Whale Mail, page 10
Seaweed, of course, was used to create thin, semi-transparent and very flexible material that the expensive dressmakers loved to incorporate in their designs.
“How did he deal with the constant changes in rules?”
“He used to say that he didn’t go looking for trouble when trouble didn’t come looking for him. He said that usually when a change of rule came through, he argued back, and because whales are such poor talkers, they’d often give up. He wouldn’t order the object in question for a while, until he felt it was safe, but he also wouldn’t stop selling his existing stock. Funnily enough, whales are very peculiar about money. For all they claim to not understand people on the land, they sure understand money.”
“But you can’t do anything with money under water.”
“How do you know? Have you ever lived under water?”
They both laughed.
Then Dorella continued, “But kidding aside, money can buy you lots of things: ships to patrol your borders, people who will further your business interests, and people who get you the things that are really valuable to you.”
“Like heirlooms.”
And while he said that, something occurred to him that he hadn’t thought of before. The puman people were debt collectors. Debt didn’t necessarily involve money. It could also involve possessions.
The pumans had come to the old secondhand shop to look for secondhand stuff, presumably looking for particular items. A lady had come into the shop trying to sell an old trumpet that couldn’t possibly work and had no clear value. He even said it looked like it had been at the bottom of the harbour for years.
Well, damn it.
What if… just if… all events from the last few days were related? If that trumpet was the thing the pumans wanted and it belonged to Gaminia. And the trumpet… was in the collection Roban Dianello had bought, which meant that the pumans were making threats to the Dianello family, because they’d been hired by Gaminia to retrieve the trumpet?
Dorella had stayed rather longer than usual, and when she left, Perrin didn’t feel like going back to the books. He needed to know about this collection without asking Roban or Mirella—because they’d already shown that they’d lie to him.
But he might just have stumbled upon someone else he could ask about it.
Chapter 15
Mirella withheld information about her brother’s actions. Perrin was sure of that.
Because if there had been a random magical attack on a well-off family, the Bureau would have been the first to have heard about it. The fact that no report had been filed with the Bureau meant that the Dianello family knew what it was about, and that it was something illegal.
But if Perrin was right, and the events were all connected, then the presence of pumans in town and the fact that someone owned a thing that was of value to Gaminia, meant there was serious trouble ahead.
And the fact that Mirella contacted him, of all people, about it showed the level of desperation they had reached. But Mirella wasn’t going to tell him what was going on for fear of her brother finding out, or fear of incriminating herself, or both.
And since Mirella wouldn’t talk to him, he would have to do his own investigations. Away from the Bureau, at least initially, because this was above his paygrade. If she knew about it, Inspector Carbin would take him off the case and give it to the investigators who would not only be too slow in working on it, they would rob Perrin of his chance to get rid of his dragon.
It so happened that Atreyo’s old book had reminded him of a person from his previous life who could be useful. He could ask her for an unbiased opinion whether anything untoward had happened in the sheltered, exclusive and magic-riddled world that the Dianello family inhabited. A world far removed from magic inspectors. So he decided to pay this old acquaintance a visit after work.
He didn’t repeat his previous mistake to not have dinner or feed the magic sniffers and made sure that both were looked after before he left the house again.
Sabyna the witch lived a bit out of town, so he caught the train for a short ride to the foot of the mountains that formed the natural border between the harbour city of Tamba and the highlands where he had grown up and where people lived off the land and sold their produce to the city.
Further still was the border with the magical realms, but you had to get a special permit to travel there.
The train to his home town would take a few hours and the border was further still.
The trip was short and relaxing. The afternoon sun cast golden light over the coastline and the fields where cows grazed and crops grew.
Mothers and children with bags of shopping made up most of the other passengers in the carriage. The atmosphere was one of happy laughter. Perrin was reminded of about how he and Atreyo had been talking about taking in a young orphan to raise as a well-educated, happy citizen, but of course Atreyo’s death had changed all that. Maybe it was time to revisit it again. After all, he now had a spare room.
The station at Jasmine Falls was only small, but most of the families got off here. Since the passenger train had started to run, many small-acre farmers had moved to this area for its fertile soils, while they could still sell their produce to the city of Tamba. With the farmers came their families and all the services that catered for families.
The woman Perrin was going to visit, however, had lived here for many years, long before the train stopped here.
Perrin was at a stage of his life where many of the people he dealt with every day were younger than him, but this woman was not one of those.
Sabyna was—there was no other way of putting it—a witch. She had come from the realms long ago as a young woman and had lived through the magical upheavals that resulted in Tamba’s city council banning magic from its territory. She agreed with it. At least she said so.
But she was still a witch.
Getting to her house required Perrin to climb the hundreds of steps that started at the deep and dark pool at the bottom of the falls that gave the community its name.
The jasmine grew all over the mossy and slippery rocks and lined the steep staircase hewn into the cliff face.
