No-one need be spared

 The beach at Baida fil-Einek was short and wide and had pristine white sand in a rough oval contained by the sea and limestone escarpments.  The waves were small and gentle and the beach quite gradual which would have made it ideal for parents and children.  The sun was pretty much exactly overhead and the sky was a deep azure that was common for much of the summer.  The heat wasn’t yet at its worst, but it was hot enough to make the sea look increasingly inviting.

At the back of the beach, dug into the escarpment so that yellow-white limestone, marred here and there by blue-green lichen, overhung the terrace, was a café.  Expensive designer chairs were set cautiously around equally expensive tables; no table had more than three chairs at it, and the chairs were always spaced as far apart as possible.  Two of the tables were occupied other than Chretien’s: one had the Minister of Finance in deep conversation with suited men who Chretien did not recognise, and the other had one of the two Ministers of the Interior sat with her Deputy.  Potted plants were laid between the tables to form sound baffles; Chretien could see, if a little indistinctly, the people at the other tables, but their conversations were murmurs at most.  Occasionally a word might escape the maze of greenery and fall into his ears but rarely enough that they were essentially meaningless.

He sipped a non-alcoholic cocktail and tapped at the iPad nestled in his lap.  Messages from the security details for both Ministers present were updating in real time.  Soon he learned that the Minister of the Interior had been coming here with each of her Deputies all week under the pretence of conducting performance reviews and that the Finance Minister had declined to update his security detail with any more information than that he was meeting important foreigners.

“Corruption as usual,” murmured Chretien to himself.  He touched the button on the top edge of the iPad to turn it off and sipped his drink again.  The sea produced more noise than the other conversations and he rather liked the soft rushing of the tiny waves breaking on the beach and the lacy patterns of foam they created.  Each design lasted mere seconds before breaking up and fading away, but there was always another to replace it.

The iPad lit up briefly; a new message had arrived to tell him something banal about European football results.  He noted only that the first team was AC Milan; this meant that Mahrie im-Mantis, Mistress of the Treasury, was arriving for their scheduled meeting.  Twenty-five minutes late, but a lack of punctuality was one of the hallmarks of the im-Mantis family.  He walked inside, carrying his drink, and when he returned holding two drinks he found Mahrie approaching the terrace across the white sands.

He returned to his table, where the iPad was now discretely tucked in at the side of his chair, and set the drinks down.

Mahrie was short and dressed as though she were taller.  Despite everything her tailor attempted her skirt was too long and too heavy for the heat, her blouse was overbroad in the shoulders and her chest was flatter than she wanted it to be.  She had a green jacket slung over her arm and a black leather handbag dangled from her fingers and she gave the impression of having learned how to dress from a book.

“Cretin,” she said.  She never bothered to use Chretien’s actual name and barely even bothered to look at him now; her eyes were on the drink.  “Did William make this?”

“Yes,” said Chretien as she called out to the barman loudly, ignoring him and drowning his response.

“William?  Did you make this?”

When the affirmative reply came from the bar, muffled by the plants and seating arrangements, she sat and tasted it.  Her lips pursed a little; Mahrie im-Mantis only really liked Champagne and so had all other alcoholic drinks made equally as acidic.

“Why are we meeting here?” she said.  She met Chretien’s gaze briefly then looked away again.  She clearly disliked him but all of his attempts to find out what the cause was had met dead ends.

Chretien placed the stained envelope containing the demands that Allabar im-Mantis had refused on the table in front of her, and then took a clear plastic case from his pocket and set that down next to it.  Her son’s shrivelled finger was nestled inside it in cotton wool.

“Qasqar’s finger?”  She sneered and returned to her drink.

“The demands in the letter are quite clear,” said Chretien.  While Allabar refused to read almost everything his ex-wife was compulsive about gathering information.  “Allabar has provided his response.  I am curious only if you have anything to add.”

“I agree with Allabar that the perpetrators of this crime need to be found and brought to justice,” she said.  “The Fort is appropriate.  Other than that, I do not see why we are meeting here.”

Chretien sat back and tasted his drink.  The barman had topped it up with water so that it looked fresh; now, diluted, it was less pleasant.  The Mistress of the Treasury looked at him after the silence drew out to a surprising level, and then she looked around more carefully.

“Ah,” she said.  “I see that Mehrab is here, with people I have not been informed about.  This… finger is a pointer, isn’t it, little Cretin?  You think you’re so clever, so sneaky, and yet all I have to do is ask a question and I find the answer.”  She sipped her drink; despite seeming to only sip the glass was already half-empty.  “I can replace you any time I like, Cretin.  You’re only still here because my hus— ex-husband — finds you useful.  You should remember that.”

“My concern,” said Chretien, “is simply to ask if your ex-husband should be advised against his current course of action.  Such advice would carry more weight if it came from an office equal to his own.”  It was, he reflected, nice to be able to use proper words instead of having to choose from a restricted list more suited to tabloid newspapers.

