Wicked Bronze Ambition

24

The crowd had broken up. They were all gone but me, Dex, Race, and Morley. Penny and Singe had gone sullenly, under orders to report to the Dead Man and to make sure Dean was still breathing. Though his managers kept sending whining messages, Morley was determined to stick like he was my Mortal Companion, while he could. And I felt more comfortable having him close by.

Barate would be back once he had taken his mother home.

Oh, and Vicious Min was still around, stashed in a room big enough to fit, in medically induced unconsciousness. Dr. Ted said he’d check on her regularly. He expected her to recover, but if she did, she was likely the sort who got up and going before she was really ready.

I knew all about that. I’d been known to charge back into the fray before I was physically ready.

I burned some energy helping Dex and Race deal with the wreckage. It is amazing how much damage a few guests can do. We didn’t talk much. Those two were more uncomfortable with me than I was with them. They were worried about their jobs. The employment climate in TunFaire had not yet recovered from the outbreak of peace.

They did talk about Strafa. They told me she had come home around sunrise. She ate a light breakfast, then napped for an hour. Then she left again. She said she had to go see a priest. She expected to be back around noon, hopefully before I came home, meaning she had expected me to head here once I was done at the Al-Khar.

Not much to hang my investigator’s hat on there. The priest would be the guy she wanted to do our wedding. He had some remote tie to the Algardas through Strafa’s mother. He was reluctant. He didn’t think either of us showed enough respect for our purported faith.

Barate returned. We settled in the kitchen, where we could kibbitz while Dex and Race did dishes. We drank tea and nibbled leftovers. Finally, Algarda asked, “Have you studied that bolt?”

“I looked it over. It didn’t tell me anything. The only unusual thing is that it broke.”

“It’s more unusual than that. It’s what killed Strafa.”

“Dr. Ted didn’t find any wounds.”

“He didn’t. The bolt carried a spell. It broke when Strafa deflected it. She kept it from hitting her, but it still got close enough to deliver the spell. That piece ended up tangled in her skirt.”

“Oh.”

I set the broken bolt on the table. “Barate, this is iron with a steel penetrator tip. Iron, silver, and sorcery don’t mix. I’ve had painful personal experience of that.”

Laconically, Morley observed, “I was there to see it.”

“They’ll mix if a ferromage is involved.”

I said nothing. Ferromages are rare, like frog fur coats. I doubted that there were many of either in TunFaire today.

“That was the point Mother wanted you to get. The spell-or spells-would have been laid into the grooves filed lengthwise along the shaft.”

There was a trace of powdery stuff lodged there. “A ferromage? That would narrow the search considerably, wouldn’t it?”

“Definitely. It would narrow it so fine, and so fast, that no genuine ferromage would involve himself in anything so certainly damning. This iron had a ceramic coat baked on, to separate the magic from the iron.”

I confessed, “I’m lost, then.”

Dex stepped over, invited himself into the conversation. He picked up the bolt without asking, said, “This is an old piece. More than thirty years old.”

“You can tell that because?”

“I was artillery. Date of manufacture, lot number, contract number, all get stamped on the shaft. This one is broken. Only two numbers, a letter character, and the hallmark are missing, though. We don’t need them. Only one outfit manufactured these. Smitt, Judical, Sons and Sons. Not the best but they met their deadlines and brought their contracts in without overruns.”

I said, “I remember them going out of business when I was little. There was a kickback scandal, or something.”

“You’re right,” Barate said. “Twyla was in on the investigation.”

Twyla would be his wife, Strafa’s mother, whose ghost I saw the same day I first saw Strafa. She died a long time ago.

“That must have been ages ago.”

“Oddly enough, just a little more than thirty years. I remember being worried sick because Twyla was carrying Strafa.”

Could a case that cold be germane?

Barate told Dex, “Somebody must have found some of the missing bolts.”

“Certainly, sir. Or they may have had them lying around since then.”

That seemed unlikely. But. “This mess gets stranger by the minute.”

