Twelfth Race

Ian

I was slumped face-down in the ruins of another failed session of trying to figure out how to contact Lachlan, my fingers rubbing gently at my empty glass, when the man himself sliced into my office. I could say he 'stormed' or 'burst' in, but the motion was neither as spectacular as the first nor as desperate as the second. He came in like a hefty, well-oiled sword on the sharp end of an expert thrust, the door seeming to my drunken eyes to melt back before him – though he moved fast, I heard no slam of it hitting the filing cabinet it backed onto.

If he'd been a mob hitman I'd have been dead. In fact I think the reason I knew it was him was because I was still alive by the time my brain processed the fact of him standing over me. Even burning with fury, his voice was like syrup. "Get up, Spector."

I let out a slurred groan and tried to navigate my limbs to the edge of the desk. I was too numb to really feel it, but probably somewhere deep down, all the adolescent shames of my high school classroom were welling up, all the times I'd fallen asleep in class, or come up blank when the teacher asked a question, or been caught mooning over a classmate.

"You brew the vilest coffee I think I've ever smelled." Lachlan was over by my coffee machine now. "This looks like it hasn't been properly cleaned since the palace was built. I assume it adds whatever flavour you find in this stuff, but I can only imagine what it's doing to your insides."

By the time I was more or less vertical, my every bone lolling from its joint, Lachlan was wafting a mug of something hot and black under my nose and unfocussed eyes. Objectively, he was right about the smell, but right now I needed the way it drilled up through my nostrils and into the bottom of my eyeballs before I'd even taken a sip.

Lachlan seated himself opposite me. "I need everything you know. Everything."

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"So you are certain that the feud between Castelloro and the Nosa Costra concerns Tenryuu?"

Grimly cogent, if not anything like sober, I nodded. "Angelo must've stolen the dragon or something."

"Stolen?" Every time Lachlan spoke felt like being stabbed, but in a glamorous sort of way.

I managed a shrug. "We know the mafia breed dragons, innit? No-one knows where Soot came from, so I figure it stands to reason."

"If this comes out…" Lachlan shook his head, so slowly his fringe didn't even shake. I wanted to run my fingers through that soft silver hair so bad. More to himself than me, he said, "But what would count as proof?"

"Wha'd'you mean?" I slurred.

"That the dragon was stolen from the mob." Lachlan didn't look up. "This violence is superficial, it accomplishes nothing for the Calabrians. They would have to do much worse to destroy the Castelloro organisation, and they've hardly touched Tenryuu."

He was referring to a string of shootings that had ripped through Rindburg over the last few weeks. That 'superficial' violence was by any normal standard a terrifying outbreak of gang warfare. I tried to get my eyes to focus on Lachlan's face, but he was unreadable.

He went on, "The Nosa Costra is, under everything else, a debt collector. They weigh blood and pride just as much as money, but they collect on it all. They could murder Tenryuu tomorrow if they wanted, but that would not recover their debt. They could probably kill Angelo Castelloro in a week, but same problem. If they wanted Soot they could smash their way into the Tenebrae-P.R.A.N.C. centre with a transporter truck and take him."

My blood was cold. Ike's assessment was probably accurate, but the dispassion of his purr made it brutal. There was no way he was in commerce of any kind, as I'd thought at first, and this was a little too steely even to be a rival crime syndicate. That left a narrowing range of deeply unpleasant options to account for Lachlan's origin.

After a moment, I said, "So why kill the Castelloro men?"

"Terrorism." He said it bluntly. "To spread fear. None of the three were Angelo's inner circle, but all should have been protected."

"Three?" There had been four deaths reported so far, one knifed at the very farm that had set my investigation in motion, the other three shot.

"Four." Lachlan's correction didn't fool me, but before I could query it, he sat up and tapped the top of my desk hard with his fingertips. "Pay it no mind. Soot must have been chipped to be registered for the Imperial League. Find out where and by whom."

He stood and turned to leave. At some point a new stack of money had appeared on my desk, and my eyes were still fixed on it as he said, "You'll need to go to Norda, I'd think. True lunar drake territory."