Whale Mail, page 2
The small items were usually destroyed, but the more substantial items were all still held in the building for lack of a better purpose for them. Very few of these items were ever claimed by their owners, since claiming an item required admitting illegal possession of that item. Most cross-border traders considered confiscated goods as a write-off.
The collections were held in storage rooms on the ground floor of the building.
In the past few months, some poor administrative clerk had gone through and catalogued all the items, and rather than haphazardly thrown in crates, they were stored in labelled boxes that said things like magic shields, and invisibility devices and deception devices and, most dangerously, purpose unknown.
All inspectors filed into the narrow space in between the storage racks.
Inspector Carbin explained how the items here were unique and often dangerous, but then she said, “Go ahead, pick something that you think you can use. I would suggest that you pick something that protects you rather than a device designed for attack. You will appreciate that we’re not supposed to use these items, so keep it modest. Don’t pick anything of which you’re not sure what it does. I don’t want the mayor to get upset with us. Try to run a quick test on whatever item you choose, in the hallway, please.”
When she finished speaking, the inspectors all looked at each other like little kids being set free inside a candy shop. As if no one wanted to appear too keen to start looking for the coolest device to use.
“Well, I like the idea of a magic shield,” Regis said, while he took a box off the shelf.
Inside lay a couple of cylinders made from a smooth, glass-like material, open on one end.
He picked one out and moved his finger to the button on the side—
“In the hallway,” Inspector Carbin reminded him.
Perrin also grabbed a cylinder and followed Regis out of the room.
Regis pointed the cylinder at the empty corridor and pressed.
Something went zoop. An umbrella-like shield of light sprang out of the open end of the cylinder. It shimmered and vibrated.
“Now what do I do with this?” Regis asked. He turned around. The shield followed his movement.
A colleague, Hendon, stuck out his hand. It went straight through the shimmering shield. He laughed. “That tickles.”
“What does it actually do?” Verbena asked.
Perrin took his tube and pressed the button as he approached Regis. The shield sprang up like an umbrella.
He swung his arms until the two shields collided.
A bright flash tore through the hallway. The cylinder flew out of Regis’ hand. Regis himself flailed backwards, falling against the wall.
Perrin released the button and his shield disappeared. He held out a hand to help Regis to get back to his feet.
“You can have this,” he said, and handed the cylinder to Verbena. “This seems an excellent device for protection.”
“What about you?” she asked, eying the empty box.
“I’ll find something else.”
A squeal of hysterical laughter came from down the hallway.
Three other inspectors stood there. One held a device that spat out a spray of sparks that glittered so much that Perrin couldn’t see who the inspectors were. The sparks fell to the ground in a waterfall of light that formed a puddle that surrounded the inspectors. One of them dipped the tip of his shoe into the shimmering puddle, and it dissolved.
The inspector who held the device copped most of the sparks in the face. As a result, the top half of his body disappeared. You could still somewhat see where it was because of a shimmering outline, but the rest of the body had become transparent.
It was kind of immature, a bunch of magic inspectors going through boxes of magic items like kids in a lolly shop. He wondered who had prodded Inspector Carbin in which places to allow this to happen. Magic inspection lay at this weird conjecture of needing to stop the magic and needing magic to detect the magic in order to stop it.
Perrin went back into the storeroom.
He reached into another box and pulled out a jade and silver amulet on a gold chain. He showed it to Verbena.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You use it like this.”
He pressed the jade against her forehead.
She winced. “Ouch, that stings.”
The jade in the pendant glowed with green.
“See?”
He held it up.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re telling the truth.”
“But you didn’t ask me a question.”
“Then tell me how many children your sister has.” He put the amulet against her forehead again.
She responded without hesitating. “Seven—ouch!”
The stone now glowed a dull red.
“It says you’re lying.”
“I’m not. That thing is wrong. She has seven.”
“There are none forthcoming that you don’t know about?”
She opened her mouth, said nothing, and closed it again. “If that is true… I’ll kill her. What does she think I am?”
Thinking it wise not to comment any further, Perrin hung the chain around his neck.
Verbena’s face still looked disturbed.
All around them, inspectors were testing out different items.
Hendon had put on a hat that made half his face disappear. Another had found a pendant that let out a constant stream of sparks when someone touched it. But it didn’t seem to have any effect.
In another box, Perrin found a metal staff that stung him when he put both his hands on it. He slid that in his pocket. He could prod someone with it in uncomfortable places.
He also found a tiny box of stink pills, an item he remembered from Atreyo. These were eggs of an insect that lived in the desert and that, when disturbed, gave out the most disgusting smell to drive off predators. They were said to last for about ten years, so Perrin opened the box a sliver to see if they still worked.
A puff of air came out.
In the bottom of the box lay about twenty of the oblong eggs, slightly floppy, blue-grey shapes the length of the nail on his little finger.
“Oy, what’s that stink?” someone called out.
