Nocturnal (episode n. 1) Read online

«I warned you, the rest is up to you.»

  «I hope you don't think I owe you anything for your riddles...»

  «Things are much simpler than that, my dear. Either you do what I expect you to do, after which you will owe me no more, or soon you will be dead, in which case it would not matter any longer.»

  «Threats again.»

  «I think I told you, I am not prone to threatening people. I was only explaining the situation to you, I did never state I would partake in your death. Ash, prepare the coach, I am leaving.»

  The last sentence was evidently for the black-skinned man, who immediately left the room.

  That woman really had a coach. Incredible.

  «Aren't coaches a little too old-fashioned lately?»

  «It only takes persisting and every thing comes back in fashion sooner or later.»

  «And I take you have been persisting for a while.»

  «Longer than you can imagine, my dear, longer than you can imagine.»

  The woman stood, sliding between the table and the sofa with a fluid and graceful movement that Amanda would never have been able to reproduce.

  «What is your part in all this?» she managed to ask her before she was out of reach.

  «I do not like competition» she answered, almost in whisper, before she went through the door and disappeared behind the heavy curtains.

  Standing up and following her would have been useless. And considering the quality of the conversation, she probably had no reason to anyway. Aside, maybe, trying to see if the coach really existed, but she could live without that as well.

  The rest of the night was spent in a long and useless wait. None of the people she wanted to meet showed up.

  There were still a couple of hours before dawn – and the closure of the locale – when weariness started to have the upper hand on her, and Amanda decided it was time to go back home, even though this meant she had to visit again the following night.

  She had taken just a few steps outside when something cold and wet brushed her face, almost a light sting. Automatically she lifted her fingers to her cheek, surprised.

  Water.

  Instinctively she looked up, as if she could see anything but the night and the stars. She didn't, but another drop hit her on her left eyebrow, followed by another on the root of her nose.

  One after another, uncountable drops of water started drumming on the macadam. As absurd and impossible as it might seem, it was raining.

  CHAPTER 4

  The following morning she got up in an even more wretched state than she had forcefully get used to lately. Being up late the night before hadn't helped for sure.

  Fortunately, lessons were still suspended, so she could take it easy and go looking for more useful information elsewhere.

  When she was awake enough, she left and went to the police headquarter.

  Although she had been there less than twenty-four hours earlier, the feeling was exactly the opposite of the one she had in the Underdark: it seemed like it was a totally different place from the one she had seen the day before.

  The building in itself hadn't changed, of course, but it seemed full of a frantic activity, too much even for a place like that.

  «May I help you?» asked an uniform breaking her train of thoughts. Weird it had even noticed her in all that confusion. Weird but good.

  «I would like to talk with detective...» right, what was his name? «... the one who is in charge of the homicide of Trey Parker.»

  «Please wait.»

  And she waited.

  It took longer than she had expected before the man showed up again.

  «I'm sorry, madam, it seems there is no such investigation.»

  Amanda stared, confused. She wanted to reply she was sure there was one, but she knew that the reply wouldn't change anything. Fortunately, she had a plan B.

  «May I talk to detective Stonehand, please?»

  «I think he is busy», the man answered with a regretful look. It seemed he was really sad for that.

  «I can wait. Just let him know Amanda Sheldon is here, please.»

  «As you wish.»

  The policeman walked away again and she sat on one of the chairs lined against the wall for anyone who was waiting his turn to talk to someone for whatever reason. They were so uncomfortable that she always thought they had been chosen on purpose to dishearten people more quickly, and keep time losses to the minimum. No one without a very serious reason would have wished to sit on one for more than a few minutes.

  She had a serious reason, though, or at least so she hoped, and forced herself to wait there, almost motionless, for a time that seemed endless.

  She was almost at the point where she could stand no more, already about to stand and renounce, when a man slightly taller than one meter appeared at the end of the corridor and started walking towards her.

  «Manda.» As far as she could remember, he was the only one calling her like that. «Today's not a good one. If you wanted to greet an old friend, you could do that yesterday while you were here.»

  Amanda looked at him. He had a formal tailored pearl-grey suit, and a pale blue buttoned shirt. The tie, matching the suit, was loosened and dangled obliquely. A very bad sign.

  «Sorry Shim, I wanted to but I was terribly late for work.»

  «Not late enough not to have time to molest two poor thieves who were only doing their job», he grunted. Amanda shrugged. She knew that, under the gruff tone and reproachful look, there was a pleased smile hidden. After all he was the one who had taught her to fight.

  «What's the emergency?» she asked, receiving an astonished look in return.

  «You must be the only one in the whole city who doesn't know. It rained last night.»

  No news here. Probably she was one of the first to have known, considering her close encounter with the rain while leaving the night club, and she had no doubt that it had been extremely unusual, but she didn't see how this could concern the police.