“You are not to tell him that I want anything other than what I just said!” Mahrie’s reply was as fast as a striking snake.  She was now watching her Finance Minister, moving her head this way and that to try and get a better view of the people he was entertaining.  “I want Qasqar revenged and that is it.”

“The letter is quite clear that they may attempt to harm Qasqar again if no ground is given,” said Chretien.

“Empty threats.”

“They have managed to show signs of competence.”  Chretien rubbed his hands together beneath the table.  Playing mental chess was certainly more interesting than listening to the blunt stupidities of Allabar im-Mantis but, he reflected, it would be nice if sometimes he could just be blunt with Mahrie.  Bluntness however reminded her of her ex-husband and made her recalcitrant. 

“Rubbish!  Qasqar was stupid and paid the price.  You’ve increased his security?  You’ve certainly increased mi— ah, Mehrab is getting up!”  She half-rose, hesitating until the Minister of Finance had gone inside.  “Don’t wait for me.”

Chretien set his still-mostly-full drink aside and picked up the iPad.  He waited until he heard hints of Mahrie introducing herself to Mehrab’s companions and then unlocked it.  He opened the browser and went to a bookmarked page, selecting an article from it seemingly at random and then sent an encrypted message containing only the link.  To all intents and purposes it looked like he was simply commenting on the outcome of a chess tournament in Las Vegas.  The coded message, to those who understood the code, was simply no-one need be spared.

Mr Scarecrow

 There was silence in the house.  Halibut — a stupid name, given to him by stupid parents — stood in the entrance hall, listening for any sound at all.  There was a steep wooden flight of stairs in front of him, and a narrow hallway ran past it to a closed, green-painted door at the end.  Unusually for houses of this build there were no other doors off the hallway, but the recesses where they had been, now bricked up and wallpapered over, remained.  They formed odd niches and someone had stood chipped stone plinths in each one.  Atop the closest was a pair of scuffed brown leather shoes and even though James had been wearing blue shoes Halibut got a sense of dread just from looking at them.

The silence dragged on until his own breathing seemed loud and when he held his breath, the pounding of blood in his ears seemed to deafen him to all other noises.  He tensed, realising that he was either alone in the house, or whoever else was there was better at waiting than he was, and took a step towards the brown shoes.

Underfoot a floor-board creaked.  He stopped immediately and started listening again.  The house was supposed to be empty, but the shoes on the plinth also suggested that it hadn’t been empty all that long ago.  Would the creak be interpreted as the house settling by anyone here, or would they come and investigate.  He felt his heart thump in his chest, almost unpleasantly hard, and wished that he were braver.

The floor was brown and bare and looked as though it had never been carpeted.  There was just on it, but not enough for him to look for footprints — not that he’d even thought about that, he realised.  The wallpaper was white with a faint yellow pattern on it; where the sunlight through the window to the side of the door struck it it glimmered, but he couldn’t make the pattern out.  Yellow on white seemed like a poor-contrast choice.

He made himself take another step.  The floor remained silent now, and he reached the plinth without any more creaks or groans or worrying noises.

The plinth was rough sandstone bricks piled up in a rectangular column with a  larger red tile on top.  He thought it might have been a paving slab before its current job.  The edges were slightly discoloured, in some places paler and in some places darker, as though plants had grown around it and been peeled away.  The shoes were neatly placed side by side.

He picked one up and looked inside it, pulling the tongue up to get a better look.  He found the size — European 38 — printed in tiny gold letters that were barely worn away.  He turned the shoe over again, looking at it more carefully now, and saw that while the uppers were scuffed the sole looked almost new and the laces were still stiff with disuse.  James wore a European 41 though, so they couldn’t be his.

Halibut set the shoe back down and the plinth grated for a second.  He started, stepping back, and the plinth, as though freed by his movement, started to turn on top of the pillar of bricks.  The grating of stone against stone seemed painfully loud in the silence and he instinctively retreated again until he was back by the door, facing the stairs and staring at the plinth.  It stopped turning after it had moved through ninety degrees.

“Hey mister,” said a voice and he started so violently that his leg jerked and he almost fell over.  He stumbled, throwing out a hand and catching himself against the door.  “You ok, mister?”

The voice seemed to be coming from above him and when he looked at the stairs he saw a young boy, perhaps nine or ten, standing at the top.  He looked at the boy’s feet next, and was unsurprised to see that he was wearing only socks.

“I’m fine,” he said.  His voice was firm and calm and didn’t indicate that he was clenching as hard as possible to avoid wetting himself.  “I just wasn’t expecting to see… a ghost.”

The boy took a step down the stairs and there was a creak as he did so.  “I’m not a ghost, mister.  Why’d you want to call me names like that?”

“You’re a ghost,” said Halibut.  Everyone knew that the kids that came into this house never left.  The Scarecrow saw to that.  “Everyone knows the kids in this house are ghosts.”

“You’re mean, mister,” said the boy, taking another step down the stairs.  His shadow seemed to be growing longer as he did, but Halibut knew that the light was coming in the wrong direction for that shadow to be real.  He reached behind him for the door handle.  His fingers skittered across painted wood for far too long, then found the satisfying coldness of the iron handle.  “Mr Scarecrow wouldn’t let you say things like that if he was here.”