The other inspectors all ran into the hallway, cursing and gagging.
Perrin shut the box and put it in his pocket. He repressed a smile, remembering how Atreyo had once used these stink pills to get rid of a very insistent seller of cheap sweets who had accosted Perrin and Atreyo in a bar on their travels.
“I’m not going back in there,” someone said in the hallway.
“We’re just about done clowning anyway,” Inspector Carbin said. “Let’s go.”
“Are you coming as well?” an inspector asked her.
“Yes. I know this might be dangerous. You weren’t trained to do this—neither was I. We’ll share the danger and the victories. I can’t, in good faith, ask you to risk your lives to do something you’re not properly trained to do and stay in my safe office myself.”
When he first came to work for the Bureau, Perrin had often thought of Julianna Carbin as harsh and strict, but although she was those things, she also had a deep sense of duty for the agency she had been instrumental in creating.
Chapter 3
It was a strange and motley crew of inspectors that made its way out of the building not much later. No longer dressed in recognisable uniforms, they wore a collection of strange hats, dusty cloaks and strange-looking devices in back packs. Some carried staffs and one had a coil of magic rope over his shoulder. Inspector Carbin wore a pink fluffy hat with a string of pompoms dangling from it. The garment cast a magical illusion that made her look like an old witch with a hairy mole on her nose.
In the scheme of things, Verbena’s brightly striped socks looked normal.
Dusk was falling in the city, and shop owners were closing up their businesses, ready to go home for the day. The last shoppers were carrying their purchases home.
Some of them gave the band of strangely dressed inspectors puzzled looks.
A little boy pointed and said, “Look there, wizards! Look at the ugly witch!”
His mother looked where he pointed, and a horrified expression came over her face.
“Be quiet, you. Those are magic inspectors. Don’t talk about other people while they can hear it.”
The kid’s eyes went wide, and he continued to stare.
Several inspectors chuckled.
But they soon passed the town square and then went into the narrow streets of the harbour district. Serious expressions returned to the inspectors’ faces. Despite the somewhat silly outfits, this was not a fun expedition.
If Perrin had hoped, in a secret, cowardly part of his mind, that the fight had stopped in the time that had passed between when the dockworker Bix had left the scene, walked through the streets and reported the goings on to the Bureau, he was sadly disappointed.
Yells and shouts and the sound of breaking glass echoed through the narrow street.
In the time since Bix had left, the disturbance had spread to the alley at the side of the inn, and had grown into an all-out brawl between people in various states of drunkenness.
In the chaos, it was very hard to see who was fighting whom or where to start investigating.
A single guard was standing on the corner of the alley, hopelessly outnumbered and not sure what to do.
Inspector Carbin went to speak to him.
“What’s going on here?”
He gave her a startled look. “Uhm… madam?”
“Urgh.” Inspector Carbin yanked off the pink hat and changed from the mole-faced witch into herself.
The guard’s face cleared. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me, and I’ve brought a team. What’s going on here?”
“I’m holding this position while my colleague is drumming up reinforcements.”
“What’s up with these louts?”
“My partner and I were walking past when we noticed unrest in the inn. We tried to stop them fighting, but we might as well have shouted at the wind to stop blowing.”
Inspector Carbin asked, “Did you spot anything that indicates the use of magic?”
“We did, for a bit, but we couldn’t get close enough to see where it was coming from. Honestly, it was far too crowded in that place.”
“Did you establish who were fighting?”
“There are some strangers in town,” he began to say, but at that moment a great shouting match broke out and the rest of his words were drowned out by the noise.
The mood in the crowd had changed.
Someone shouted, but it was not a burst of anger. It was a cry of fear.
People retreated. Several young men ran away, one covering his head with a jacket.
More and more people started running away. First those who had been close to the fight, and then others followed.
“Come on,” Inspector Carbin said. She had put her pink hat back on and had changed back into a witch.
“What’s happening?” Verbena asked Perrin.
“I don’t know. Come on, let’s stay together.”
Inspector Carbin pushed ahead through the crowd.
Before convincing the council that a service that kept magic in check was necessary, she had been a city guard.
But Perrin was not a fighter and had no guard training, and neither did the others in the group.
He met the eyes of another inspector, whose face looked terrified.
Verbena made a dapper picture with her magic cylinder in one hand and the baton, the only weapon that inspectors were legally allowed to carry, in the other.
Perrin hoped he appeared as brave as Verbena, but didn’t think he succeeded. He slid his hand in his pocket and held onto the magic staff. It tickled his skin. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to use it, because he had no idea what it did other than make his skin prick. He followed Inspector Carbin. She held onto her pink hat with one hand, a serious look on her witchy face. Verbena walked behind him.
The crowd jostled around them. And what a range of people they were. Sailors, common townsfolk, ladies of ill repute, bandits, wizards and thieves, drunkards.
