Brynner hunched atop the report on his desk, scanning it over and over. The field agent that had brought it to him – their name was Leaf, Brynner seemed to remember – was sort of edging back toward the door.
‘Wait,’ the Director commanded. ‘I’d like some clarification. You’ve written here the phrase “a billion feral hell-dogs”?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Leaf. ‘Is that a problem? Not the dogs, I mean. I know the dogs are a problem, hence the report. But the phrasing, I mean. Is the phrasing a problem?’
Leaf had at least had the decency to print the report out rather than having Brynner use his ghastly lap-top computer. Perhaps a measure of clemency was in order. He looked up. ‘It’s just that I’m unsure whether this is hyperbole.’
‘Well, it’s an ongoing incident, sir.’
‘You know you don’t have to call me “sir”, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘…Well, if we’re having a sudden influx of feral Infernals we’ll move to emergency containment measures. Penny?’
Penelope’s phantom head popped up from the floor.
‘Penny, we’ll need to send a message up to the Lakes. Have them prepare for a full breach – centralised on Middlemarch itself – but as the situation is still developing they are under no circumstances to act except upon my order.’ He paused and glanced down at the report again. ‘Or upon my death, I suppose.’
⁂
In an ascending lift at Open Sky Capital, Merlin, Nora, and Ursa were discussing their options.
‘So, it makes sense to do things in order of proximity,’ Merlin was saying. ‘We’ll finish up finding what we can in the vault, and if no more urgent leads arise, we’ll go to see Mr. Pyrite.’
‘We don’t want to be traipsing around the city trying to find some slippery Angel if we can help it,’ agreed Nora. ‘So Adagio is a last resort, right?’
Ursa looked up from the text she was sending. Both Merlin and Nora were pointedly looking away. She pressed send.
‘Hey, so we’re just clearing up a couple things at the crime scene but then we’ll be heading out. Got to go see a Dragon called “Mr. Pyrite” next! But then after that I think we can go see your friend? Hope you’re ok!’
Merlin squinted at the phone’s reflection in the lift’s reflective doors. He could make out the word ‘Pyrite’. He made a conscious effort not to make any assumptions.
Ursa got a reply near-immediately.
‘Holy shit, Mr. Pyrite the judge?! You’re dealing with the big names now! He’s a dealmaker and then some; the kind of guy that’d do wonders for, say, someone trying to organise a bit of Fiendish collective action.
‘I’ve tried to strike up meetings with him before but he’s a bit out of my price range, metaphysically speaking. Hey, you’re charming – can you maybe drop my name? Put in a good word?
‘For real though, be careful. He’s a big name, like I said. If you’re between him and Laniakea? Keep your head down, Ursa.’
⁂
Laniakea was waiting, immaculately tense, at her desk when they arrived on the top floor. Ursa slipped effortlessly into her role as Face.
‘Hi, we were just coming back to finish up a more thorough inspection of the scene of the crime, if that’s alright with you?’
Laniakea glowered at her, but it was obvious now that that was just how she looked all the time. ‘Have you identified the culprit?’ asked the Dragon.
‘We’ve got a couple leads but we need to confirm a few things first. With your permission of course.’
‘Very well.’
When Laniakea didn’t move to open the vault, Nora took it upon herself to push through the waterfall and do so instead.
‘Wait, it’s just a big lever on the wall?’ asked Merlin, joining her once the waters had parted. ‘Come on, that’s such a cliché! Is there no lock? No security?’
Laniakea was behind him, having moved in utter predatory silence. ‘I am the security, little Gnome.’
Merlin peered up at her. She wasn’t as tall as she seemed to be, but she was still a good two heads taller than him. He gave a friendly little smile. She didn’t return it.
They moved into the vault proper with the Dragon accompanying them, as – in her own words – she’d be ‘quite upset’ were anything else to go missing. Merlin got to work inspecting the arcane fortifications, the Dragon keeping within about four feet of him at all times. Apparently he was the most suspicious one.
‘So there are powerful wards against teleportation,’ he said as he worked. ‘Summoning, gate spells, and even planar shifting included… Astral projection wouldn’t breach these. Nor would a spectral intruder, like a ghost… Scrying isn’t possible either. And weirdly enough, it’s set to break invisibility too.
