38
It was gone just past nine o’clock by the time he and Lill used Lena’s black carriage to take her to Elmshore East station in Full Striding and got her booked in with the desk sergeant and escorted to a cell. Lena barely said a word the whole journey, though she answered the desk sergeant’s questions politely and with practice, even offering a couple of details before he asked for them. After filling out some paperwork about the lead up to the arrest, it was eleven minutes past ten before Mick and Lill finally left the station. Outside, the street was lit with streetlamps spaced ten feet apart and glowing orange. A carriage driver waited nearby, feet up on his driver’s seat and using a tiny carving knife to shape a wooden duck.
Lill fastened her coat buckles and turned up the collar. “Colder than a witch’s tits out here. Celebratory drink? We can fit one or two in before last orders. Maybe three if we mean business.”
“Never turned down a celebratory ale in my life,” said Mick.
She took him down Waxon Street, across a small plaza filled with street performers, and then to the middle of Kierkemall Avenue, where the Hand and Cuff tavern awaited. This was the Elmshore East guards’ pub of choice, apparently. Anyone ranked as an inspector, sleuth, detective or above didn’t go in. They preferred the Glassy Eye, which was on the opposite side of the street and north a little. Lill said she hated that place, and despite not being the correct rank, she would go nowhere but the Hand and Cuff.
“Cheaper beers, a less pretentious food menu, and if you’re lucky, things get rowdy after midnight,” she said.
Inside, they got a few funny looks from the sergeants and constables who were enjoying a post-work ale or cider, gathering in little law enforcer clusters spread throughout the tavern. A few of them recognized Lill since she was Head Inspector Brenda Glass’s daughter, and they knew she was an apprentice inspector. This led them to conclude that Mick was, too, and thus they weren’t exactly welcome. Nobody went so far as to be rude, but Mick was decent at judging a person, and he knew enmity when he saw it.
“This guy’s taking a while,” said Lill.
They’d been stood at the bar for at least ten minutes now, and the barkeep kept serving anyone with a constable or sergeant insignia on their shoulder. Didn’t matter if they’d arrived after Lill and Mick, they got served first.
“’Scuse me,” said Mick.
The barkeep ignored him.
“S’cuse me, fella, we were here before this lot.”
Again the barkeep treated Mick like he was the tavern ghost.
“This is ridiculous. Let’s just go somewhere else.”
“I used to come here all the time,” said Lill, “But I guess that was before I became a trainee inspector.”
“Well, now, look who it is,” said a voice.
Mick turned around, quickly becoming dismayed to see Sergeant Nichols waving at him, the bloke who’d played the Inspector Longwaite joke on him. Nichols had been drinking in a snug with a couple of constables who hadn’t gotten changed after work, like they were supposed to. Rather than enjoy beers while wearing their uniform, they had simply removed their ranking stripes from their sleeves.
Sergeant Nichols stood up and said loudly in his West Easterly accent, “Sleuth Mulroon, isn’t it? Barman, a drink here for Sleuth Mulroon and Inspector Glass. Put it on my tab.”
Mick wasn’t a fully-classed sleuth yet, so didn’t deserve the title, but he appreciated it nonetheless. “Thanks. I’ll have a glass of Lawless Times.”
Evidently, Sergeant Nichols had some standing in the Hand and Cuff, because nobody glared at Mick and Lill after that, and the barman decided their gold was just as good as anyone else’s.
After thanking Sergeant Nichols, they grabbed a seat in the booth furthest away from the door. The green, felt seats were worn, but the snug had ornamental oak barriers around it, giving them some privacy. Mick took a long, refreshing sip of his beer, unable to resist letting out an ‘ahh’. The first sip of a nice ale always hit the spot.
“Checked your token text yet?” asked Lill.
“Nope. I was saving it all up. You know, as a treat.”
“Check them together?”
“Sure, why not.”
The idea of checking their token text at the same time was a nice thing to do in theory, however neither of them could see the other’s text. Tapping his token bracelet, Mick released several streams of token text into the air. It hovered above their table like pipe smoke, visible only to him.
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In one fell swoop – and he was pleased to think of this pun, even if he didn’t actually say it out loud – he had solved three bird-related cases. Added to the book learning he did at home, his studying with Janey, and the various smaller cases he’d solved about missing keys and the like, it had resulted in something special.
Skill Tree Earned: Simple Observation
- Ability: Keen Eye
Level: 1
Keen Eye enhances your vision, allowing you to spot details that others might miss.
