Chapter 14
The more confusing the initial evidence looks, the more you can be sure someone’s involved who’s trying to hide something. Keep digging.
Investigator’s Manual - DIC
Gweir stood in front of the office door. He was tired, sweaty, and would have preferred to have a shower and change into a clean uniform before reporting to Havron, but the order was to come immediately. He straightened his hat, smoothed his field uniform, then knocked on the door.
The rough voice of Havron answered. “Enter.”
Gweir walked into the office. It was a spare place, that reminded him somewhat of the Birch’s office, a big desk, with piles of papers, a shelf lined with a few books, a chest, a few chairs. Standing at attention, he saluted the officer sitting at the desk. Savon was older, sunbaked and silver haired, cut neatly short. His uniform was basically the same type that Gweir was wearing, a field uniform, neither crisp nor stained, but worn by a man who felt most at home in its utilitarian feel. He was reading a document, and did not look up as Gweir stood there.
“You sent for me, Commander Havron?”
Dropping his papers, Havron looked up and nodded. “Have a seat, Leader Blackthorn. I want to discuss what we’re doing here, what you’re doing here.”
Gweir nodded, and sat down in the offered chair.
“The last two weeks, I’ve been putting you and your men through their paces,” Havron said. His face was calm as he explained. “It’s all been standard training – running, exercises, fighting technique, group work, a little stealth, a little ambush work. I’m sure your men have been going through the same type of training since they first joined the military.”
“It’s the same type of exercises I have been doing with them,” Gweir said, nodding. “I hope my soldiers have met your satisfaction, sir.”
Havron leaned back a bit in his chair. “Yes, they have. Well trained, work together well as a group or smaller unit, have some skills in the stealth and ambush areas. The Hawk himself would be proud of how well you and yours are doing. Yours are the type of troops his training programs, and those of the Redsticks, too, try to produce.”
“Thank you, sir.” Gweir said. Although he kept his face smooth, inwardly he was quite pleased.
“Still, even the best of the Hawk’s troops are not necessarily what the Birch is looking for in his units.” Havron rested his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers together, watching Gweir closely.
“Sir?” Gweir sat up straighter, a bit uncertain where Havron was going with this.
“You studied at the White Circle, am I not correct?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“The Oldest’s method is to teach all students how to reach in and access their innate magic, become friends with the mana fields until they can shape it and use it as a tool or weapon. Am I not right?”
Gweir nodded. “It’s hard training. A lot of us didn’t have what it took to master the discipline or the talent to use it at the level the Magic Guard or the White Circle demand. But to use tools like touchstones, we were taught to do the work they were looking to do would, well, fry our minds.”
“And when you went for training with the Redsticks, how did they deal with magical combat?”
“Heh,” Gweir said. “They gave us some brief classes about enhancing our own weapons, aim accuracy for arrows, strengthening the durability of our blades, and some tricks about sharpening things and doing temporary patches of our equipment, but beyond that, it was all physical. Muscle and technique and skills in the field for stealth, the best way to handle a sword, and so on. If we needed magical attack or defense, we were to rely on the Magic Guard.”
Hevron nodded. “As it should be for most soldiers. Believe it or not, that saves more people in a fight than letting a bunch of hotheads shoot magic bolts left and right. Back in the early days, during the Sundering wars and shortly afterwards, we learned all that the hard way.”
He opened a drawer in his desk. “But the Birch’s people, we aren’t regular soldiers in the field fighting regular battles with bows and swords backed up by the Magic Guard. We go out in the field doing special operations. It might be intelligence gathering. It might be to set a trap for someone in the Shadowlands who’s trying to stir up trouble. It might be interdicting a smuggler who’s carrying secrets from Ynys Afel. And we do it like we too are shadows. It is important that our missions stay in the background, serving both the needs of the White Island and Ynys Afel. We keep the peace...well peaceful.”
“But why me and my men, sir?” Gweir asked. “You yourself said what my people are is a unit that is highly trained in the normal way of fighting.”
