[Closed] Delays By Misadventure (Nkemi)

[Genet Meseret Dereje]

Vienda - The Elephant Coffee House
The Fourth Day of Vortas 2719, morning

I

t snowed yesterday.

An alien sight in an alien city. A sight she found she did not mind. That had been unexpected. It was a novelty, a departure. The city was an easier place to accept in the bitter air, with a sky the color of old lead, even with ice forming on the fringes of the river. A place of its own, to be examined under its own terms. The snow had wiped the city clean, blurred its outlines, and made of it a ghost.

Lower Ro Hill, between Kingsway and the Courts; the streets just beginning to narrow into that mad labyrinth of little alleys and hidden courtyards that surrounded the juridical domes. Streets she was beginning to learn, even their names. There was Thurlowe Street with its clothiers shops, Snagsby Lane where a gaggle of old ladies started, gimlet-eyed and suspicious, at anyone who passed by. Useful contacts. She doubted she would be invited to their sewing circle or to take tea with them. She did not know how to sew, for one.

Good tea, real tea, green and sharp and scented with cardamom, well, that was vanishingly rare. Even the odd half-Mubrobi coffee shop on Gadwine Street made only an unremarkable pot. The coffee was better. Much better. It would not do to admit it was some of the better coffee she had drunk, in any city. Well, no sense in wasting the opportunity. The place was comfortable, generally with clientele that kept to themselves or chatted in small business-like groups. The staff was neat and efficient. It wasn't quite the place she normally haunted. So far she’d not seen anyone be murdered over an unpaid bill, or had their hand pinned to the counter with a kitchen knife. Some days, she really did miss The Drowned Man. It had character. It was a good source of tips, of contacts, and a little bloody entertainment.

The Elephant too had character. Its own colorful cast of characters. The two aged gents who played draughts at a table in the back corner, complaining of their joints and boasting of their ailments. The gaggle of young lawyers from the court who talked too loudly about tedious cases. Now there was a resource. Anaxi jurisprudence was well set among this labyrinth of streets. The garrulous lawyers provided a useful primer, a useful map. Occasionally there was the man with the side whiskers. He seemed to be a friend of the place, but mostly kept to a table of his own, drinking coffee and turning his cup in a strange repetition, and writing in a tiny neat hand in a set of notebooks.

She rarely spoke to anyone, yet somehow it had gotten around that she had some legal connections, some affiliation with the Investigative branch. Maybe the Mugrobi-looking proprietress, the one with a Vienda accent thicker than honey, knew the meaning of the Prefects ring she wore. After it became known, the garrulous lawyers would ask her over from time to time to discuss comparative legal theory. She always felt like a damned professor when that happened. They meant well, and they had their uses, but what she needed was to sit alone, to think over the coffee.

Nine legal circulars, crime reports from the Patrol Division, trial dockets, and two of three broadsheet newspapers of the most salacious kind now covered her table. Most of what was there was useless. Ordinary murders, robberies, tedious lawsuits, assaults. Crimes of finance were common enough, but most were tricky accounting and fiddles with investors schemes. Only the vaguest of possibilities for counterfeiting. A kid who tried to pass off a couple of badly made metal discs as tallyes. A few dodgy banknotes had been cashed by a grocer who swore she accepted them in good faith. Who from? She had no idea, honest. That was probably true. It probably meant nothing.

She took a sip of her coffee, turned back to the reports.

A few minutes later, one of the coffee girls, a small slip of a thing with eyes that took up too much of her face, tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Inspector?” her voice was unsure, quarrelsome.

“Prefect.” The correction was neutral, merely informative.

“Right, right, sorry Prefect, Ms Sebele keeps telling me that, but I ain’t got the best way with words.” There was something wrong about her face, well, beside the huge owl-eyes. She looked nervous, scared. “Only, I think there’s something you need to see, Prefect. Only, I found him just a bit ago, out in the alley behind.” She gestured over her shoulder toward the back of the place. “A dead man. Dead in the snow.”

Well, that was a turn. It seemed half like old times. Some fool died of misadventure, exposure, too much opium, a terminal encounter with the fists of another man. Some other fool roused whatever Prefect could be found to have a look, to give it the official squint. She hoped that was all this was, some poor idiot who froze to death in the night. If it looked at all suspicious, well, that was going to ruin her entire day.

Did she have the power here to convene and inquest? Back home that would have been easy enough. Half the patrons here had more than a passing familiarity with the law. An ideal coroner's jury. She looked at her watch. A little luxury she had afforded herself here in the capital of timepieces. Sidewhiskers had recommended an horologist. It had not been a disappointment. She was cutting it close, the cantankerous Chief Inspector would not be pleased if she were late. Again. She took another sip of her coffee.

"Right then, let's go."

And, like any good Prefect, she went out to inspect the body.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 4 Vortas 2719
The Alley Behind Elephant Coffee House, Uptown

The chairs outside the Chief Inspector’s office were just tall enough that Nkemi’s toes did not reach the floor, not even in the hard, sturdy boots which she had carefully purchased a few weeks earlier. She was ever more grateful for them; in the few brief snows that had blanketed the city, they had been invaluable, even if the expense had weighed heavy on her purse. But even those boots did not provide her with the extra inch or two of height she would need.

Nkemi knew that she could sit perched on the edge of the seat, with her toes stretched forward; she had done it once, straining carefully. The second time she and Prefect Genet had been called to meet with the Inspector, Nkemi had stood, instead, against the wall next to the line of hard, uncomfortable chairs, and waited there instead.

Today, Nkemi sat. There was still a bit of time before their appointment, but Nkemi liked to be early better than to be late, and she could as easily write the letter she wished to send here as in the barracks; she knew it would be weeks before it reached all the way to Dkanat, but she had wished to describe the snowfall for her mother all the same.

