Chapter 54
Never undervalue the ebb and flow of personal connections. Friend one day, enemies next, ulterior motives hidden under a smiling face or a dropped innuendo. Gather them all and see what they reveal.
DIC Manual of Operations
With most of the investigation teams out in the field, there wasn’t a lot of activity or noise in the big war room that Master Investigator set up. Off to one corner, surrounded by multiple file boxes, Rust was keeping busy; it seemed like invoices from the people in the field came in every few hours, and the accounts were always being updated. The soft clicking of her abacus was a gentle background to the other comings and goings in the room.
Byrony stepped out of his office, and looked around the room, spotted Haran sitting down at one of the tables with a set of papers surrounding him, bent over and writing something. First, he stopped by the tea service, filled his mug, then bee-lined over to where the Jinn was working.
“Having a good time?” he asked.
Haran looked up. “History. Reviewing other times that Gandaran signaled that something wasn’t right.”
“Learn anything?”
“Your people have a weakness to greed and power grabbing. Ours do too, but we don’t have a full scale dragon to tell us in advance when things are dangerous.”
“It’s a mixed blessing,” Byrony said, sipping his tea again. “But it has bought us a long time of peace. Worth something.”
“You have something in mind you want me for?” He made a note in his journal.
“Let’s go check in at the library,” Byrony said, watching the meticulous Jinn note where he had left off.
Haran looked up. “There’s something I should learn there?”
“Possibly,” the Dragonkin said. “But I really want to see what sort of trouble Tobris and Lero are doing there. I know she’s wanted to enhance searching there for a long time, and Lero’s got the brains to figure things out, but it’s been too quiet in there lately.”
“Maybe they’re just working well together,” Haran said, writing his last words. He closed the journal and stood up.
“It’s possible, I guess.” Byrony shrugged. “But Tobris is so rules bound and Lero is so willing to break all the rules while he’s tinkering with new toys.”
“It could be he’s making just the toys she wants.”
They began walking out of the war room and into the labyrinthine hallways that marked this part of the DIC. Byrony stopped in front a large set of brass doors, and pushed one open.
Inside, they walked into a huge room that had pools of light in the center, but shadow along the walls lined with chests and books and file boxes. There were doors spaced at regular spaces, with what Haran found to be cryptic labels: Trans Third Pres , Ex Second Pres, Pharm Third Pres, and so on. He guessed they were the records of the various segments of Dragonkin economy organized by administration. Whatever else was in a separate wing was out of his eyesight.
“A lot of records here,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
Tobris, neatly dressed in her DIC uniform, was bending over a table, in a bright pool pool of light, with Lero next to her. She turned up to look at the newcomers at the sound of Haran’s voice. Her ruff was noncommital and flat to her head, a sign of concentration and calm emotions. “We have a saying at the DIC. You can’t spit without filling out a report. Thus, the paperwork builds up.” She laid something Haran couldn’t quite make out on the table. “Welcome to the archives.”
Lero, wearing some sort of goggles over his eyes, put down a long, thin tool. Pushing his goggles up, he looked at the two men, then grinned. “Hello, Byrony. Come to check us out?”
“Something like that.” Byrony and Haran moved closer. “I was almost afraid that Tobris would have stabbed you with a pen by now.”
Lero snorted. “Not when there’s so much to do.” He looked at Tobris. “Right now she keeps finding new things for me to do. I’ve been constantly busy. There hasn’t been any time for me to get on her nerves.”
“He is being exceptionally helpful. Come see what he’s managed to make for me,” Tobris said. “This is will make our job here in the archives so much better!” She held up a rather thickish rod, “Come see, Commander.”
Byrony and Haran moved up to the table. Tobris had a set of old reports set up in one stack. Next to it, she had a number of blank sheets of paper. She handed the rod to Byrony for his inspection. It was heavier than it looked, about a foot long, and contained a red and a green touchstone on opposite ends.
“Ever seen one of these before?” Byrony asked passing it over to Haran. The Jinn shook his head after running his fingers down its length.
