Whale Mail, page 8
“Well, either I help, or I don’t. It’s all the same to me.” He picked up the box and handed it back to her. She didn’t want to take it back.
“Can’t it stay here?”
“Absolutely not. The screamer is the problem that belongs to those it’s been sent to. The Bureau will have no responsibility for the problems of your family. We even agreed about that in court.”
She looked disappointed and at that moment, Perrin knew that she hadn’t been looking to solve the problem, she had been looking for someone to take the problem off her hands. And he wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction.
“I can’t help you any further, because I would need to go through all of Atreyo’s collections to see what he could possibly have that might trigger this request. I will need some time to do this, and I have a job, so either you go officially through the Bureau, or I will do it for you in my time after work, when I have time, which won’t be soon, and I’ll need to be paid for it.”
She looked at him. Her mouth twitched.
After a while, she said, “All right then. Not the Bureau. I don’t want them involved. Come to the house tomorrow.” But her words sounded like they were spoken through clenched teeth.
Chapter 12
But Perrin didn’t get much time to think about Mirella or her screamer.
When he came back home, he found Frida in her nest in the company of seven little pink jellybeans. Some of them were still wet and by the way her belly shivered and she licked her backside, he thought there might be more to come.
He left her to it and cut up fruit for the other magic sniffers and cleaned out the cages. When he finally returned to Frida, she had produced two more tiny pink, semi-transparent lumps. They were small enough to fit on the tip of his finger. Their tails were tiny, their eyes still shut, their incoherently waving paws soft. Most of them had latched onto Frida’s nipples, and Perrin pushed the last one over until it was also feeding. Then he skewered pieces of fruit onto a stick and fed them to Frida.
He should really start thinking more seriously about selling his previous brood.
Perrin spent the next day at work trying to find someone to take the dragon back to Solania.
The owner of the warehouse was not happy about the dragon. He might be used to housing animals, he said, but this dragon was just ill-behaved.
The boy who looked after it told him that whenever he opened the cage, the dragon would spray piss through the bars and work dung out between the bars.
“It’s handy because I haven’t had to use the rakes, but the creature stinks up the whole warehouse. It should be doing its business in a corner of the cage where we can clean it, but it has been spraying piss all over the place, even out the window. It won’t let anyone clean the cage anymore. It got hold of a couple of horsehair blankets that we use to put in between furniture inside the carriages and we can’t get them back. They’re in the cage with the straw.”
Perrin went to have a look. The dragon’s eye appeared behind the tiny window.
Was he imagining it or had the orange iris become more flecked with gold?
Something was changing about the dragon. It was maturing.
When he got to work, he went to see Inspector Carbin, who sat at her desk, an expression of thunder on her face.
“Yes,” she said when he came in.
Oh dear, not a good time.
“About the dragon…”
“What about it?”
“It needs to be moved.”
“Yes, tell me something new.”
“In a hurry.”
“You were working on that, weren’t you?”
“It’s not easy. I may need to hire a boat.”
Now she looked up. The expression on her face was one of incredulity. “A boat?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
They looked at each other for a while, and then she started laughing.
“A boat? A whole boat? Big enough to carry the dragon?”
“Why is that funny?”
“Because we don’t have the budget! And we know nothing about boats, and have nothing to do with boats, and most boat owners and captains and their crew don’t like us one bit.”
“We may not have another option.” He suspected that the dislike was mutual.
“There is always another option. Dear Perrin, you have been hoodwinked by people who sell boats.”
“There is no way for me to move the dragon if I can’t put it on a boat and I can’t put it on the train and trucks won’t carry it.”
“Who told you those things?”
“Everyone. Parvo.”
“Yes, he would say that, but when it really comes to it, they will change their minds.”
Perrin shook his head.
“Not at all?”
“Nope. That’s why I want a boat.”
“That’s ridiculous. We don’t have money for a boat. Let me go and talk to the railway people. They can’t just refuse paying customers.”
She got up from her desk, and swept all the papers in a heap. “I’ll be glad if I don’t have to think about this mess for a while.”
Good, because that feeling was mutual. If she could bully Parvo into taking the dragon, then that was all the better.
He started filing his inspection reports. He might actually be able to finish on time today—and then he realised he’d forgotten about visiting Mirella after work.
Well, he’d just take a quick look at Atreyo’s stuff, find nothing—because there was nothing there—and then he’d be able to leave again.
Inspector Carbin, however, came back quicker than he had expected. If she’d been angry before, that was nothing compared to how angry she looked now. Her face was red and glistened with sweat. Her normally immaculate jacket hung askew on her shoulders.
“He won’t budge,” she said. “I asked him what else he expects us to do with a dragon and he said it was my problem. He was quite rude about it, too.”
Another inspector asked, “What’s that horrible smell?”
Perrin knew exactly what the smell was.
