“I got double iron bound and barred doors upstairs.”
“If you can tell us what’s missing, I can put out the word.” Zellyn offered a professional and sad smile.
“Much good that will do.” Kantros shook his head. “Besides . . . how can I tell?”
Zellyn nodded. “I understand. When you find out, let us know, and we’ll do what we can.” He pulled out his blue-covered patrolling book and used a marker to jot down notes, then slipped it back inside his tunic.
“Not much good . . .” Kantros was still muttering as we left.
“We’ll have to report it, but he’ll never tell us what was taken.” Zellyn glanced across South Middle, waiting until two coaches rolled past, both heading toward the Midroad. “He probably doesn’t know himself.”
The remainder of the morning was less eventful, but mornings usually were, it seemed. Even so, when the ten bells of noon began to toll we were both hungry and thirsty, but we were nowhere near any place to eat, and it wasn’t until close to half past that we sat down in the rear of a small bistro on Quierca in an alleyway a block off the Midroad. The name on the signboard with peeling paint read Alysna’s, but inside was clean-and bare.
I followed Zellyn’s lead and had a Domchana-a batter-dipped and fried sandwich that held fowl and ham strips wrapped around mild peppers and a pungent cheese I’d never tasted before. It wasn’t bad-but not all that good-if filling. The lager helped.
I’d been thinking about the burglary and finally asked, “You said it was early last night. Why?”
“Kantros likes his brandy at night. Has ever since his son was killed. Young Lantryn ran with a bad crowd and was caught with some silvers that weren’t his. He was also probably lifting coins from his father. Justice allowed him to join the Navy, rather than do the road gangs. He was unlucky and got killed in a boiler explosion on the Chedryn. The daughter ran off to Solis, married a coppersmith. After that, Kantros’s wife died. He drank a lot before that, but lately . . .” Zellyn shook his head. “Oh . . . that much in spirits means you sleep like the dead for a glass, maybe two or three, then you’re restless after that.”
“Someone had to know him, then.”
“Wager it was one of those fellows who got Lantryn in trouble, but trying to find them . . . don’t spend two nights in the same place, and most of them went south to the hellhole. That’s not in our district. All we can do is send the patrollers in Fourth District a notice. Sometimes, it leads to something.”
His tone suggested that most times it didn’t.
“If Kantros didn’t keep silver in the shop at night, why were there all the chains and heavy hinges on the rear door?”
Zellyn smiled. “What would keep someone from coming up behind him when he’s working?”
Put that way, the chains made sense. I just hadn’t thought of it like that, perhaps because for anyone to steal anything of great value from Alusine Wool would have taken a wagon and a team. Wool was heavier than people realized.
Before that long we were back walking the rounds, looking and being seen. Nothing happened until after third glass, on what would probably be the last round of the day. We were headed up Faistasa when we heard screams.
“Help! Help!”
Both of us hurried up the street for another three houses until we reached one of the narrow wooden dwellings with a half mansard roof of cracked tiles. The house was one of those that dated back close to a century, and that had been turned into dwellings for several families. The wooden clapboards were a faded gray that might have been some other color once, and the yellow bricks in the walk were uneven and cracked.
A man in a ragged brown jacket was beating on the street-level side door, trying to force it open, while the woman screaming was trying to force it closed against him.
He didn’t even turn as we approached.
“You patrollers! Get him!” the woman yelled.
At that moment, the assailant turned and lunged toward Zellyn. Behind the attacker, the door slammed.
The patroller’s truncheon slammed into the man’s temple, and he staggered, but started to lunge again. I delivered a turn-kick to his weight-bearing leg, rather than his knee, and he went down, face-first, into the brick walkway.
Zellyn dropped onto his back and cuffed him so quickly I couldn’t believe it, but the man immediately began to kick and squirm.
“If you’d pin his legs, sir!”
I did, and Zellyn wrapped a leather restrainer around both legs, then rolled the man over. His face was scratched and bleeding, but he tried to spit at Zellyn, who promptly clouted him alongside the jaw. “Next time, I won’t be so gentle.”
“Frigging trolies!”
As I looked at the man more closely, I could see that the irises of his eyes had expanded, or his pupils contracted, so much that the pupils looked to be little more than black dots, and the whites of those eyes were so bloodshot that they looked bright pink.
“Longtime elver,” Zellyn said contemptuously, leaving the bound figure on the walk and moving back to the door. “Madame . . . we’ve got him tied up.”
There was no answer.
Zellyn rapped, then pounded. Finally, he shook his head. “No point in breaking down the door. She won’t talk anyway. The women around here never do. We’ll just charge him with attacking the woman and attacking patrollers. That’ll more than take care of him.”
The nearest pickup pole was only a block and a half away, but even with both of us carrying the squirming elver, covering that distance seemed to take forever. When we reached the pole, Zellyn didn’t attempt to uncuff the man, just used another strap to tie the cuffs to the railing.
“You . . . trolie bastards . . . sewer-rat sows . . .” From there, his curses grew fouler and far less inventive.
That made it somewhat easier to ignore him, but it was still close to another two quints before the patroller pickup wagon rolled toward us. After we lifted the still-cursing and squirming elver onto the wagon, Zellyn looked to me. “Might as well climb on and ride back. Marshyn won’t mind.” He grinned at the burly patroller driving the wagon.
“Nope. I’ll even head straight back.”
“Only because it’s your last stop.”
“Next to last.”
Since there was no one at the last pickup point, we reached the Third District station about two quints before fourth glass, but it took most of that time to write up our report and give it to the desk patroller.
Since Shault had given me an envelope for his mother on Mardi evening, I really felt that I should deliver it, and it would be easier before dark. So as soon as Zellyn and I finished the report, I hurried off up Fuosta and then east on South Middle. More than a few taudis-dwellers either looked away or disappeared into alleyways or doors when they caught sight of the patroller’s cloak. Because most of the street signs were either missing or defaced, what should have taken a quarter glass took me longer. Slightly before half past fourth glass, I rapped on a door that I thought had to be the right one.
The door itself was age-darkened and cracked oak, without a peephole that I could see. No one answered, and I rapped harder. I also drew open the cloak so that my imager’s grays and the silver imager’s pin would be visible.
A thin-faced woman finally edged the door ajar, but I could see the heavy chain holding the back of the door to the casement. Her eyes were barely above the loop of the brass links. As Shault had said, her hair was black, and she was tiny. I couldn’t make out the shape of the pendant at the end of the silver chain around her neck, but her face was so like Shault’s that it was hard to believe she could have been other than his mother.
“Madame Chelya?”
Her eyes widened more. “Who are you?”
“Master Rhennthyl from Imagisle.”
“No! Don’t tell me . . . No!”
Did she think I was there to tell her bad news? That her son was dead?