The air was cool and humid, but Perrin was still hot and sweaty by the time he got to the little grassy park at the top.
During holidays, people with families would come here but today he had the park to himself. Those who made the effort to climb were rewarded with a magnificent view all the way over the city and to the offshore islands.
Sabyna’s house lay tucked into the lush forest at the back of the park. Hers was the first in a small cluster of houses.
It had been a long time since Perrin had last been here, and it was a long time since he had seen Sabyna in town.
He pushed open the creaky gate and walked along the path of uneven flagstones through Sabyna’s riot of a garden. At this time of the day, the smell of herbs and flowers hung in the air.
“Well, well, look who’s here, Mr Fibbles. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again,” said a sharp voice from the front porch.
Sabyna sat on an old rocking chair basking in the last rays of sunlight. She was as thin as a whip, dressed in purple as usual. Her hair sat in a bun atop her head, although advancing age had thinned it a great deal. A number of gold and silver bangles hung from her ears, some adorned with ancient runes in tongues from the realms. She wore a lot of rings and arm bands and her precious emerald pendant lay, as usual, in the hollow atop her cleavage. Although the skin above was rather spotted and papery-looking these days.
Mr Fibbles, of course, was the ancient long-haired white cat on her lap. He had a green eye and a blue eye, but Sabyna had previously confessed to Perrin that the poor cat was rather blind.
“I haven’t seen you in town for a while either,” Perrin said, while stepping onto the veranda.
It struck him how he had just stepped into a time capsule, because while Sabyna looked older, the house, its riotous garden, the knickknacks on the veranda and the walls that always looked in need of a lick of paint, were still the same. The place smelled the same, too, of hearty soup mixed with an unidentifiable tang of something earthy and magical. Crushed leaves of aromatic herbs, peppermint oil, the sweetness of exotic, but poisonous fruits, the pungent odour of crushed stink bugs.
“Sit down, sit down.” She gestured at a bench that stood against the wall. The bench was rather full of knickknacks, the largest of which was a metal-wire bird cage. “Just put the cage on the ground. The parrots will find it when they decide to return.”
Perrin lifted the bird cage—with its door open—and set it next to the veranda steps. There was also another cage with a much more familiar animal. The fluffy brown creature reared up on its hind legs, poking its wriggly nose through the bars of the cage.
“You keep magic sniffers?” A very handsome male specimen, too. Well fed.
“Argh.” She flapped her hand. “Some people are trying to trick me, don’t they, Mr Fibbles?”
The cat had gone back to sleep.
“How did you get the Bureau to allow you to keep magic sniffers?”
“Argh. Those city people. They think they control what we do. If I want to buy a mountain rat, I buy a mountain rat. Nothing says I can’t buy mountain rats, no?”
People who used the term mountain rat usually meant to say that they thought little of the Bureau’s authority. They were the people who thought that magic should be officially allowed. Who apparently still wanted to know if someone tried to play a magic trick on them. Fancy that.
Perrin sat down.
She cocked her head while studying him. “But I hear you work for them now?”
Them. The Bureau.
“I do. But I didn’t come here for that reason.”
She snorted. He doubted she cared even if he had come here as an inspector.
“I’m sorry about Atreyo. It’s a shock when someone dies when they’re younger than me. What a waste, what a waste. They could have taken my old arse instead of a young man full of life.”
“Sadly, that’s life. You don’t get to choose.”
“That’s right. That’s life. Money’s got very little to do with it. When your time’s up, it’s up.”
“I have come for a reason, though.” And he went on to explain his misgivings around the activity of Atreyo’s brother and the screamer the family had received. While he spoke, Sabyna’s face darkened and when he finished, she let a silence lapse.
“You want my advice?” And when he didn’t say anything, she continued, “I guess you do, else you wouldn’t be here.”
“I want to know if you have any knowledge of what’s going on. So I can help solve it. If you can shed any light on what he might have bought.”
“Argh.” She snorted. “This is my advice: do not get involved.”
“But I already am, because I’m a magic inspector.”
She lifted a finger. “Do not get involved. Just keep inspecting the inns and shops and that stuff that the inspectors do. This is bigger than all of the inspectors together and it’s something that no one in Tamba is ready to handle.”
“But they’ll have to handle it, anyway?”
“Argh. It will be handled and it will pass, as all these things do, but anyone who’s not involved shouldn’t become involved, because then they won’t be killed.”
“That’s what the Bureau is about: preventing people getting killed.”
“Mark my words: ignore it. Let the wizards sort it out.”
Well, wizardry wasn’t allowed in Tamba, and there were no important wizards in town. So she was suggesting foreign wizards were going to come in and battle out some magical issue over the heads of the innocent citizens?
“Can you at least tell me what’s going on?”
She heaved a sigh. “Well, I guess it all started with the death of the Grandwizard Fallon in Solania.”
“I thought Grandwizards could live forever.”