‘If someone came in here disguised or invisible, the wards would go off.’
Nora was sweeping the room with her Eldritch Sight to look for traces of magic. ‘We saw the footage. There was pretty clearly an invisible something,’ she said, absent-mindedly.
‘Well, said footage is on an analogue format. It’s a damn pain to edit something in or out of it, magically or otherwise.’
‘So it’s more likely they bypassed the wards rather than messing with the footage after the fact,’ said Nora. Her Sight wasn’t picking up anything other than the massive amounts of coalesced power in Laniakea and almost every single item in her hoard. It was hard to make out anything else, like driving with the sun in your eyes.
There was just a hint of something. An illusion? Or rather the traces of one, in the same way you can sort of tell if someone’s made a curry recently when you pass their kitchen.
‘But illusions on a person would break as they entered?’ she asked of Merlin, who nodded. ‘And they were in and out of the building in less than ten minutes, right?’
While they pondered, Ursa’s searching had come up with very little, so she resorted to her only other present means of education: the Dragon, currently trying to fossilize Merlin with the pressure of her stare.
‘So, Laniakea, could I ask a bit about your meeting with Mr. Pyrite?’ Ursa asked, watching as Merlin moved to inspect the broken case. ‘Its purpose, I mean?’
Laniakea’s eyes moved to hers. ‘You are prying into my private affairs?’
‘No!’ said Ursa. ‘No no, it’s just that we’re wondering if he may have had a hand in it, and been using the meeting as a distraction.’ She did not mention the double-agent Kobold currently manning the security desk downstairs. Laniakea probably knew about turncoat Tasi, but just in case she kept his orders from Pyrite to herself.
The Dragon didn’t respond right away. ‘I myself am Mr. Pyrite’s alibi,’ she said, prodding at the idea like a missing tooth. ‘Do you think he could have hired someone on the outside to steal my book? And pretended to have our usual meeting, when in fact he is the prime suspect?’
‘We’re trying to find that out!’ said Ursa, unable to keep a trickle of exasperation from her voice. ‘It’s a regular meeting, then? Like a catch-up?’
‘Mr. Pyrite and I have an understanding. We discuss upcoming projects, and ensure that we do not cross paths accidentally.’
Nora had come over, and even Merlin stopped what he was doing to back Ursa up. ‘You meet regularly to ensure you don’t meet?’ asked Nora.
‘Yes. A scheduled meeting in a public forum and an unexpected meeting at crossed purposes would be very different.’
‘Has that happened before?’
‘Yes. It has,’ said the Dragon. ‘Most recently when I acquired my still-missing book. Another clue that points to Mr. Pyrite as the prime suspect.’
‘Who else would have known about the book?’ asked Merlin.
‘Only myself and Mr. Pyrite. And those who were on the team to retrieve it.’
‘So could one of them–‘
‘No.’ The corners of Laniakea’s mouth twitched up, revealing her teeth. ‘I took measures to… guarantee their discretion.’
So she’d killed her employees. That was reassuring.
‘Couldn’t one of them, you know, have survived, though?’ insisted Merlin. ‘What if–‘
‘Do you doubt my ability to cull pests, Gnome?’
‘Well! We’ll just finish our inspection and then we can be out of your hair!’ said Ursa, clapping her hands together. She almost missed.
They resumed the look through the crime scene. At Laniakea’s needling, Ursa found herself crawling around on hands and knees beneath the broken case, picking her way around the shards of glass. She emerged to find Merlin talking through a discovery he’d made by analysing the broken glass itself.
‘– this, along with the breaks with the smallest perimeter, leads me to believe that the case was broken with something small but flat. A mallet, maybe? And… oh, Ursa, you’ve got something on your…’
He plucked something from the small of Ursa’s back, causing her to shoot bolt upright.
It was a feather. Dusky blue at its base and sunset orange at its tip.
Laniakea reacted as if Merlin had held up a severed head. ‘That,’ she breathed. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s a feather,’ said Merlin.
