather pleased at the assignment. Maurin and Leda, knowing they would be used in some way that took advantage of their technical skills were both content with their work on sourcing the jumpstones.

“I’ve been wanting to take one of these things apart for a long time now,” Maurin said, with a glee that only people who like to reverse engineer get. “Are there extras?”

“A whole case of them. But save some,” Byrony said. “We need them as evidence.”

Maurin nodded.

“You do know they are mostly magic conduits, like touchstones,” his partner Leda said. The two began to walk back to a room marked “Research Workroom One.”

“Yes, but we have tools that will show us a lot about it,” Maurin said. “Come on, let’s figure out what’ll be useful. And do you think Deira Brashton might be willing to join us?”

“Master Investigator seems to know his people well by the way the assignments have gone,” Haran noted, nodding at the two walking away.

“He’s good that way,” Byrony said, looking at his almost empty hands. “I don’t know how he keeps up with all of us.”

There was a cough from behind him. Byrony turned around. He knew there was one person he particularly needed to address, and where the cough came from. Lero Bluestone watched the two technologists walk off and disappear into their workroom, and looked at Byrony. Haran read the disappointment on his face, and sighed a little bit.

“I know, I know, Lero,” Byrony said, walking up to the Daoine man, “but Master Investigator ordered me to keep you in reserve. He told me to tell you that your skills were above all others, and that’s why we have to have you ready to jump in case there are any problems.”

“So what am supposed to do until then?” Lero asked. His brows knit together in a deep frown. “You of all people know how I get when I can’t keep busy.”

“You could work with me, Lero,” Tobris Slipstone said, looking up from where she was reading. Her mood was clearly calm, and nothing much showed in her ruff. It hung untouched by any emotions on her shoulders, a dragonkin woman at peace. Her job was always being a support person, dredging up information out of the vast archives the DIC had accumulated over the centuries and that all her work would be nowhere but at DIC Headquarters.

“You?” Lero asked, surprised.

“You know how the archive equipment is always a mess, and I’ve been begging for ages to have someone with skills go over the gear with me. It was all such early touchstone tech, and it’s clumsy and breaks down constantly. There is better gear out there, but…” She turned and gave a quick look to Rust, who simply shrugged.

The Daoine tech scratched his head. “Early touchstone tech? Nobody’s updated the archives since then?”

Tobris shook her head. “I’ve begged. Got a few emergencies dealt with, but Logistics always told me I was low priority. But now, I’ll be having high priority things to do.” She looked at Rust again. This time, the Logistics officer added a tiny smile and an even smaller nod to another shrug. “We might be able to get some of it fixed.”

Lero nodded with a stronger shake of his head. “Yeah, I’ll go take a look.”

Tobris stood up and grabbed Lero by the elbow and marched him out of the room, like she was trying to keep him from being snatched up by anybody else. “First, let’s look at the prime indexer.”

After a moment, they disappeared out of the room

“Well, that solves that problem,” Bryony said. Finally he turned to Balston and Asper, the last two in the room who hadn’t been assigned. He took a deep breath.

“I’m afraid I have the hardest task for you, Asper. You and Balston get to see if we can make any sense out of the missing persons reports,” Byrony said, handing Asper the file. “All but one of the cases are cold. All of them involve non-Dragonkin people which will complicate things.”

“What are we trying to find out?” Asper asked.

“Are they all really related? Or do we have some coincidental events? Are any of the transport companies involved, or are any of them being staged to make it look like one or more are? This may involve travel, but before you go, I want to go over the details and what we’ve learned so far.” He turned to his Jinn companion. “I’d like your eyes on this too, Haran. And don’t be afraid to speak up. If you can add anything to what we’re missing, or ask a question we hadn’t though of yet, that would be a good thing.”

Haran nodded. “This is all been an interesting learning experience. I hope I can give something back in return.”

Byrony nodded back in return. “Master Investigator moved all these materials back into one of the offices. Last week, we had each category taking up an entire section of wall each, but I think he thinks now that we’re a multiperson team, it’ll be better if we’re not on top of each other.” He headed to a room marked “Missing,” unlocked it, and ushered the two Dragonkin and the Jinn in.

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There was a large map on one wall, marked with each disappearance. The markings didn’t have any obvious pattern to them, except they were mostly clustered in Daoine dominated parts of the Sunlit Lands, in areas where there were higher population centers.

Besides the map, the standard bookcase and tea service, there was a table big enough to seat six people comfortably and eight in a pinch. Asper and Balston took seats on the left side. Haran took a seat to the right. Byrony went to the far side of the table and lifted the contents out of a large box resting there, then moved to the head of the table. He passed out a thick packet to each of Asper and Balston, and laid an identical one in front of Haran, while putting the fourth one in front of him.