Snow fell several times last month; once, there was what they called a blizzard, and it blanketed the whole city, crisp and white, for two days. These last days were the first snow of Vortas, and they tell me it will only grow more and heavier from here, for the whole rest of the month. It is an unexpectedly beautiful sight, juela; the whole of the city changes color for a few hours. It is whiter than rice, whiter than the white caps on the river, as white as crisp new paper; as if they had skattered sheets of it, which draped and fell over every surface. The feeling of it is soft, also, to the touch; there are children, in the streets, who take handfuls and fling them at once another.

Even by today, it has begun to melt; it grays at the edges, first, and there are brown bootprints left all through it. Carriages roll mud from the streets onto the edges of it, and it becomes a sort of brown xludge in time. I wish you could see it! The only trouble is the cold, which.

“Pezre Nkese? Dereje?”

Nkemi lifted her gaze from the paper to the uniformed young man standing at the door, his shock of bright red hair cut short and slicked back with some sort of grease.

“Yes sir?” Nkemi left the letter on the table, unfolding her feet – her boots had not lasted so long on the ground after all – and rising with a bright smile.

“The Captain sends his regards, madam, but wishes you and the – uh –” he faltered, frowning.

“Prefect Dereje,” Nkemi supplied with a friendly smile.

“Prefect Dereje,” the man nodded, “to come by at the same time tomorrow. Unexpected business has arisen today.”

“Thank you,” Nkemi said politely. “Please let the Captain know we look forward to the meeting, and are grateful that he, in the fullness of his schedule, makes time for us.”

“Yes sir,” The young man said with a serious nod. The door closed behind him; there was the shift of movement through clouded glass, and he was gone.

Nkemi picked up her letter; she blew softly over the ink, and folded it up. She took her brown coat from the back of the chair, and pulled it on over her soft brown sweater, adjusting the folds of the bright orange scarf at her neck, her head covered with a second of a warm orange color. She tucked the letter away in one of the pockets inside, and set off.

It was not so hard to leave a message at the desk; for the other Mugrobi, Nkemi had said, with a cheeky grin, and the woman had looked down and hidden a snort behind her hand. The air outside was brisk; Nkemi’s breath left clouds trailing through it, white and sharp, and she was grateful she had thought to tuck her gloves in her pocket.

Then Nkemi was off, trudging through the thin scrapings of grayed snow, gloves tucked away, scarf pulled up over her nose and mouth; she had learned by now where Prefect Genet Mesert Dereje of the Three Flowers District liked to spend her mornings, and the Elephant Coffee House was not so far from the station; it was one of the points Nkemi had added to her mental map of Vienda, carefully etched in.

Nkemi had walked past the kofi house before, but never gone inside; it was not, she understood, a place for kofi har’aq, but Genet had told her they made good kofi all the same. She would likely have gone in, but for the faint shifting of sound from an alley on the cross-street; Nkemi had glanced over, more out of habit than anything, and her eyes widened faintly at the sight of a familiar head of hair, crouched in the snow.

“Prefect?” Nkemi asked curiously, calling through the scarf. She came down the alleyway, hands coming out of her pockets.

It dawned on her slowly.

Genet was crouched on the ground, turned half-away; past her, there was a lump of snow, half white where the sun shone on it, etched at the edges of gray-brown, and dark and piled high against the wall of the alley. Just past her leg there was a shape - a large, worn shoe, Nkemi realized; a man’s shoe, worn on the bottom with traces of something strange and dark at the edge of it, facing out.

Nkemi was already sliding her gloves off; she tugged her scarf down. She crouched too, next to Genet, a solemn prefect’s look on her face; she nodded to the other woman, and turned back to the body lying on the ground. “May Hulali’s waves float him to better shores,” Nkemi said, quietly. Then, “What do we know?”

[Genet Meseret Dereje]

Vienda - The Elephant Coffee House
The Fourth Day of Vortas 2719, morning

T

he dead man, and it had been a man, lay stretched out in the snow. Stretched. Odd. A man seeking shelter from the cold would more likely have curled up, for all that would have done him. Snow below him, snow upon him, and too many footprints now. Anything useful would be under, what, an inch or two of snow? About that amount had accumulated on the body. More than enough to obscure any useful footprints. Damn the snow. It seemed such an ally only moments ago, a perfect medium to track prints on. All gone. All swallowed up. Traitorous bastard.

On to the body then. Facts first, curses later. A man, well built and out of the bloom of youth, but not aged either. About her own age perhaps. Mid thirties to mid forties. The skin would have been pale even without the double bleaching of death and cold. Hair? Brownish, slightly curly, but most obscured by a knit cap. She pulled a notebook from the pocket of the greatcoat she’d bought to prevent herself from freezing to death in this city. The body was wearing a heavy coat of its own. Heavy, probably well made, but old with fraying at the hems and cuffs. Likely not a rich man. Still, it was a good coat and there were signs it had been repaired. Frugal? Careful?

Speculation was pointless at this stage. The man would come later. Now was the time for the corpse. The man had gone. The Good God carry his soul across the wat . . .no, that was the wrong prayer here. The order of things was different. What was the correct local custom to send off the soul, to entreat that no hungry ghost should be formed in this place? Nothing came to mind. She would need to know the proper rites, the proper words. All she had was the Prefect’s duty to discover the cause of death, to see what justice was done if needed. Then again, there may not be anything here. Just another death on a cold night. It must happen often enough.

The outstretched limbs, that still did not seem right. Not for a death by misadventure. In the snow and covered as it was, the body showed no obvious signs of violence. No bruising about the face, no tell-tale pool of frozen blood. Nothing at all like that. Just a pale corpse in the snow.

“Do you know him?” The girl with the too-big eyes shook her head.

“No, don’t think so ma’am. I mean, I think I’ve seen him about, but he’s just a face. Sorry ma’am.”

“What’s your name, and your occupation?”

“Ma’am?” the girl looked confused, as though Genet should already know. And she did know the girl’s occupation, but policy had to be followed. Was this policy here? It did not matter. It made sense, it would hold up.

