16
It was evening by the time Mick left Elmshore East station. Inspector Glass had gone home by now, and Deputy Chief Inspector Ray Moonlight had taken over. He was a short guy, and he had what Mick perceived to be a deceptively earnest face. He just had this look about him that was so incredibly honest that his real personality couldn’t be anything but the opposite. He suspected many a criminal had fallen victim to Ray Moonlight’s frankness in an interrogation room.
Ray thanked them all for their time, then told them, “Go grab yourselves a beer. Unwind a little. But not too much, mind. We want to see you here bright and early tomorrow. That is, if you want to know which of you have made it.”
The pavements outside were stained dark by a once-heavy rainfall that had slowed into a drizzle. Mick buttoned his coat and put his hood over his head. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he left Elmshore and headed toward the city center.
He had studied the Striding map earlier that morning in the reception area and used his memory techniques to remember some of it, so he was a little more familiar with the place than before. There were some deductions a person could make about most towns and cities, too, if they thought about it.
Like many cities, the stores in Striding tended to group together by type. Not unlike people, actually. Mick had tried reading a book called ‘Maskill on Human Nature.’ It was a little wordy for him, and the author thought he was some kind of genius, but he’d gleaned a few treasures of knowledge. For example, like attracted like. People sought in others what they either saw in themselves, or wanted to see.
Same thing with Full Striding shops. Take Regent’s Plaza, for example. Mick only had to glance into one or two of the clothes store windows there to know his coin pouch couldn’t take the strain. They weren’t even called stores, he reminded himself. You were supposed to say establishments. What was the difference between a shirt bought in a store or an establishment? One of them made your coin purse much lighter. They were probably made in the same damned place.
Still, Mick was a stickler for using the right words. Some people would have said, ‘who cares whether you say store or establishment?’ This kind of distinction was important. As a sleuth, he was going to run into all kinds of folks. Some of them would respond better to a sleuth who spoke like them, used the same kinds of lingo.
A quick walk along Honeyford Street took him to a place where he felt much more at home. There, in a mercantile square called Trader’s Row, Mick stood for a moment and tried to form a plan. Only, it was busier than a beehive here. He could barely hear himself think. Breathing in a deep, calming breath, he was treated to the smell of horse chestnuts that a nearby vendor was roasting on a glow stone. Laughter came thick and heavy from a tavern called the Golden Goose, just across the plaza.
Mick eyed the plethora of stores dotted all around the square’s boundary, and he asked himself one question: Just what in the name of all the saints did you buy a thirteen year old girl for her birthday?
He’d always had a deep fondness for his niece. When she decided that she hated being called Zipsolera and wanted to be called Zip, he was the first in the family to do that. He didn’t know what his sister was thinking anyhow, naming her kid that. The fact was, Mick saw a lot of himself whenever he talked to his niece. She’d always been a lonely kind of kid, despite all her uncles, her aunts, her many cousins. She was quiet, too, in her way. Not shy, exactly, but choosy with what she said, and who she said it to.
She could also be a handful, sure enough. His sister, Kiera, told him once that she sometimes regretted even having kids. Mick had been shocked when she said it, but Kiera said, “All parents feel like that from time to time, Mick. Trust me. Our ma definitely did. Just most of ‘em don’t say it.”
A plan formed in his mind as he stood there. Buy a present for Zip, find a tavern to stay at, then get something to eat. After that, a quick beer or two, and then bed. Not a bad evening at all.
The first few stores he tried in Trader’s Row sold clothes, but Mick would rather have walked barefoot through a pine forest than attempt to buy her something from there. It was hard enough shopping for his own clothes. So, he tried an interesting-looking store that sold all kinds of tinkered animal models and monster puppets. A little monkey made from tinkered parts that could be made to complete a simple task, like fetching your slippers. Intricate models of mailcarts, forts, even a circus. Any model you could think of. That fella with all the tattoos, Phil Brownhill, would have loved it here. But would Zip want anything from its shelves? Mick reckoned not.
Led by his gut, Mick tried a candle store, a hurtleball shop, an apothecary, and a handful more places on Trader’s Row, only to leave all of them with nothing. The stores were fine, but he just really wanted to get her something she’d love, and nothing grabbed him.
He took a room at a tavern not far from the station. The Hand and Cuff, the sign outside named it. Bed and breakfast for twenty-five gold. Twenty-two if you were a token-carrying guard or inspector. Not a bad deal. His room wasn’t quite as nice as his back in ‘hampton, but it was cozy, in its own way. It had a little desk, a glow lamp, and the window view looked out onto a small plaza called Hearth’s Way. The tavern had a bunch of outdoor tables and heaters set up on the plaza.
Mick decided he liked the Hand and Cuff so much he’d eat here tonight. So, he ordered cod and fried potatoes and a glass of Striding Crown from the bar, and then took a table outside. While he waited for his food and drink he watched the folks milling around the plaza, studying their faces, trying to glean something from them that most people would miss. Insights, in other words. Little nuggets of information that were like coal for a sleuth’s forge.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
After a while, the barlad brought out his glass of Crown, but his cod still hadn’t arrived. This didn’t bother him. The opposite, in fact; he was always suspicious when his food arrived too quickly. Made him think it had been cooked hours earlier and then had sat under a glow lamp.
He took a sip of Crown and turned his attention away from the strangers in the plaza and inward, to the exam. He’d resisted trying to evaluate how he’d done today, since he usually tended toward the negative about his own abilities. Now, he allowed himself just a little bit of optimism. If he really thought about it, he reckoned he’d done okay. Certainly not the worst of the group. Especially with the running – nobody else had come close to him for endurance.
