City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [144]
‘I’m not sure about that,’ he replied, eyeing them still. ‘But would you believe that girl is meant to be my assistant?’
*
Back in the lazaret adjoining the Inquisition headquarters, deep in thight with all the investigators and aides and administrative staff safely at home, and with Abaris and Ramon ‘recalibrating’ their equipment, whatever the hell that meant, Jeryd and Bellis contemplated Nanzi and the man in the top hat. After restricting the initial cage in size, they had forced the pair to walk the streets surrounded by their light-prison, while passers-by gawked in awe. Jeryd brought them back to the quarantine section, afraid of what diseases these culprits might carry.
With them safely behind bars, Jeryd lit a flambeau fixed to the wall, and their faces glowed softly from the corner of the room. A deep chill persisted, but he lit no fire for their comfort.
For some time he merely watched them. His mind was overflowing with questions. But where to start?
‘What are you?’ he demanded finally.
Her head was down, her hair in front of her face.
‘What were you doing? You claim to be some honourable girl, and yet . . . And yet . . .’
Jeryd sat down on a stool with a sigh, his energy drained utterly by the scenes he had witnessed earlier. There was always a strange sensation of emptiness when he brought in a perpetrator after such a difficult case. The search for them filled up some hole in his life, so once they had been brought in, there was just a void. He devoted such a degree of mindspace to each individual criminal, carrying their activities around in his head. ‘Why didn’t you kill me, Nanzi, when you had the chance?’
She looked up at him meekly as if to speak, but after the man whispered something to her, she immediately focused again on the floor.
‘I’m guessing,’ Bellis suggested to Jeryd, ‘that you must have provided her with some sort of essential information. Hmm. Was there any specific Inquisition stuff that only you had access to?’
After a moment, Jeryd mumbled, ‘The commander, maybe. She was with me some of the times when he would give me military updates.’ Did she want details of patrols? The movements of soldiers around the city so she could plan her next killing? Maybe to know when to be ready to flee?
‘But she tried to kill me earlier, in the theatre . . .’ None of this was making sense. Perhaps she . . . this thing actually did care for him enough to let him live for a while. Jeryd turned to the man with the top hat. It was just possible that this fellow had some control over matters. ‘Hey, you there, what’s your name?’
‘My name is Doctor Voland.’ The words were spoken crisply, and he held himself with great dignity. So at last some answers might be forthcoming.
Voland: the same name Malum had given him. The same man who made weird specimens, and dealt in questionable meat. Jeryd would get to that later – the essentials first. ‘Is Nanzi here your wife?’
‘She is my partner,’ Voland insisted.
‘So that’s why you came to rescue her, right?’
No reply.
After a moment’s consideration, Jeryd stood up and approached the bars to study him closely. He was a distinguished-looking gentleman, much older than Nanzi. His clothing was also finely tailored, and there was an air of mild arrogance about his manners. Although at the moment he appeared glum, in another situation he might electrify a room with his persona.
Jeryd asked, ‘What’s your business in Villiren?’
No reply.
‘Why did you come out to the rooftops tonight?’
No reply.
‘What do you know about selling bad meat?’
He looked up at that, but gave no reply.
Jeryd turned to Bellis with a nod.
‘Right you are, investigator,’ she responded. The cultist pulled out the device that activated the imprisoning bars of light, this time separating the prisoners by bisecting their cage. Voland at once took renewed interest, his face expressing his concern for his lover. He prodded the intervening bars, but wrenched his hands away as soon as he touched whatever electric