Lanikea’s whole demeanor had shifted. The executioner’s composure she normally held, all the coiled-up violence, the searchlight of her ire all flooded away. A plume of poison jetted from her mouth, and the grinding of her teeth lit the little cloud into a constant, sputtering green flare. Her eyes, though, were filled with misery, not anger.
‘Adagio,’ she said.
The others looked to one another. Nora was the bravest of them. ‘Does this look like it belongs to her?’
‘She is the prime suspect.’
Nora’s voice was not unsympathetic. ‘You said before that she was another enemy of yours? Could you tell us when you last saw her?’
‘I last saw her here. In the office.’ Something in Nora’s tone had softened her, almost imperceptibly. ‘That was the day she made herself an enemy.’
None of them knew quite how to respond. ‘Aw,’ said Ursa, but very, very quietly.
Their deadline was approaching, though. Having found what they could here, excuses were made and the three prepared to visit Mr. Pyrite.
‘Wait.’ Laniakea halted their egress. ‘I would like to keep the feather. If that is possible.’
⁂
The address for Mr. Pyrite’s chambers listed them as about five minute’s walk away from Open Sky Capital. Merlin made a brief reference to the rival gangsters in Lucky Number Slevin, but trailed off when both Ursa and Nora indicated that they’d seen the film.
His grumblings were interrupted by a ferocious barking sound. The three turned as one to see an odd-looking man sprinting full click down the opposite side of the road. As he almost fell, tumbling to one side and vanishing down an alley, his pursuers grew ever-closer.
Said pursuers were, at a glance, two small dogs – pomeranians or bichon-frises, maybe – and what appeared to be a rat, clinging to the back of one dog’s neck.
‘Huh,’ said Merlin.
Then the filter wore off, and the agents of the Caliber Institute saw past what the Vanilla Humans watching could see. In truth, the odd man was probably right to be running.
The dogs were Hellhounds, all hunter’s muscle, and acrid slobber, and mouths like a shark mixed with a cactus mixed with a tribal tattoo. The rat was some kind of cackling little imp, astride one hound like a jockey.
‘Should we… help?’ asked Merlin.
Ursa had already taken off running, and with a cry for her concern, Merlin took off after her. Nora sighed and followed with all the urgency of a chain-smoking teen on school sports day.
The alley was a blind one, because those are the only kind that exist when you’re being chased. The hounds’ quarry had sequestered himself inside a bin, Ursa could see his eyes glittering from just below the lid.
Her fingers came down to pull a power chord from her Midi Fighter, levelled at the Hellhounds as they advanced on the bin with the prize in it. But in her haste, the cable had somehow come unplugged. ‘Oh shit,’ she said.
Merlin was passing her, arcing bolts of lightning leaping between his hands like an accordion. He lobbed the Lightning Bolt down the alley, where it passed over the head of the imp and just obliterated one of the hounds. The Gnome planted his feet and held the lightning in a sustained blast, its crackling offshots quickly reducing the imp to toffee.
The blue light of the bolt faded, and there was one Hellhound left. Ursa finally snapped back from the spectacle of it, and got back to fixing her instrument. Merlin, too, retreated to hide behind a nearby bin.
The hound had turned to leap at Merlin, but an Eldritch Blast from Nora in the mouth of the alley slowed it enough that Ursa had time to mash the keys and level Dissonant Whispers in its direction. She looked back to thank Nora, who was advancing on the Hellhound, holding a bin lid like a shield.
The hound winced, but continued its advance.
And a tiny, glowing ember drifted to settle on its head. The odd man that had cast it sank further into his protective trash shell, closing the lid.
The ember bloomed, turning the whole of the world into fire and agony.
Ursa was just fast enough to see the Fireball‘s rapid expansion, and retreat before it could reach her. Merlin and Nora, though, took the full brunt of it.
They emerged from murky unconsciousness to see heatwaves still shimmering in the air, and Ursa standing over them with healing magic dripping from her palms.
‘Are you guys okay?’ she asked, eyes full.
‘Uh, yes,’ said Merlin.
‘Ow,’ said Nora.
With the status of the other two confirmed as ‘Still Living’, Ursa stomped over to the bin with the Fireball caster and sent the lid clattering to the floor.
‘What the fuck was that?!’ she demanded.
