The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - MULLINAX (Part 2)
(Chapter 12, part 2)
It was cold enough to wake us right up before dawn. The banks of cloud had pushed away past the twin mountains, Ossa and Pelion, and into the Montara Sierpento beyond. Their movement dragged fog off the Greater Thalassa after them, and the street below was misty in the lights as the lamplighters came and snuffed them all out again. We tied on our peploses and went downstairs and took an early shower that wasn’t too cold, and then Barsina made us breakfast while I got on my tablet and tried to sniff out some information without being obvious.
First, I cautiously slipped onto the grid and looked for Zoan. There wasn’t a lot. For the first city the Caballardo controlled, you’d think they would talk more about it. Maybe they’re embarrassed by it being blown over by sand. I couldn’t even figure out how long ago it went missing. It had to be later than six hundred years ago because that’s when the Caballardist war was going on, and it had to be earlier than five years ago because that’s when this Mullinax was digging it up.
It could have been anything in between.
I have no grasp of history. They didn’t teach us anything about that at all. What would girls like us need to know that? From what I do know, it’s mind-numbingly dull once you get past the Caballardists, and the world getting mostly terraformed in the areas people are interested in. Then it gets dull, as if everything just stopped.
Notwithstanding what Miss Testaferrata thinks, I am a good reader, and, like I said, I can do household maths like a queen. But I know my limits. There was no more than a paragraph on Zoan in the State Cyclopedex, and it used words like stratigraphy, environmental catastrophe, typology, in situ, midden, and carbon dating.
I did see the name Mullinax connected with it, and then there his name was at the Academy. There was his blocknumber too … but, like I say, I am very reluctant to do anything to do with a blocknumber, and there was no way I was going to use the blocknumber I happened to have memorized ever again. I had the uncomfortable feeling that’s why Miss Testaferrata’s attention had been drawn towards Aulis in the first place.
Barsina looked over my shoulder, and I leaned my head back on her. She put her hands on me.
“We should be packing,” she said. “I have counted Miss’s money. We could get to Argoshaan by an overland bus in five days, find a place to set up practice—”
“We’re going to the Academy this morning,” I said.
I felt her tense up. “As Miss pleases,” she said and moved away.
I sighed. I didn’t like to upset Barsina, but there wasn’t any help for it. Mardonios had already told me not to leave town. I couldn’t think of any better way to attract his deep interest—with my clothes on, anyway—than to skip out of the city on a land-stage to Argoshaan. I wasn’t sure how I was going to shake Miss Testaferrata, and find the culprit for my poor dead client whose fifty drachms I had gladly taken, and deal with the peculiar situation of Miss Zenithar and Miss Fortunato, and keep my neck unsnapped at one and the same time—but one issue before another.
And, I had taken the case. I had to complete it. Like I like my desk neat, and like I wanted to help Mardonios with his coat, there was no getting around the deep need to leave it tidy.
The Academy is on the other side of Landing Park. It’s surrounded by the Old Town, which is not like the rest of Aulis at all but is a bizarre square grid laid out in straight lines, rather ugly and inhuman and, to someone like me, who doesn’t like to be seen at a distance, pretty disconcerting. If you don’t know it already, the Old Town is the oldest part of Aulis. They got off their landing craft where Landing Park was, and the first thing they did was survey out a bunch of squares and live like playing stones on a game board. Left, right, left, left, right, back and forth. Inside the blocks, it’s comfortably tangled with back alleys and odd bolt holes between buildings like normal people live, but out on the streets—eyes in my back, that’s all I can feel. I stay away when I can.
The Archaeology Department is in a big building on the west side of the Academy … not that far from the State Gallery, which Barsina pointed out when we glimpsed a flash of its spires over the laurels.
“Convenient, that,” I said.
“For what?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, but we keep having convenient coincidences, don’t we.”
There were a lot of students—men—hurrying around in their brown and green short copes and tunics and robes and a few women in brown chitons as well. Like I said, if you look, there are glimpses of another Iphigenia, but I don’t expect it ever to be. There was a bell in a skinny tower on the corner of the building, and right after we went in, we heard it clanging and the lecture hall doors all opened, and men came running out. I grabbed one by the elbow. “Where do I find Doctor Professor Mullinax?”
He stared at me, but pointed over his shoulder. “Seldoni Opticum,” he said.
“What?” but he was gone.
Barsina has a good head for finding things, though, and she pointed through the mass of struggling young men in brown. A tall skinny bespectacled man with his brown stitched cope flapping around his shoulders was forcing his way through them, waving away green paper booklets they shook almost in his face. “Office hours, office hours,” he said. “They are marked, out of my way, young man. Out of my way, sirrah. Out of my way, young man—Miss, rather, pardon me!”
He stopped short, blinking at me through thick lenses.
I didn’t bother to curtsey; I wanted to make sure no one pinched my bum in this mob: Barsina had already put her bottom against the wall and was hard put to keep her toes from being stepped on. They were already tramping on my sandals.
“Doctor Professor Mullinax?”
“Yes, yes, excuse me, I have to get back to my office—”
“Good, I want to talk to you there.”
“Out of the question, Miss! Excuse me.” He started to push past.
“It’s about Meisje.”
His head snapped around and he looked searchingly at me, then seized me by the wrist, and pulled me along, Barsina hastening to keep up.
( … This way to Chapter Twelve part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Twelve part 3 … )