“He’s not at home?”  Halibut’s heart jumped and he fought to control his excitement.  Perhaps he had arrived before the Scarecrow; if James wasn’t here yet then there might still be a way to save him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”  The boy stuck his tongue out at Halibut and took another step.  The staircase seemed to groan under the weight, even though Halibut was sure that a ghost should be weightless.

“You just said he wasn’t,” said Halibut.

“So you’re deaf as well as stupid?”  The boy sounded more adult now and Halibut realised that he’d grown taller too.  It was as though he was aging as he descended the stairs.  Halibut gripped the door handle tightly and wondered if he’d know when it was time to run.

“I just came looking for a pair of shoes,” said Halibut.  “Looks like you’ve not found them though.”

“There are shoes right there,” said the boy.  His voice deepened suddenly as though breaking and he took another step down.  There were, Halibut counted, only four steps left.  Unless the boy jumped down the rest.  “You were looking at them, weren’t you?  You must be really stupid.”

Halibut pulled on the door handle deciding that it was time to get out.  The door didn’t move.

“Doors have locks, you know,” said the boy.  He stepped down again and he no longer looked like a young boy at all: now he was a man in his early twenties and looked like he worked out regularly.  Halibut tugged on the door again, hoping it was just stuck, but he could hear a rattle behind him that might just be a lock jiggling against the doorframe.  The sense of dread from earlier returned like night falling and seemed to seize him a freezing cold grip.

“Well, would you look at that,” said the figure on the staircase casually.  He stepped down the last two steps as one.  “Looks like Mr Scarecrow is at home, after all.  Why don’t you say hello to me, Halibut?”

Choosing sides

 “What is the meaning of this?”

Allabar im-Mantis held up a red-stained envelope in one hand and then, with a disdain that his advisor could only envy, the middle finger of his only son.  The finger had been neatly amputated from the man’s hand and the stump end had dried and shrivelled somewhat.

“A demand,” said Chretien, im-Mantis’s advisor-without-portfolio, “and a middle finger.  I expect you’re supposed to take it metaphorically, though the fact it comes from your son would seem to make it less offensive that you would otherwise expect.”

“What?  Speak normally!”  Allabar had spent much of his adult life spending money that, strictly speaking, wasn’t his, and he had enjoyed it.  He was obese, struggled to get in and out of bed by himself, and got short of breath just walking from one office to another.  He travelled everywhere in a bullet-proof limousine and was growing steadily more fearful of the world around him.  He was also getting steadily more impatient with everyone and everything.

“It’s both a warning and an insult,” said Chretien.  He waited for im-Mantis to think about that.

“I get the insult,” said Allabar testily.  “I think I can see when someone’s giving me the middle finger!”

“This is your son’s middle finger,” said Chretien.  He waited again, resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the folder of paperwork he was carrying.

“My son wouldn’t dare give me the middle finger!”

Chretien nodded.  “And that is the insult, Sir.  Your son is, if you like, being forced to give you the middle finger.”

“Bah!”

“And it is s-also a warning,” said Chretien, narrowly avoiding saying ‘simultaneously’.  “That if you do not take the demand in the letter seriously then your son might come to more harm.”

“Where is the little idiot?”  Allabar looked around the long, narrow office as though expecting Qasqar to be hiding beneath a desk or in a cupboard.  Chretien allowed himself a tiny smile at the thought that if Qasqar were here he would almost certainly be trying to hide from his father.  “Why have I only got his finger?”

“Qasqar is still at the hospital,” said Chretien.  He had received a report an hour earlier from one of Qasqar’s security guards that the man was refusing to leave until he was certain his father had calmed down.  “I believe they are dealing with his… injury.”

“They’d better be regrowing his damn finger!  Why’s it taking so long?”

“I have no idea,” said Chretien.  “I can ask for an upda—“

“Leave it!  What is this demand about?”

Chretien nodded again, mostly to himself.  He had expected Allabar’s concern for his son to last for less time than it had.  “As you have read yourself,” he said, knowing that Allabar rarely took the time to read things, “the letter is a demand for changes in the way the country is run.”

“I’m not stepping down!”

“Quite.  In fact, the demands are more about socio-political policies, and the release of Jacques Humtaine from prison.”

“Absolutely not!” Allabar’s face reddened.  “He conspired against me!  And he’s still not told us who his conspirators are.  He can stay there and rot for all I care.”

“And the policies?” Chretien didn’t bother trying to explain the demands as he was sure what Allabar’s response would be.

“Nothing doing!”  Allabar glared about the office as though still trying to find his son hiding somewhere.  “I’m giving in to nothing.  Double the security on Qasqar and myself and find out how they managed to get to him.  And then have the people who let it happen sent to the Fort.”

“I have already taken the liberty of increasing security about you and your family,” said Chretien.  Allabar im-Mantis was separated, officially, from his wife but had been unable to remove her as Mistress of the Treasury and so some of his everyday frustration came from their sniping at each other as they attempted to run the country.  “However, I cannot send Qasqar to the Fort.”