“Things are getting dicey, Blackthorn. Something we haven’t put our finger on is going down in the Shadowlands and someone, possibly connected with the Dragonkin, but maybe not, is aiding them from the Sunlit Lands. I wanted someone who understands the best of the military, who understands cohesion and discipline and how to get things done to learn how we do things. You’re not the first unit to be pulled in this way. This is how we get most of our operatives.”
“I see, sir,” Gweir said, although his eyes reflected uncertainty.
“Our next few weeks will be your men the Birch’s techniques.” He pulled out a device from his drawer, and laid it on the table. “One of the first is mastering this.”
The thing he laid on the table looked like a leather wrist guard. It was a simple affair that closed with buckles. But on the top of the wrist guard was a double row of some sort of gems.
“You may have seen my guards wearing these,” Havron said.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Are those...touchstones?” Gweir asked. He reached over to pick it up, then stopped short, pulling his hand back.
“It’s safe for you to touch, Blackthorn. It’s not been keyed to you, so it won’t activate by accident.”
Gweir picked up the device and ran his hands over it. It lay limp in his touch. Even when he ran his fingers over the buttons, nothing happened.
“Yes, those are touchstones. A special type of touchstone that can only be keyed to one person at a time. It’s a highly guarded secret from those outside of the Birch’s operatives. Each button will help you manifest a set group of magics, of the type mostly only the Magic Guard can do. The effect isn’t as large, nor the duration, but it allows our people to do things almost unheard of in the field.”
“And it doesn’t destroy the user?”
“We have learned a special method to stop that from happening. It’s not an easy method, but with good discipline you’ll be able to use this wrist guard all day long.” He put the wrist guard back in the drawer of his desk. “Tell your men to get a good night’s sleep. Our real training begins tomorrow. And what they’re about to face will make running laps around the practice field seem easy in comparison.”
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Byrony sat in a borrowed office at the local DIC in Harani City. It was clean and neat, and in many ways, sterile. There was the official DIC poster hung behind his chair, evidently meant to influence the person sitting in the visitor’s chair. There was a bookshelf on one wall that held the DIC manual and supplements, and a few Daoine legal books.
The desk he sat behind was broad and meant to intimidate, made of finely polished wood, as was his hair, massive, covered in leather, with substantial armrests. In front of the desk was a simple wooden chair. The light in the room was very bright, not sunlight, but more than the usual light of Dragonfire lamps. It pooled most intensely over the interviewee chair. At his left hand was a stack of papers; to his right was a single cup holding water. He had a pen at hand.
“Well, they know how to have interrogations here, I see,” he said, tapping the end of the pen against the wood. “Now let me see if I can learn anything of this mess of an investigation.
It was true Byrony felt rather frustrated by the whole situation. First there was the circus back at Xendo’s Freehold. He was sent out with every bit of forensic equipment that someone at the top of logistics could think of. They were under orders to try every piece, every rig. More than half didn’t work because of the wonky way magic behaved there. The remaining tools...well, with magic fields acting as strange as they did in the Gray Lands, he didn’t know how far he could trust them.
What he found when he got there was everything that he expected. The man in the dwelling place had been dosed with enough blazendraught to cause a nasty, painful death. The room he was in had been ransacked, perhaps to make it look like a theft. Or maybe it was. But not even a rogue Dragonkin would use Blazendraught to cover up a theft. There was a hefty penalty for doing that – restriction to the drug, which leads to madness.
“Was it a revenge killing?” he muttered.
When he used his forensic recreate magic, he saw the unfortunate man sitting in a chair, tied up. Someone, with dragonkin hands forced a potion down his throat, not just one time, but three. He was slapped around a few times as he was being questioned. Not for the first time, he wished the magic gave him sound as well as limited sight. The few glimpses he had of the dragonkin, he saw a hooded and veiled person, and as the spasms that signaled the collapse of the victim, the dragonkin removed the bonds and evidently began ransacking, mostly just throwing things around.
The other victim was simpler. He was ambushed evidently by the same dragonkin, no questions asked. Right before the magic faded out, though, the investigator caught the glimpse of another dragonkin, His outfit was emblazed with the logo of a dragonkin company. It wasn’t one Byrony recognized.