  Most of all she didn't understand how it could concern him, even though, thinking of it, it was obvious that if the police had to be concerned, he was the one who had to be front and center.

  Shim Stonehand had been for years the chief of the Magic Monitoring Department. Basically, they investigated on forbidden artifacts deals and violations of the magical code. A mistake in weather scheduling didn't seem too fitting for his job. But if anyone had to investigate, it could be no one but him.

  «Yes, I noticed», she answered without giving too many details «Shouldn't this be a problem for Weather Control? Since when scheduling mistakes are criminal?»

  «When was the last mistake in weather control?» he returned.

  «Let me think... wasn't there a lightning which struck a house in central town eight years ago?»

  «That was the High Prelate of Oon quarreling with his wife. And anyway, we aren't talking about a single event, Manda. Last night it rained on the whole city.»

  «OK, OK, it's absurd, but what does police have to do with it? For sure you don't think it was a deliberate act, it would be...»

  «It's not that we think it was. We know for sure.»

  Amanda stared at him and pushed back the end of her sentence. "Impossible", she was about to say. Weather control was one of the best protected businesses of the whole nation. Only a few mages were selected every year to join the ranks of the controllers, and they underwent all kinds of checks and investigations to make sure no rotten apple was allowed in, as well as signing a strict confidentiality agreement forbidding them, literally, to talk about their job or even mention what it was. No one but them knew the locations of the control stations, the places in which the properly set crystals amplified and routed the power towards the mage in charge, who determined and directed the weather manifestation proper, and furthermore each one only knew his own stations, not the whole set. This way, even if someone had quit the job and succeeded someway to pass on the information he had, before they were removed from their memories, only one station would have been compromised, and it would have been easy to replace it with a reserve, or bypass it as long as needed to fix the problem.

  Small-scale weather alterations were possible, for who possessed the proper knowledge and power. Within some boundaries it was even possible to do that without breaking the law. But changing the time on the whole city would require controlling the entire network, which was impossible, there was no other fitting definition. If even just one of the controllers hadn't channeled correctly the power needed to obtain such a result, the head controller wouldn't have been able to create it, would have noticed that something was wrong and informed the proper people, which had never happened so far, at least not that she knew. All mages concerned had to work in agreement for those things to work. It was unthinkable that all of them had decided to change the scheduling, especially since they didn't even know each other. Even if someone had been able to find each one of them and control them somehow, that would also have been useless. Weather crystal would not operate if the user was forced or controlled, and were able to detect any kind of external influence.

  «What are you talking about?» she was finally able to ask.

  He scowled. «Come to my office.»

  She followed him along the corridor. In spite of his shorter legs, he had always been faster than her, and to keep his pace she had no time to look around and see what was happening. She even wondered whether he was going that fast just to prevent her from meddling around.

  Shim entered his office, waited for her to do the same and closed the door, then pulled the curtain covering the glass panel on it. He reached the chair behind his desk and climbed on it, managing not to look ridiculous. The administration had never provided him dwarf-sized furniture, and he hadn't asked.
r />   «You know this is no business of yours», he told her as soon as she had sat. His tone was halfway between statement and question.

  «I also know you wouldn't make me run after you till here just to tell me nothing.»

  He sighed. «A few days ago, the governor received a threat. Madmen kind of stuff. It said the city was going to be destroyed by a hurricane unless...»

  «A hurricane?»

  «A hurricane. Unless...»

  «How much did he ask?»

  «It wasn't a request for money.»

  «No? Weird.»

  «Weird?»

  «No, actually not. Artifacts? Documents?»

  «Something of the sort.»

  «That is to say?»

  «Let's say that in order for the city to be safe he wanted us to deliver something I won't tell you anything more about.»

  «The kind of things in your job description?»

  He nodded. «It looked like the usual myth maniac stuff. You have no idea how much of that we get daily. At least, it looked like that until tonight.»

  «But there was no hurricane, it just rained. And not that much either.»

  «It was a demonstration, Manda. He announced it. And he added that, afterwards, we had to pay within twelve hours, which means we have...»

  «Until six p.m.», she stated after a brief calculation.

  «Exactly», Shim grunted in reply, not exactly pointing out that she seemed to know more than she should, still making it quite clear.

  «Do you think he can really do that?»

  «We're not sure, but we can't be sure he cannot either. Not after tonight.»

  «So?»

  «So that's it. I go back to my job, solve this problem, and if nothing goes wrong no one else will even suspect anything.»

  «I wasn't here for this anyway.»

  «No?»

  «Remember Trey Parker?»

  «The rector? The dead one?»

  «Mmm. Him. I wanted to speak to the detective in charge. I've been told there is no...»

  «He might be out investigating.»

  «... no case», she concluded. «They told me there are no investigations about that.»

  «If they said so, that must be true. I don't think the guys at homicide squad became so lazy as to close a case before even starting to investigate. Maybe they found out there was nothing odd.»