The man inside was trying to merge with the trash for camouflage. It wasn’t very effective. Momentarily, he’d emerged from the refuse and dusted himself off with an unwarranted and thoroughly undeserved flourish.
‘My apologies,’ he announced. At first it seemed like he was taking the piss, but after a moment it became apparent that his voice was just like that. ‘Were you caught within the blast of my immolative dweomer?’
There was a banana peel on his shoulder. He noticed and put it carefully back into the bin, before producing two vials of viscous red something.
‘It’s medicinal,’ he said, an unhealthy note of conspiracy to the word. Still, when Merlin and Nora drank, they began to feel better.
‘Right, who the fuck are you?’ asked Merlin. He was understandably a bit dyspeptic, and not only from the mystery potion.
The odd man squatted down like so his eyes were level with Merlin’s, as if the Gnome were a toddler. ‘Well, little man,’ he said, and stopped talking as Merlin pushed him off balance to careen backwards, knocking over the bin again.
The man took a moment to put all the rubbish back in; banana peel on top like a fascinator. He straightened up. ‘My name is Stiletto Benevolent,’ he declared, holding aloft a grimoire that flipped through pages in a nonexistent breeze. ‘I am a distinguished, discerning detective and puissant practitioner of the arcane arts!’
Nora threw her bin lid at him. It bounced off his face and he careened backwards, knocking over the bin again. A pendant of some sort dangled from his neck, revealed by his tumble – Nora took a moment to scan it with her Eldritch Sight, but everything about it, and its wearer, was completely obscured; a magical–null-space.
Once all the rubbish had been reorganised again, he continued with a bit less bluster. ‘I’ve been hired to look into a case of bibliolarceny at Open Sky Capital.’
‘Wait, stop talking,’ said Nora. ‘Hired by who?’
‘That’s the thing, I don’t know who! I have no idea who it was that has procured my services.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Compels me, though.’
‘So, what, you just got an anonymous tip?’
‘That and an envelope filled with cash,’ said Stiletto. ‘I have it here!’
He produced a nondescript brown envelope, warped by the sheer number of notes inside. Merlin knocked it from his hands, and Stiletto dove to catch it, careening backwards and knocking over the bin again.
‘But Open Sky won’t let me in for some reason, even after I charmed the receptionists,’ said Stiletto, after the usual trash-restoration. ‘And when I picked myself up from the kerb, a rift had torn the very air asunder and I was soon beset by those calamitous canines. There has been a sudden uptick in Fiendish activity throughout the city, you know. The mindless, antagonistic kind, I mean.’
‘Right,’ said Ursa. ‘We’re looking into that ourselves. Have you found anything worth sharing?’
‘Oh, no, I haven’t even been able to inspect the scene of the crime! I had heard tell of Laniakea’s trademark intensity, but I did not think it extended to those in her employ!’
Nora scoffed. ‘So you’re literally useless, then.’
‘Useless?! You already felt the sting of my magic, did you not?’
‘Fireball, though?’ asked Merlin. ‘That’s old man magic.’
Ursa held out a business card, which Stiletto eyed suspiciously before taking. ‘If you do manage to find something, my DMs are open,’ she said. The card had a little picture of herself and everything.
‘Ah, yes, you may require assistance,’ said Stiletto, producing a pen. He scrawled his own phone number across card-Ursa’s face, then handed it back. Ursa glowered at it with Green-Dragon ferocity.
‘What if you need to get in touch with us, though?’
‘I’ll remember,’ said the detective.
‘Ugh,’ said everyone else, as they watched him leave. There were no more Hellhounds on the way to Mr. Pyrite’s chambers.
⁂
Mr. Pyrite’s chambers held the sort of cosy opulence that could launch a thousand Pinterest boards. The polite and well-dressed receptionist had told them they were expected, and not been offended or even surprised when Merlin had asked for a cappuccino.
‘Okay, wait,’ said Ursa, swooping round Merlin like they were on opposing basketball teams. ‘Merlin, I want you to promise not to say anything that’ll offend him. It’s another Dragon, and you tend to think out loud and piss people off.’
‘Like with Laniakea,’ agreed Nora.