“Not at all. What does it do?” He passed it
“It’s related to something we use to make maps,” Lero said. “Now those devices are much bigger, and attached to a stand, but I thought if I could modify the device into something handheld, the archive workers could find it very helpful.”
“You’re damn right it’ll be helpful. I’ll never have to worry about you ham-handed DIC investigators ruining my originals again,” Tobris said. “Let me show you what it does.”
She punched the red touchstone, and the device began to hum and glow slightly.
“It didn’t need the sound and light,” Lero said. “But I thought it would be better if people knew it was on.”
“With the people working here, that’s always a good idea,” Tobris said. “We don’t always get the first class workers here in Archives.” She shot Byrony a hard look.
He put up his hands. “Don’t look at me! I’m not in charge of personnel.”
She shrugged. “Well this device might make Logistics happier. I won’t need as many scribes to copy things. Let me show you how it works.”
Taking one of the written on pages on her table, she rolled the rod down the length of the page. She put that one back in its stack when she was done, then took a clean sheet of the same size and laid it on the table. Carefully placing the rod at the top of the page, she clicked on the green touch stone, and began to roll the rod down the length of the page. Briefly, the page glowed green, then a black fog developed, then suddenly, it cleared, leaving behind a copy of the first page. She lifted them both up for Byrony’s inspection.
“An exact copy! And done in about the time it’d take for me to take out my ink bottle and pens.” She almost glowed with excitement.
“Is...is that how you made the texts about Gandaran I was reading this morning?”
“Oh, it was you who requested that?” Tobris said. “Yes, it was. If we hadn’t had this,” she said, holding up the rod, “You would have had to come down here, or wait until my staff could have written you out clean copies.”
Lero snugged his goggles back on. “You should have had that long before now.” He picked up his tool. “And this sorter. I can’t believe anybody is still using a piece of junk like this. It had to be installed here fifty years ago.”
“Try a hundred. Or almost, anyway. Before we got that, everything had to be sorted by hand.”
He ducked out of sight to continue working on the device. There was a loud pop, and suddenly, a small column of smoke began to drift to the ceiling and Lero was thrown from the machine he was working on to land on the floor with a thud.
Tobris and Byrony ran over to help him get up, but he waved them off and slowly pushed himself up. “That’s it,” he said. “There’s no way I’m getting this old piece of crap to work. I don’t even think they make the part that just blew up.” He pulled off his goggles, and there were circles of light, clean skin where they had been against the smudgy brown that colored the rest of his face. “This sorter is dead. What’s the DIC doing, trying to run itself on antiques?”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Fists clenched, he began heading for the front door of the archive room.
“Where are you going?” Tobris asked, a worried look on her face and anxiety coloring her ruff.
“To give Rust a piece of my mind. What in the world is Logistics doing, expecting things to work on such ancient gear?”
Byrony stepped in front of him, blocking his passage. “You better let me go talk to Rust. Sit down, and make a list of what you need, and what you want. I’ll go prepare her for what’s coming up.”
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Leila walked out of her house deep in Cullin’s Forest. She had a table set up there where the light poured out through the branches of the trees overhead, and placed her basket on it.
Off to one side of the clearing, the three Woodwives were already busy at work. Su was sitting at a large spinning wheel. Du was working at a skein winder, and Lu was bent over a heavy pot of boiling water where she was dying the white skeins into a lovely pale blue.
As the nymph sat down and took out some embroidery she was working on, Su the oldest of the three noticed her, and stopped her spinning for a moment. “Good morning, Leila dearest. Come out to work with the rest of us?”
“For a bit,” Leila said. She looked through her basket of threads, and selected a spool that was bright yellow.
Du finished winding her skein, tying it with bright red threads . “Morvran told me Habetrot might join us at the spinning today,” she said.
Lu gave the dye pot a big stir, and then used the paddle to lift out a skein of blue yarn. Laying the paddle over the pot, she squeezed the yarn delicately before laying it down to dry on a drying rack. “I wouldn’t listen to anything that old raven says. Habetrot leave her sister spinners to walk through the forest just to sit with us? I don’t believe it.”
“She might,” Leila said, cutting a length of the yellow thread. “I did invite her.” She gracefully and skillfully threaded her needle on the first try.
