City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [41]
If these families knew that a war was imminent, they didn’t show it.
How can you destroy people who are already broken?
But he and Nanzi found out one crucially interesting fact: those who had disappeared in larger numbers were the citizens with better-quality jobs – traders and tavern owners and smiths. Jeryd was frustrated with how the Inquisition could have overlooked such reports.
They strode from the houses back to the Inquisition headquarters in the ambience of the falling snow.
‘It’s not a pretty picture, is it?’ Jeryd’s mood had been so contemplative, he had momentarily forgotten Nanzi was next to him. He supposed today’s task had not been easy on her.
‘I had no idea how bad things were in this city,’ she confessed. ‘It doesn’t look like we can do much for them though, does it?’
‘The good investigator’, Jeryd replied, ‘always has choices before him, even when it seems there are none. He instinctively knows what’s right. He knows he has the option to do something.’
‘Sounds as if you’re the only good investigator left,’ Nanzi remarked.
‘I feel like I’m holding the fort all by myself.’
*
Another long day till his legs ached and sentences were drying up in his throat. After Nanzi departed for the night, he sat and contemplated the day’s findings in his chamber, a cup of tea in one hand, a biscuit in the other.
Patterns materialized.
Give or take half an hour’s walk, the majority of disappearances had taken place between the Ancient Quarter and the seafront, or concentrated in Deeping, around the Citadel and the barracks.
Jeryd brooded on these facts, as if tuning in to their importance.
What was special about the types of citizens who resided there? He had to also consider whether they had been murdered by some careful killer operating stealthily, or if perhaps prosperous men and women were walking out on their families because of the threat of war.
The red sun having set early this far north, he deliberated the subject for some time while in darkness.
*
Another whisper, someone calling out a name, one that wasn’t his. Night-time now, and once more Jeryd was lying in his bed. His gold-starred red breeches hung on the back of a chair as if mocking him. He’d been reading a history book he found on the shelf, the kind of dry information he needed to take his mind off things.
Marysa had kept herself busy by hunting for all the libraries. Not one central depository, they were spread across the city in small bohemian enclaves, some no more than front rooms or attic spaces. Her current area of research involved antique architecture. The Boreal Archipelago was littered with the remains of structures of dubious purpose, edifices that had been reduced to nothing more than crippled aesthetics, though there was little of the old stuff to be found in Villiren. She hoped to find herself employment from history tuition, but few people seemed interested.
And tonight she had recently returned from one of her first classes in some obscure technique of personal combat. Garish advertising leaflets constantly made their way around the city, promising methods of safety amidst the gang violence. He himself could never keep up with them: there was always a new technique to be learned: a punch or a jab that would defeat all others.
The ultimate fighting moves! The killer system! Women, defend yourselves against gang tyranny!
Currently she was out of the room making them some more tea, when suddenly he heard a voice that might or might not have been merely the wind; he couldn’t be certain.
The second time, it spoke a name, for sure.
When he opened the window to investigate, the area outside was quiet. No one walked the narrow, lacklustre streets. Was it possible he was being spied upon?
TEN
Malum was enjoying a card game with JC and a choleric trader called Gall, who was bleeding Sota and Lordil coins across the table. Malum didn’t need the money, just liked to win, although sometimes he wished that these types didn’t let their fear of him