“Of course you can’t!  I didn’t tell you to, I told you to send whoever failed to protect him!”

“That would be he himself, Sir.  He dismissed his security guards, went to the Hotel Amadeo, and drank heavily there.”

“So blame someone in the hotel.”  Allabar stamped over to a window and stared out of it.  Chretien shifted uncomfortably where he was standing; the window actually offered a view of the Hotel Amadeo and he wasn’t sure if Allabar knew that or it was just chance.  “They have security themselves, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Chretien.  He had spent several hours earlier that day reviewing the security cameras in the hotel, and talking to the guards and the barstaff.  “Unfortunately the incident cannot be placed with them.”

“Of course it can!  Just make something up!”

Chretien sighed.  “Sir,” he said firmly, “your son was alone in a locked bathroom when he was assaulted and his finger removed.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, did everything they could to keep him safe and he still managed to lose a finger.  The only person I can reasonably blame here is Qasqar.  His security guards would have joined him in the bathroom if they had been there.”

Allabar turned away from the window and Chretien noticed that the reddening of his face had increased and his neck was almost purple.

“Make.  Something.  Up.”

“I see,” said Chretien.  “Yes, I shall do that.”  Privately he decided that he would make up having made something up.  Allabar rarely checked unless there was money involved.

“At last,” said Allabar.  His shoulders sank a little as though he were relaxing.  “I don’t know why I keep you around, Cretin.  Sometimes you’re as bad as Mahrie.”

Chretien said nothing.  Allabar often called him ‘cretin’ and occasionally told him it was just a little joke between old friends.

“Laugh.”

Chretien forced a laugh that might have been a cough.

“This is boring,” said Allabar.  He dropped the letter and the finger on a nearby desk.  “Find out who’s behind this and put them in the Fort.  And quickly, I don’t want to have to see security guards everywhere I go.”

“Indeed,” said Chretien impassively.  “There is the small matter of other paperwork—“

“Later,” said Allabar.  He walked over to the door and just before he reached it, he looked back.  “You’re annoying me.  Make it tomorrow.”

“Very good, Sir,” said Chretien as the door closed behind Allabar.  He waited, unmoving for two minutes according to his phone and then sat down in an empty chair.  He scrolled through several news reports on his phone before selecting one that seemed innocuous, something about the rise in inflation rates and the cost of living, and sent a link to it to a number he had to type into his phone from memory.  The real meaning behind the message was that he had picked a side.

A dirty business

 The assassin lay quietly on the bed, his hands folded across his ribcage so that his fingertips just barely touched, and concentrated on his breathing.  It was slow and steady, each intake of breath measured in seconds and each exhale as gradual as the rising of the tide.  His muscles were relaxed and his mind was alert.  He paid attention to the hardness of the mattress he was lying on and the narrowness of the bed.  The air in the room was warm — it was in the low thirties outside and the air-conditioning in the building did not extend here — and there was a smell of cloves mixed with coffee.  There was a faint hum of white noise which was the sounds from the hotel bar adjacent to this room and which rose and faded irregularly.  There was also a sense of stillness and he appreciated knowing that in that peace he was a coiled spring, well-looked after and ready to unleash stored energy at a moment’s notice.

His phone beeped.  It was on the floor next to the bed.

He rose with the least movement he could achieve: he swung his legs around and off the side of the bed, lifting his chest and shoulders as he did so.  He reached down and picked the phone up, silencing it with a click of button and not needing to check the message: something banal from the bartender, some comment about the news or the weather, whose actual purpose was to let him know that Qasqar im-Mantis had gone to the toilet.

He left the room barefoot and walked unhurriedly along the beige-marbled corridor outside.  He allowed himself a half-smile; the marble was known as Mantis marble because the im-Mantis family still had a business importing it as cheaply as possible.  There were cracks in it already yet the building was barely a year and a half old.  At the end of the corridor was the outline of a door but no handle.  The assassin pressed on a part of the wall that looked no different to any other and waited until he heard a soft click and then pressed on another part.  The wall swung inwards silently and revealed a janitor’s closet and another door.

He left the secret door ajar and opened the janitor’s closet door into the public toilet.  This was also done in Mantis marble though the floor was polished concrete.  There were mirrors but they were over the sinks and Qasqar, a florid man who wasn’t yet thirty but looked to be forty-five or even fifty, was leaning against the wall and pissing into a pristine white urinal.  The smell of it rankled the assassin’s nostrils and the sight of the man — a clear roll of fat around his waist covered by expensive but poorly cleaned clothes, shabby unpolished shoes and sweat stains spreading out from his armpits and across his back — was offensive.  He was the son the so-called Prime Minister, a dictator in all but name, and dressed and acted like a near-homeless alcoholic.

“Qasqar,” said the assassin.  The handle on the door to enter the toilets rattled but the door had been automatically locked by the bartender at Qasqar’s request.  Someone banged on the door and yelled about hurrying up.

Qasqar’s head jerked up and then fell back, bumping gently on the wall.

