Industry & Intrigue (4 page)

She was stunned;
he spoke with a
flawless and upper-class, Alkon accent, and it was disconcerting to
hear what normally came from the mouths of nobles and government
officials to be spoken by this beast.

Upon seeing Brenna’s hesitation
the agorid said
, “I assure you I will not damage your hand sergeant, I
have been trained to control my greater physical strength when
interacting with humans.” She slowly moved her hand out and grasped
a part of the agorid’s paw and shook.

“
Sergeant Brenna Moreland,” she
said, “I’m sorry for my uh… hesitation.”

“
No need to apologize ma’am,
frankly your reaction is minor compared to many of the other
officers when Captain Tolov first brought me into the station this
morning. I have grown accustomed to people’s reactions upon viewing
me but I also hope that the contributions that I can make here in
this branch will go in towards alleviating the intimidation that my
physical appearance can bring,” he replied. “My name is Snar Bruce,
a pleasure to make your acquaintance Sergeant Moreland.”

Cogs whirred in Brenna’s head,
the name sounded familiar.
“Snar? Wait you’re not Snarly the Bear Agorid are
you?”

“
One and the same
I must confess,” he
said with a smile, or least what she assumed was a smile on the
jaws of a bear.

Brenna
grinned
, “I
still remember the day my parents took me to the Garud Brothers
Circus twenty years ago and seeing you.”

Brenna’s memory of the time was excellent.
It had been her first visit to a circus and the attraction of a
live agorid had been heavily promoted by the circus. Snarly the
Bear Agorid was a small toddler during the circus’s heyday and was
a big event. No one had ever had the chance to see an infant agorid
up close before.

He had been captured after
a
battle,
west of Fort Naikos at the edge of the steppes and brought back to
Alkos City. At least that was the tale that the circus narrator had
told. He had performed a small show of little else besides acting
as his natural self and engaged in in mock fights with magical
light constructs that looked like soldiers.

“
But you were only this big,”
s
he put her
hand about three feet above the floor.

Snar replied
, “I grew older and matured as
all beings do. The circus was losing money and I wasn’t such a
novelty anymore so I was bought by the man who raised me, Professor
Bruce. I would be more than happy to inform you of further details
but at this time I believe we have an urgent case to attend
to?”

“
Yes you do
,” said Niko. “Help Imperial
Branch clear up this suicide and then we can get you onto the real
meat of what we do around here.”

“
Yes sir
,” said Brenna, “we’ll take care of
it as fast as we can. Right then Officer Snar, we best get going to
Warded Spirals.”

***

Inissa
Renoch opened the door to a
non-descript building. She moved past the workers who were busy
packing shipping crates and over to the stairs up to the main
office. She pulled the hood from her face slightly to show it to
the guard and he stepped aside to let her past. She carried on up
and entered the heavy stone door.

Inside were several individuals
counting
money and noting down figures. She turned to one of
them.

“
In the back
room
,” he
said, without looking up from his counting. She nodded and headed
to yet another door and knocked.

“
Come in
,” was the gruff response and she
pushed it open.

The man
who had responded to the knock
had another man on the floor and a heavy boot on his face. The man
on the floor was barely moving, half his teeth were knocked out and
his face was covered in blood and gashes. Above him stood Barus
Asulius, he was built like a side-show wrestler with
closely-cropped, dirty blonde hair.

“
It’s done
,” said Inissa and she removed
her hood and placed it on a small shelf near the door.

Barus looked up from the man he had been
beating. “Glad to hear it Inissa. No problems?” he
asked.

“
The officer
that was meeting with him may
have caught a glance of me on the way out, but even if she found
me, she can’t prove I did anything,” she replied. “When she saw me
I wasn’t near the room and I ditched the knife away from the area
before she had time to get back outside.”

“
Then I think we’re clear to go
for tonight then,” said Barus. The man beneath
hi
m groaned
in pain and Barus looked down. “I’ll get back to you in a minute
you fucking little shit.” He lifted up his foot and slammed it down
on the man’s chest, Inissa could her several ribs break and the
victim coughed violently.

“
I’ll need you to escort the
shipment to the safe house
,” he told her. “After that it should be smooth
sailing for another big payday. Oh, and Mikono wants you to drop by
her place.”

Inissa licked her lips nervously. “Did she
say why?” she asked.

“
No and she doesn’t have to
because she’s the boss
,” replied Barus “I think she wants to make
certain you’re good after today. This was the first time you had to
do your own dirty work.”

Inissa bristled,
“I may have lost my
enforcer, but that doesn’t mean lost my stomach.”

Barus laughed,
“If you say
so.”

She nodded, “I’ll go and put her mind at
ease.”

“
Good, go do that,” said Barus.
“I have a thieving scumbag to take care of.” Barus lifted the man
to his feet with one arm. He pulled his other arm back and punched
him hard enough to make him fly back into the stone wall behind.
The man slid to the floor leaving a trail of blood on the wall; he
was no longer moving at all.

Chapter 3

The sound of shattered glass
echoed t
hrough the classroom. The room was on the third floor of
Warded Spirals Magical Center and across the entrance in white
letters was the word
Pyromancy
. The students had been fixated on trying to
create a stable halo-fire spell when the sound made everyone turn
their heads in its direction.

“
What did I say not more than
five minutes ago
, Henry?” asked Zuri Abeliah, the class teacher and a
Warded Spirals master-mage in both pyromancy and shadomancy. She
was a member of the skylord race and had chocolate colored skin and
yellow eyes that were common features of her people.