“No one can. Grandwizards—if they’re smart and not all of them are—can live longer than most people, but they must die. Fallon had lived a long time and had many fabled treasures in his collection. Many treasures that others wanted, or thought were theirs. Cursed treasures. Secret treasures, you name it and he had it.”
“I understand some of those were actually the property of other realms.”
“Aargh, yes. The Grandwizard wasn’t always honest about getting the pieces he desired. After his death, the other Grandwizards bickered over who should get what, and a lot of stuff was distributed. But there was also a lot of stuff that was—shall we say—contentious. He got it in dubious deals and held objects hostage in return for favours or to avoid embarrassment. No one knew what all these arrangements were because he was good at remembering things and never wrote anything down. So after all the Grandwizards plundered his assets, there was a collection left over that no one would touch. It went from his family—who didn’t want it and said it was cursed—to various authorities—who didn’t want it either—to private collections. It was not that people didn’t want the collection. Those collections are worth a lot of money.”
Perrin knew. Atreyo would sometimes buy them.
“There was a lot of fighting between wizards about stuff that was in this collection. Many were pieces stolen from other realms. Some were so valuable you can’t put a price on them. Others, from outside the realm, were after the stuff. Some people sent mercenaries to retrieve what they considered theirs.”
“Pumans?”
She flicked her eyebrows. “If you know the story so well, why do you ask me?”
“It’s nice to have one’s thoughts confirmed. These are all guesses of mine.”
“Ha. There is a reason Atreyo was interested in you. You’re smart.”
Huh, he’d never seen it that way. He thought Atreyo had been interested in him because he was quiet, dutiful and displayed little ambition.
“So tell me what happened to the collection.”
“It went from hand to hand. Various bits were peeled off and returned to whomever claimed them. But also, a few people in possession of the main collection died mysteriously. And then the collection vanished.”
“Let me guess, it turned up in Tamba.”
She gave him a sharp look. “There have been rumours.”
“No, I think I know where it is, or at least some of the items.”
Another sharp look. “You do?” She no longer told him not to get involved.
“Well, I’m not sure, but I can make guesses. When Mirella visited me, I took the screamer the Dianello family had received to the Bureau and translated it for her. The family could have done that themselves, of course, but that would have meant admitting that they have illegal stuff, that they acquired illegally. And the Bureau has a public office, so they would have had their dealings exposed to public scrutiny. The screamer asked for the return of an item that belongs to Gaminia. Roban Dianello prefers to ignore the whole thing, perhaps judging that he’s safe in Tamba.”
“Ha! There is no such thing as safe.”
“Exactly. Their office has been broken into, maybe by pumans hired by Gaminia. I’m guessing it started when Roban Dianello—not knowing what he was dealing with—saw the collection offered for sale and thought to make some quick money selling items to collectors like Atreyo used to do, but found it was more trouble than it was worth.”
She shook her head. “The pursuit of money makes decent men do stupid and evil things.”
“Men?”
“It’s always the men. The heads of the family. Strutting around in their finery boasting about… stuff they bought. Trinkets. Rubbish. It’s all about showing off what they have. Argh.”
“There are rumours about a magical trumpet that’s overgrown with barnacles.”
She gave him a sharp look. “The Horn of Truth?”
“I have no idea. Apparently, members of his family have been trying to sell it, but no one is interested.”
She whistled between her teeth. “People have been after that for a long time, since it was lost. If he truly has it…” She shook her head. “If he’s indeed got it, he bought a big problem for himself. It’s a Gaminian treasure, and Gaminia has employed many a bounty hunter to retrieve it. It’s become somewhat of a legend even amongst pumans. There are rumours about fabulous bounties for returning it to Gaminia. I don’t know what’s true. I could believe that old Fallon squirrelled it away. I could even believe that he pulled off stealing it from the underwater palace, however he might have achieved that. Fallon was no friend of the whales, and the horn was their only way of talking to land creatures, although with Fallon, the art of using it will have died. If he has it, it’s something only he can solve by returning it to Gamina. Because if Gaminia knows where it is, they won’t stop at anything trying to get it.”
“But if he’s ignoring their pleas, it will only get worse.”
“It will, until he takes action.”
“The Bureau should put pressure on him. We should offer to help him.”
“Don’t, Perrin. Whales are very big and they can be very angry, and you can’t argue with them, because they don’t speak our language and don’t think about life in the same way we do. We can’t visit them and they can’t visit us.”
“But if the Bureau can’t get involved, then why have a Bureau of Magic Abuse in the first place?”
“Don’t you have some inns and eating houses to inspect?”
Perrin couldn’t tell if she was joking.
Chapter 16
But if Perrin thought that he’d have the time to investigate quietly about what sort of items Roban Dianello might unwittingly have bought in this cursed collection, he was mistaken.
When he came into work the next morning—still tired from having returned late on the train the previous night—he found a man from the transport company waiting at his desk.
