Further up along the street, he spotted three elderly types in dark cloaks behaving rather oddly. They were crouching over some bizarre object, and something about their mannerisms suggested immediately to Jeryd that they were cultists. All wore different shades of tweed cloth, the kind he hadn't seen in a long time. One was a tall woman, the other two were men as short as Jeryd himself. Listening hard, he distinguished the words 'Amber' and 'Teuthology'.
'Sele of Jamur,' he announced, approaching, and they turned sharply to regard him. 'What have we got going on here?'
'Ah, good morning, indeed, sir,' the woman replied. 'Just a spot of research.' Grey-haired and thin, she possessed well-proportioned features, laughter lines suggesting amiability, and her blue eyes were intense and warm. A wonderful perfume lingered around her.
Of the other two, one man had a thick grey moustache and wore a flat cap over his wide, chubby face while the other was completely bald and it seemed he wasn't one for wasting words.
'Anything we at the Inquisition ought to be aware of?' Jeryd asked.
'Oh, um, no,' the woman said. 'That is, I mean to say, nothing of a questionable nature. We're simply cultists, looking into something unusual. We're not even local, sir.'
'Cultists… say, maybe I could use a bit of your wisdom. Could I buy you all a drink?'
The man with the moustache grinned. 'Aye. I ain't never turned down a drink yet, and I'm seventy-two!'
*
Jeryd took them to a decent bistro in the better part of Port Nostalgia. The morning rush of traders had finished, leaving just a young soldier writing at a table by the counter. Two old ladies hovered indecisively over the menu. Behind them, a wood stove burned generously.
The cultists shuffled in a line towards a booth at the back, where the tables looked antique judging by their baronial and gothic carvings.
Jeryd removed his hat and gazed out of the window. In the street below, a ragged family struggled past, hauling loads of bulky items.
Jeryd had seen many such families being moved on by the army for the sake of their own protection, but it must still be demoralizing to be forced out of your own home.
A boy wearing an oddly feminine mask took their various orders for tea. Jeryd also contemplated the pastries offered, then wondered about their contents and declined. Introductions were exchanged: the blue-eyed woman was called Bellis, the chubby man with the moustache Abaris, and the bald man Ramon. He'd met some strange types in his time, but there was something distinctly eerie about Ramon. It didn't help that his left eye was blue, the right brown.
A couple of minutes later, the drinks were brought to the table.
'Now then, there's not too many rumel coming to Villiren these days,' Bellis declared. There was an air of refinement about her, yet overwritten by occasional uncouthness, and Jeryd immediately liked her for this; though he didn't quite know what to make of it when, with a flourish, she whipped out a hip flask and splashed some of the contents into her tea. 'Sherry?' she offered.
Jeryd shook his head.
'Yes, as I was saying, do you find, sir, any hostility to your being here?' She slurped her drink like it was the first she'd tasted in days.
'You get a little animosity, but I just shrug it off. You got a bit in Villjamur, too, where I'm from, but it was a rather repressive city. Women were treated even worse than us rumel, so it never bothered me once you see how corrupt male human society can be. Nah, I suppose I've been around far too long to let that sort of thing get to me.'
'A veteran of sorts, then?' Bellis chuckled.
'Seen over two hundred summers, actually,' Jeryd commented dryly. 'You start to see life with a little more clarity once you're past your hundred and fiftieth year.'
'Hear that, Abaris,' she nudged her companion exuberantly. 'We're just children compared with him. Children!'
Abaris brushed his grey moustache, with a smile. Even Ramon, still silent, seemed to show something in his stark expression.
'So what are you all doing in this city?' Jeryd enquired.
Bellis told their story, with constant interruptions and corrections from Abaris. Ramon never said a word throughout, and now and then he and Abaris would share the odd glance. They belonged to the Order of the Grey Hairs, just the three of them, an unofficial and relatively new sect of cultists. They had been sick and tired of the younger men and women belonging to their previous orders, sick of the suggestion that their age meant they were out of touch. The younger ones were so competitive, so determined to prove their worth – often killing themselves through indulging in reckless experiments that went wrong. Five years ago, they had left Villjamur to search out some of the more esoteric folklore of the Boreal Archipelago. Age had brought them unparalleled experience and wisdom and they were constantly drawn to the unknown and the unlikely.
'And it's just the three of you?' Jeryd wondered about the fact that a woman would travel with these two men everywhere. Were they related? Was one of them her partner and, if so, how did the third one feel about this arrangement?
She suddenly guffawed outrageously, her jangling voice attracting way too much attention for his liking. 'I know what you must be thinking, investigator – here we are, all free single adults. We are none of us together in any respect, other than to pursue our chosen business.'
Jeryd reckoned that didn't seem right, but he decided to ignore that suspicion for now. 'And why come to Villiren with the threat of war? Plenty of other, safer places to be.'
'We might ask the same of you, sir,' Abaris remarked, pushing up the brim of his flat cap.
'I'll give you that,' Jeryd conceded. 'Suffice to say I've poked my nose in too many awkward situations before. Unlikely though it seems, for me this place might be safest.'
Abaris laughed, seeming to like the element of the rogue in Jeryd. 'Well, we're here looking for something. Just like we always does. Only thing is, it ain't proving quite that easy to find, let alone raise-'
Bellis interrupted. 'Abaris, you old sod, remember the investigator is a busy man! And, so, what can we do for Investigator Jeryd? You couldn't have brought us here just to listen to us waffling about our personal histories.'
Jeryd paused for a moment, contemplating why they did not want him to know what they were up to. 'I've come across a very interesting case and realize that I might need a little help with something rather beyond my means. How would I go about eliminating an… an… unusually large spider? And where the hell could it have come from?'
'Depends how large we're talking,' Bellis said. 'What, an armspan or so?'
'Twice the height of an average man, at least.' Jeryd let that statement hang in the air. The old cultists looked impressed at that, conveying their surprise in their swift glances to each other.
Jeryd went on to tell them about the disappearances, the silk webbing found around the city, the few witness statements. He did not yet reveal his fear but, as he related the events, he found himself becoming increasingly determined to overcome his phobia. The recent confirmation that something solid existed, no matter how outlandish its nature, gave him something to focus on.
'Good healthy citizens are being abducted off the streets,' Jeryd concluded, 'and I'm the only one in the Inquisition who seems to give a damn.'
'Well, slap me silly,' Abaris said.
Ramon, sipping his drink, nodded sagely, never saying a thing.
'Quite the predicament, sir,' Bellis admitted. She reached for her hip flask and tipped her head back to guzzle what was left. She then stifled a belch, and eyed him as if to see what he made of her. Jeryd would have admitted to meeting classier ladies…
'There are any number of possible origins,' Bellis declared. 'A hybrid, perhaps. Growth enhancements. It could even have evolved naturally and been imported from some collection of islands off the map! Though what possible competitive advantage its size would provide seems questionable. As for helping you, I'm sure we can think of something useful. You wish to destroy the creature, or simply ensnare it?'
'I'd like to trap it first, then examine it, where it came from, what it's doing here.' He was starting to