She swept her fingers through
the dark hair above her ear, a habit of hers when she was
annoyed.
The
eleven year old student, Henry, glumly looked at the window he had
broken and shrunk under her disappointed glare.

“
Well?” she asked when he
didn’t respond.

“
You said to only put the
minimal amount of energy i
n,” he replied, while looking at the damage he had
caused.

“
Yes, that’s exactly what I said
and
now you
know why. This is a delicate spell and you need to master the small
intricacies of it before you try to increase its size.” She sighed.
Henry was accident prone, she wondered if he was up to studying
pyromancy.

Before she could get the class
back on track, there was a knock on the
door. Zuri turned to see the head of
the teaching department, Rai Chek, a red-scaled drakon. “Come in,”
she said and he entered the class taking a casual glance at the
window.

“
Zuri.
I need to speak with you with you in
private. Could we?” he said to her quietly and he gestured to the
corridor outside the room. He waved his hand at the broken window,
“Don’t worry I’ll have the janitor come by and clean that up
immediately. Until we’re done Cynthia will mind your class.”
Cynthia Haig, one of the substitute teachers walked in.

Zuri nodded. “It will take long enough
that you need her to cover for me?” she asked.

“
It could
,” said Rai and then he turned
to the class, “Class, I need Ms. Abeliah for a time. Mrs. Haig will
be in charge until she returns.”

Zuri followed him out into the
corridor and she shut the door behind her.
“What’s the matter Rai?” she asked,
“If it’s about my contract for the next semester-”

“
No, no, nothing like that,” he
replied “I’m afraid I have tragic news for you. Kyle Dunn is
dead.”

The news hit her hard.
“What! No!” she
cried. Her shock was enough for her light brown, feathered wings to
rise in reaction. Like all skylords, Zuri had a set of wings,
although she usually kept them down and close to her back when she
was around the Center.

She was
ready to fall over and Rai
helped to keep her up by grabbing her arm. “I’m sorry Zuri, I know
he was one of your favorite students,” said Chek. “There are watch
officers waiting in my office, they’d like to talk to
you.”

Zuri composed herself and nodded
“Alright. Thank you Rai. How did it happen?”

“
All they told me is that it
looked like a drug overdose. I don’t anything else ,” he
replied.

They arrived at his office and entered.
Three watch officers in red uniforms were sitting while a fourth,
an enormous bear agorid, was standing near the east wall. Rai
introduced her to them. “Officers this is Mastermage Zuri Abeliah.
She’ll be happy to answer your questions.”

“
Thank you Mr. Chek.
C
ould you
give us some privacy,” said the female officer.

“
Of course,” said Rai and he
exited the room.

The woman held out her hand to
Zuri.
“Ms.
Abeliah, I’m Sergeant Brenna Moreland of the Justice Branch, that
is my partner Officer Snar,” she indicated the agorid, “and these
two gentlemen are Inspector John Graves and Inspector Cadus
Hendryks, from Imperial Branch.”

Zuri’s eyes
wide
ned in
surprise and she shook the woman’s hand. The Imperial Branch she
could understand given the notable political position of Kyle’s
family in the city. But the Justice Branch they didn’t investigate
suicides or homicides.

Zuri looked around for a
chair.

“
Here you are
ma’am,” said the
agorid and with one hand effortlessly moved a chair into position
for her.

Brenna went
first, “Now Ms. Abeliah, Mr.
Chek tells us that Kyle was one of your top students. His family is
incredibly rich, he had plenty of friends and was well on the way
to becoming a master mage like yourself.”

“
All of that is true,” replied
Zuri.

“
Well, we’re all confused.
W
hy would a
boy with everything going for him, resort to using a drug like
tarcaine? To the point of shooting himself up with so much that he
would kill himself?”

He shot himself up with
tarcaine
?

“
I have no idea
sergea
nt,”
she replied. “Kyle had been distracted the last few months, his
school work suffered, he didn’t pay as much attention. I put it
down to stress or one of those brief teenage phases.”

Brenna
nodded and leaned back in her chair.
Inspector Graves spoke next, “Understandable. I can imagine the
pressure that the students here could be under.”

“
Yes,” said Zuri, she had seen
it happen more than once. “Many of them come from rich and
well-connected families and there’s a lot of pressure from their
parents. Kyle handled it fine. Until, like I said, he became
distracted and withdrawn. I tried to get him to talk to me about
it, but he refused to open up.”

“
Can you think of anyone
that
would
want to harm Kyle?” he asked.

“
You don’t think it was
suicide?” asked Z
uri.

She seized on that
thought.
There’s no way he would do this to himself, someone must
have made it look like a suicide.

The inspector shook his head.
“
No, we do.
But we have to be as thorough as possible,” replied John. No doubt
the man was under pressure from the Dunn family to wrap this up
quickly and quietly.

“
Can you think of anyone
h
ere at the
school who could have given him the drugs? We wouldn’t want this to
happen again.”

Zuri thought for a moment and
remembered something. “
I did see Kyle hanging around with someone I
didn’t recognize. I know he wasn’t one of his friends because most
of Kyle’s friends are in my classes and I’ve seen them hang out
together enough to recognize most of them. I don’t even think he
was even a student, he looked dangerous somehow.”

Brenna took over the
questioning again.
“What did they say?” she asked.