Arthur Stokes saw it in very simple turns: Tinjouki was a city of gods and demons. People never read the old books anymore, and that was a damn shame. But if you took the time, and knew where to find them, you might notice something. Magic, that was so mundane in the world Arthur lived in, used to be treated with wonder. Long ago, and far, far away, magic was regarded as the art and mystery of benevolent deities, and it was theirs alone to wield.

That thought always sat kinda snug with him. It made sense. There was something perverted about the way of the world, something wrong when a small girl lifted up a lorry to save the people trapped beneath it, something wrong when chilled, sleek young men with madness in their eyes hovered over a crowd and rained mindless death. This power did not belong to them. They were not worthy of it.

Power was something Arthur new a lot about. He was kīnless: could not breath fire or sing to the earth. Kīnless made up something like 60% of the population of the city, the forgotten, silent majority, extras in the great melodrama that played out every day and had for three hundred years. It didn’t really bother him. Being an extra had its advantages. No-one pays attention to the extras.

In those old books, all humans were kīnless, and it was an important property of their lives. Nor were they any less for it. In the books, the creatures which wielded the power of the heavens did so in service to extremely specific ideals, ideals which they declared very certainly were the pillar of a good life. Things like justice and kindness and honor and the so on, values which today, in his city, were empty words bandied about in cheap parody and used to justify acts against humanity. Today the word kīnless was a dirty word and his people cringed beneath the gods, dying in hoards to their whimsy. And so it was that Arthur Stokes became political.

He was not a political man. Politics were against his nature, he knew, something he’d rather treat as frivolous and boring. To be honest, he was not sure what type of man he was. He’d never managed to find out. He felt, with a strength of the intuition he trusted above all else in this life, that whatever kind of man he was had no place in the strange world he had been born in. His political allegiance to the movement was a thing of necessity, not love or temperament. He, like all ranking members of the organisation, knew what lay behind the Wall. He knew what countless millions were deprived of, in service to the greed of the gods and their favourites. He knew he couldn’t live in this world, couldn’t find joy in it. So he had to change it.

To kill the demons, and bring the gods to their knees.

Arthur sat in his car, a pair of binoculars to his face, watching the entrance to the Ghojaki races. He had watched as the young man on the F-bike had arrived, driven recklessly down the alley and, barely pausing, gone in. He had watched the Peep arrive—as expected. Arthur had good intelligence that the Kid was buying a new Bulb developed deep in the National Park. He was hoping to get a glimpse of what it was, but stealing it was out of the question. The organization only valued one thing, after all.

Information.

He’d listened as the whirring and screeching of the bikes rumbled down the alley, heard the whumps of an energy expression, and then heard the third sound. This sound he had not expected—the sound of a small, highly contained explosion. It was outside of the predictive models provided to him. Arthur had waited a while, shocked when he saw the rhata kid trundle out of the races on the oil-bike, glanced around, and driven off. But he shook himself off and sighed. The models were far from infallible, but if there is one thing you could always trust, it was that no-one ever looked inside of parked cars.

With the kid out of sight he’d driven down the alley, parked at an exit, put on his hat and ducked inside. Of course it was raining. When Arthur was on a job, it was always raining. The rain pattered into his hat and ran from the brim in thick rivulets, down his beige, waxed coat and off his shiny leather brogues. A scan of the race tracks summed it up: dead Peep, scuffed up track from a dancing F-bike, and a good amount of blood. He couldn’t do anything about the blood. There was too much of it and the Cretes would only need a little. Plus he didn’t have long. He searched over the body of the Peep and found it had been stripped. The kid was not a total idiot, then. He followed the tire marks, jogging into the far bunker where it led him, and followed the trail of sandy dirt to the dog kennels in the back, going to the final stall.

Okay, he was pretty stupid.

There was nothing he could do about the bike, but the bike didn’t matter. It was flashy, but they didn’t call Tinjouki endless for nothing. Plenty of people rode a Dayzl and all of them felt cool doing it. However, he was pretty sure only one of them had a bright yellow sticker plastered to the ass with the phrase ‘OH NO, I’M ON LOAN’ and a phone number. If he left this here the Kid would get to the kid before he even woke up. And of all the natural forces of the world, the Demon King was most vile.

Arthur took out a small notebook and wrote down the number. Then he reached into his pants pocket and took out a flick knife. It was sharp. He got to scraping, starting with the number. The sticker was thick and reinforced with some kind of hard plastic, and scraping it off really fucked up the paint job on the bike, but he was able to get the number off. He’d prefer to take off the entire sticker, as it was still a clue, but a glance at his wristwatch told him he had to bail. Dandelion would have his goons over any minute. He jogged back to the car, reversed out, and drove back to the photo shop.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It was the middle of the night. Arthur unlocked the shop and went inside, through the door behind the counter. He hung up his coat and hat, loosened and removed his tie, and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. He’d inherited the photoshop from his father, and couldn’t deny it was a convenient cover. Behind the shop was a kitchen living room blend, with a sofa and TV, and a half-island dividing off the kitchen area. He went to the kitchen and brewed coffee, pouring a mug and adding some cold water before draining it and then pouring another. He went to the sofa and pulled it away from the wall, shoving one side against the TV. He placed his hand on the wall, in an inconspicuous position between a two scrapes from the sofa, and a square patch of the wall lit up with a deep, emerald light. He glanced behind his shoulder, for no real reason, then pushed on the square.