Morley suggested, “Somebody in a hurry grabbed the nearest handy tool. They didn’t know the bolts had identifying marks.”

Barate said, “They might not have known about the markings, but they spent a lot of time preparing the bolt.”

Had somebody been planning to take Strafa down for some time? “Dex, you say you don’t need the markings to tell where the bolt came from?”

“Correct, sir. Smitt bolts were cast, dipped, and baked. The foundry did almost no machine work. Quantity was the goal. Smitt developed a mass production method. You still need the marks to tell when a bolt was made, though. Nowadays, with the war over and the supply scandals forgotten manufacturing dates shouldn’t be relevant. Nor even the manufacturer, really. In fact, you’d almost expect newly surfacing bolts to come from a lot that went missing years ago.”

“You’re probably right.”

Dex went on. “If it was me, I’d look for the weapon used to shoot the bolt. There can’t be a lot of those around.”

A good point. Who had a siege weapon sitting around in the back garden? “Nobody has home access to artillery, right?”

Dex agreed. “Though there are some in private hands, in museums or owned by collectors. Those that are legal have the sear catch in the trigger housing assembly taken out so the string can’t be locked back.”

“So a legally owned piece won’t work.”

“Theoretically. It wouldn’t be hard to make one functional. I could do it if I had access to a smithy and a machine shop. Any good mechanic could fix one by studying the trigger mechanism. Hell, if you only wanted to shoot once or twice, you could hand carve a wooden sear. We did that all the time in the field. You can’t always take a weapon off the line long enough for the armorers to make repairs.”

Barate said, “It’s another thread to pull. What kind of range are we looking at, Dex? Six hundred yards’ flight, four hundred with momentum enough to kill? If we draw a circle with Strafa at the center. .”

“A surplus antique-which is what this piece has to be-not manned by a trained crew, you’re unlikely to see a lethal range over three hundred yards. This engine was probably less than two hundred yards off to get this accuracy.”

I said, “Let’s get a map, draw different circles, see whose properties show up inside, then winnow the possibilities.”

Barete said, “Use a topographical map. One of those survey maps with all the ground features and structures on it.”

Dex said, “Ordnance survey charts are what you’re talking about. You can even identify blind spots and impossible lines of fire.”

I looked straight at Dex. “You know how to use an ordnance survey map?” Those were for army use originally. They required basic literacy, a lot of training, and on-the-job experience at the point of the spear.

Dex said, “I can use a rural map. I don’t know about one for a neighborhood like this. Wasn’t a lot of urban fighting in the Cantard.”

“I’ll get a set for the Hill,” Barate said. “What now, Garrett?”

“I go home and talk to my partner. He’s sure to have some interesting suggestions.”

Barate’s expression went blank but cold. Clever me, I figured him out. “This is where I live now, but there’s no way I can not think of my house on Macunado as home. That’s where I built my life.”

Barate said, “Intellectually persuasive but not emotionally satisfying.”

I let that slide. “Once I see him I’ll hit the Al-Khar again.”

“Why?”

Algarda had a full Hill ration of distrust of the Guard, and an abiding disdain for systematized, publicly funded law and order.

“Because if I keep them interested, they can do stuff like find the rest of that broken bolt. They can knock on more doors in a day than I can in a month and be more intimidating asking the questions we want answered. You know somebody saw something. It happened in broad daylight.”

“You’re underselling yourself. You have more chance of getting good info than any Guardsman.”

“You think? Why?”

“You’re Strafa Algarda’s husband. You’re the man chosen to share the life of the only Algarda who shined. The only one that everybody loved. Now you have all the other Algardas, who scare everybody, lurking behind you. Love and fear. Excellent motivators.”

Yeah. Only not for whoever attacked Strafa.

He continued. “If you do the asking you’ll have your neighbors more willing to help than you might actually want.”

From the sink Race said, “That is true, you know.”

Dex, erstwhile artillerist, nodded agreement.