“Here are copies of what we’ve gathered so far, from first to last,” Byrony said.

“Looks like someone was busy yesterday evening,” Haran said. “How’d you know how many copies to make?”

“I was pretty sure Master Investigator was going to break us into pairs. It’s his custom when working on cases with this many people. I made one for him, since I expected him to be leading this meeting, and an extra one, just in case.” Byrony looked a little embarrassed for some reason.

“Well, it was a lucky guess,” Haran said. He placed his notebook to the right of the stack of papers. “Shall we get busy reviewing what’s here?”

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Elsewhere in the Sunlit lands, Rob guided the cart that Betts was pulling into the town of Goblin Market. Gan looked at everything wide-eyed, taking it all in as they passed the first buildings as they entered the outskirts of town, big buildings that were comercial, small homes and large, but her eyes were not as wide as Rosebud, perched on her shoulder.

“So many people,” the little Pixie said, as they passed a lumber yard where several men were sawing, and a carpenter’s shop where others were working in an open air area covered by a spacious roof. Beyond them was a line of four modest homes. “So many people. So many buildings.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Rob said. “Just wait.”

“It’s still interesting. I haven’t really ever gotten a good look at the town here,” Gan said. “I’ve been to the Dragon Web station many times over the years, visiting Elaine. Even when we fled when I was a child and we moved to Brightwater. We came through with a group of refugees camping on the outside of down, and then we left.”

He drove down the main street. There were only a couple of other horses on the street, but a number of people walking down the street, carrying baskets and bags. “It’s a nice little town. Glad we don’t have to go to Waterford to go to market.” He turned to Gan. “If you are agreed to it, I’ll take Betts and the cart to Sully who runs the public stable here. He’s a good man who loves horses and such, and that’ll let her rest while we shop. Then we can meet up at Red Bird cafe. I doubt my shopping will take as long as yours.”

“You’re shopping too?” Rosebud asked, as if that was the most surprising fact of the day. “I didn’t know men went shopping. Cullin never does.”

“Cullin is a special case,” Gan told the Pixie.

“The Old Hermit never did either. He always waited for the peddlers to come.”

“Is that all your experience with Big People men?” Rob asked.

She nodded yes.

“Your world is rather small then, girl. I need some new handles for my farming tools. I thought that hoe was going to fall apart on me yesterday. And I know my scythe needs a new handle. You just go with Mistress Gan and see all the wonders you can here at Goblin Market. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of stories to tell the other Pixies when we get home.”

Rosebud bubbled up with excitement at that thought. “We’re going to see wonders!” she shouted, just loud enough to turn one or two pedestrian’s heads as they continued to drive down the street.

“And ma’am,” Rob said, “if you want to get anything heavy, just pay for it, and when we’re ready to go, we’ll just drive the cart to the shop, and pick it up right before we leave.” He pointed to an eatery on the street not far from where they were. A sign with bright letters in red announced “Shimma’s Place.” “How about we meet there after you finish your shopping, ma’am? I know what I want to get won’t take me long, and they don’t mind me waiting there.”

“Oh?” Gan asked.

“My Lily works there,” he said, looking down at his hands and blushing a little bit. “Her aunt Shimma owns the place.”

“Ah,” Gan said with a nod. “I’ll be sure to take my time.”

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In Willowick in Sunderland, Byrony went and refilled his tea mug while the two investigators and Haran read over the files of the missing no space researchers.

He looked at the three men over the top of his mug. Haran was making notes in his little notebook. Asper was reading methodically, his lips moving silently as he plowed through the documents. Balston, a faster reader, had scanned through most of the report, then was going back to other sections, and reread them. Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned one last page and looked up.

“Commander Byrony?” he asked.

“Yes?” Byrony put down his mug.

“Are we sure the two,” he looked back down on the page in front of him, “the two Greengain brothers are the same type of disappearance? I mean, from the reports, what they were doing and how they were working seems so different than the rest of the people.”

“It’s true that what they were working on was different than the other missing persons – according to reports, they were trying to fine tune a method of moving materials in their mining operations,” Byrony said, nodding. “This is a good question and Master Investigator and I have pondered it a good bit. The Greengain Brothers were evidently trying to find a system to move material that would free them from using the jumpstones supplied by B&F.”

“I noticed there was a lot of trying to work around B&F,” Asper said, nodding. “Have we checked out any possible sabotage by them?”

“Over and over again,” Byrony said. “There is absolutely no trail that actually goes back to the transport company. But there have been many false trails that seem to try to imply that.”

