‘The Sele of Jamur to you, sir,’ Brynd said, thinking the traditional Jamur greeting would prompt some response. Nothing. He looked the man up and down. ‘You, er… you must be cold.’
Apium snorted a laugh.
The man still didn’t move, just stared vacantly ahead. They stepped cautiously to within an armspan of him, noticing his face lacked blood as if totally drained of it. His eyes were slightly slanted, and they gazed directly past Brynd. There were strange wounds around his neck, then Brynd noticed that his head was shaven unevenly, so that tufts of black hair blossomed on it in patches.
‘Looks dead, doesn’t he?’ Apium remarked.
Brynd reached out, prodded the man in the chest. Still no reaction. The commander took a bold step forward and reached out to feel his wrist. ‘Well, I’ll swear by Bohr, he is.’
‘What?’ Apium gasped. ‘Dead?’
‘Yes. There’s no sign of pulse.’ He let go of his wrist, and the man’s arm slumped back to his side.
‘This is cultist work, Brynd,’ Apium warned, reaching for Brynd’s shoulder with fear in his eyes. ‘Nothing natural here. I don’t like it. I’ve no idea what they’ve done to him, but we should send this fellow on his way and stay with Fyir. In fact, I think we ought to move off a little.’
Although stunned, Brynd didn’t know what to make of it. A hardened soldier, he was used to seeing the worst of life, but this individual out here spoke of technologies he was unaware of. What options did he have? If they killed this man, there might be more in waiting. Should he provoke it? In their depleted state, Brynd considered it best to leave things be and report it back in Villjamur. ‘I think you’re right. This can wait. I’ll maybe put it in a report.’
They carried Fyir gently to the ruins of an Azimuth temple.
Little was known about that civilization, and hardly anything was left there aside from hidden and subtle masonry. One of the towers had fallen so that it rested flat against a hillside, just beyond Dalúk Point, the lower side now wedged firmly into the slope. Lichen and mosses suffocated much of it, but there were still discernible patterns, squares within squares, that were known to be traditional religious symbols. It was thought that the Azimuth had worshipped numerology and mathematical precision, a sentiment he liked: looking for beauty in the most abstract of places. Brynd pondered this reverence as Apium fell asleep alongside Fyir.
The commander sat at the foot of the tower, his knees pulled up, back resting against the stone. His sabre remained unsheathed at his side. Stars now defined the hills surrounding the fjord, and he concentrated on sounds, the way you always did on these shifts, hoping and yet not hoping to hear footsteps, maybe snapping branches, someone coming their way. But there was little activity apart from that of nocturnal birds and mammals, every one of their eerie calls reminding him how they were quite alone.
In fact, he began to feel he was barely there himself.
THREE
The hardest cynic, Investigator Rumex Jeryd thought, is often fundamentally the most romantic person, because he so often feels let down by the world. He couldn’t detect much romance in himself today, but all the cynicism he could wish for.
He could hear the rain driving against the old stone walls. He liked the sound: it reminded him of the outside world. Lately, he’d spent far too many days in this gloom, had begun to feel a little too disconnected from Villjamur. Everything the city stood for these days was something he found a struggle to perceive.
The rumel looked down at the returned theatre tickets in his right hand, then his gaze switched to the note in his left hand.
It read: Thanks, but it’s just all a bit too late, don’t you think? Marysa x
Jeryd sighed, his tail twitched. It was from his ex-wife. They were a rumel couple, and had been together for over a hundred years. There were benefits in not being human. Not only was rumel skin tougher, but because of their longevity they could take time with things, have some patience. As a rumel you never ended up running around frantically after matters. You let them come to you. However, it made his being away from Marysa all the more painful, because it was as if he’d lost half his life along with her.
He folded up the paper, placed it and the tickets in the drawer of his desk. He would have to find someone else to take to the production. Or not go at all, just forget about it.
The Freeze was going to be cold enough without spending it alone. He sighed.
She’d hinted she was going to leave him, before that final day, but that was during one of the months of fighting between groups of the newly arriving refugees and Villjamur’s far-right protesters, so a period where nothing really registered in his mind. The Inquisition had hauled in and executed several men – all disillusioned ex-soldiers of the Regiment of Foot – just to set an example, and it was known secretly that the soldiers were sympathizers with these extremists.
But it all meant Jeryd had been ignoring Marysa.
She liked antiques. In a city as old as this there was a plentiful supply. Sometimes, she told him, she hoped she would find a grand relic, one that the cultists had overlooked, maybe make a fortune with it. But Jeryd had his head in the real world, or so he said. It was only his job, after all. He brought home the trauma of these ancient streets, carried it as his own burden. Keeping order in a city of over four hundred thousand individuals was partly his responsibility, and when he came home there she was: parading some new item around the house, telling him eagerly about what its history might have been, researching it in those pointless books she purchased. A luxury! The Jamur society was the latest in an endless line of civilizations, and each had left their own funk and detritus. Of course, the cultists would have long claimed anything useful from the Dawnir remains. All that was left now was a hint that things were once greater – that life in Villjamur today was more primitive and less civilized than life under those ancient societies, the Qintans, the Azimuths, despite the city’s constant attempts to hide that under the veneer of Imperialism.
It was only natural the couple would drift apart. One night she looked right at him, through him, continued that fixed stare, as if she was weighing up there and then whether to leave him. There was no argument, no discussion, and he didn’t even want to ask in case he found out some harsh truth.
When the truth did arrive, it wasn’t such a bitter exit, and that somehow made things even worse. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he could hear her footsteps as she departed, the sight of her tail trailing out before the door finally closed. The stillness of the room afterwards. He didn’t think there was another rumel man involved. He supposed there had never been any real man in her life, which was why she went. She had left only a forwarding address, and an instruction for him not to follow her there.
Jeryd was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his life.
Not only that, but those kids from further along his street had been throwing stones at his windows again. Every winter they’d regularly arc snowballs into the door, and he’d end up answering it to encounter nothing as they vanished with urban skill down lanes and backstreets. They knew he was a member of the Inquisition all right, and that prestigious honour only made him more of a target. He had become a badge of honour, a snowball medal, the ultimate highlight of their day.
Bastards.
He looked up from his desk in mid-yawn as his aide, Tryst, entered his office. ‘Work keeping you up late, Jeryd?’
‘Like always,’ Jeryd replied. ‘But I try my best.’
He studied the young human form of Investigator-Aide Tryst, though didn’t linger on his athletic physique, bright blue eyes or his thick dark hair. He wasn’t even envious, strictly speaking, but the young man was a reminder of times long past – a hundred years ago, or thereabouts, when Jeryd had kept himself trim. Still, Jeryd retained a sharp mind, and he had his experiences.