“And Inspector Welling, did you see him? What about Maresh and Lin? Where’s Hemmit?”
“Welling!” Dayne said. He got to his feet. “They’re going to use him in the machine.”
“Make him into one of those creatures?” Asti asked.
“No,” Dayne said. “They’re going to use him to power the machine.”
It took a good half hour of whistleblowing before Satrine got a couple of night patrol constables to show up with a bodywagon and take the corpses away. Apparently, North Seleth was hardly patrolled at all, with only an understaffed Loyalty Waystation in the area. The patrol regulars were oddly unperturbed by several dead men in the middle of the street, and several more in the upstairs apartments of the gadget shop. All it took was her assurance that it was a GIU matter and she would come to the Keller Cove stationhouse later to sort the matter.
By the time that was done, she went into the gadget shop, to the back room, where Verci Rynax—shirtless with several bandages on his chest—was going through a satchel of weapons and devices. His wife was helping him sort things with a quiet calm while Kaiana Nell held their baby.
“Well, that’s settled,” she said as she came in. “In as much as nearly a dozen dead men in your shop can be.”
“I appreciate it,” Verci said. “Now how about you explain why you showed up at my shop in the middle of the night, exactly when I needed help.”
“A message from God?” Satrine said, even though she wasn’t sure what it was.
“I’m going to ask for a bit more than that,” Verci said. “Given everything I’ve seen today.”
“Same,” Kaiana said. “I was with her and I don’t understand it.”
“You remember how I found you last time?”
“You said something about a cloistress giving you a pastry.”
“Yeah,” Satrine said. “I know it makes no sense, but right when I needed your skills, I also happened to look at the bakery bag, and I followed the hunch and found you. The same cloistress who gave it to me, today she left me a mangled copy of the Testaments.”
“Mangled?”
“Written over, blotted out. Madness to look at it. But one of the first things it had was a rewritten passage about ‘listen to the gardener when she comes.’ And this one shows up at my door tonight.”
“The Thorn’s friend,” Verci said. “Where’s Mila?”
“Probably asleep in her bed like a sensible person,” Kaiana said. “I thought about getting her, but I didn’t know how to do that without creating a scene in her dorm.”
“I’m happier that you didn’t. She doesn’t need to be in this mess,” Verci said. He looked back to Satrine. “So that led you to me, because you saw me at that cult thing this afternoon?”
Satrine wasn’t sure how much to explain. “It’s more complicated than that, but roughly, the sister left a message only I would be able to understand in the book.”
He nodded, then his eyes went wide. “Wait, this sister. She wouldn’t happen to be a young blond girl, a bit wild in the eyes and spouting nonsense?”
That described Myriem fairly well. “Rather.”
He laughed like a fool. “She came here. She came . . . right when I was about to take off to chase Asti down the tunnels.”
“She did?”
“She called me Saint Terrence, and said my work was here . . .” He gasped, and looked at his wife. “If I had gone, those bastards would have killed you and Corsi.”
“Message from God, indeed,” his wife said, kissing her knuckle and touching her forehead with it. Acserian benediction.
“So you know the Thorn, and he went into the tunnels here with your brother . . .” Satrine remembered the message she had received from Major Grieson about Verci’s brother. “Former agent, right? He’s why Grieson knew you.”
“And Grieson knows you,” Verci said. “How about you, girl?”
“Kaiana,” she said. “And I don’t know who that is. I got sent to her by a girl in a Tarian uniform.”
“Jerinne,” Satrine said. “She works with Dayne, the big fellow at the Parliament.”
“He’s in this mess as well?” Verci asked. He finished his adjustments to one device, and then started looking through a selection of brass balls. “Here’s what I know. Those zealot fellows in Keller Cove arranged for a statue to be stolen from some fancy house in East Maradaine.”
“Lord Callwood’s Estate,” Satrine said. “What kind of statue?”
“Green jade, four arms. The two bastards who got away tonight made off with it.”
“How did you have it?” Satrine asked. After a moment of hesitation from him, she said, “In the interest of expedience, by my authority as an Inspector Second Class, I deputize you, Verci Rynax, as a Character of Material Information and statements you make regarding infractions of the law connected to your information will not be used to prosecute you for past misdeeds. Do you require a counsel from the Justice Advocate Office for your statement?”
He started to laugh. “Thank you, Inspector, but I was just thinking of the best way to explain it. But I appreciate that. The window-man the zealots hired, Kel Essin, he ran off with the statue, and when he found his friends had also been influenced by this . . . Brotherhood, he came to me. He knew I didn’t like him, but he figured I was safe. Shows what he knew.”
“The dead man upstairs,” Satrine said.
Verci nodded. “But I know about two other statues like that. One stolen from Lord Henterman’s place a few months back, and one—a much larger one—stolen from someone else out east, sold to unnamed parties.”
Satrine raised her eyebrow at that but didn’t comment.
“So why do they want the statues?” she asked.
Verci perked up at a sound out front, and grabbed one of his darts. A skinny young man, filthy and wild-haired, stumbled into the room and fell to his knees.
“Delmin!” Kaiana shouted, rushing over to him.
“Kid, what happened?” Verci asked.
“Machine . . . horror . . .” the young man said.
“Who’s this?” Satrine asked.
“He’s a mage,” Verci said. “He went down with Asti and the Thorn.”
“I . . . I . . .”
“He needs food,” Kaiana