“Not done,” he mumbled, struggling to produce coherent words.  A smell of alcohol briefly pushed the acrid notes of piss away and the assassin shook his head; the change in stench was not an improvement.

“You will be,” said the assassin.  He waited several seconds while Qasqar’s sluggish brain worked out that the words weren’t from outside.  Finally the man lifted his head and turned it.  Dull, bloodshot brown eyes squinted at the assassin, trying to focus.  When they finally managed it he half-moaned a question, “Who-ooo?”

The assassin reached down and pulled up his left trouser leg to get to a suede-leather sheath and removed a knife from it.  The fifteen centimetre blade was blackened and nearly invisible in the dim lighting of the toilets but Qasqar had no trouble guessing what it was.  He turned his whole body, now spraying the floor with his dark-yellow, stinking piss, and his sallow face managed to turn paler than it already was.

“You’re disgusting,” said the assassin.  He didn’t often offer personal commentary as his opinion wasn’t paid for, but im-Mantis had stepped over the line where he felt obliged to hold back.  He stepped forward, his body language switching from neutral to threatening in a single pace.

“Whaddya wan’?” Qasqar was so drunk even terror couldn’t sober him and unslur his words.  He tried to to back away but sat down heavily in the urinal he’d just been using.

“You,” said the assassin.  “You’re to deliver a message.”

“I’m rich!” Qasqar’s brain finally seemed to understand the situation.  “I can pay.  I can pay!”

“You mean your father will pay,” said the assassin.  “Or perhaps your mother.  Depending on who you tell first, yes?  I don’t care, and my clients don’t care.  You are, however, requested to give either of your parents this.”  He now slipped his free hand inside his shirt where, unusually, a pocket was sewn.  He extracted a white envelope that was as smooth as expensive paper could be.  He set it down on the counter where the sinks were.

“Give it to me,” said Qasqar.  He was starting to sober up, the assassin noticed, and his eyes were starting to shine and dart about.  “I’ll give it to both of them.”  He tried to stand up but his hands slipped on the porcelain of the urinal and he fell back again.

“In a moment,” said the assassin, taking another step closer, watching Qasqar carefully.  Even a drunk could lash out and get lucky.  “We need to know that the message will be taken seriously.”

“It will!”  Qasqar’s dread was now engraved on his face, deeply inscribed in his tired, alcohol-soaked skin.

“Indeed.”  The assassin looked to the left and Qasqar’s eyes followed instinctively so when the assassin’s hand leapt out like a salmon leaping upstream to seize Qasqar’s right hand im-Mantis didn’t even notice until the hand was pressed against the wall, stretched out by the length of his arm.

“No no no no no,” gabbled Qasqar, his eyes now locked onto the knife in the assassin’s hand.  “No, please no!”

The assassin pressed the point of the knife against the middle knuckle of Qasqar’s hand and pressed inwards until it popped.  A little jiggling and then the knife cut through the skin and tendons, severing the middle finger.  Qasqar’s scream echoed around the toilets and he struggled, trying to pull his hand free.  The assassin held it easily in place until the finger dropped to the floor, then let go.  As im-Mantis clutched his hand to his chest, blood staining his already filthy t-shirt, and moaned to himself the assassin picked the finger up and set it delicately on the envelope.

“Don’t forget to pass the message on,” he said.  “Or next time it’ll be something you value more.”

He walked back through the janitor’s closet and closed the secret door behind him.  Taking his phone out, he sent a message to the bartender, a random Instagram picture whose actual meaning was that the task had been achieved, and then went to find somewhere to wash his feet.  Dealing with the im-Mantis’s always seemed to be a dirty business.

Secrets and Lies

 “The issue, Minister,” said Dink Lightly, “is that the diaries you’ve provided for the book—”

“My personal diaries, yes.” The Minister famously disliked listening to anyone else speak for longer than a few minutes.  Dink, his ghostwriter, was coming to terms with it but he still had to avoid sighing in frustration that the Minister was clarifying a point that was obvious to everyone in the room.

“Yes,” he said, mentally sighing instead.  “Yes, those diaries. The issue is that they contain, well, confessions.  Of crimes.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said the Minister cheerfully.  He grinned at Dink with his best campaign smile.  “I think we used that a slogan last year, in fact.  You can put that in the book.”

Dink forced a smile onto his face and reached for his notepad.

“Ah, before you write that down, Mr. Dink,” said a nasal voice to his left.  He couldn’t help but think of a weasel trying to be human whenever he heard that voice.  “That slogan, Minister, was the one we trialled to explain the increase in the number of people being sent to prison.”

“Ah,” said the Minister in the tone of someone being reminded of something unpleasant.  “That was not our greatest success, right?”

“Far from it, Minister,” said the weasel.  Dink tried to remember that the man’s name was Jacob, just in case he had to offer an opinion.

