The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - FORTUNATO AGAIN - (part 2)

Chapter 2, part 2

That evening, we walked into the Green Quarter. I had Barsina dress me as respectably as I had clothes for: felt boots, not sandals, despite the heat, and a brown shawl with a short fringe, nothing too sensual, and my hair up with white fillet and white lace on the back of the braid. Barsina was … well, Barsina, and mostly I bought clothes for her to please me, not make her look modest, but she wore a full chiton and the longest shawl she had and braided her hair up into a double loop. No visible jewels for either of us except Barsina’s seed pearl earrings. Strictly professional, and not weak targets for a dry cosh or a tripping gang.

We were consequently nearly half an hour late getting to the aristoi’s palaco, which is not how I like to do business. It had been raining with a quick blow off the sea, as often happens in Aulis, so Barsina’s feet were splashed wet, and my felt boots were damp. The house was on Herkeniad Placo, at Number Three. I say “house” loosely. There was a wall, over which poked some plane tree branches, dripping with rainwater, and the roofs, terracotta tile, of a big mansion, on the other side of which the tops of some old cypress trees were visible. The door in the wall, by a small porter’s lodge, was painted red, with the number in brass and a knocker, and there was a small gas lamp.

I knocked a bit, and then Barsina took it up for me. She can bang a knocker despite her modest eyes and slender hands. It was like a stevedore throwing barrels down a ramp.

I looked around the cobbled Herkeniad Placo: dolphin fountain in the middle, stone benches. Four other sides, four other palacos. Quiet place. We had it to ourselves. The sky was almost full dark, and bats were swooping the roofs.

“This is the address, Miss,” Barsina said, frustrated. “But—no one.”

“He said the mews was in back. Maybe it’s outside the house wall, and we can see the car.”

“Yes, Miss,” she said doubtfully, and I didn’t expect it either. But there might be a groom or a skivvy dumping a dustbin—anything to get us inside.

“The porter must be off tonight,” I said cheerfully, and we made our way from the Placo side along the wall to an alley that didn’t smell and wasn’t cluttered and had gas lamps halfway down. “Here.”

We met a kind of luck right away. Halfway along, a double gate hung, made of heavy wood on low pneumatic rubber wheels. To my surprise, it stood slightly ajar, just a few centimeters. If I’d been walking by not looking, I wouldn’t have seen it, but it was as plain as a midnight rocket launch for a woman and her maid who wanted in.

“Convenient,” I said.

“Miss.” She pointed.

A fragment of junk metal jammed the latch between the bolt and the faceplate, keeping the spring-loaded bolt from dropping into place. The rusted faceplate had fresh cuts, probably from a hammer or mallet striking the scrap and the latch.

“Well, well.” I pulled an electric torch from my girdle, dialed the beam to low and dim, and examined it. “Someone may be here ahead of us.”

“Or coming soon.” She looked back up the alley, but we had it to ourselves still.

I took a kerchief from my girdle and, grasping the door, rolled it open half a meter, and we went in. My heart rate was up, but my eyes were wide, and my ears pricked. The house was dead silent, and hardly a lamp shone in the windows.

“Odd.”

“I don’t like this, Miss.”

“Neither do I.”

The mews was just inside the gate, and sure enough, under a shed roof, a red ground-car was sitting, its nose crumpled and driver compartment cracked, fluid stains on the cobbles where they had slowly dripped. But I set that aside in my mind. “Let’s find someone to take us to Mist’ Fortunato.”

The kitchen door was locked, and the kitchen was dark. We walked through the herb garden and into the central lawn on the other side, trying doors until we found one unlocked.

“Good!” I said.

“No, Miss.”

“Damn it,” I said. The lock was jammed open again, and I’d put my prints on the knob. Barsina, taking off her sandals before we went in, shook her head disapprovingly.

The door let us into a big room with a high ceiling and lots of broad-paned glass windows, not the bullseye stuff they let the mercanters and dolemen have, but the hanging sheets two meters high. The walls were covered with high shelves of books, lots of them old, and paintings. A suit of powered armor crouched like a goblin in the corner; every time I looked that way, I thought it was a man, making my heart jump. There was a taxidermied (I think that’s the word) wildcat off the savano, with a sandy pelt and black, tufted ears, one paw raised, snarling with blind glass eyes—poor cat. I shuddered. I saw a little girl-child done that way once, with the organs exploded out in labeled blocks of transparent plastinate. You don’t forget a thing like that; for a moment, the stuffed cat threw me off.

The terminal on the desk was alight, a dreamy lightshow on its lock screen.

I decided we’d proceeded into trespassing. “Mist’ Fortunato?” I said brightly, like I’d come calling at sixteen in the afternoon instead of nineteen in the evening to a creepily silent house. “Hello? Mist’ Fortunato?”

My voice sounded wan and shaky in the dark, and Barsina’s arm slipped through mine. We moved through the room, off rich carpets onto black marble floors. The leather soles of my felt boots tapped on the stone, but Barsina’s bare feet were as silent as the cat would have been.

We rounded a glossy black table lined with various statues and art-like objects, some delicate under glass bells and some sturdily sitting there. It faced an empty hearth, which probably only got lit in Nocturna and Primera, Aulis’s cold months, and there was another rug on the floor to catch cinders, and lying on it was my client in a pool of his own blood.

( … This way to Chapter 2 part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter 2 part 3 … )