“Lily, ma’am, and I’m a waitress at The Elephant, but then you know that one. I’m new ma’am, only since the start of the year.”

Lily, still all eyes, stood shivering in the cold, turning near as pale as the corpse. “I need your surname too girl, and everything you did and saw up to the moment you found the body. Any detail you can remember, sounds, smells, the angle of the light, anything.”

“Barlowe, my surname’s Barlowe.” Lily Barlowe then, just a kofi girl. Just the only witness she had. “I’d come out ma’am to take the rubbish to the bin. Mostly old coffee grounds and such. I remember some were still steaming when I came out. Then, I went to the bin, dropped in the rubbish, and that’s when I saw the poor dead fellow. Then I came to find you, ma’am.”

Genet shook her head. It was nothing to go on. Still the girl had done her best. It didn’t see she was hiding anything. Genet had nothing new, nothing useful. Only an anonymous corpse of an anonymous man. He might have been a local, or worked in a shop here abouts. Or perhaps not.. There had to be something identifiable. Something before she would have to draw the scene. Before she would have to take the body away. The Seventen would have a morgue somewhere. Some dim hole full of phosphor gloom and the smell of bleach and expired flesh, of caustic reagents and that smell she could never quite identify. All morgues were the same. One day she’d end up in one. Probably anonymous like the corpse in the snow. Perhaps some Prefect would have to work out what had happened to her. Perhaps she’d leave a puzzle behind. A cheering thought, proving one last act of professional charity.

The corpse here was enough of a puzzle for the nonce. It had shoes on. Shoes, not boots. Seemed odd. On such cold night, with the snow falling. They were out of place with the heavy coat. But like the coat, they were worn but in decent repair. Maybe boots were too expensive? Maybe they weren't needed? Might be a local, thinking that the could wouldn’t seep through. Worth investigating.

And so was the odd substance on the bottom of those shoes. She reached again into her coat, pulled out a slip of paper and a pen knife. Before she could take a scraping, a voice. The other Prefect. Damn, the woman must have been sent to collect her, to chide her for being late. To the howling desert with being late, there were more pressing matters.

And yet the other Prefect did not mention anything of the kind. She stooped down, took off her gloves, Genet still had her’s one, and would even through the closer inspection of the body. No gloves? Now? Are you thinking to read the corpse already? Is that how they do things in Windward Market? Perhaps it was the best course of action. The body would have to be examined, minutely. There was little sense is crouching here much longer in the snow.

“We know we have the corpse of a man. Stretched out though, and lying on his right side. Possibly dead of exposure. Possibly not. Too early to tell. Good coat, but worn. Shoes, not boots. We’ll have to have a proper look, in better light, out of the cold. Only witness we have so far is the girl, Lily. I’ve had no time to ask around. Just arrived a few moments ago. Cause of death remains unknown.” She looked up at the other Prefect, bundled up against the cold, like Genet, like the corpse. “There’s something on his shoes. I was about to collect a sample. Thoughts?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 4 Vortas 2719
The Alley Behind Elephant Coffee House, Uptown

Genet said nothing at first, through the careful prayer and Nkemi’s crouching to study the body. Nkemi focused on the body first; it was hard to gauge the age of Anaxi, still, even after more than once month in Vienda. He looked older, she thought; there were some wrinkles about his eyes and on his forehead, but not so many, and what she could see of his hair was brown. His skin was pale, unnaturally so, but even a Mugrobi might look almost pale, in such snow.

He wore a knitted cap; there was a little lump of gray wool on one side, bulging out where it shouldn’t. Something in his hair? Or simply poorly knitted? Nkemi kept looking. A heavy coat, thick and warm-looking, but frayed at the hem and cuffs; there was a spot of faintly too light thread where it must have been repaired.

The shoe, with its trace of something strange, was the first thing Nkemi had noticed. Like the coat, the shoe must have been expensive once, when new, but whatever treads it had have worn down; it might have been hard for him to walk on the damp street. Nkemi’s own boots were much sturdier, and even she had gone carefully in the shadows, searching for dark, slippery icy.

There was, Nkemi thought, no obvious cause of death; if not for the paleness of his color and the awkwardness of his position, he might have slept. Her hands were already cold; she flexed her fingers, and tucked them carefully in her armpits, still crouching. Nkemi looked wide-eyed at Genet, and then back down at the corpse, at the dusting of snow piled atop him.

“It is very cold,” Nkemi agreed; her field politely caprised the other prefect’s, static and clairvoyant mona both mingling freely, the partly belike fields professionally comfortable with one another. “Has anyone from this coffee house been out in the alley before now? Maybe Miss Lile can please confirm this for us.”

“May I, please?” Nkemi took the paper from Genet’s gloved hands, although not the knife. She took a deep breath, and began to cast, soft and steady, pressing the paper against the sample. The static mona in the field around her shifted etheric, warm; Nkemi offered the words to an adhere spell to the mona. Slowly, stubbornly, the bit of something shifted onto the paper; it was a grudging process, the mona almost reluctant, but slowly Nkemi pulled the paper away slowly with something on it.

Nkemi folded the paper up and passed it back to Genet.

The prefect took a deep breath, and started a second spell. Small fingers reached, and settled delicately on the man’s exposed neck; Nkemi held them there as she offered the first part of the temperature measurement to the mona, her other hand resting lightly on her own neck. This was a spell she had learned in the prefects, not at Thul’Amat, to make a comparison of the readings between her own core and that of a corpse, and in this way to make an estimate of the length of time dead. In Thul Ka, the corpse wouldn’t get as cold as here in Vienda, but even in the heat, the center of the body did not stay warm for a long time after death; even in the heat, one could draw a comparison.

It was a useful spell; not sufficient, on its own, to prove when death occurred before a magistrate, but helpful when combined with other evidence.