Merlin’s brow furrowed. ‘I thought Laniakea and I rather struck it off, to be honest.’
‘What? Good lord,’ said Nora.
Ursa tried to say a few different things, but kept trailing off. Eventually she settled on ‘Merlin, she almost decided to kill you. Twice.’
‘That was just banter,’ said the Gnome. ‘Or flirting, maybe?’
‘Merlin do not pursue that line of thought.’
‘I’ll ask her when we see her next.’
‘Merlin I repeat, do not pursue that line of thought.’
Inside the chambers proper, Mr. Pyrite rose from his seat to greet them. He was a big man, bald with a series of golden, floral tattoos on the left side of his head. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly nasal.
‘Ah, Laniakea’s extempore investigators, is it? Come in, come in, have a seat.’
Ursa made sure her smile reached her eyes. That was important. ‘Hi, Mr. Pyrite,’ she said. ‘It’s a real honour to meet you!’
‘The pleasure’s mine,’ said Pyrite. His smile stayed confined to the lower half of his face.
‘How did you know we’d be coming?’ asked Nora, looking not at the Dragon but at his furnishings; the stuffed bookshelves, the framed diplomas, the antique mahogany desk.
‘Ah, my inside man phoned ahead, as I’m sure you already know. Tasi tells me the three of you are quite talented; wasted in the Caliber Institute I’m sure. Humour me for a moment, if you don’t mind?’
Pyrite moved over to a large, ornate book mounted on a lectern behind his desk. This he retrieved, and set reverently upon his desk. ‘I’m sure you’re aware of the Draconic disposition,’ he said serenely. ‘This whole affair concerns Laniakea’s hoard, so you must be to at least some extent. Would you like to hear the subject of my particular fascination?
‘It’s True Names. Beautiful. This is my collection here. Want to take a look?’
He gestured at the page, at the cramped text spanning the paper. Though the text was in no language any of them could understand, what could be understood clearly – to anyone with even a lick of nous – was the sheer potence contained in the leather-bound volume.
‘It would be remiss of me not to ask three promising new figures if they’d like to add to my little collection?’
He held out a pen. All they’d need to do was sign their names on the page, and it would be encrypted by the magic binding all the others; added to the hoard.
‘What does having someone’s True Name do?’ asked Merlin, carefully.
‘Oh, it ties in well with the business I’m in. See, by holding the True Name of both parties, it’s much easier to quell any arguments and ensure that everyone respects myself and each other.’
‘So you hold power over them?’
‘Only in a very technical sense. It’s very unlikely that it would ever come to that. After all, if a bank were to spend its reserves, nobody would trust them to hold their wealth in future, would they?’
Merlin kept his mouth shut, as instructed. He didn’t voice any further trepidation.
Nora subtly spelled out a message to the Morris Worm on her wrist. ‘Should we trust this?’ Its reply was ‘I wouldn’t.’
For Ursa, she was thinking ahead. She wanted to hold her name back as a potential future bargaining chip, particularly after she’d found an opportunity to drop Alkahest’s name.
‘No takers?’ said Mr. Pyrite. He stuck his bottom lip out and made a show of his disappointment, putting the book back on its lectern. ‘Very well, very well. How may I be of help?’
Ursa checked the others didn’t want to speak, and cleared her throat. ‘So we’ve heard that Laniakea was at a lunch meeting with yourself when the incident took place. If we could ask, where was this lunch and what was it for?’
The Dragon waited for her to finish. ‘Am I to undertand that – despite my being with Laniakea at the time – I’m a suspect in this little investigation of yours?’
‘We’re just making sure we’ve got our timeline right,’ smiled Ursa, lifting a line directly from the procedurals she liked to watch.
‘Well, we’d gone for… what is it they call it? A “Cheeky Nandos”,’ said Mr. Pyrite. He noted the derision on Merlin’s face, adding, ‘It’s not about the quality of the establishment as much as how public it is. It happened to be the busiest at the time.’
‘Typical,’ said the Gnome.
‘Indeed. We were discussing upcoming projects and making sure we hadn’t double-booked anything.’
This matched what Laniakea had told them. Which meant the next step was…
‘We heard from Tasi that he’s been working for you for a few years now,’ said Ursa. ‘Why is it that you need a mole in Laniakea’s company?’