A doorway in the wall slid up.

Arthur walked down the corridor and set his steaming mug of coffee on the console. Above and behind it was the machine, hanging from the ceiling. A series of descending brass discs with shrinking diameter, each connected to the next by an apparatus of curling brass pipes. From the lowest disc was cut a series of rounded squares spanning the circumference, and from each ‘port’ a bundle of long silver plugs extended. From each of the plugs game a golden wire, and the golden wires wrapped and intertwined to form loose ropes, which again split at an opposite port and plugged back into the machine.

In the center of the nest of wires there was a square object. It floated in space, shrouded in a haze of blue light. A single wire plugged into a port on each of its six sides. The material of the square was mother of pearl, polished and shining. It seemed to ripple and alter in strange patterns imbued with a kind of alien intelligence.

Arthur sat at the console, tapped the space bar, and text appeared on the small screen.

>Password?: <<<<<<<<<<<

>Password Accepted

>Connecting you to the Shoal. . .

>Connected

>Welcome back, Sleuth

>“Date: 3213213. Begin entry.

>Tonight I followed the brother of former operative, Poro Soto…

Late into the night, Arthur continued his report.

= = = = = = =

“Pardon me, Simon, I must have misheard you. Start again.”

“Of course, ma’am. Eleven minutes ago I received a report on the stolen specimen. We are confident it was one of Dandelion's lieutenants that organized the hit on our car two nights ago. He made use of a group of rhata as pawns, presumably to mask his own involvement. He then simply needed to purchases it from the leader of the pawns. I suppose Dandelion didn’t want it getting out that he had successfully acquired the specimen, and instructed his Peep to murder the pawn in an attempt to get rid of witnesses.

This is all as we calculated. However, shockingly, the pawn not only defended himself but he revealed a latent Mantle and somehow managed to kill the Peep, which was at least a grade three. The pawn has retained the specimen.”

Goell froze, a plastic cup of mint tea paused just before her lips. She mouthed something under her breath.

“Indeed ma’am. The temptation to cite fate is rather overwhelming.”

Goell regained her composure.

“Simon, you’re an atheist.”

“Absolutely, ma’am. But the odds involved are rather extraordinary. I was certain we had lost it, as was the engine. Now, we may regain the specimen and salvage the situation.”

Goell hummed.

“I know you already have, Simon, but I have to ask.”

‘Of course ma’am.”

“You scrambled de-scenters to cover this kid's trail?”

“Yes ma’am. We are quite confident we will capable of blocking the Dogmen now, with Far-Eye Sniff dead and Cardinal Scent turned-coat.”

“Do we have a name for him yet?”

“The courier? No ma’am, but we will by dawn. We’re pretty sure he’s a F-biker. And he’s smart enough to at least somehow obscure his trail, staying at a companion's tonight and switching vehicles. Even the important details on his bike were scraped clean when we got there.”

“Fine. There must be a fence involved, a liaison between Dandelion and this rhata kid. The other f-boys in the chapter may have details on the specimen. If he’s talked.”

“I have special circumstances poised to make any necessary arrests, ma’am.”

“Not the kids. That'll only serve to ostracize the pawn and send him underground with the specimen.”

“The fence?”

“Authorised, naturally. What about family?”

“We don’t know his personal details yet, ma’am.”

‘Right, of course. Sorry, Simon. Long night. Well, have SC poised to set up any necessary carrots or sticks we can use to motivate the kid. Full spectrum.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Goell paused, turning slowly in her plush swivel chair. She glanced over the many monitors in front of her, reached over and turned them all off. The Executive Eye’s CCTV network was tinker built and used a digital salience system to select video channels with a higher likelihood to be important. The endless stream of high-definition footage of the Endless City was more than a little distracting.

“I have a thought,” said Goell.

“Yes ma’am. I think perhaps I share it.”

“He’s opened the cask, hasn’t he?”

“Likely, ma’am. Otherwise the Peep would have little cause to attack him and risk losing the specimen.”

Goell hummed.

“You said the kid recently integrated?”

“Yes ma’am. It is not certain, but the engine doesn’t find any other realistic method of him surviving a Peep attack.”

“And did you ask the engine what the likelihood of the specimen attempting transit was? If it was opened by a young man with a fresh Mantle.”

“We did ma’am.”

“And?”

“The engine does not really understand the specimen, ma’am.”

“Simon.”

“Over 96%, ma’am.”

“Pit.” Goell closed her eyes. The world disappeared, replaced by the faint centrifugal sensation of the turning chair. She was mouthing something under her breath. Simon watched her intently, trying to lip-read and failing. She opened her eyes. “Well, it seems fate has chosen a partner for us. So be it. So long as we regain the remaining portions, the situation is salvageable. I want his name and family history by morning, Simon. We’ll contact him tomorrow and see what we can put together.”

“Very good ma’am.”

A pause.

“May I make a recommendation?”

She sighed. “Sure, Simon. Go ahead and say it.”

“Get some sleep. Ma’am.”