Nkemi lowered her hands, tucking both of them back into her armpits. “Not yet as cold as the air,” she said, carefully, looking back at Genet. “It had not yet stopped snowing when I awoke,” Nkemi wrinkled her nose, very slightly, “but neither did it snow very much longer. I think he has been dead only a few hours. If it were exposure,” Nkemi added, slowly, “I would expect him to be colder.” She looked back up at the other Mugrobi, eyebrows lifting.

Murder, Nkemi did not say, but she could see in Genet’s eyes that the other woman understood. She did not think it surprised the other woman; there was very little which left a man stretched out so and, too, was natural.

Rolls

Adhere spell: SidekickBOT04/02/2020
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (2) = 2
Temperature Comparison spell: SidekickBOT04/02/2020
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (4) = 4

[Genet Meseret Dereje]

Vienda - The Elephant Coffee House
The Fourth Day of Vortas 2719, morning

D

ead for only a few hours. Dead before the snow stopped. It was a narrow window of time. A narrow window that included the darkest and least populated hours of the night. The corpse was here before the dawn. That at least was near certain. Nothing else in this sordid little scene, all wrapped up in its chill white blanket as half so sure.
The kofi girl, Lily, at least was not lying. Not about this. It took no magic to see that in her deportment, in the cast of her owl-bright eyes, or in the small and pensive way she chewed on her lip. She was like a doll, a toy of a girl. No, she was telling the truth, at least as far as she could manage. To see the rest, to see what she might have missed, what she may have omitted without realizing it, that did require some magic. Her field slid from her like water, coursing down limbs and outward, fanning out into a great braided channel. An outpouring her he private mona. She tasted the blue and burning skies of home on her tongue, heard the cries of the flower girls, smelled the spiced and grilling fish she once ate, and felt the strings of music, of oud and kora, playing not in her ears but upon her bones. Memory. The field shivered about her, the currents turning to purpose. The mona had understood what she was asking of them in the private language of her thoughts. Light and gentle like a spring breeze heavy with the scent of flowers, the field-flow passed over Lily. Would she smell those foreign scents, those alien breezes upon her? Would she take any comfort in it if she did? Or was it all translated into the smell and feel of this place? Genet’s memory-form becoming Lily’s. Cobble streets and leek pies, costermongers’ cries and the rattle of carriage wheels?

No, the girl was not lying, but she had hidden things. It was significant, but understandable. She had stood longer in the snow than she claimed. She had stared long and hard at the body, trying to make out the face, the man he once was. She still felt she knew him. She knew she could not place him.

“Lily,” she tried her best soothing voice, indulgent of mistakes. “I think you do know this man, at least to have seen him more often than you think. Come here.” The girl did not move. She stood stock still, frozen in the snow. “The body will not harm you. It can do nothing more now but lie here and cool. Come. Come and look at his face.” She adjusted the flow of her magic, playing on the strings in Lily’s thoughts, changing harmonies and overtones, picking out the strains that tugged most at the girl’s memory. By degrees Lily approached. Unbidden she crouched down beside Genet, looking into the pale face of the corpse.

“Jack Pellworm!” Her reaction was not immediate, it dawned like the slow sun in winter, but it had dawned. “He comes in from time to time. Quiet, polite. No trouble. I don’t know what he does or who he is, not really. Just a customer.”

She turns from Lily to Nkemi. “Well, at least we have a name. A name and whatever those shoes stepped in. Any notion of what it is, or will you require more time in some less frigid place?” A reasonable question. It is freezing out here and thought would be stilled as much as the blood in all their veins. Run slow and cold, wishing for warmer climes and the embrace of the fire’s heat. The Good God preserve her, but if she were to die in this place, she would have to be cremated, if only to feel one last kiss of warmth.

“Lily, if any of the lawyers are in, and the proprietor, get me five at least to certify we are on official business, that we have secured the corpse and consider this an unnatural death.” Is this how it was done here, to gather citizens in good standing to act as an impromptu jury in the finding of fact? No idea. Local protocol was on the agenda for the day. Well, that wasn’t happening.

“Nkemi. We’ll need to secure the scene. Interview everyone in the Elephant at the very least. Then track down this Jack Pellworm.” She looks at the other woman. The too-cheerful prefect is no longer so cheerful. She is calm and focused on the work. A woman of parts, whatever her laughing and too-easy relations with the Seventen. “I can convene a coroner’s jury to release the body to us. Then, we can have a look under that coat.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 4 Vortas 2719
The Alley Behind Elephant Coffee House, Uptown

Lilee had shifted when Nkemi looked up at her, looking back at them; she chewed on her lip. “I don’t know if anyone’s been out here ma’am, before me, but the rubbish bin was real full.” She paused; she inhaled, and then glanced down and away, and said nothing more.

Nkemi smiled encouragingly at the girl for a long moment, holding her gaze. Lilee glanced up at her, and then back down at the body, her forehead wrinkling in a frown, and pulled her lips in together.

Nkemi asked the mona, then, to answer the question the girl had not. The static mona which hovered in the air around her held, and responded, and she understood more than they could say. Genet met her eyes for a long moment, the two prefects still crouched in the narrow, snow-drifted alley, shaded by the slope of tall buildings.

Genet turned to Lilee and began to cast.

Nkemi listened with one ear as she went about further examination. Genet wove a delicate, careful perception spell, thorough; first, a spell to detect lies, one Nkemi had heard similar variations of many times in Thul Ka. There was a pause as the spell curled; Nkemi glanced up at Genet, watching her watch the witness.

Genet began again, this time in Estuan. Nkemi did not smile, though her lips twitched very slightly. Genet coaxed the girl forward, even as she began to cast once more, the perceptive mona in her field stirring etheric, tugging lightly at the belike mona in Nkemi’s own field. It was a memory augmentation spell, but Lilee came forward as though Genet had cast some sort of magnetic tug, her eyes very wide. Slowly, the waitress crouched down on the cold ground, and peered at the man’s face.

