upward.
There were some ruins of a civilization around them which she did not recognize. Structures that were dense and elaborate, mixing unusual shapes and materials. Monuments that were crippled by time; vines and lichen had long ago begun reclaiming them, wiping out any cultural residue carved into the stone. For some time the two of them hesitated on coloured tiles that blended effortlessly with grass, as they peered through a window arch towards the vista beyond.
The deep sense of long-past time was humbling.
*
Beami told her lover of the names she had assigned to certain placehere, simple names so that she had something easy with which tamiliarize herself over the year or so she had been visiting the hiddeorld. Lupus wanted to name something there after himself, teaseer until she gave way by re-titling some ugly fish in his honour.
Silences in their conversation were not in any way awkward – much was revealed in them by the tender gesture of a hand, a searching look. They sat in the shade of a salix tree, its graceful weeping form astir in the wind. Still she could not get over the unaccustomed warmth.
The discussion of their intervening lives continued until they met up with the present. As soon as he mentioned the coming war, and the perilous situation that the city faced, the mood blackened. He told her of his duty as a Night Guard soldier, the honour, the pride and commitment entailed, even described the ritual of enhancement he had received as a new recruit. When he told her of the cultist-doctored fluids involved he could provide little explanation of the process, only the surge of pain running through his body, the rapid recovery times from injuries thereafter. He lay on her shoulder when he told her of the recent attacks on Tineag'l, describing as best he could the bizarre alien race that they had fought against.
'Aren't you afraid that you might die?' she asked, concerned.
He gave a wry smile that could have meant anything. 'I'm a Night Guard. I'm an enhanced soldier. I'm one of the best fighters amongst them. Yes, I might die – we all might – but I therefore stand a better chance of survival than most of our soldiers. And if I'm killed it will be while protecting others – that's what I trained for, that's who I am. I'm used to the idea of my own death.'
To her silence he said, 'I don't expect you to understand, but you've got to accept it.'
She was increasingly afraid of losing him to the army once again. They talked thus for hours, might have gone on for days as if that didn't matter. Eventually, both felt they should return. Guilt had ultimately caught up with them.
*
After producing the Heimr, she closed her eyes to sense the subtle drifts in current beneath the surface of its metal. When they both reappeared together back in her study the coldness of the room hit them, causing both to gasp as if they'd risen from underwater.
'The exact same moment as when we left,' she assured him, as he looked around incredulously. 'You should maybe go now. I don't want him to find out.'
'Of course,' he said, then kissed her softly on the lips, passion having given way to a tenderness she knew she would soon miss.
She showed him to the door, provided him with some spurious documents to make his visit look semi-official, so that there wouldn't be any reason for Malum's men to worry. From an upstairs window she watched Lupus depart without looking back, striding with purpose through the snow, heading back into the city.
After he had gone, there was a concentrated stillness throughout the house.
NINE
A new city required finding a new place in which to drink. Jeryd had always enjoyed his favourite bistros in Villjamur, where he could sit with his notebook and sip some flavoured tea, whilst poring over cases and watching the world go by. As he crossed the irens, he noticed there was still a surprising amount of food in this city – he had assumed that the ice age would mean a lack of fresh meat. Certainly, at home, agricultural industry had all but collapsed, and only those wealthy enough to employ cultist assistance could supply meat. Yet, all around this city, there were chefs who could consistently rustle up a quality meal, using all sorts of rich fusions of old tribal origins as well as contemporary recipes and subtle, Villjamur-style concoctions.
On his quest to establish for himself a brand-new routine, he was struck by just how long he had spent in the Inquisition, nearly one hundred and eighty years, not a day of it ever the same. He wondered if they did things differently in this community.
The Ancient Quarter offered the most interesting-looking bistros, some were baroque structures lurking in the shadows of the Wings. He entered one, a warm if not overpowering place with red and white chequered floors and some wealthy-looking customers. Incense burners stood on the counter, behind which two young blonde girls hovered idly, one with arms folded, the other slowly wiping a plate. It was a large room, with little natural light, and the shiny wooden tables reflected the flickering candles that rested on top. About ten customers in all were sitting in there, the average number you saw in any bistro anywhere in the world, at this time of the morning. They all stared hard at Jeryd, mainly men, and in those not wearing masks, their eyes were cold and distant. He had heard rumours of such hostility towards his kind from another rumel back in the Inquisition.
'Morning.' Jeryd slung his outer garments on a chair by a corner table, then took off his hat.
They were certainly not a particularly friendly bunch, this lot, but he didn't know whether this was normal behaviour in a city so far north.
'Morning.' Eventually, a grey-bearded man with tiny eyes spoke to him. 'Rumel, I see?'
'You see right,' Jeryd muttered in response, then to one of the serving girls, 'Black tea and a pastry, please.'
'We don't get many rumels visiting this place,' grey beard remarked coldly.
'That right?' Jeryd lowered himself onto the chair with a groan. Still not getting any younger.
Grey beard stood up, and his companion, a blue-masked woman wrapped in a matching cloak, looked away, probably embarrassed. 'Not sure you understand me, friend.'
Jeryd stared back at him, conscious now of his coarse dark skin, of his tail, of his glossy black eyes. He hadn't dealt with any of this kind of shit for a long, long time. 'You'll have to forgive me.' He undid the top buttons on his jerkin to reveal his Inquisition medallion, featuring its iconic angular image of a crucible. 'Investigator Rumex Jeryd, pleased to meet you. New to the city, you see, so I'm not yet sure which of these places are full of bastards – or not. I'm still finding my way around.'
'Oh,' grey beard replied, backtracking desperately. 'Well… I can see…'
'All you can see is a rumel, right? I understand. And if you don't like that, you can just wait half an hour until I've finished one of these delicious pastries, or I can haul your arse into a cell overnight, where you might or might not get beaten unconscious by one of the inmates. Now, then – is that enough to impress your fancy woman, friend?'
The waitress brought over Jeryd's order, just then, with a cheeky smile on her face that said she was enjoying the show. He winked at her.
Grey beard sat back down, to commence a terse and angry argument with his female companion. Sure rumels constituted a minority across the Archipelago, so Jeryd had had to deal with racism before, a while ago, but Villjamur was enlightened now, so he just didn't expect to encounter it in any major city elsewhere. At home they'd closed down the last humans-only tavern before he was even born. Perhaps things really were different, this far north.
As he chomped into his pastry – a wonderfully sweet creation with honey bleeding from the middle – and sipped his tea, he found the mood in the room becoming much more amicable.
*
Arriving at his desk by eight each morning, he found his groove quickly, getting some of the good tea available, then chatting to the few enthusiastic Inquisition staff, and getting stuck into things. They began to respect him – and he knew it. It wasn't tough to work out why, because Jeryd seemed the only one to actually care about solving crimes – a fact that somewhat surprised himself.