Pyrite’s eye twitched; it seemed that either the line of enquiry or Ursa’s tone had bothered him just a little. ‘It’s like they say,’ he explained, getting up and sauntering towards the door. ‘Friends close, enemies closer.’
The lock clicked shut.
The Dragon’s friendly smile still sat on his lips as he acknowledged their sudden concern. ‘Ah, you wouldn’t want anyone to walk in on a clandestine accusation like this, would you?’
‘N-no, I guess not,’ said Ursa, her smile less predatory and less convincing. ‘So, um, we heard from Tasi that you’d told him to leave the door unlocked as long as possible while the fire test was happening? Why was that?’
The room was warmer with the door closed. ‘Ah, that’s a bit of a joke at Laniakea’s expense. I do like to keep her frustrated where I can.’
‘It was a prank?’
‘It was, in fact.’
Contrary to what he might believe, Mr. Pyrite was not at all a good liar. He looked from face to face, checking for any spark of distrust. After a moment he seemed satisfied, and visibly relaxed, choosing not to elaborate.
‘Well… uh.’ Ursa tried to keep the dubiousness from her voice. ‘That doesn’t sound true, does it?’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Pyrite’s smile was set in marble, unwavering. ‘Oh well. Perhaps you should try finding Adagio? Laniakea and she fell out recently so maybe it’s something personal? Don’t let me keep you.’
‘You’re not keeping us!’
‘Oh, good,’ said the Dragon, and reopened the door. ‘Then you’ll be leaving, I assume.’
It wasn’t going very well. Ursa had been trying to say it wasn’t any trouble, but instead had agreed to leave – she wondered if that had been the intention. Nora, sensing that their time was growing increasingly limited, flashed on her Eldritch Sight in the hopes of picking up at least something.
Aside from the book of True Names and the Dragon himself, there was one source of arcane power in the room. It was Evocation, and condensed into something very small, in the top drawer behind Mr. Pyrite’s desk.
So Nora had to do something. She sat herself down and tried to look natural.
Pyrite saw her sit at his chair, and casually put her feet up on the desk. ‘I’m sorry, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
Ursa saw this too, and trusted that Nora surely wouldn’t do something so stupidly rude without a good reason. Probably. She needed to get Pyrite’s attention, and maybe if she phrased it properly he’d appreciate her frankness and stop lying?
‘Alright, let’s cut the bullshit, huh?’ she said. ‘Obviously you’re involved in this theft somehow. I don’t know if you’ve planted evidence – just bringing up Adagio like that was weird either way – or it’s some sort of “prank”, but we’d appreciate it if you’d start telling us the truth.’
She looked him dead in the eye, confident, assertive. He stared back. The temperature of the room began to rise, layers of heat emanating from Mr. Pyrite’s skin.
‘Frankly,’ he said, having apparently gone through such a meteoric ascent of rage that he now floated in a serene and stable orbit of placid fury. ‘I am having quite a bad day. I have had plans go awry because I made the mistake of relying on others than myself, and then on top of that I allow the three of you lesser creatures into my chambers, only for you to accuse me of petty theft?!
‘You would do well to leave, immediately, before I incinerate you.’
With a shrug, Nora shut the desk drawer and pocketed what she’d taken while Pyrite had been distracted. She got up and followed Merlin and Ursa, who were waiting just before the doorway. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, making sure the Dragon could hear. ‘I guess we’re telling Laniakea we’ve got our guy.’
A hand came down on her shoulder, kiln-hot. Nora panicked for a second – he must have seen her open the drawer. But instead, Pyrite spoke quietly behind her.
‘You can tell Laniakea that if she wants to go to war over this, she is more than welcome. But on your head be it.’
Merlin stood, mouth hanging open and finger raised like he had a point to make. Ursa, close to tears, tried desperately to smooth things over.
‘Well, uh, bye?’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry that–‘
Mr. Pyrite had gone over to the lectern with his pages of Hoard upon it, and seemed to be trying to calm himself. ‘Close the door on your way out.’
The three fled into the cool air outside.
