I turned on the radio to distract from the uncomfortable silence. The DJ was between tracks, talking about the concert and the other major news, the arrival of the Barekusu caravan. I reached for the tuner, but Guyer stopped me. “I want to hear this.”
I dropped my hand. The reception faded in and out, but the story was simple enough to follow. The city was about to receive a visit from a large caravan of Barekusu. I’d seen them on the news, a long column of pilgrims, each of them the mass of two or three humans, thick layers of ice clinging to the long hair covering their bodies as they made the impossibly difficult trek by foot. Barekusu rarely traveled by any method other than walking, devouring the distance between their stops with long quadrupedal strides as their delicate sly hands stroked their fur and plucked the hair that made their fortunes. This caravan was of particular note, as at its head walked Weylan, one of the most prominent guides on Eyjan. There were other religious leaders who matched his stature, but it was hard to find one this side of the equator.
Halfway to the city limits I stopped, idling the vehicle as I tried the police band. It squealed a protest, but after repeated attempts, the voice of a dispatcher called a response. “SR-212 go ahead.” The dispatcher had the brisk, clipped tones of someone accustomed to juggling a dozen potential emergencies.
Releasing the talk button, I glanced at Guyer. “You okay going second?”
She indicated her acceptance with a nod.
“We need a rush sheet on the 187 decedent,” I said, not naming the victim. Open air communication was frequently monitored by reporters, or anyone with a police band radio. “Notify on secure channel.” There were a few bands not accessible on civilian police monitors.
“Copy that. Channel L7 for further information.”
The static pulsed, and interference shattered the dispatcher’s voice. A tinny singing came through, bleed-over from another radio band that shouldn’t have been possible—emergency bands are far enough removed from public airwaves specifically to prevent that from happening.
There was a familiarity to the rise and fall of the static’s hiss that chilled my blood. A muffled buzzing, as if someone were trying to smother a beehive with a pillow. When the dispatcher’s voice came back, I asked if they’d heard it, too.
“Static,” they said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I put it out of my mind as I handed the radio over to Guyer and waited for the results of the pull sheet.
Guyer thumbed the talk button. “Dispatch, can you get Captain Auberjois on that secure channel as well?”
Auberjois was the Arcane Regulation and Containment team coordinator. Since the rediscovery of manna, the media had stoked fears of manna-wielding magicians posing a threat to the public. The reality was that manna was far too precious a resource to be used to mug passersby for pocket change. But when the sorcerous duel between Ambassador Paulus and the murderer dubbed “The Jaw-Stealer” appeared on live television, the mayor’s office had passed the word to the brass back at the Bunker: the ARC teams were here to stay.
I flipped to L7 and we sat in silence, listening to the ping of the engine, until a dual-toned male voice came over the air. “Auberjois here.”
Guyer relayed the importance of the events without disclosing any of the more salacious details. Even the Bunker’s communications room wasn’t immune to stray whispers. She used terms like “corporeal displacement” and “unanticipated occult surge” to describe the events we’d seen at the oil rig. But it seemed to get the point across.
When she was done, Auberjois said, “That’s enough. DO Guyer, I’m placing you on this case as support for DO Harris. Wait on the rearrival of a tech team to process the change in the crime scene, then oversee the relocation of the body back to custody. It’s vital to clear the scene ASAP.” There was a static-filled pause. “Manna expenditure authorized as you and Harris see fit.”
The idea of a sorcerer who suspected my involvement being given a blank check on her investigation wasn’t good news. It was clear that Jax was right—I’d have to make peace with Guyer one way or another.
After Auberjois signed off, Dispatch came back with info on Bobby Kearn’s record. He didn’t have anything on file in Titanshade proper, but they were putting in a request to his last known address in Cloudswar. Expected delivery time of two or three days. Cross-department cooperation at its finest.
“Copy that,” I said, and glanced at Guyer. “You need anything else?”
She shook her head, looking out the window, her eyes tracing the swirl of snow and sleet across the ice plains in the rapidly fading afternoon daylight.
I revved the engine and turned the snow-runner around for the return trip to Shelter in the Bend, calculating how best to break the silence.
It turned out that I didn’t need to.
“I’ve been wondering,” she said, “how much of your hard-luck persona is an act?”
“Hard-luck?” I kept my hands easy on the wheel.
“The ‘poor me’ angle you pull all the time. How much of that is an act, and how much is you actually believing that you’re the victim in all of this?”
I scratched my nose, eyes still on the almost-invisible white horizon. “The only victim I saw today was a Gillmyn with knife wounds in his back.”
“As long as I’ve known you—”
“Which is what, two months?”
“Three.” She tugged on her coat zipper, pulling it halfway open then closed. “Feels longer, though.”
Her coat was rugged and well-worn, with reinforced patches on the shoulders and elbows, far nicer than the ones provided to us by the TPD. I wondered why a divination officer would spring the cash on something like that. She was far more likely to be mingling in the warmer zones closer to the Mount, where the geo-vents were more densely packed, the cost of living was sky-high, and the