Sleuth Bonus: Increased perception of details and observations related to heightened states of emotion
-Ability: Stakeout Stamina
Level: 1
Allows for a temporary increase in concentration and the removal of mental fatigue
Skill Tree Earned: Simple Forensics
- Ability: Evidence Sweep
Level: 1
Applies an instant forensic sweep of a location. The evidence uncovered depends on your ability level, as well as the equipment and materials you have to hand.
-Ability: Show Deceptions and Manipulations
Level: 1
Highlights the presence of physical items and evidence that have been manipulated or tampered with to aid some kind of deception.
Skill Tree Earned: Simple Stealth & Tracking
- Ability: Silent Movement
Level: 1
Quiets your movement and footsteps, allowing for more efficient tailing of a target.
- Trail Hound
Level: 1
Possessing a keepsake belonging to a person allows you to track their whereabouts.
Sleuth bonus: The better your abilities and the more important the keepsake (in terms of emotional connection), the further you can see a trail, and the clearer it is
Mick had to read the token text three times, he was so overwhelmed by it. Not in a bad way, though; this was a pleasant kind of overwhelmed. He knew he’d been chipping steadily away at all of his skill trees lately, what with all his hard work and the little cases he’d solved. It was still surprising to earn three skill trees at once.
Then again, he’d solved three cases in one go, and that counted for a heck of a lot. Flo’s milk bottle lids, the mystery carriage, Jonathan Tillwright’s birds. Doing so had taken the use of every aspect of sleuthing, which earned him plenty of experience. Then, closing three cases in one go had given it a great boost.
The descriptions of his new abilities under each skill tree would bear further reading when he got home. He’d sit in his favorite chair by the fire, make a nice mug of hot chocolate, and really get to grips with what they could do. Ultimately, though, the best way of learning was by doing – by using his new sleuth abilities.
Reaching into his pocket, he took out the five skill tokens that Brenda Glass had told the station quartermaster to issue to him.
Well, would you look at that. Three of his tokens were no longer blank. The Simple Observation token had a pair of binoculars on it, the Simple Forensics had a glove and a vial, while the Simple Stealth & Tracking token had a set of footprints on it.
“Three trees?” said Lill. “Well done!”
He’d been so lost in his thoughts he’d almost forgotten he was even in a tavern, let alone that his friend was with him.
“So the tokens,” he said. “Now that I have three skill trees and a couple of abilities on each, I have to set the tokens in my bracelet to use them? Am I barking up the right tree?”
“Starter Sleuthing goes into all this. Chapter Six. Or chapter four if you have the old edition from a few years ago, before they revised it.”
“It’s one thing reading it, another actually getting a skill tree myself.”
Lill drank the rest of her beer, leaving nothing but suds at the bottom, and pushed the glass aside. “Okay, so for one thing, your abilities aren’t in the tokens. They’re in you now that you earned the skill trees, okay?”
“Sure. Wouldn’t make much sense to lose a little token down the back of the couch and have to say bye bye to your abilities.”
“Exactly, so the tokens are just a way of getting the abilities out. Like, say you know how to play the lute. Take your lute away, and you can’t make sounds, yet you still know how to play. Right?”
“Makes sense.”
“Think of the tokens like that, like instruments. What if you need to use an ability from Simple Observation? Easy as lemon pie on a sunny afternoon. Just make sure you have the Simple Observation token set in your bracelet.”
Mick was grateful he’d befriended Lill, of all the people in the token intake group. As the daughter of a Chief Inspector mother and a solicitor father, she’d grown up in an environment where little inspector class tidbits were as prevalent in the air as mayflies in summer. She knew so much about it all; she and her parents probably discussed changes in the counterfeiting law over the dinner table. They probably read her the ‘Easterly Noise Act ’81’ as a bedtime story.
At the same time, as grateful as he was, he felt like the guy turning up at a buffet with nothing to add to the table. What was Lill getting out of their friendship? He tried to think of something he could offer. A little morsel of knowledge he could throw her way.
“Gotta be wary,” he said, then paused and took a sip of his beer for effect. “All well and good using abilities on your skill trees. But there’s a certain kind of stamina at play when you do so. I read about it in Starter Sleuthing. Use your abilities too much and you’ll dip into your ability stamina, and all you can do is rest up and wait for it to come back.”
“Uh huh. Ought to be easy to conserve stamina for a miser like you, no? Just pretend it’s gold and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh, like that is it?” he side, with a grin. “Well, Ms. Gill. How about the miser here buys the next round of drinks? Who’s the skinflint now, huh?”