To make things more interesting, there were the corpses of two spybirds, not dead as long as the miners. So someone was surveilling the area as well. And, from the looks of things, someone had recently dug something out of the ground, not long before the team arrived. There was an area of moved stone, with dirt still clinging to where they had been turned upside down.
The questions were who, and what and why. Did the jinn outfit have anything to do with it? Once again, Byrony wished he had been able to hold onto the one jinn they had, but soon as they arrived at Xendo’s Freehold, he took off like a nightmare was chasing him.
“What a puzzle,” he said, running a hand over his eyes.
So he was here in Harani, chasing down loose threads. Like the one he was about to interview.
He took a sip of water. There was a soft knock on his door.
“Enter,” he said.
A young female dragonkin walked in. From the condition of her ruff, a ruby dark red, she seemed to be rather nervous, although the dark red set off her lighter red scales in an attractive contrast. She looked at Byrony in quick, fast glances, the gray of her eyes unwilling to meet his darker eyes for very long.
“Young and inexperienced?” he muttered, “Or is she afraid of something else?”
“Excuse me, sir?” she asked as she stood there.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied. “I must have been thinking out loud. Have a seat,” he said, waving to the chair.
She settled down into the offered chair, smoothing out the pale green of her loose flowing dress.
“Master Drumlin, my supervisor sent me here,” the young woman said. “He apologizes for not coming himself.” She looked down at her hands and intertwined her fingers.
“Ah,” Byrony replied nodding. He reached under his desk, and activated the truth telling device he had placed there. “Did something come up?”
She looked up at him, blinked three times. “I...I don’t know. He called me into his office and told me to come here in his place, gave me a file, and told me some things, and sent me on my way.” Surprised at what she had said, she covered her mouth with her hands.
Byrony tilted his head, and tried to give what he hoped would be viewed as an encouraging smile. “Now for the record, tell me your name, the name of your company and your supervisor’s name.”
“Aria Copal. I work as an assistant for Sinter Acquisitions. My supervisor is Zefed Drumlin, chief acquisitions scout.”
“And that means?”
“We look for minerals,” she said. “If we find good sources, we assay them, test to see how fruitful it might be to exploit them into full-fledged mining opportunities, and then to bring in one of the trading companies to market them.”
“And how do you find these resources?”
“We use various means. Some of it is our own mining experts. The Gray Mountain area is particularly rich in minerals. Sometimes, we find other mining outfits, and act as intermediaries, supplying them with support, helping them get equipment, and seeing to the marketing of what they produce. We don’t actually own those type of mines; it’s more a limited partnership.” She looked up at him. “Why do you ask?”
“And do you sometimes actually buy out a mine?” Byrony asked.
“Occasionally. If the resource is good and the price is right.” She reached for the bag she had brought in, and took out a sheaf of papers bound in a bright red cover. “Master Drumlin gave me this report of our current activity to give to you.”
Byrony took it and glanced at it. “I see.” Closing the folder, he looked at her sharply. “Do you ever buy up mines in the Gray Lands themselves? I hear various specialized minerals can be found there.”
Her ruff flushed a deeper red. “In...in the Gray Lands? Why would we? Our equipment doesn’t’ work there.”
Byrony gave a curt nod. “That clears some things for me. Thank you for your time, Aria Copal. If I have any more questions, I’ll ask your master Drumlin. Please make it clear to him that if I do, I’ll really need to speak to him. You may go.”
She almost bolted out of the door.
After the door closed behind her, he tapped his fingers on the desk. “Funny how she reacted when I asked about the Gray Lands. Interesting indeed.”
He looked through the reports on his desk. He picked up one document out of them, a bit blood-splattered and dirtied.
“Offer to buy: Sinter Acquisitions offers Hallan Piter and Eshin Rashan the sum of 3000 Gold of Ynys Afel for the rights and ownership of the mine called Xendo’s Freehold,” he read out loud. “That’s a rather generous offer for a played out mine, even if Black Opals are rather valuable. What are you hiding, Drumlin? And did it have anything to do with those two deaths?”