  «How exactly being found dead in the middle of a courtyard matches your "nothing odd"?»

  «I don't know yet. I'll see. I'll let you know. No promises though. I have more pressing matters at hand right now.»

  «I see. Thanks for your help.»

  «Anything for you...»

  «As long as I let you do your job.»

  «Something of the sort.»

  CHAPTER 5

  It was quite clear that, in comparison with a weather crisis, a simple homicide became suddenly a lesser priority. Not to be forgotten, sure. Maybe to be delayed until after six p.m.

  Anyway, Shim was good at his job and there was no way she could help him with that problem, it was a bit out of her league, so it was better for her to worry just as much as necessary and keep carrying on her investigation, maybe trying to get some more answers and some less questions. In the last few hours she had already gathered so many of the latter that the rest of her life might not be enough to answer all of them.

  Especially if she had to keep that Vivienne into consideration.

  Then again, if Shim weren't able to prevent the destruction of the city by a hurricane, probably Vivienne would end up being right after all. But there wasn't much she could do to avoid that.

  For now, all she was able to do was asking someone else, while waiting to find out if she was going to survive the next few hours, and if she would still be able to go back to the Underdark.

  There was only another person she could visit, and she was for sure the least informed about what had happened. But this was something she would have been able to fix herself, fortunately.

  Seers were not very well considered by most of the world population, for a long list of reasons, all open to discussion. First and foremost the fact that, contrary to magic, seeing couldn't really be called an exact science. Each premonition, each prophecy, even the most precise, could prove to be completely useless if a wrong interpretation was given. Seers who could provide exact information, without any ambiguity, could be counted with the fingers of one hand, and even those were much less precise when it came to look into the future, which they described as continuously changing and impossible to know for sure.

  Of course there was also the problem that many known seers, especially the most famous ones, where actually con men, whose true job was telling people what they wanted to hear in exchange for overwhelming payments.

  Amanda, though, knew well the third, and much more important, reason: magicians were among the most important persons in society and they were absolutely, completely, irrevocably unable to see the future or the past. Admitting someone was able to succeed where they failed, especially someone who wasn't backed up by divine power or had the years of study necessary to excel in any of the Arts, someone who was what he was just for an obscure plan of fate, would undermine their believability. A very good reason to destroy that of seers and being safe, before running the risk of being sorry.

  This way, fake seers were able, with their silver tongues, to keep up a remarkable business, meeting with no serious resistance, as no magician would ever waste time discrediting someone who really had reason to be discredited, and to whom nobody really believed. True seers ended up having to work almost in disguise, mostly to do good and to use in some way the gifts they couldn't get rid of if they wanted, and only marginally to earn something from that.

  Amanda knew several seers of both kinds, but there was only one she trusted. Meaning she had enough trust in her not to be afraid she would try to dig some dark secret out of her mind. The few she had, she'd rather keep for herself.

  She stopped to buy something to eat along the way, then she went to Kate's place of work. It was, actually, a first-floor flat comprising only three rooms: an anteroom, a little study and a third one Amanda had never seen, and that she also thought could be a bathroom, a closet or both at the same time. Not that it was her business.

  She pushed the door, which caused a little bell to tingle, so softly it could hardly be heard. The anteroom was empty, but the curtains of the study were closed, which meant someone was in and she had to wait.

  The room, quite plain, was remarkably devoid of any of the weird decorations and odd items that could so easily be found in the studies of other kind of seers. There were four rows of chairs, two on the left and two at the right of the door, and two small tables displaying several magazines, ranging from classic gossip ones to specialized publication about seers. Once Amanda had tried reading one of the latter and she had felt like she had opened by mistake a paper coming from another world. She hadn't tried again since, only looking every once in a while at something less abstract and not too gossipy.

  She hadn't been there long when the curtains opened and a short, large and quite bald man – almost like the extra-large version of a gnome – came out. The expression on his face was unreadable. Had he received good news? Bad ones? Neither of those?

  Amanda virtually shrugged. She had other thoughts at the moment.

  She stood up and went to the other room, barely noticing the bell meaning that the little man was going out.

  Kate's study was less than half the anteroom. The walls were covered by light-blue drapes, creating sort of a relaxing mood. There were several bookshelves, but it took moving the drapes aside to see what was in them. The few titles peeking out between curtains were all about seeing, and Amanda could easily imagine that their contents were even more alien than those of the magazines on the tables.

  A round table was in the center of the room, this too covered with a light-blue cloth. In front of it there was a chair, behind it there was Kate, sitting, all intent in gathering some cards scattered in front of her. She looked as sober as her anteroom, and she had nothing to spare with the typical image of the commercial seer. No veils, no ridiculously oversize or elaborate clothes, no noticeable jewelry, no colors assailing the onlookers. She wore a simple beige suit, which collar was barely brushed by her brown hair, long just enough to cover the neck and not much more.