⁂
Nora gently placed the gavel on the table. They’d gone to a coffee shop for shelter, and sat themselves at a table in the back after Merlin had tried unsuccessfully to order three cups of Vietnamese Cà Phê Trung (‘Mate, we don’t serve food,’ is what he’d been told).
The gavel was ornate and well-crafted, made of a rich brown wood with golden rings that looked like the real deal. The smoothness of it was only interrupted by a little inscription near the bottom of the handle, marking it as piece ‘2 of 3‘.
‘It’s got some damn strong Evocation baked into it,’ said Nora.
Merlin was eyeing it over. ‘I can’t identify anything without testing it… but it’s remarkably similar to the profile of what may have broken the case in Laniakea’s trophy room. Maybe a little bit smaller?’
Soon they’d retreated to an alleyway after some debate on what to test the thing on.
‘We can’t just smash up someone’s car!’ Ursa had said, when Merlin suggested a nearby car park.
‘We can’t just kill a guy!’ Ursa had said, when Nora suggested phoning Stiletto Benevolent.
‘Ready? Okay.’ Nora swung the gavel at a nearby skip. The side of the skip dented inwards, and the whole thing skidded to the opposite side of the alley with a fresh hole in the metal.
The three stared at it.
‘Okay, let’s… not swing that around anymore,’ said Nora. ‘So we think that might have been able to break the case with the books in, but we can’t exactly check as the case is already broken.’
‘Not to mention bringing that gavel to Laniakea is as good as accusing Pyrite and maybe starting a war,’ said Merlin. ‘The question is, did he lend out one of those gavels, or was one stolen from him?’
‘He was easier to steal from than you might have expected,’ mused Nora.
‘Hmm. I think Ursa was right to assume he’s definitely involved somehow. Ursa?’
‘Huh?’ Ursa looked up from the text she was drafting, trying to euphemistically – but without any ambiguity – explain to Alkahest just how badly the meeting with Mr. Pyrite had gone.
‘I said you were right to assume Pyrite is involved. What are you doing?’
‘Oh. Well, uh. I actually have this friend, you see, and they might be able to shed some light on the gavel and whether it could break that case. And hopefully they’d also know a bit about what book’s been taken, so we might be able to tell if it’s something Mr. Pyrite would want enough to steal?’
‘We do know he wanted it before Laniakea acquired it,’ said Nora, rubbing at her chin. ‘But I’m concerned about the number of people that know what we’re up to. Like, there was that Stiletto guy – still don’t know who even hired him, but they must know too – and now Mr. Pyrite? Maybe we should be keeping our investigation a little bit closer to the chest?’
‘Oh, we can absolutely trust this person!’ said Ursa. It might not have been a lie; she didn’t know yet. ‘We’re running out of other leads. We need to follow this one up as much as we can, right?’
Merlin thought back to the texts he’d snooped on earlier, but kept his mouth shut. It wasn’t healthy to just assume.
Nora was tapping her foot now. ‘Alright. Okay,’ she said. ‘But we only reveal as much as is necessary, nothing more.’
‘Okay!’ said Ursa. ‘Oh. They are a Demon, by the way.’
Merlin threw up his hands.
⁂
The address Alkahest had sent pointed at a detached Victorian house with a long gravel drive, nestled about half an hour away in the surrounding suburbs. It was nice and upscale, with a little stepped porch over the door and a little window beside it and everything.
Ursa knocked, and the door swung inwards of its own accord.
‘Oh, of course,’ said Merlin.
Inside, the house seemed to be full of a pervasive smoke, lit by no lamps. A voice drifted out towards them. ‘Well? Are you coming in?’
Ursa, though, was staring at the wallpaper. It was green and faded just slightly, in that Victorian style often emulated by the sets of period dramas. She’d seen it before on a video on her phone. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘It’s just green wallpaper, loads of houses have that. Stop being weird.’
Nora jostled her shoulder.
‘Oh!’ said Ursa. ‘Yeah, uh. Alkahest gave me your address, and he said you might be able to answer some questions we might have? I’m Ursa, by the way! It’s nice to meet you!’
She turned to see both Nora and Merlin looking irritated.
‘I thought you said you were friends?’ asked Nora.