“So probably only a third-rate success,” said the Minister sounding thoughtful and apparently having only heard what he wanted to hear.  “I think the book should—“

“Focus on the top-tier successes,” said Jacob.  The Minister glared at him for a few seconds and then nodded.  “Ok, don’t use that quote.  Or save it for the sequel maybe.”  Dink glanced surreptitiously at Jacob who shook his head fractionally but firmly.  Dink wrote down some words at random to appease the Minister and wondered how much longer this would go on for.

“Right,” said the Minister.  “That’s all then, right?”

“Ah,” said Dink, but the weasel laid a cold, clammy hand on Dink’s wrist and spoke over him.

“Not quite, Minister.  The diaries, as this young man,” and Jacob smiled at Dink in a way that made him want to vomit, “is trying to tell you, contain details that are not in the public interest, though the public would likely be very interested in them.”

“What?”  The Minister could be disarmingly blunt when he wasn’t actually interested in what was being said.

Jacob took his hand off Dink’s wrist and Dink narrowly avoided shuddering in relief.

“The diaries state that you broke the pandemic rules,” said Dink.  “Repeatedly.  And inventively, in some cases.”

“Those rules didn’t apply to me,” said the Minister.  He looked at his watch.  “I’m on the news in five minutes and I’d like to watch it.”

“They did,” said Jacob smoothly.  “And finding out that you’d broken them would put you on the news rather a lot Minister, but not in any way you’d like to watch.”

“Well change the law, then,” said the Minister.  “Have them not apply to me, since I’m the Minister and I’m running the show here.  How is this difficult?  Why am I having to listen to this?”

“Changing the law retroactively would require Parliament to be told all the details,” said Jacob.  “Which might endanger your chance of re-election.”

“Oh.”  The Minister frowned and adjusted his position on his chair in a way that suggested he had been about to stand up and leave no matter how the conversation went.  “I need to be re-elected.  At least until I can make this position hereditary.  So… just don’t put that bit in the book.”

Dink found himself writing down hereditary? and wondering what the Minister was on about.  A moment later Jacob took his pen out of his hand and carefully scribbled over hereditary until only the question mark was left.

“The problem, Minister,” said Jacob, “is that under the rules set out for the writing of these books for government officials the ghostwriter must report any evidence of criminal activity if they come across it.”

“Well done,” said the Minister, smiling warmly at Dink.  “I shall act on it at once.  Is that done now?”

“Not to you, Minister,” said Jacob.  Dink thought he sounded wheedling now.  “To the police.”

“Good Lord,” said the Minister.  “Haven’t I abolished them yet?”

“Legislation is in passage,” said the weasel with a smile that Dink felt showed far too many teeth that were far too white.  “But realistically it would be better to submit the evidence to them and then have them decide that there is no crime to investigate.  A little work with the Official Secrets Act after that and we can cover this up for a hundred and fifty years, by which time no-one will care.”

The Minister gave the weasel the side-eye.  “And how do they decide that?” he asked.  “What’s it going to cost?”

“It used to be a peerage,” said Jacob.  “In the good old days.  You’d just knight the Chief Constable or give his wife a modest title, one that comes with a small stretch of land, and be done with it.  But under the current circumstances… you’re probably going to have to give up on abolishing the police force.”

“No!”

“Hear me out, Minister, at least.  There is an alternative.”

“I won’t have these plebs trying to prosecute me!  They’re persecuting me enough already without changing the damn letters around!”

“Indeed, Minister, though can you truly say they have no cause?”  Jacob didn’t wait for his boss to answer. “Instead, let’s have the police force report into you directly.  They will be placated by the legislation to abolish them being dropped and we’ll slide their reporting lines under you as part of amendments to other bills. A little bit of PR work and we can change the M from meaning Metropolitan to Militia, I should think.”

“The M?”

“As in London Metropolitan Police: LMP, Minister.  We can make it London’s Militia Policing.  And it will your own private army.”

Dink reached for his pen to note that down but Jacob removed it and, without once looking at Dink, snapped it in half.

“Capital idea,” said the Minister.  “They’ll have a hard time arresting me if I’m giving the orders, right?”

“Precisely, Minister.”

Descending the mountain

 Garret clung to the rockface, the tips of his fingers white with the effort and long-since numb.  His feet were half-on, half-off a narrow ledge and his toes were starting to ache with the strain of holding himself in place.  He was trying to edge along the ledge to the next patch of cliff-face where he could actually stand but Samara had stopped in front of him and he was biting his tongue to prevent himself from demanding what the problem was now.

The crumbling of the path ahead of them had turned out to be a much bigger problem that he’d expected; when they’d turned around to backtrack a little and find another way down they’d discovered that the steep slope they’d been descending was unclimbable.  The loose scree that they’d carefully nudged aside with their feet coming down was impossible to avoid when going up, and it just slid from under them and dumped them unceremoniously on their arses, unpleasantly close to the drop.  Or plummet, considering it was definitely far enough to the steppe below to be fatal.  Samara had cursed a blue streak, letting go some of the rage she had for the path crumbling in the first place and conveniently not letting Garret ask any more questions about whether the whole situation could have been avoided if she had been more trusting.  Then she’d glared around her as though the cliff and the sky and the mountain were somehow conspirators against her and sat heavily down and sighed as though she was carrying the weight of the whole world on her shoulders.