“Chaq Pelwurum,” Nkemi repeated, carefully, biting off the consonants as hard as she could. It was much more than they had had before. Nkemi met Genet’s eyes. “More time in some less frigid place,” she agreed, looking at the specimen on her paper, and down at the man’s show.

Then, she turned back up to Lilee. Nkemi smiled then, bright; it spread warm over her face. “Thank you, Miss Lilee,” Nkemi bowed her head, respectful and deep. “You have done very well.”

Lilee blushed, her cheeks matching the pink tip of her nose. “Weren’t nothing, miss,” she said, but there was a little smile which rose in answer to Nkemi’s on her face.

Genet released her, then; the girl rose and curtsied uncertainly, and went back inside.

Nkemi’s face was smooth and solemn, prefect-serious, once more as Genet looked at her. The junior subprefect nodded. “The scene first,” Nkemi agreed. She glanced up the alley; the far end was closed off with a heavy, rusted gate; the lock looked as if it could be struck open, but it seemed to end into a building beyond, as best as Nkemi could tell.

That left only the opening to the street. Nkemi rose; she fished in her pockets, and took out a small ball of bright yellow string. Carefully, she looped off two lengths, and trimmed them clear of the rest. She tied them across the front of the alley like an x, securing each with firm, hard knots to the bricks and metal at the walls. She took a notebook out from her pocket, and trimmed, carefully, a little piece of paper free; Nkemi crouched, balancing it on the notebook on her knee, and wrote in large letters, traced over once, twice, and a third time:

DO NOT ENTER. CRIME.

She hung the makeshift sign from the string, facing out, and made her way back to Genet. "Our meeting was postponed until tomorrow," Nkemi offered, and grinned, just once, at the other woman. Then her gaze went back to Chaq Pelwurum; then, solemnity drew over her face once more.

[Genet Meseret Dereje]

Vienda - The Elephant Coffee House
The Fourth Day of Vortas 2719, morning

S

till crouched down in the snow, she had not taken her eyes from the corpse, from that half-frozen face. When it was alive, who had it been? Who was Jack Pellworm? At home, in Three-Flowers, it would have been the work of perhaps two hours before she had the man’s address, his occupation, his creditors, an accounting of his unpaid laundry bills, his mother’s recipe for lentil stew, his favorite local bars, the names of his enemies, and more deadly, the names of his friends and family. Family are always the most dangerous, always the most likely to send you to an early grave. A good reason to avoid having such things. Enemies were much safer. Well, by and large at any rate.

There was little enough to see of the man who left behind this shell. An empty name, devoid of context. Where were her contacts, her gossipy matrons and quarrelous and omniscient fishmongers and barmen? Where were her sagacious watermen and Kazleen rag-and-bone collectors? Vienda was a city, a real city. It would be such people about, contacts to cultivate. Nkemi was not a bad sort, the Chief Inspector - what was the man’s name? Thurible? - seemed reasonably competent and had a proper distaste for uniforms.

They were a start, nothing more. Too official, too circumspect. As colleagues they would serve, and well. She needed colleagues. Needed people to tell her she was in the wrong, or to argue with over case law and legal precedent. A Prefect would go mad without such people. She needed her eyes and ears more. A blind woman cannot see the cause of things, a deaf woman cannot hear the rumors in the wind.

Nkemi’s voice, matter-of-fact, then slightly amused. It seemed that Thurible had a proper distaste for meetings as well. Genet nearly grinned, then looked back at the corpse. This was no place for grinning.

“The Good God smiles on us, at least in some small way. I loath meetings.” Damned foolish things, forever getting in the way of the work. And the Seventen seemed to love meetings almost as much as they loved their sickly green uniforms. Floods take them and may they drown in their vanity. Here and now, such prettification did not signify? A corpse lay in the snow, apparently murdered. What else mattered.

Nkemi, with due competence, had secured the scene, marked it off as a space of its own. A grim templum to the art of detection. And in that space, defined by yellow cord and the shape of the alleyway, she let slip her field again, drawing in all the feel of the narrow space, the position of objects, the lay of the body, its clothes, its expression, its features. A picture in the mind, a recollection of the scene. Would it stand in court? Perhaps not, but that was not the question now. Cause and manner of death were more pressing.

SpoilerShow

1d6 = (4) = 4 - Expanding Recollections and Memory (Perceptive)

Slow movement of her eyes across the space,into every nook and cranny, every shadow and pile of dirty snow. The picture assembled, a diorama in her mind’s eye. She rose, smooth and well-practiced despite the snow, and walked the scene. More of the place filled her mind, added to the scene. The peeling green paint of the Elephant’s ally door, the smell of stale coffee grounds and the sharpness of the snow. From all angles she took in the corpse, the place. A sad and meaningless place for a death. A death not hidden. No fear of being caught? A sudden unexpected assault? It seemed not unlikely, but the place gave no answer. The corpse was too cold to draw memories from, the mind too much gone.

A commotion, the sound of voices, and several figures appeared. The lawyers. Good. The method may not be proper in this place, but it would be methodical. “Ladies and gentlemen. I convene you as a jury of inquiry. Do you swear that you are all citizens in good standing, that you witness these, our actions, without bias?” The words were unfamiliar to the Viendans, but their meaning was clear. Murmured ascent followed. Good. That cleared the air, made the next steps all the easier. “Thank you. As Prefect and as an officer of the court, I hereby charge you to witness what it is that we do in this place and that you will faithfully testify to the same in court, should the summons come.” More ascent. One of the lawyers, a woman wearing at least three scarves leaned in, watching everything with keen dark eyes. The forewoman.

SpoilerShow

1d6 = (4) = 4 (investigation)

Genet returned to the body, nodded at Nkemi, and passed her gloved hands in slow and careful movements over the corpse. At first there was nothing but old cloth and empty pockets. She moved part of the coat aside, feeling first the corpse’s torso, congealing, half-frozen blood. A wound to the chest. Recent. Deep. Likely fatal. Then she ran her hands into an inner pocket. Nothing. No. Notnothing. Something in the seams. Lumps and the sound of paper. Knife back in hand, she cut the threads and removed a small paper envelope. She could guess what was in it, by feel and by smell, even in the chill air.

