Dead Letter (20 page)

The
mages took a place at the end of the queue and waited. The line
progressed slower than an aged walrus up a mountain. There was only
one attendant working a desk that had room for three or more. To
make matters worse, he was flirting with all the female
customers.

“
Use the crest, Inspector,” said Lanuille. “Morning will be
gone and your list of suspects grows longer every time you ask
another question.” Kettna took out the Constable’s seal and moved
to the head of the line, showing the badge to the counter
attendant. “Sorry to interrupt. I need to speak with the Postmaster
behalf of the Constable.”

“
If you haven’t noticed, we’re busy. Wait in line or come back
later in the day.”

“
Didn’t you hear what she said?” asked Lanuille, tapping the
counter as if it would jolt the attendant’s brain into gear. “This
is the Constable’s business.”

“
Fine.” The attendant gave a contrived look of apology to the
young lady he was serving. “This is not the standard process
though. I guess as long as the message is quick, you don’t need to
bother old Yarvin for it. What does the Constable want run for
him?”

“
I don’t want a runner for anything! I need to speak with your
senior.”

“
Alright, alright! Keep your fancy robes on.” The attendant
tapped a nearby bell with his tan gloved hand and winked at his
customer. “Mages, huh?” A junior ran out to answer the call. “Take
this lot round back and find the old horse before they leak acid on
my counter.”

The
youngster looked uneasily at the four mages as though he expected
they would turn the attendant into a newt. “If Postmaster Yarvin
heard you say that, you’d be out on your ear.”

“
He can’t afford to loose me,” the attendant replied with smug
satisfaction and a wink to the lady. “I can ride the range faster
than any.”

“
Don’t count if you kill a mare every time, Hasset,” corrected
the younger courier. “If you’re so fast, why’s Yarvin stuck you up
front?”

“
Because you can’t reach over the counter,” said Hasset,
clipping the boy upside the head as he ran past to collect the
mages.

The
junior courier guided them through a side door to the transfer
warehouse. It was a large building that smelled of new pine and
manure. A high ceiling allowed room for two wagon docks fitted with
cranes. Beyond the two massive doors hung on rollers was an open
yard that joined with the large stables and a crowded aviary of
cooing pigeons. The warehouse also stored goods waiting to be
shipped out. Pine crates were stacked in every corner and a balding
man with a potbelly painted their destinations with neat lettering
upon the timber. A young girl with a bandaged knee and a teenage
boy with his arm in a sling busied up and down a long wall of
square shelving, sorting letters and parcels to their appropriate
box.

As they
walked to the back office, the junior pummelled them with
questions. “I was listening to you and Hasset, so I gotta ask, what
are mages doing working for the Constable? Must be expensive to
hire four mages for the Guard. Or I s’pose you’re friends with the
Guildmaster being he is of the Order. You going to fry the
anti-guilders? Or are you flushing out Jandan spies? How come you
don’t get to wear nice blue robes? If I were a mage, I’d choose the
blue robes, and freeze people with ice, or make Hasset slip over.
Do you shoot ice, or do you shoot acid like Hasset said?

Kettna
never had a chance to answer any of the questions and was amazed
that the courier kept his breath while walking so fast. Only at the
door to the Postmaster’s office did he pause to knock. “Don’t
bother complaining about Rider Hasset out front. He’s Postmaster
Yarvin’s nephew.”

The Postmaster’s office was perfectly cubic, as though it
were a very large steel crate attempting to blend in with the
others in the warehouse. Beside the door was a yellow sign which
read:
Secure Area. Keep door
SHUT.

“
Mages to see you!” the apprentice hollered.

“
Alright! Send them through,” came a gruff reply.

The boy
opened the door for them and bowed before running back to help the
injured couriers sort the mail.

The
heavy door swung open to reveal a solid storage vault. A
middle-aged man with a lustrous truffle-brown moustache sat behind
a desk surrounded by shelves of metal lockboxes, each bearing a
different guild seal or family crest. “Screaming hells! What mercy
can you give me? Four of you?”