“Am thinking: is time to climb,” said Efimov looking over the edge. Garret, who didn’t have vertigo or a particular fear of heights did not join him; the view was spectacular but made him feel uneasy.  There just wasn’t quite enough space on their path to stand back and feel secure in his opinion.

“There’s no chance we could fly instead?”

Efimov looked over at him and grinned, a light dancing in his eyes that made Garret more uneasy than looking at the drop to the ground.  “Ah flight,” he said.  “Difficult magic, that.  Taught at Bogbones and Atul schools, however.”

“They teach all magics,” said Samara but it sounded automatic and less defensive than she’d been so far.

“They teach this one,” said Efimov.  “Problem is, the way they teach it is about leverage.  Flight is achieved by pushing on something else, typically the ground.”

Garret’s forehead, which could charitably be compared a freshly ploughed field, furrowed further as he thought about this.  “Isn’t that right though?” he asked. “I mean, a bird flaps its wings and pushes the air against the ground to stay aloft, right?”

Efimov shook his head.  “No, bird pushes air against air when it flaps.  Ground is a long way away and there is a lot of air between it and bird.  Also, air moves when pushed.  Flying is not like rowing boat.  Flapping is not for support, flapping is for direction.  Bird curves wings, adjusts direction.  Bird flaps to turn, but relies on being light enough not to fall too fast.”

Garret puzzled over this.  “Ok,” he said at last.  “I don’t think I understand that, but magic does it differently anyway?”

“Exact,” said Efimov.  “And here is problem.  Magic flying here — ground is too far away.  So we have only falling until ground is close enough, and then magic probably not strong enough to slow fall and start flying before ground catches us.”

“We die, but more slowly,” said Samara.  She was staring into the blue sky and Garret wondered for a moment if he’d ever seen her look so hopeless.  “We’re stranded on the side of this stupid mountain and we’re going to die here.”

“Time for climbing,” said Efimov.

“We can’t climb, you idiot!  There’s no way up.  The scree will kill us just as much as jumping off the mountainside will!”

“Not climbing up,” said Efimov.  Garret plucked up his courage to look over the edge of the mountain and wished he hadn’t.  The side of the mountain was yellowish-grey rock and while there were lots of bumps and crags and cracks Garret didn’t like the idea of clinging to them for dear life while trying to inch his way towards the ground.  Somewhere overhead a bird chose that moment to scream and the cry echoed around them eerily.

“You want to climb down?!  Have you gone mad?”

Efimov gestured at the path.  “Path continues below us,” he said.  “Only need to climb down to rest of path.”

Garret thought Samara was going to start shouting but she stood up instead, and took three quick steps to the edge.  Then she knelt and peered over, then stretched out, lying down and let her head hang over the edge.

“You’re right,” she said, sounding surprised.  “The path switches back and carries on below us.  We could climb down to that.”

“We?” asked Garret and wasn’t at all surprised when the other two ignored him.  “I might be a bit heavy for that,” he said into the silence.  “My pack, that is,” he said when he still got no response.

“You will have to carry only what is necessary to you,” said Efimov.  “But I think we have a plan now.”

“We?” asked Garret again. A chill feeling of dread started in the pit of his stomach and spread outwards.

Samara led the way as though it had been her idea all along until they’d reached the first point where they could rejoin the path.  Garret, gritting his teeth and sweating so much that water seemed to run off his head in a rivulet, had struggled down with his pack intact.  When his feet finally settled on the path and his heart stopped pounding in his chest like it was going to burst the pain in his fingers and toes started up.  As he massaged his hands and got his breathing back under control, Efimov looked over the edge again and said,

“I think we could climb a bit further.  Would save time.”

“Lead on,” said Samara.  Garret bit his tongue and wondered at the unfairness of the world that his companions seemed determined to take the hardest approach to everything.

“I might prefer the path,” he said, even as Efimov slipped over the edge of the path and started to climb down.  “I don’t have any spiders in my ancestry, you know.”

“It’s getting dark,” said Samara, glancing up at the sky.  It was a deeper blue than it had been earlier and Garret now noted, with dismay, that there were hints of red and orange, sunset colours, amongst the sparse clouds.  “Sure you want to be up here on your own when that happens?”

“Extortion,” muttered Garret under his breath and resigned himself to following Samara.

Now, with the path once again in sight, she had stopped in front of him and he was wondering how long he had before his fingers just stopped working and he fell off the mountain.

“There’s a problem,” she said and Garret had to restrain himself to keep from shouting that there better bloody had be.  “Efimov had stopped.”

“Great,” said Garret, unable to help himself.  His jaw ached from gritting his teeth.

“What?”  Samara turned her head to look at him and then she sneered. “Oh, was that sarcasm?”

“What else?” said Garret.  He reminded himself that while he was only to fall off this cursed mountain the way things were going, he didn’t have to anger Samara into pushing him off.  “I don’t think I can go back.”