“Opium resin, and a fair amount. Left behind. Moderately well hidden, but not so well as a detailed search could not find it.” She held it out, showing her make-shift jury the find. “Witness that this was drawn from the lining of this man’s coat, witness that he has been stabbed. It is my finding that is is an unnatural death. Do you concur, or do you challenge?” She handed the packet to Nkemi. “One more piece of evidence for your collection. One more object to be read.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 4 Vortas 2719
The Alley Behind Elephant Coffee House, Uptown

He is Merciful,” Nkemi agreed, peeking up at the older woman. Her face was solemn this time; she wore her prefect face well. Chaq Pelwurum lay before her, and it was not a place for mirth. “May He rest you beneath the waves,” she said, quietly, down to the man. She did not suppose he had prayed to Hulali; she understood Anaxi to worship the Lady, mostly. Just as all knew the importance of water, so too did all know the value of time; Nkemi did not begrudge these Anaxi their emphasis on it, nor the solemn, echoing songs of their Everine, doubling time upon itself in haunting chorus.

Nkemi thought of the bodies she had seen in Windward Market. It would not have been so different, at first, the searching and spell casting, the questioning of witnesses. She would have gone next to the Golden Bands, she thought, for they had the most men on the street, and, too, she knew Sumfe’s second lieutenant, Ada’na Ofera, well. After that, even if she had already learned much, to Ada’xa Gofad, for a cup of kofi; the old imbali would weave together lies and truth both, and it would be to Nkemi and her colleagues to sift through the strands for the bit of gold hidden by the muck.

And here? Nkemi glanced up, looking around. She knew no one on these streets; she did not know what people to seek out, nor even which Seventen to ask to try and find them.

Genet was casting again, to preserve her memory; this was a perceptive spell which Nkemi knew, or very like it. If she had been working alone, or with another clairvoyantist, she might have cast it herself; such memories were useful, later, to sift through. Nkemi could reach back in her own mind to many such scenes, already; she wondered, glancing at Genet, how many the older woman had.

Kere pezre Jadhi had told Nkemi once to be sparing, in her memory spells; that which is set into the stone of your mind, she had said, lightly, is not so easy to wipe away.

There was the bright chime of voices, then. Nkemi turned to watch the patrons spilling out of the kofi parlor. Had not one stepped into the alleyway for a smoke? It was cold outside, Nkemi thought, solemn; she skimmed bare fingertips for the telltale dirtying of tobacco – easily visible on even Mugrobi skin – but there were some clean fingertips, and others besides which were gloved, and hard to tell.

Nkemi straightened up to the fullness of her height, chin raised; she watched, solemn, as Genet charged these Anaxi to bear witness. She watched, too, hands clasped together behind her back, as Genet began the searching of the body, turning him over. There, finally, Nkemi saw the gash on his chest; beneath him, the snow had melted, although the bright stain of red against dark fabrics was frozen, now, where the warmth of life had slipped away.

“I concur,” Nkemi said, clearly and evenly, the tradition as comfortable and familiar as it was out of place. “Are there any who wish to state their challenge? Speak truth now, or know your silence speaks on your behalf.” She took the small packet from Genet with a careful, gloved hand, and tucked it away with the twist of paper.

There was a shifting of silence from the lawyers; there was quiet in the cold, dark air of the alleyway.

Ada’na Sebele was wide-eyed, her thick Viendan accent strange against her dark skin, and went quickly through a series of sentences: never in all her years – of course, anything she could do to assist – yes, her dishwasher could secure the scene while she sent a waitress to fetch a Seventen to assist, of course.

It was good; it freed up Nkemi and Genet both for the asking of questions. Nkemi sat at one of the small tables, back straight, looking across it solemnly at the Anaxi woman sitting on the other side. Her eyes were wide, her bright hair fluffed up on her head, but for the sides where Nkemi supposed the necessity of a hat had pushed it down somewhat.

“A body?” She was asking. “Really?” She shivered with a big motion of her shoulders, and fanned her face lightly with a gloved hand.

“Yes, madam,” Nkemi said, smiling at her. “I am very sorry to be forced to disturb you with talk of such things.”

“Oh,” the woman said. “Well – it is your duty, I – suppose? You said – prefect…?”

“Yes, madam,” Nkemi said, straightening up, delivering her title with solemn importance, “Junior Subprefect of the Windward Market District of Thul Ka, currently on assignment with the Seventen. You may call me Prefect Nkemi, please.”

“Prefect – Nechemy,” The woman repeated, doubtful. “Of course, I’m happy to answer any questions, but I don’t see how I could possibly… well!”

“It is often the case that we see more than we know,” Nkemi said, solemn, with a hint of a smile. “I wonder if you must, for example, know a great many things of your neighbors, Mrs. Renekine?”

“Well,” Mrs. Renekine lowered her eyes slightly, taking a break from glancing in quick, sharp bursts around the coffee house. “I do have a knack – just around the neighborhood, you understand.”

Nkemi nodded, solemnly. “Your insights may be of great value,” she said, comfortingly. She settled the tip of her pen to paper. “What time did you arrive, this morning, at The Elephant?”

“Let me think,” Mrs. Renekine began; Nkemi listened, intent and focused, and began to write.

[Genet Meseret Dereje]

Vienda - The Elephant Coffeehouse

The Fourth Day of Vortas 2719, morning

T

he jury retired to the Elephant for deliberations. It was natural enough, and better than freezing along with the corpse. Chill air replaced by the warm, spice-scented fug of the coffeehouse, and Genet’s cup still unmoved from where she had left it. It would be undrinkable now, cold sludge gone bitter. Still, her hand might reach out for it, a force of habit, and she might sip of dregs. She passed the table by and joined Nkemi at another.