Most of them were trying to wrestle their way out of the narrow alley, while the inspectors went against the stream to go into it.
The resulting log jam took a while to clear.
The fight at the very back of the dead-end alley concentrated around a group of people who stood on the steps to the side entrance of one of the harbourside inns. This area, normally the place where establishments put out their rubbish bins, had become a battlefield. It was hard to see who or even how many people were involved.
Perrin recognised a few townsfolk, colourful characters known to law enforcement, on one side of the fight. But on the other side… as Bix had said, some of them were strange characters indeed. They wore dark masks over their faces with tiny holes for their eyes. The masks were made from stiff cloth and depicted creatures with long snouts. The fabric was black with intricate patterns in gold paint.
The rest of their bodies were also completely covered: they wore dark hats, long-sleeved shirts, gloves, leather trousers and tall boots.
They held a local man holed up against the wall of the building. Perrin had seen this old fellow in the harbour before, although he wasn’t familiar with what he did. Shady business, probably.
He stood against the wall, facing three masked men, holding his hands up. His face was red. One attacker held a knife.
Inspector Carbin yelled, “Hey, you, stop immediately!”
The strangers all turned around at once. There were five of them, all dressed in black and wearing similar kinds of masks.
Perrin could see the eyes of one: dark orange irises with a slitted pupil. Definitely not humans.
“Thank the heavens, Inspector,” the old man who had been the victim said. “I told these miscreants that someone had gone to warn you.”
“You’re the man known as Duco?”
“I am, Madam.”
“What was going on between you?” Inspector Carbin asked.
“They accused me of stealing something. I don’t even know what sort of thing they were talking about. I told them they had the wrong man.”
“What about you?” Inspector Carbin asked of one of the attackers. This was a tall fellow, clad in black from head to foot. A thin slit between layers of fabric showed two glinting green eyes with slitted pupils.
“Careful,” Perrin said in a low voice.
Duco took the opportunity to scurry between the inspectors to safety.
“I’m asking you a question,” Inspector Carbin said, her voice loud and clear. “It’s your right to refuse to answer, but not answering may lead to your arrest, in which case you’ll have to come before the court and answer under oath before a judge. I leave the choice up to you.”
The attackers remained silent. Besides the green-eyed character, there was another with orange eyes and a much shorter one with dark eyes and two others who hid behind rubbish bins.
Inspector Carbin repeated, “Again, I’m asking a question. It will be beneficial to you if you answer it. Who are you and why did you threaten this old man? What are you looking for?”
After another moment of deep silence, one of the strangers whistled.
The figure facing Inspector Carbin backed away.
Then the one with the orange eyes slunk in between the rubbish bins.
“All right, I’ve had enough. Arrest them!” Inspector Carbin yelled.
The team sprang into action.
The wall that closed the end of the alley was taller than a person, but one of the strangers ran a few steps and jumped to the top, as if it was knee high.
“Did you see that?” someone yelled.
But even if people hadn’t seen it, the other four strangers followed their comrade’s example, and all jumped on top of the wall with ease.
Inspector Carbin called out, “Arrest them. They’re trespassing on private land.”
One inspector gave a colleague a leg up, but this was awkward because the man in question had chosen an illusion cape as magical aid and that got caught between his knees and the wall. Because it was an illusion cape, he couldn’t see it, so he stood there with his hands flailing. He made it to the top because of his colleague’s pushing, albeit rather unceremoniously and with some swearing.
Meanwhile, the strangers ran nimbly along the top of the wall to the inn’s side. The inn also offered accommodation, and the back of the building was three floors tall.
But the sheer wall with small windows did not deter the attackers. The first one clambered up, holding onto the downpipe, all the way to the roof.
A young man in the crowd of onlookers yelled, “Look, look!”
Up on the roof of the inn sat another creature of similar human-like build, but without the face covering. It looked, for want of a better word, like a giant human sized cat wearing clothes.
The last of the five were now climbing up the drainpipe.
Perrin searched his pockets, but had brought nothing useful for a situation like this.
Someone behind him yelled, “Let me through!”
It was another inspector, with the magic rope from the store of confiscated items. In the space hastily vacated by curious citizens, he swung it and threw it into the air. The rope shivered. It formed a loop which fell over the last cat-man still climbing the drainpipe.
An inspector grabbed the end, and together they pulled and pulled. For a moment it looked like the cat-man might have to let go, but then a flash of blue fire lept from his fingers. It travelled along the rope for a short distance, and then the rope slid off him in two parts and fell to the ground, the ends smoking. He reached the roof safely.
The attackers ran over the roof of the inn to the back of the building, where they jumped across another alley and vanished.
Perrin followed the inspectors in running around the block, but by the time they got to the alley, the attackers were long gone.
Well, damn.
“What did these characters want?” Inspector Carbin asked.
She had taken off the pink hat and was panting. She looked more dishevelled than Perrin had ever seen her.