‘Well, uh. Friend of a friend.’
A figure was coming down the stairs, slowly, wreathed in smoke. They paused after a few seconds. ‘Ugh,’ they said.
Then they billowed out into smoke, vanishing and reconstituting themselves on the doorstep. ‘I’d forgotten how slow physical bodies are,’ they said.
Their clothes were feminine and fashionable, in a gothy sort of way, and a cigarette hung from their lip. Their hair was long and straight. Their eyes – four of them – were black with yellow irises. And they were retreating into the house, without waiting to see if the three were following.
Ursa jogged after them, with Merlin and Nora reluctantly following her in turn. Soon, they found themselves seated in a smoky dining room with the gavel on the table and the Demon mid-rant.
‘So, let me get this straight, stop me if I’ve misunderstood anything… Alkahest tells me a friend of his might be visiting, so she can make a couple enquiries about a missing book. I say yeah, no problem, it’s no skin off my back. And then said friend turns up and says that not only does the book belong to a catastrophiliac Ancient Dragon, but you’ve also stolen a magical something belonging to an entirely different Ancient Dragon and brought it to my dining room.’
‘Yes,’ said Ursa, checking for exits in case things went sour. ‘That about sums it up.’ There was the way they’d come in and another door on the adjacent wall, probably leading to a kitchen. The light was on around the gaps in the doorframe.
‘Right, just checking. Well. Whatever. I’m Strych,’ said Strych.
‘Strych-ly what?’ said Merlin.
His colleagues both shot him a look, and Strych leaned back in their chair. ‘Oh, he thinks he’s funny, does he? Well. He is, actually. Hahaha.’
They held up the gavel. ‘So,’ said Strych. ‘This thing would punch a hole of a certain depth in anything, no matter the material or wards or whatever. Glass, concrete, steel, tofu? Always the same depth. I’m guessing based on the little maker’s mark that 1 of 3 and 3 of 3 might have a bit less and a bit more power respectively.
‘As for what you told me about the book, and the ones that were still there… plus the sudden influx of Hellhounds and the like?’ Their face had gone a bit pale, and they took a second to light another cigarette. ‘It’s bad news, unfortunately. Someone’s gone and stolen the Infernomicon of Caravigg.’
The Infernomicon of Caravigg, known in other worlds by other names, was the most thorough and definitive tome of Infernology – the summoning, study, and taxonomy of both Demons and Devils – in the multiverse. The tome recounted both the oldest and most current descriptions of every Fiend in existence, and caged behind lines of its script roiled a devoured reference world of Death itself, which kept the book up-to-date, no matter how many pages might be removed.
‘It’s got the True Names of every single Demon and Devil, and it’s probably got a bunch of scary fuckers sealed up inside it too,’ explained Strych, ‘But worse than that, if enough Fiends of sufficient power were to tear out enough pages, they could feasibly pull the reference world from inside it to collide with this one.’
‘Hence why both Laniakea and Mr. Pyrite are interested in getting it,’ said Nora. ‘What about Adagio, though? Why would she want it?’
‘Adagio?’ asked Strych.
‘Oh, there was apparently an Angel at the scene of the crime. She left behind a feather that Laniakea recognised.’
Strych snorted. ‘That’s not how Angels work!’
‘…Okay, is Laniakea faking it then?’ said Ursa, more thinking out loud than anything. ‘It’s an excuse to go to war with Mr. Pyrite, maybe?’
‘Or Adagio, if she’s being framed?’ wondered Merlin.
‘Or,’ suggested Nora, ‘Is there someone else entirely that we’ve been overlooking?’
The three of them looked around the room as they thought, with Merlin and Ursa in particular glancing back through the hallway towards the front door.
A pair of sheathed swords were in an umbrella stand, and Ursa’s stomach did a flip when she saw their distinctive hilts. She remembered a certain Demon slowly putting them away when she cast Charm Person on him.
He was here?
But more pressing than that was the pair of eyes in the window by the door, which were what had caught Merlin’s attention and soon everyone else’s too. They were yellow, with slitted pupils, and sat in a feline face with black fur.
Cait-sìth was watching them from the windowsill outside.
Roll History 