The prefect was carrying on in her quiet, calm, and pleasant manner, asking questions of a woman with frizzy hair and a complexion grown strangely pale. He voice was sing-song, as though reciting something she had been trying to learn. It did not seem to be any ruse, merely the pitch of a woman unused to speaking to authorities. Even authorities as kind-natured and honey-sweet as Nkemi.

A pause, and Nkemi turned the questioning over to Genet. Time now for the vinegar. She had no time and even less inclination for niceties. Facts were what she needed. Cold, hard, facts.

Word by slow word, Renekine told what she thought she knew. She had arrived at The Elephant perhaps an hour and a half ago. No, she had not seen Jack Pellworm about recently. No, she did not recognize any of the company as associates of his. Little enough. Genet probed a bit more. She asked the usual questions. “Yes,” said Renekine, “I know my neighbors enough to be annoyed at them for making a racket at all hours and walking the streets without paying the least attention to where they are going. That one,” she pointed at the corpse, “well, he was a quiet one, I recall. Quiet, well-behaved, and no trouble that I ever saw.” That old refrain. Lily has said those words, almost alike in order and cadence. The sign of something? A rehearsed story? Don’t go looking for zebras when horses will do. But then again, in zebra country, horses were rare. She turned the words over and over in her mind. Stock phrases, the kind of thing anyone might say. The kind of thing that gets said of those who leave nearly no impression. Damn. The man was a cypher. Just a face and a name. And a corpse.

“I think,” Renekine continued in a prim and lofty tone, as though she were addressing a class of unruly children in a shady arcade, “he worked in one of the shops on Hargrove Street. The little printers, Throckmorton’s. Don’t know what he did there.”

SpoilerShow

1d6 = (4) = 4 (investigation)

Genet closed her eyes, played the images and angles of the alleyway back through her mind’s eye. She could see the corpse, clear as day. She looked the memory up and down, taking in whatever signs she could recall. Any indication of occupation. Then she looked down at the frozen hands. Nails: short and with dark grit under them. No. Not grit. Stains. Ink stains. There were calluses as well, on both hands and in more or less the same places. Not writer’s calluses, though he had those too, on the fingers of his right hand. “He might have been a typesetter. In any event, he worked with very dark ink often enough it stained his fingers to the point they’re nearly tattooed.” A quiet man who worked in ink. Not a man of means but a man with some self-worth. The clothes spoke to that. It all painted a rather convention picture. Respectable. Respectable save for the opium hidden in his coat.

It stood out nearly as bright as the blood on the frozen ground. An incongruity. Something to follow up on. Her eyes fluttered open again, and she was back in the Elephant, staring into the face of the censorious Renekine.

The woman continued in that officious tone that seemed to grow on her. “Perhaps so. I never heard rightly.”

“He was a lithographer.” A new voice, one of the lawyers. A young man of perhaps five and twenty. “Did the plates for small-run publications and the local circular.” He had rejoined his table, and had been nodding along to the questioning. He said nothing until now, made no interjections until he could be of use. Until his knowledge was able to fill in another gap. Another respectable man. “I didn’t know him well. No more than to give him a civil nod when I saw him about the neighborhood. I do know he did good work. Throckmorton’s is a solid business.”

Genet nodded. It was something at least. She had the man’s profession and place of work. Something that could easily be followed up. The usual questions asked. Friends. Family. Associates. She very nearly smiled. Renekine and this man entered her book as useful locals. People worth cultivating. “And your name, sir?”

“Natchbul, Winlock Natchbul. At the firm of Pocket, Pockett, and Hattersleigh.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a small silver case. Visiting cards. A local curiosity, but a good one. It made note-taking much easier. “My card.” Genet took the small rectangle of crisp cardstock.

Winlock Natchbul esq.
34A Sellwin Garden Square, Bornwyth Street
The Clockhouse, Vienda

The Clockhouse? The other side of the Crosstown Court and the civil administrative buildings that surrounded it. A fair way from home this Mr Winlock Natchbul, and so early in the morning. An early riser? Perhaps. It was likely meaningless. Just another unimportant curiosity. Still, she tucked it away. For safe keeping.

Before Natchbul could continue, Renekine rejoined the symposium, volunteering more prim information. “I believe he lived alone, or certainly I never saw him with anyone.” She sniffed. Probably in disapproval of a man going about his business without a wife to chivvy him about and wish better clothes upon him. “Yes. quite alone.”

“No,” said another new voice. A middle-aged woman with a cheerful, rosy complexion improved by the bracing air. “He kept a bird.”

Renekine harrumphed. “A bird, Mrs Marbeq, is not family. It is a nuisance.”

Marbeq did not seem to notice this, and carried on. “Some manner of parrot I think. I’m afraid I am not good with foreign birds, but it is large and noisy and occasionally he took it about for walks. A white bird with a crest.” A cockatoo then. Or very likely. That was something else to try and follow up on. People would remember a man with such a bird.

“It would seem,” she said, turning to Nkemi, “that our Jack Pellworm was a man after all. That is something.” It was at that, but it was still thin gruel. The coming says would show if anything else could be found out about the dead lithographer. She had few hopes. She would pursue the matter all the same. Justice and due diligence were deserved by all. Even here.

She was about to ask more when a thudding of boots and the creak of wheels sounded in the offing. The windows of the Elephant showed nothing but the street and little enough traffic. The sound grew closer. Dark green uniforms appeared upon the street, almost as though they sprang fully formed from the shadows. Behind them an open wooden cart paused a little further back. Two smart fellows in green made for the door, and swaggered into the Elephant. The senior of the two Seventen made a curt nod to the company. Then, he addresses the space, not quite knowing to whom his remarks should be directed. “Sergeant Fothergill. I am taking command of this scene, the evidence, and this body. Official inquiries will be conducted and the matter swiftly brought to its end.” He looked at the two prefects, at their impromptu interrogation room, their array of witnesses, and gave another nod.It was less curt. “Though it seems that I may have little enough to do on some front.”