“Did you?” Su said, in a disapproving voice. “Why? Just because she thinks her spinning is the best in the forest…”
“No, no,” Leila said. “It’s not because of the quality of her thread. You spin one ever bit as fine, and if it’s wool, finer.”
Su relaxed a moment, letting the whir of her wheel slow down. She gave a beaming smile to Leila, and a knowing nod to her sisters.
Leila picked up her embroidery hoop and made her first stitch. “It has nothing to do about spinning. I’ve been hearing rumors about the Birchwife. You know she makes her home not far from the place where Habetrot and her spinning sisters live, over on the other side of the Old Oak’s hill.”
“She’s been hiding, not wanting to talk to anybody,” Su said.
“Ever since she punched the faun,” Du said, grabbing a fresh spool of thread from her sister’s completed spools.
“It’s not he didn’t deserve it,” Lu said. “But she’s too embarrassed that our Lord Tree Shepherd chewed her out.”
“He’s chewed all of us out at one time or the other,” Leila said. “That’s not enough of a reason. She ought to be used to how he is by now. But maybe I should go talk with her.”
“Maybe,” Su said.
“Possibly,” said Du.
“ I believe so,” said Lu. “After all nobody reads hearts the way you do.”
Suddenly the sound of a bell ringing ran through the yard. All four heads perked up.
“Ah, the peddler calls!” Su said.
“I wonder who left the token,” Du said.
“It wasn’t me,” Lu said. “We’re still not through with our thread.”
“I hope he has some good embroidery threads,” Leila said. And folding up her work into her basket, she headed inside.
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At DIC headquarters, Byrony had a short but useful discussion with Rust about ordering the supplies for the Archives, a discussion that went much smoother than it would have gone if he had allowed Lero to come storming in with smoke on his face and anger in his voice.
After that negotiation, he grabbed a cup of tea and collapsed at the table where Haran was doing his work.
“That copying device,” Haran said after Byrony sat down. “I know there are people with the Alder Branches who would love to have a device like that. They’re as crazy and protective of their archives as Tobris is.”
“Make a note of it in your notebook,” Byrony said. “Then ask me again after we get the Archives settled. I’m no good at remembering things that have practical value outside of what we do here. In making money,” he said with a mock sigh, “I fail as a Dragonkin. As do most of the rest of us here. But not necessarily in Logistics, which is why so few Grays work there. If there’s some profit to be made, those are the people who have the right connections to get it marketed.”
Haran grinned at his partner’s confession. “Will do.” He pulled out his notebook, where he made a bit of a production of scribbling a note in pencil, even boldly circling it.
Byrony leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “We should be getting some early reports from the field teams any time now, It won’t likely be much – just preliminary checking off the easy stuff in their to-do lists. Getting a look at locations, doing initial analysis, first impressions before the real digging begins.” Leaning forward once again, he grabbed his mug and took a big swallow. “I’d really like to know what Yosh is going to turn up, but he might be the last team to do their first check in.”
“I get the impression if you’d have had free choice, the work Yosh is doing is the assignment you would have taken,” Haran said.
Byrony nodded. “So that makes me more anxious. Are Yosh’s eyes fresh enough? Are there things I missed? Plus I’m a little jealous, having to be here and babysit, waiting for data. But I’m also very interested in what Leda’s team is working on – figuring out the sourcing of the black market jumpstones. Reverse engineering, looking for traces, and checking on the ground for suppliers, makers...it’s a job.” He stared off across the room, not really looking at anything, holding his mug, lost in thought. Finally he took a sip and said, “Commander is not as fun as Field Operative.”
“Maybe that’s why the Oldest has all the high level White Circle operatives teach classes,” Haran said. He picked up one of the papers he had been looking at before they went to the archives, and began looking at it again. “Maybe to keep us in touch with the field, so to say.”
“I forgot she runs her place as a combination of headquarters and academy. You teach?” Byrony asked.
Haran nodded. “At least two classes a year. I got excused from this term to come over here. One of my co-workers got my class and I caught her raiding my office looking for my notes.” He grinned at the memory. “Just basic Aos Si magic that she should have been able to teach standing on her head, but she’s not as organized as me.”
