‘Everything here says to me that someone has placed the corpse here deliberately and, given that we’re in an iren, this seems as if it was staged to catch the eyes of as many of the citizens as possible. Someone, somewhere in this city, wanted people to think a monster had come here to kill. Now that presents us with a few questions, admittedly. The first one, where did they get the creature’s corpse?’
‘I have a suspicion,’ muttered Brynd, but seemed reluctant to expand on the issue.
‘Really?’ Fulcrom asked.
‘It’s only a thought, mind you — there’s a factory in the city that specializes in things like this. You could start there, but I can’t see why they would be involved in staging something like this.’
‘What makes you say this?’
‘They’re business people. And they go to great lengths, generally, to keep such things away from public eyes. No, they wouldn’t want this out here in this state.’
Fulcrom nodded. ‘If I could take the details of this factory, back in the Citadel, along with any other information, I’d be very grateful, sir. Now, point number two then: if this corpse was acquired, somehow, that leaves the question of why it was left in public view like this. Why would someone create a scene? What is there to gain from the act? And there’s little to follow it up, either — so what was the purpose of something so isolated?’
Brynd looked around at the iren, which by now had returned to normal.
‘Given we’re in a public place, the purpose could have been to get people talking and, possibly, for people to be frightened of the creature.’
‘Why do you think someone might want that?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘You know this city better than I do, of course.’
‘There are plenty of tensions here,’ Brynd admitted. ‘I had considered, since the war, that most of those concerns were no longer valid — that it was a fear that came from the war itself.’
‘This invasion came from the north, am I correct?’ Fulcrom asked.
‘Indeed.’
‘And the alien threat, that’s nothing for people to be worried about?’
‘There may well be concerns about those from the otherworld who are camped south of the city.’
‘I can understand that.’ Fulcrom nodded. ‘Do you think someone wants to make a point of their dislike of this arrangement?’
‘People are going to have to learn how to cope sooner or later.’
‘If there’s anything I’ve learned, it is to never underestimate the will of the people,’ Fulcrom replied. ‘They can be overwhelming if a notion spreads wide enough.’
Brynd sighed and glanced at the corpse one more time. ‘Do you think you can find out who did this? After Jokull, you’ve earned my trust.’
‘I will give it my best shot,’ Fulcrom replied. ‘At the same time, I’d like to seek permission to build a team — volunteers at first, most likely — but if an Inquisition needs forming, we’ll need people — perhaps even some surviving members of the Villiren Inquisition.’
‘I probably wouldn’t bother with them,’ Brynd urged. ‘Start fresh. Get smart, honest people.’ He marched over to the gathered Dragoons and said, ‘Right you lot, Investigator Fulcrom is hereby in charge of this situation and you’re to follow his orders, do I make myself clear?’
A chorus of ‘Sir’ came.
‘Good.’ Brynd returned to Fulcrom. ‘If they give you any trouble, let me know. This is all yours now.’
Back at the Citadel, Fulcrom had requested a cool basement room to use as a temporary office. As it happened, Brynd had already located a little network of chambers and antechambers situated a couple of levels underground, beneath the kitchens, and offered them to Fulcrom’s operation. Some of the rooms still contained crates of foodstuffs and bottles of wine hoarded during the war, but a few insouciant Dragoons carried them elsewhere while Fulcrom and Lan settled in.
In the furthest room from Fulcrom’s intended office, the corpse of the iren creature was brought in. Soldiers stacked packs of ice around the body so it didn’t decay further and reek the place out.
Fulcrom and Lan studied it in detail and made notes, before abandoning this in favour of a better idea: Fulcrom decided to send messengers to bring in whatever medical staff there were at hand. At first these people protested, said they didn’t want to see any monsters, but Fulcrom went out of his way to charm them into helping him.
One woman obliged, a plump former nurse with a penchant for art, and who seemed to want something more interesting to do with her days; she set about scrutinizing the beast, humming a little tune as if she was baking. She prodded it and sketched it, and Fulcrom left her to her own devices for an hour or so. When he returned, he asked her if she had found any visible wounds; she’d located none, just a few casual grazes where its body had been seemingly dragged along a harsh surface — such as a cobbled street — and her report confirmed much of what Fulcrom had suspected.
Lan, meanwhile, set about creating an office out of their intended chamber. She hauled huge pieces of furniture about the place with apparent ease. This had been, in the past, some kind of accounts room, and there were ledgers running way back — books that covered the movement of grain, ore, gemstones and money. She opened them up and was startled to see how intermittent they were; in some of them, whole years of accounts seemed to be missing. Lan acquired a rag, dusted down a desk. She arranged the chairs. She managed to find some scented oil and lanterns to scatter about the place. Within a couple of hours, she had transformed the room from a reasonably large but forgotten dusty corner of the Citadel into a welcoming office.
‘There,’ she said to herself, ‘we’re going to do things properly or not at all.’
Fulcrom came in and his expression pleased her greatly. ‘This looks fantastic, Lan!’ He walked over to the desk, where he immediately began arranging some of the books and pencils into something more orderly.
‘You just can’t leave things be, can you?’ Lan suggested.
Fulcrom smiled. ‘You’ve found a notebook too — excellent.’ He pocketed it and looked around. ‘We can put up some legal texts here.’ He pointed to a shelving unit.
‘Yes, and I’ve even found a blackboard you might find useful,’ she said, and lifted up a large, four-foot-wide board. She stood it on the desk, leaning it carefully against the wall. She picked up a piece of chalk, wrote the word ‘monster’, and circled it.
‘Your handwriting is messy,’ Fulcrom said.
‘Stop being so damn neat,’ she replied.
Fulcrom moved closer to her and said, ‘And that’s why you love me.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, pausing. ‘I do love you.’
They said it so little recently, but now things had calmed it seemed more powerful than before.
‘We should do something tonight,’ Fulcrom said. ‘Just have dinner in our chambers. No one else. Get some candles, make a night of it.’
‘That’d be nice.’
‘Just nice?’ he asked.
‘OK, that would be great,’ Lan replied.
‘That’s better.’
‘So have you had any more thoughts about the creature?’ she asked.
‘Many,’ he replied. ‘Once I make a detailed sketch of it, I’ll be satisfied that we can probably burn the corpse and be done with it, the poor thing. If it has a soul, we can at least free it. In the morning, I’m going to head to the factory the commander spoke about. I’d like to speak to some people in the irens, too, to see if they witnessed anything out of the ordinary beforehand.’
That evening they acquired some roasted meats, cheese, bread and even commandeered a bottle of red wine Fulcrom had spotted being carried out of his new headquarters. They had both washed in hot water, and dried off, by the firelight, eating the food in its warm glow, sitting semi-naked together on a bearskin rug.
They took their time. They ate slowly. Fulcrom enjoyed the fact that he could finally enjoy the lines of Lan’s body — the cold conditions had always denied him this luxury. She was wearing a long, dark silk skirt and a wraparound top that only really covered her breasts. He could see her firm stomach as she lay on her side. Her long dark hair, drying in the firelight, seemed healthier than ever. She had trimmed her fringe so that it was as short as he remembered in Villjamur.