“Sergeant,” Genet looked him square in his pale grey eyes. “Prefect Nkemi and I have secured the scene, begun our inquiries according to our custom. We have convened these citizens to observe our investigations and ensure that no court may judge that we acted in ill-faith. We are both officers of the court. This matter is well in hand.”

“Yes prefect. I understand that. However, protocol here requires that the Seventen take charge of the matter. Still, on a personal level, I cannot but thank you for your preliminary work and I am sure it will be admitted in the court.” A look passed across his face. A look Genet knew well. She had worn it enough times herself. Yes, it would be admitted in the court, if ever this matter was to see a court.

“Nkemi, it looks like we’re about to lose our case.” She turned to the Sergeant again. “However, I would ask it as a professional courtesy, one officer of the court to another, to let us finish what we started here. The fewer people treading though the alleyway the better. And we have already begun interviews.” She gestured at an empty table, the once that had been hers. “You can join the coroner’s jury we have just convened. You can see how we work.”

To Nkemi she said, “Let’s see what else we can find. I’m sure there are things we have not yet discovered.”

She looked around the Elephant, at the still-shocked customers, the gaggle of lawyers, and now the boys in green. Her scant hopes withered. What else could be discovered here? The matter would dry up, the trail grow cold as the snow outside. Jack Pellworm would be forgotten. One more dead man in a city full of dead men.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 4 Vortas 2719
Elephant Coffee House, Uptown

Genet sat at the table with her. Nkemi did not look at the other prefect, for all that she was aware of her. Her attention was focused on Renekine, all her listening intent. She kept her face prefect solemn, but for the hint of a smile in her eyes when Renekine shifted, and frowned, and asked.

In Thul Ka, Nkemi thought, there might have been other prefects to assist the two of them. She had chosen Renekine because the woman had been watching them, all the same, very intently, from the moment they had come back into the coffee house. She had shifted, once, and Nkemi had wondered if perhaps she had had something to say.

This was not a private questioning; Nkemi had not particularly made an effort to keep her voice low and soft. Mrs. Renekine was the center of attention, in the small coffee house; if every word she spoke could not be heard, then most of them could be.

When the lawyer spoke, Nkemi turned to look at him, nodling. A lithographer who worked at Jaharoqamoroten. Nkemi started to try to write the name down, but stopped. “Would you write the address of this Jararoqamoroten’s, Mr. Nakubule?” She smiled at the lawyer, turning the page of her notebook over and extending it to him.

The lawyer’s lips pursed at a smile. “Natchbul,” he said, lightly.

“I am sorry, sir. Mr. Nakabul,” Nkemi repeated, with a grin at him.

The lawyer bent his head over the paper, hiding a smile, and wrote.

They had very strange names, these Anaxi, Nkemi felt; there were consonants where the vowels should have been, and when the vowels did appear, however rarely, the sound of them was very strange, short and clipped. The consonants themselves, too, were harsh and sharp, pronounced with the fullness of the mouth.

Mrs. Marabick entered the conversation as well. Nkemi thought of Chaq Pelwurum, lying in the snow; she thought of his job at Jaharoqamoroten’s, and his bird, and the small packet of opium in his pocket, well-hidden. What was such a man doing with such a thing? Nkemi, in her mind, drew a line between this and the manner of his death.

A man stabbed in the front, Nkemi thought. If they had thought of opium on his person, it was not a very good way of killing; blood ruined the powder, and very badly. Had they known, even? Was it that a man with one bad habit might yet have more?

Nkemi lifted her gaze to Genet; she nodded. She looked back at Mrs. Marabick, and smiled. “Mrs. Marabick,” Nkemi said, “do you know of any other men with such foreign birds?” It was not the bird’s fault, Nkemi thought, that Chaq Pelwurum could no longer take it for walks. What was justice for the man would not help the bird, if indeed justice could be found amidst the snow and strange accents.

“Oh,” Mrs. Marabick said, wide-eyed. She frowned, although not very heavily. “I’m sure I’ve seen other such birds about,” she glanced around the coffee house; no one else contributed. “I should have to think on it – um – madam.”

“Thank you,” Nkemi bowed with her head and shoulders. She turned back to Genet, a small frown on her face.

Nkemi rose as the Seventen entered. She deferred to Genet in the conversation, letting the more senior prefect take charge; she had noticed the Seventen cared very much about seniority, for all their titles were not very long and their ranks measured mostly by the pins on a jacket.

It seemed to Nkemi that the only clue which remained of yet was the small scraping from the man’s shoe, still in the little twist of paper where Nkemi had deposited it. This, too, she supposed, they would turn over to the Seventen, whose brief it was to find justice amidst the cold; Chaq Pelwurum, and the frightened look on his face – the one which he would never shake – was, too, theirs.

Every man’s life, Nkemi knew, had mysteries. To go out in the cold in shoes instead of boots – was it only that his boots were in for repair? Or was it, somehow, of importance – of a part of the puzzle which led to his death. A prefect did not cast away clues, but rather gathered them in, and then – slowly, painstakingly – shaped them into truth like clay, found how the puzzle fitted together.

Genet was looking at her, and then around the coffee shop once more. Nkemi followed her gaze, her eyes sweeping over the customers all looking at the two of them, and the Seventen.

“Thank you for your guidance, Mrs. Renekine,” Nkemi turned back to the Anaxi woman with a smile, bowing.

“Sergeant,” Nkemi said, turning back to the Seventen with a friendly smile. “Perhaps Prefect Genet or I may show one of you the alleyway, such that you may see what we have done, and what has been witnessed here by the coroner’s jury?” She bowed lightly. “The other could accompany one of us for further questioning. In this way, we may continue upon the path which we have begun, while you walk alongside us.”

Nkemi left it to Genet to decide whether she wished to keep asking questions or to go back in the alleyway, standing still, upright and well-bundled in the midst of the coffee house.