Haran took notes.

Byrony picked his mug back up. But back to your question – we considered them first for several reasons. Like most of the other people on the list, they were contacted by someone from the outside who they mentioned had offered them help – but the person was never seen by their own teams. There were a few messages left behind that seemed to come from Harani, but when we tried to trace them, they went back to a shut down bakery and a gryphon stable.”

“Stable, eh? Was someone trying to make a joke?” Haran asked.

“We have considered that,” Byrony said. “But if they were trying to, the joke fell flat.”

“And like all the others that had witnesses, there was a large display of magical light shortly before they disappeared. In fact, twice, since they were in two different chambers of their mining works. Those light displays were witnessed by others not involved with the research.”

“It does follow the pattern,” Balston said, nodding. “None before this?”

“Not that we’ve been able to determine,” Byrony said. “If something happened earlier, nobody reported anything.”

“So next was Reinz Tobry, who worked in Brissingham over in the Western Reaches,” Asper said, thumbing back to the appropriate page. The town there has a big school of Fireburners there, and they had made several breakthroughs on enhancing no-space related devices – specialized carriages that could work independently of Dragon Web stations. The King’s Guard uses one of their models for troop transport, in fact. It’s powered, of course, by Briarwood and Flysch no space engines.”

Byrony nodded. “Yes, and the information we have is that Tobry thought he had been approached by one of the Transport companies in competition with B&F to see if the gear they were working on could be adapted. When we followed up on it, the company had no idea of what was going on.”

“And someone dropped an anonymous accusation against one of the B&F regional managers,” Asper said, running his finger along the text. “How did that turn out?”

“Another dead end,” Byrony said. He leaned back a little bit in his chair. “Manager was not anywhere near Brissingham. He had been doing a rotation at B&F headquarters.”

“So most of these cases are just like that,” Haran said. “A person respected in the field gets contacted by someone purporting to help them do legitimate research, for the most part, research on how to adapt some sort of mechanism that would free the researcher’s company or location from B&F’s expense. Then some of them have trails that seem to implicate B&F, but they all prove to be dead ends.”

“That does seem to be the strategy for whoever is doing this,” Byrony said.

“And most of the incidents that are witnessed outside of the room the researcher was in record a rather impressive light and magic show.” Haran rubbed his chin. “Is that normal for no-space incidents?”

“No. Usually a person crosses into no space, and that’s that. No noise, no obvious magic, definitely no light show,” Asper said. “That’s why the King’s Guard can use no space devices in covert operations, like they did in the last operation you and Commander Byrony were on.” He shrugged. “You’re there one moment, and then you’re gone.”

“So whoever is orchestrating this wants to call attention to the events. Is he doing this to say ‘Look at me!’ or is he masking something else in the light show?” Haran scratched the back of his neck. “And if he’s trying to blame B&F, they’d never do something so attention grabbing if they were trying to eliminate the competition. What is his logic?”

“If there is logic, it might be intimidation...the Aos Si aren’t as a whole that familiar with how no space works. It could be a ‘How dare you, you puny others, playing with the secrets of the Dragonkin’ signal. Master Investigator and I have pondered this for a long time.”

Haran nodded, and looked thoughtful for a moment. His eyes grew big as an idea struck him. “What if these weren’t no space accidents after all? What if they were kidnappings or murders or something else, and he picked researchers because they were easy targets, and people would assume after the light show and the person being gone that it was the research that did them in.” He grabbed his tea mug. “What if the real magic was the light show.”

“What type of magic would that be?” Byrony asked. “But also be aware we’ve never found any trace of any of the missing anywhere after their incident.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe your archivist can did up something. Or maybe the White Island can. They have records that go back to the Sundering, and some before.”

“We can do some digging on this,” Byrony said, nodding. He didn’t look or sound convinced. “Everything else we’ve hit was a dead end, and I brought you in for fresh insight. That one certainly is something we haven’t pursued.”

“Could he have been doing blood magic?” Balston asked. “Using the researchers as sacrificial victims?”

“Not at the disappearance sites. They were all blood free, and none of them showed signs of a struggle. If he was doing something like that, he was doing it elsewhere.”

Balston shrugged. “Just an idea.”

“And one worth following up on. You can feel free about assembling whatever people you can snag to pursue it if you want to. But before we go off into the field looking for traces, I have one more case for you. This is recent, and may have nothing to do with the original cases. A Daoine woman who worked for B&F in their jump stone shop has gone missing, and we don’t know why.” He passed out a new set of papers. “Her name is Violetta Greenleaf, and in her secondary schooling, she studied under the last man to disappear, Tobias Gwaher of Comrie.”