“
We are sorry to trouble you.” Kettna showed him the
Constable’s seal from outside the door. ”I’m Inspector
Kettna.”

“
Splendid! You come in. No space for the rest of you. Pardon
the lack of room, the vault was not built for
entertaining.”

Kettna
walked through the door and was surprised to press into a field of
magic. Inside the novice was harassed by distortions in the weave
from all directions. It took her a few breaths to centre her own
place in the weave and focus on the physical space. What trap had
she walked into?

“
Dear me, you’re feint. Please, sit down. You there!”
Postmaster Yarvin called to Lanuille. “Shut the door, would you?
The heat is coming through.”

The room
twisted and the floor swelled underfoot. Lanuille ignored the
Postmaster’s request to shut the door and raced into the room to
aid the Inspector. The weave contorted even more with Lanuille’s
presence inside the vault. The adept’s eyes rolled back into their
sockets and she dropped to the seething floor, her mind knocked out
by the magical flux.

“
Bloody mages!“ Yarvin strode across the heaving floor with
the ease of a corvette on the high sea and shut the
door.

The room
stabilised and balance returned to Kettna’s senses. “What have you
done?”

“
I shut the damn door,” explained Yarvin. “I told you to do
it, but you mages know better.”

Lanuille
groaned as she returned to consciousness, drool slavering on the
floor.

“
Where are we?” asked Kettna, knowing they were not in
Calimska any longer. The fabric of the weave was foreign and
regimented. It was not a natural space.

“
You’re in my damn vault and if you don’t mind, I have a large
amount of work to catch up on here, so what can I help you
with?”

“
Did you not feel the world going through a wringer?” asked
Kettna.

“
Certainly not! But I don’t quaff stardust potions or dance
with elves like you lot. Stable mind, stable life, I
say.”

Interdimensional planescapes were a field of study Kettna had
pursued with great interest for a time. Her knowledge was purely
academic, but it appeared to her that the vault was an extra-planar
construct of unique design and the Postmaster had no appreciation
of it. It would be impregnable with the door shut, and every one of
the lockboxes was armed with an individualised ward. With the door
open, every thread of magic must have screamed through the weave to
connect with their origin of creation in Oranica. Once shut, the
portal to the extra-dimensional vault isolated the flow.

“
The wards on those lockboxes are not compatible with the
spells that made this room,” warned Kettna. “You have a serious
feedback problem. Whoever put this place together should be
quartered.”

“
I’ve never had a problem.”

“
You will if a sorcerer dies in your office,” said Lanuille,
easing herself up off the floor.

The
seriousness of the situation dawned on Postmaster Yarvin. “I don’t
want that. Some folk get green gills, though no harm’s ever come of
it. It’s so cool and quiet in here, I thought I’d bring my desk
in.”

“
Do you realise that
here
is in a dimensional pocket in a frozen hell?”
spat Lanuille.

“
Really!” exclaimed Yarvin, looking at the steel walls as
though he expected an ice demon to slice it open. “I don’t like the
sound of that … Not at all. I thought this place was
safe.”

“
I’m curious. Who made it for you?” asked Lanuille.

Yarvin
looked sheepish. “It wasn’t actually made for me. A mad gnome paid
a prince’s ransom in gems for me to store it here and deliver it to
Yoni forty-four turns later.”

“
Yoni?” asked Kettna in disbelief. “The Welcome
Stranger?”

“
Yes. I told you the gnome was mad. Yoni made a bet with
Coraki, apparently. Who am I to refuse the request of a rich raving
man serving our true gods?”

“
Isn’t there a law about opening parcels before they are
delivered?” asked Lanuille. “Surely that would apply to those
reserved for gods too.”

“
I stake my reputation on no such guild law being broken. He
gave me the secret symbols to unlock the door. That’s as good as
letting me in.”