Turning his thoughts away from the evaluations led him on to something else: Zip. He really needed to get her something before he left Striding. Why was this so difficult? If he really puzzled it out, the answer was easy. Mick simply didn’t know his niece well enough. Sounded bad to say it even in his own head, but he didn’t.
“Mick?”
It all happened so quickly. One second he was alone, the next there was a lady sitting at his table. He thought he recognized her, but couldn’t quite close the deal in his mind. Red hair tied back, thick glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose, the lenses making her eyes look huge. Where’d he know this lady from? The answer was just out of reach, but waving at him and goading him to remember.
“You are Mick, aren’t you? I haven’t just sat at a stranger’s table have I? That happened to me once before, thought it was someone I knew from school. We’d shared a seafood platter before I realized they were playing along, too awkward to tell me they didn’t know me.”
“Well, I am Mick, and you have sat at a stranger’s table. But that’s fine by me.”
His eyes fell on a detail that gave him a bridge to cross toward the answer. This lady had a thin, purple line that went all around her neck. Until now, he’d only seen the back of her head, when they were in Elmshore East station.
“You don’t mind if I sit for a bit do you? Only, this place. The city. You know? It’s weird coming from a village where you know everyone, to a place like this,” she said. “Makes me feel like I’m lost.”
“Know the feeling exactly,” said Mick. “Drink?”
“I’ll get them. You stay there.”
Her name was Lillian Gill, but she told Mick to just call her Lill. Lillian was for forms and job interviews, nothing else. From a few bits she told him about her education and her work history, he guessed she was maybe in her mid-twenties. Older than most of the other recruits on the program, but still younger than him. Even so, it was nice to share a beer with someone who he wasn’t almost old enough to be their father.
Besides, Lill came from a village called Lundy, and Mick always felt a kinship with anyone who lived in a place with fewer than a thousand people living in it. He told her so.
“Really?” said Lill. “I felt like a sore thumb when I got to the station this morning. Like, as soon as I got to the city I sprouted a second head, or something. I could feel everyone looking at me, thinking here’s the country bumpkin.”
“If the commuter cart only stops at your town twice per day and one postmaster can cover the whole place in an afternoon, then it’s my kind of town. You ever been to Sunhampton?”
“Yeah! Coin Way? Love that place. My uncle used to take us there in the run up to Yulthor. We’d have lunch at the tavern. King’s Something.”
“The King’s Head on Coiner’s Way,” said Mick. “No better steak and ale pie in Easterly.”
“You think so? Then clearly you haven’t been to the Star and Garter. Lundy’s famous for its pies.”
Some folks happen to live in a place, and some of them are from a place. Lill’s love for Lundy came through like an ink stain on a white shirt. It was famous for the Lundy Caves, supposedly. You could go on tours inside them, though Mick had never heard of them, and he told her so.
“Can’t be that famous if nobody’s heard their name. Whereas Sunhampton, well we don’t need to pretend we’re famous. Folks still flock there anyhow.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Visit Lundy one day, and you’ll be singing a different tune. Trust me.”
His food came halfway through their beer. Lill ordered herself cod and fried potatoes, and after chatting throughout their meal, they had another beer before they left. Their conversation took them through all the kinds of small talk topics expected of two strangers sitting at a table, though one subject was placed off bounds, albeit in an unspoken way. Neither of them even uttered a single breath about the sleuth exam.
In fact, the only vaguely related thing they discussed was Mick telling her about the whole Inspector Longwaite thing in the waiting room. When he finished explaining the prank they’d pulled, Lill laughed her arse off.
“You don’t think that was a little too much?” he said.
“Mick…you’ve really gotta lighten up. Stuff like that, hazing the new recruits…it’s all part of it. Every single craft in the world has some form of it.”
“I just expected them to be a little more serious.”
“Put expectations on other people, and all you’re gonna be is disappointed. If you want to take it seriously, then you’re free to do that. How other folks act, it’s not in your control. Some of the guards in the city, they don’t care. It’s just a means to get coin. If they play a joke or two, best thing to do is to join in. It doesn’t devalue how you feel about being a sleuth, does it? Joining in on a little joke?”
“I guess not. Maybe I built this place up a little too much.”
“There you go, then.”
“Anyhow, this has been nice, but I better be heading off,” Mick told her. “Gotta buy a present for my niece. Say…you wouldn’t happen to know what I should buy a thirteen year old girl, would you?”
Lill shook her head. “Not a damned clue. I’m awful at buying gifts. My tip, drop the girl part from your thinking. Buy a present for a thirteen year old. Girl or boy – that’s an irrelevance. It’s way more important what your niece actually likes.”
Mick found himself tapping his beer glass with his finger. “Well…”
“You don’t know? Have you even met this girl before?”
“I’m a busy guy,” he said. “I try to be a good uncle…”
“Hey, your family, your problem. I’m not here to judge. I’m here to sleuth. All I’m saying is…what was I saying?”
“Asking what kinds of things Zip likes.”
“Well saints alive, if you don’t know, then how am I going to help? I’ve never met the girl. I’ve even forgotten her name. Pip? Just get her a voucher or something. That’s what I do. Makes Yulthor shopping easy.”
They said their goodbyes, and Mick once again headed into the mercantile tundra of the trading plaza, his inner engine fueled by cod, fried potatoes, and beer. It hadn’t been a bad evening. Not at all. He’d even enjoyed sharing his dinner with a stranger, which was something that would normally have annoyed him.
This second time in the plaza, he perused the shelves of various stores looking for a present without trying too hard for it, forcing himself to follow the lead of his gut. When he was done, he left one store with a brown paper parcel in his pocket, which he promptly took to his room at the Hand and Cuff.