“I don’t think any of us can,” she said.  “But… oh, Efimov’s done it!”  She sounded impressed, which was very unlike her.  “That was quite a jump he made,” she continued.  Then she looked at Garret again.  “You might have a problem with that pack though.”

Garret had regretted keeping his pack eight times so far and would have taken it off and picked it up from the bottom of the mountain if he’d thought it was at all possible without it pulling him down with it.  He was certain that as tired as he now was, it wasn’t going to be easier.

“Right,” he said.  “Got this far though, so you never know.”

“Sure,” said Samara.  She edged forwards at last.  “See you if you make it!”

Ellesbrith of Quyani

 The old house was lit by candles: tall, yellow columns of dragonfly-wax harvested from the roofs of the city and moulded into shape by the ciresters.  The narrow hallway that Ramayon walked down after locking the door behind him held two, both floor-standing and as tall as mid-chest on him.  Each wick was finger-thick and burned white with a faintly lavender edge.  Shadows wavered on the walls in front of him as he moved and his eyes tracked them alertly.  The house was safe, he was sure of that, but in Quyani you lived longest by not taking chances.  There was a smell too, something papery and dry; the ciresters said it came from the wax and Ramayon, who would never dare to climb the roofs and harvest wax, chose to believe them.  The smell wasn’t unpleasant, but after a short while it was like being in a musty, unaired library and he then felt an urge to escape to fresh air.

At the end of the hallway was another door.  It had no lock and pushed outwards easily when he laid a hand on it.  He walked through, letting the door swing shut by itself, and now he was a in an antechamber of sorts.  There were doors in each of the other three walls, and in the centre of the room was a flight of wooden stairs leading downwards.  The staircase was surrounded by wooden bannisters except where the top stair made contact with the floor and, unsurprisingly, the stairs themselves vanished into darkness.  Between the doors were frescos in what looked like an untutored hand; colour was applied boldly but seemingly without much thought, and the lines of the people and animals depicted were bold but crude.  Ramayon paused for a moment, looking at the frescos.  They were mostly hunting scenes and were supposedly older than the house, painted onto the walls of caves before Quyani had been quarried around them.  Personally he thought that some of the people who lived here and never left had drawn them when they were bored and had made the story up to justify them.

The door to his left opened and a woman stepped out.  She was slightly shorter than him, wearing a blue shirt and grey trousers and had auburn hair tied back from her face in a pony-tail.  She hesitated for a moment, then recognised him.

“Ramayon,” she said.  She didn’t sound precisely hostile, but he knew she didn’t like him and, though the ballots were secret, he suspected that she had voted against his joining their society.  “Have you been lurking here long?”

“I just arrived,” he said.  “Do people often lurk in here, then?”

She pursed her lips for a moment, disliking that he’d picked up on her choice of verb.  “A slip of the tongue,” she said, waving one hand dismissively.  “Some people have been known to study the paintings.  I would… I would not have thought you were one of them.”

Ramayon decided to ignore the implied slight.  “I am sure they have amazing qualities,” he said, walking towards the door she was standing in front of.  “But I was asked to come here by Ellesbrith and you know as well as I that she does not like to be kept waiting.”

“She is impatient already,” said the woman.  She stepped aside. “I would recommend being apologetic.”

“We are not the same, though,” murmured Ramayon as he passed through the doorway.

This room had been hewn out of the rock itself; the floor, the walls and the ceiling were all pale-grey stone.  The floor had veins of colour, mostly brown and red, running through it while the walls were more uniform.  The ceiling was hard to judge as stalactites descended from it in several places and the rest was so rough that it might have been entirely natural.  In the centre of the room was a helix of metal that spiralled upwards and eventually made contact with a stalactite.  There was a cold draught coming from somewhere up near the ceiling and Ramayon shivered.

Ellesbrith was standing by the helix doing something to it with a rubber-handled tool that seemed to consist of eight prongs connected together at a central point.  As he approached she looked over her shoulder at him.

“I said midnight,” she said sharply.  Her voice echoed around the cavern, which was a better descriptor than room in Ramayon’s opinion.  “Are you deaf, stupid, or inconvenienced?”

“I am late,” said Ramayon, who knew that Ellesbrith hated anything she could describe as an excuse.  “I passed Natalie on my way in.”

He waited.  Ellesbrith tapped the helix and seemed very interested in the noises that her tool made.  After thirty seconds or so she looked over her shoulder again and she looked less annoyed.

“Natalie overran her time,” she said.  “Not that that’s any of your concern, and since you couldn’t have known she would you couldn’t have allowed for that in your arrival.”

“True,” said Ramayon. “But the circumstances are that I am only late in absolute terms; relatively speaking I am exactly when you needed me.”

“One day,” said Ellesbrith, “one day you won’t have a smart answer.  Then what will you do?”

“I’ll cross that bridge when it needs burning,” said Ramayon.  Ellesbirth snorted, but it might have been laughter.

“Fine,” she said.  “Be like that.  Now come and look at this.  If I’m not mistaken, the dance of shadows is getting longer, and I think we’re in danger of seeing a prophecy fulfilled.”