Lanuille
sniffed in disgust. “So if you have a letter opener, that gives you
the right to go through everyone’s mail too?”

Kettna
gave Lanuille a dark look, hoping she would retract her claws.
“None of this is of importance to my investigations. Given we are
here in this secure and dimensionally distant location, I hope that
you keep your ledger archive here.”

“
Of course. What do you need to know? Anything for the
Constable.”

“
Do you recall the large shipment contracted to you for the
Glaziers Guild?”

“
Is this about the stolen glassware? That was an awful hit to
Thossam, but that is what luck you get when you trade with Jandans.
Our true gods don’t take kindly to competition.”

“
Can you find the paperwork and tell me who was in charge of
the shipment.”

“
No need. I remember the quagmire of muck. Runner Rix had that
order scheduled, but he had his third strike the day before it was
due.”

“
Rix?” Lanuille looked at Kettna in surprise.

Somehow,
somewhere in the back of her mind, Kettna knew he was involved. She
gave her best effort to keep her face absent of a reaction and
focus on the facts. Emotion would cloud her judgement. “What do you
mean, third strike?”

“
I took him on as a favour to his father after your lot ousted
him. He was a bright lad and worked hard for the most part until he
developed a taste for nectar. He had plenty of warnings about
turning up to work under the weather. I suspended him the day
before the consignment was due for pickup.”

“
Do you think he might have been involved?”

“
Who would know? No one has seen him since. I feel bad for it.
His pa came round looking for him, but none of us could
help.”

“
So who was in charge of the shipment the day it was
stolen?”

“
I took it on,” said the Postmaster. “Poor Thossam was beside
herself. She stormed into the warehouse, trying to find her stuff.
She came to realise we had nothing to do with it. I’d say those
Jandans must have organised it.”

“
May I see the paperwork as well?” asked Kettna. “I don’t
doubt your testimony, I’d just like to sight the
details.”

Yarvin
went to a shelf and took out a ledger. He flipped the pages back
and found the consignment. “There you are.”

Kettna
noted nothing extraordinary about the document. The names and
signatures were all as they should be. The dates matched the theft.
The only thing that was extraordinary was the price of the goods
being shipped.

“
Why didn’t Glazier Thossam purchase insurance or hire wagon
guards?”

“
That is her business. I offered a fair price for
both.”

“
She gave no reason why she didn’t want the security?” asked
Lanuille.

“
I shouldn’t say,” confided the Postmaster. “It is a matter of
pride, I suspect, but Thossam said that they couldn’t borrow any
more. I think they went in over their heads with the loan from the
Merchant Guild.”

“
As are any fool enough to trust their terms,” said
Lanuille.

“
We don’t all have the resources of the Order behind us,”
argued Postmaster Yarvin. “Glazier Thossam is no fool. She did what
she thought right for her fellow guilders. You can’t blame her for
the work of a thief.”

Before
Lanuille had a chance to continue her argument with the Postmaster,
Kettna directed the interview back to the questions she needed
answered to solve the case and solve her worry about Rix. “Where
can I find Runner Rix’s father? I’ll need to speak to
him.”

“
He’s over in the Cauldron. The Cordwainer on Pan
Street.”

“
Thank you,” said Kettna, wanting to run straight there and
get to the bottom of Rix’s disappearance. “We’ll take our
leave.”

“
I’ll see to the door,” said the Postmaster. “Both of you
stand ready to jump out.”

Even
when prepared for the nauseating flux, Kettna and Lanuille
struggled to exit the interdimensional vault. What began as a leap
through the door ended with Kettna misjudging the distance and
falling out. Lanuille collapsed halfway through her stride and
Kettna had to drag her out, unconscious. It was quite an
undignified exit. With foggy heads, the mages got up, glad to have
their feet firmly in Oranica, though wishing this once they were
not so sensitive to the movements of the magic.