“My shoe was the only thing that got wet,” she said. She looked at Perrin. “That animal has to go.”
“Yes. I told you.”
She met his eyes as if for the first time truly understanding him.
Then she took in a deep breath. “I’ll see if I can make something happen.”
Then when he finished work, he had to look at Atreyo’s collection. This was held in the house of Atreyo’s parents who, according to Mirella, were travelling in the country. To get to the house, he had to walk past Mirella’s house, which was the house where he used to live with Atreyo. There were so many memories attached to this house that he had avoided even walking past the street for the past two years.
He glanced in through the window.
Mirella had moved a lot of the furniture. Atreyo abhorred houses that were cluttered and full of useless knickknacks, but Mirella loved big pieces of furniture—the more the better—and she possessed hundreds—no, thousands—or knickknacks. Atreyo had often complained that his sister had no sense of style, that her tendency to collect things that were shiny just for the sake of it made her house look cheap.
The beautiful living room was full of opulent couches that were really too big for it. The wall was full of paintings of all different styles that didn’t go together. Atreyo would turn in his grave if he knew about this.
Their parents’ house was a bit further down the street.
Mirella came to the door when he knocked.
They walked through the deserted corridor.
The library was still pretty much in the same state as he had found it during his last visit, now almost a year ago. The family didn’t appear to be using this room very much other than as a place to store boxes of stuff they didn’t need.
Of course, looking at the collection took more time than he planned.
Perrin spent most of the evening going through boxes of items that brought back painful memories for him. He’d been through these before, and pretty much already knew that there was nothing in it that the whales would want.
Atreyo was very wary of the whale kingdom, because of some previous interaction that happened before Perrin came into the picture.
Most of Atreyo’s beautiful items were still packed in the boxes where Perrin had also seen them during his last visit.
He managed to pick up a few more interesting books, because Mirella and her family cared little for those, and he argued that he could use them at the bureau.
Mirella waited on the very dusty couch that used to stand in front of the window in Atreyo’s office.
It was too small for two people to sit comfortably next to each other, and it was called a lovers’ seat, because you had to squeeze in next to each other.
He and Atreyo used to sit there sometimes and reminisce about the good times or to look at a box of samples that Atreyo had been sent. Perrin could still smell the sharpness of the exotic spices.
Perrin got to the end of the boxes from Atreyo’s office. A few remaining items stood to the side, but Perrin didn’t remember having seen them before.
“Is this also part of the collection?” he asked.
“Everything to do with my brother’s business is kept in this room,” Mirella said.
She was looking at the door, because children’s voices sounded in the hallway. Perrin guessed these were her kids and by the sound of things, they were getting into a fight.
“I haven’t found anything yet. Can I look in these boxes? This doesn’t look familiar.”
“Go ahead. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me. I have to go and see what the kids are up to. I told them to stay home.”
She got up from her seat and left the room.
Perrin opened the lid of the box on top of the pile.
On a bed of velvet inside lay a set of tableware. The knives and forks, spoons and serving tongs were made from silver with ornate handles with little embedded jewels.
Atreyo used to say that a classy style was characterised by its deceptive simplicity. You did not paint intricate plates with complicated patterns. Too much colour would detract from the artistry of the porcelain. Similarly, if you were going to create artistry in silversmithing, you did not embed coloured stones, because it resulted in a garish ensemble.
This tableware set was super-garish.
There was no way in the world that Atreyo would ever have allowed something like this inside his home. He would call this an ugly abomination.
Perrin was about to close the lid again when he noticed a piece of paper underneath the serving spoons.
An invoice, to be precise, made out to Mr Roban Dianello—Atreyo’s older brother.
He paid—what?—for this tasteless kitsch? Why? What did he know about fine art and antiques? He dealt in stone and marble.
Mirella’s and the children’s voices sounded in the hallway.
“No, I told you to stay home and do your work,” Mirella said.
A child cried.
Perrin closed the box, put it aside and opened the next box on the pile.
It contained a set of gold-rimmed plates with carved crystal glasses. There were only five plates—a full set was eight and Atreyo would never buy a set unless it was complete—and they were similarly garish, with paintings of pink roses.
The next box contained a set of carafes that looked like they were made of coloured crystal, but Perrin recognised the signs of fakery. These were simple painted glass.
He didn’t understand what this junk was doing here, as part of Atreyo’s collections. Atreyo would never have bought these things.
He lifted a glass cup out. The merest twinkle of light dancing around the rim indicated magic.
This glass probably came from Validor and would have looked great over there, but anything that came from Validor was shrouded in illusion magic. The merchants of Validor were the greatest con artists in all the realms.
Illusion magic ran out after a while.
Urgh. He put the thing back and shut the box.
Then Mirella came back into the room.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Those kids, you know…” She spread her hands.
Perrin didn’t know because he didn’t have kids.