Byrony chuckled.
Something struck Haran and he put his paper down. “What do you think – could it be a disgruntled employee from B&F gone into business for himself on the jump stone business?”
“I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s how whoever’s sourcing the smugglers learned to make them.” Bryony leaned forward in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “But the bigger birds are what interest me most – who’s financing it? Where are they making it? Who are their contacts in the Shadowlands? Those are the questions that matter.”
“We’ve been trying to figure that one out ourselves,” Haran said, nodding. “We think it might be someone in Bertcha’s organization, but no real proof yet. And we can’t really make any moves until we have solid proof. Nobody wants a war with the Shadowlanders. Can’t approach the Red Tower without a hard case. Aife would just laugh at us and unleash the hounds.”
Byrony nodded. “That wouldn’t be good for Ynys Afel or Sunderland.”
The door to the main room opened up, and Byrony and Haran both swerved to see who it was. Aspen, carrying a sheaf of papers, and Balston walked in.
“We thought we’d drop off some of our paperwork while we were in the neighborhood,” Balston said. “And to get the taste of B&F managers out of our mouths.” He hurried over to the tea service.
“You’re working on Violetta Greenleaf’s disappearance?” Byrony said. “Before going over any of the cold cases?”
Aspen nodded. “We still don’t know if it has any real connection besides coincidence. We did learn some interesting things about Mistress Greenleaf. She is a respected member of B&F’s jump stone team. She’s evidently pretty talented with working with touch stones. There are people there who are definitely worried about her disappearance. I’m not sure if it’s all because of her, or that she knew some of the jump stone trade secrets.” He handed the papers he had brought to Byrony.
“Not surprising. Probably some of both going on, knowing what a cutthroat place B&F can be.”
“Another interesting detail. Greenleaf’s associate that disappeared at the attack several years ago at Xendo’s Freehold. Dragonkin by the name of Halidan Graystone.” Balston came back to the table with his tea, and took a big sip.
“Interesting.”
“More than that. Seems Graystone and Greenleaf were something of a couple. There was a lot of talk. You know how unusual Dragonkin and Daoine Si pairings off,” Asper said, getting up to get his own tea.
Byrony rubbed the tip of his nose. “Is that why he left?”
“Some talk about it, but nobody really knows.” Asper shrugged. “He wasn’t asked to leave, nor was Greenleaf. Or so they say.”
“Wouldn’t be the first person sent away for the good of the company. “But notice they kept Greenleaf on staff, not him. Was she the better worker? And did he leave on good terms, I wonder.”
Asper shrugged. “Who knows what really happened? Couldn’t pick up on any solid gossip.”
“And why would he go to the Gray Lands? What’s his background?” Byrony asked.
“On his mother’s side, he’s from an old Exploration industry family. Most of them are in or near Harani. His father’s side is a real minor Trade line. Odd background for someone working on jumpstones.” Asper returned with his tea.
“People don’t always work in their parents’ field, especially if they are younger siblings. My youngest brother ran away when the family tried to get him to go to the academy. He’s happy making Blazendraught instead.”
“Takes all types,” Balston said. “Still, a dismissed employee. Then the attack at the freehold, and then people start popping up missing. Could he be part of it?”
“Well, you and Yosh have something else to dig up,” Byrony said, steepling his fingers. “Pass the information you have and find about Graystone to Yosh. It might help.”
“So we’ve finished with Greenleaf’s place of work and her schools. Figure it’s time to touch base with Lady Elaine and that other school friend of hers.”
“Sounds like you’re ready to hit Goblin Market.” Byrony nodded. “Remember what we told you about Thistleberry’s experience with the DIC. Check in with the first year man there. I’ve written him about it. You can ignore most of the advice that Witstone, the local DIC head gives you. He’s a dead-ender, and neck deep in borderline legal profiteering ”
“Will do,” Ballston said.
“Right after lunch,” Asper said. “Our last chance for a decent meal before hitting the back country. And we’ve got a lot of back country to cover.”
Byrony rolled his eyes.