“Have you found anything?” she then asked.
“No, and I think I’m done, because these boxes don’t belong to Atreyo’s collection.” He gestured at the pile he’d just looked at.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure they’re part of the business. My brother comes to store stuff in here every now and then.”
“Your brother?”
Perrin didn’t know Atreyo’s older brother very well. During much of the time that he had lived with Atreyo, their oldest brother had lived as administrator in the country and he would only come on special holidays. Then he remembered the invoice.
“Yes, he has been continuing Atreyo’s business.”
“Wait. You mean importing and exporting?”
“Yes. As far as I know. He says we shouldn’t let the business die.”
“Why didn’t you say anything about that before?”
“I thought you knew.”
She met his eyes and a few months’ worth of uncomfortable, civilised, but under-the-surface hostile interactions passed between them.
He could say that he’d been too busy fending off the family’s legal attacks on his very existence to notice peripheral stuff like this, but he chose to keep the visit amicable. Because clearly, the family was desperate for help, or maybe only Mirella was, but Perrin was curious. Most of the court case had been run by Atreyo’s father and neither Mirella nor her brother Roban had much to do with the proceedings.
So he said, “Well, I didn’t know.”
“I’m so sorry. Yes, my brother has been trying to keep Atreyo’s business alive. It seems a pity after he has spent so much time setting it up to just let it die. Roban already has other businesses that import goods, so it seems natural.”
“And these boxes belong to him?”
“It could be. If you’re sure these didn’t belong to Atreyo.”
“I’m sure. And he has continued importing fine goods from the realms under Atreyo’s name?”
“As far as I know, yes. He does have the same family name.”
“Then what’s to say that this letter addressed to Atreyo’s estate is actually about any of the stuff that’s here, because I can’t see anything in Atreyo’s old stuff that would trigger anger from Gaminia, and I know for fact that Atreyo was very careful in dealing with Gaminia, because of his past experience.”
Not only that, but Mirella would know about that past experience, because Atreyo had been quite young and still living with his parents.
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Mirella averted her eyes and looked at the floor.
“This isn’t about Atreyo’s business, is it?” Perrin asked.
“Honestly, I didn’t know where else to turn or who to ask, and Roban just refuses to deal with it.”
“So you know what it’s about?”
“Sort of. Not quite. But it’s tearing him apart, and he refuses to go to the authorities.”
“Why me?”
“Because you know about magic stuff. And because…” Her face twitched. She pressed her lips together to stop them shaking. “I miss Atreyo. He was so much fun. And you were always part of the action. I thought you might want to… I don’t know. I’d pay you if I can. It’s not about the stupid money. Roban needs help. I was hoping you’d find something, but… I didn’t know what else to do.”
Chapter 13
It was very late, Perrin needed to go home to look after the magic sniffers, and Mirella had to look after the children, so he agreed to meet her the next morning, away from the house.
Perrin suggested Dorella’s tea room. She agreed, even if, or maybe because, it wasn’t a place where she would normally come.
She didn’t want to be seen, especially not by her family.
Perrin went home with more questions than answers.
Why hadn’t she told him directly that it wasn’t about Atreyo’s things? Why had she wasted his time sitting there and watching him go through all of it?
When he came home, the magic sniffers were all running around in their cages, even Frida. He was glad to see this, because mothers could lose a lot of weight after they had young.
He cut up the fruit and cleaned the cages, refreshed the water and the straw and then he could finally look after himself.
His mind was buzzing so much with the different possibilities of trouble that Atreyo’s family could have gotten themselves in that he’d almost forgotten about his own, very large, dragon-shaped problem.
But through the combination of unusual circumstances, an idea was starting to form in the back of his mind, and thinking about it kept him awake.
That and the scufflings of the magic sniffers in their cages. He checked on Frida and the young a few times, but they were all fast asleep.
Perrin went to meet Mirella in the tea room the next morning. He thought he was early, but when he came down, Mirella was already there.
She was the only customer in the room and she sat at the table furthest in the corner, eying Dorella who was behind the counter laying out fresh pastries that the boy had brought in from the woman who baked them for her. Dorella eyed Mirella in turn and Perrin felt like he had just walked into something. Was it such a good idea to meet Mirella here? Usually, a few regulars turned up for breakfast. He just hadn’t expected Mirella to be so early.
He asked Dorella to bring tea and a plate with a selection of sweet and savoury mini-buns and joined Mirella at the table.
“You’re early.”
She met his eyes and in them he saw a deep unease and fear, something that he hadn’t seen the previous night. His attempt at being light-hearted fell flat.
“Anything wrong?”
“Yes, I don’t have much time. My husband doesn’t know I’m here and I need to look after the kids. Someone broke into my brother’s house last night and made a mess of the place. We’re still trying to find out if they stole anything, but they left a threatening message to our family.”
