Short Story #1

The mana-geysers outside Tarrah threw glowing plumes of bright, electric blue into the orange night sky, painting the stars with the raw magical energy of the land of Kamar. Periodically, a waiter would make his way across the glass window that afforded Zantikus his view of the gorgeous spectacle, delicately rubbing away fingerprints and smudges on the nigh-invisible glass. Aside from his ministrations, the only other blight on the view was the huge, hulking power-station, a jumbled concoction of tubes and cylinders looming blackly in the night, absorbing the blue mana ejected beneath into itself and storing the energy to help power the vast city of Tarrah.
“Isn't the view gorgeous?” his wife, Valenze, asked him. She had been very pretty once, but the years hadn't been kind to her. Zantikus looked out the window on his right, which showed the mana-geysers, and the one on the left, which showed the city of Tarrah. Thin, pointed domes, Gothic arches and elegant towers pierced the night sky, scattered with the embers of a thousand nightlights.
“Yes.” Zantikus agreed. “It is.” As the haggard, off-brown beard and the crow's feet etched indelibly into the flesh of his face said plainly, Zantikus had lived a long time: perhaps, he thought sometimes, too long.
“What's wrong with you?” Valenze asked him, picking at her expensive dinner. “You're not talking at all.” Zantikus sighed.
“I'm sorry, Valenze – we did well out of my job in the Urbans... but I've paid the price. I'm a policeman to the core. And I just can't stop thinking about these murders.”
“Zantikus, you've been retired ten years. Can't you give it up?”
“I'm sorry, Valenze. I'll try and focus on our night.” Resignedly, Zantikus picked at the prawns and rice splattered on his plate. He had paid a significant portion of his life's savings to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary in the Geyser View, the most exclusive restaurant in Tarrah, but to him, the food was completely tasteless. This wasn't real food, he thought; real food was the scrapings, odds and ends that could be scraped up in a policeman's kitchen. And from that duct, his thoughts slid back to the murders.
They were odd, he knew, and as one who had spent forty years in Tarrah's famous Urban Cohort, he could be relied on to smell a fish. Normal criminals, even the gangsters and terrorists, they always killed for a reason: money, jewellery, to make a point. But all the victims were members of Tarrah's immigrant underclass: Markanians, Graylinese, Farhighter peasants, all people who had fled to Kamar looking for a better life and had failed. They had nothing to steal, and nothing to say. There was no reason to kill them; not only that, but the only link between them was that they had all been found in the sewers. Stranger still was the method of killing: guns and knives were Tarrah's weapons, short, efficient and, if the need arose, easy to clean up. These killings were marked for their brutality.
“...Zantikus. Zantikus!” The old policeman drifted back to the real world on the anchor of his wife's insistence.
“I – eh – the prawns are terrible.”
“Did you hear a word I said to you?” Valenze looked at him reproachfully. Zantikus coloured slightly.
“I'm sorry... it's getting too late.” Valenze held his gaze for a moment longer, then shook her head.
“I give up. Come on; let's go home.”
“But this is our night - ”
“Forget it, Zantikus. This is a waste of time. Let's go back to the car.” Zantikus paid the waiter morosely, got his coat to shield him from the gentle rain and followed his wife to the black-lacquered, six-wheeled Jotun-built monster that Zantikus drove around in. Their Markanian chauffeur, a tall Jotun, opened the door for them and allowed the two to slide into the velvet-upholstered, wine-coloured luxury of the automobile's interior. They sat on opposite sides of the car; the radio was in the middle, but that wasn't the reason. The drive back began in near-silence, interrupted only by the gentle cough of the Jotun motor coughing itself to life. The Markanian spun the wheel, and the sleek, big vehicle manouevered silently onto the rain-slicked Tarran cobbles, sliding between the horse-drawn carriages of the middle classes and the bikes the immigrants used.
Zantikus had returned to his ruminations, having given up on a conversation with his wife, when the radio in the middle of the car began to crackle.
“It must be for you.” Valenze told him, a touch accusingly. Zantikus ignored her and picked up the radio.
“Praefect Zantikus?” a familiar voice asked.
“Praefect no more, Nicolas.” Zantikus reminded his own protégé, now occupying his old job. “What's this about?”
“There's been another killing, sir. In the Via Inverta.”
“The Via Inverta...? That's just around the corner. Segericus! Stop as soon as you can.”
“Zantikus...” Valenze pleaded with him. For a moment, Zantikus considered just driving on and going home, having a quiet drink with Valenze and making up with her, going to bed and just having a normal night.
“I'm sorry, Valenze, but I won't be able to sleep if I don't follow this up.” In the interest of common courtesy, Zantikus added: “Please?” After a moment, she relented.
“I married you for who you are. If it makes you happy.”
“Thank you.” The chauffeur pulled up onto the pavement, and Zantikus got out. The drizzle soaked into his cap and coat, and his boots splashed in the puddles as he made his way along the side-street, his one hand in his pocket, the other under his coat, grasping the little safeguard he took everywhere with him. His fist clasped comfortingly around its cold, heavy weight: in his experience, no type of foreign martial art or legendary stealth could stand up to the hard, cruel reality of a good gun.
A gaggle of people around an open manhole resolved themselves into a group of Urbans surrounding the entrance to the Via Inverta, which was slightly flecked with blood. Nicolas' honest, worried face turned to Zantikus as he approached, an island of pale concern in the uncaring, damp darkness of the night streets.
“The DNA tests,” Nicolas explained, “show that it's a young Markanian woman: Rica Hasding.” DNA tests? Zantikus thought. There can't be much of her left...
“Right.” he said. “Let me see.” The Urbans obligingly moved aside, and creakingly, feeling every one of his too many years, Zantikus lowered himself into the primordial darkness of the sewers.
For a moment, the only features of the fetid darkness were Zantikus' wet footsteps, until he found the old electric torch in his pocket. The shaky beam snapped into being, illuminating the dripping brick strata of the ceiling. “There we go.” Zantikus muttered, as he lowered the beam along the wall. “What have we here...?” The beam, followed by Zantikus' eyes, searched the floor until he found what he was looking for. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
He had been right: there wasn't much of her left. The splashes of blood on the walls showed that she had been attacked with a sword or chainsaw; and the distance between them showed that it had been done very violently. What little was left of her on the ground showed that whoever had done it had spent a lot of time trampling her into the ground – and had probably enjoyed doing it.
Zantikus came to the conclusion that whoever was doing this was a raving psychopath.
“Everything all right down there, sir?” Nicolas called down to him.
“Yes – I'm just going to go follow the clues.” There was a pause.
“Are you sure that's wise, sir?”
“I've lived long enough, Nicolas.” Zantikus called back up to him. “I have no regrets. If anyone should be this bastard's next victim, it should be me.” After a moment, Zantikus added: “If I don't make it back, tell my wife I love her.”
“Fair enough, sir. If that's what you want.” Zantikus returned his attention to the dimly lit, dripping sewers. This time, he scanned the place thoroughly: a square chamber made of damp grey bricks which was divided in two by a shallow channel occupied by sluggish waves of viscous brown water. In one corner, the remains of a tiny shanty lay: no doubt, this was where the poor woman had lived. The Kamareans were a rich people, but it hadn't always been so: long ago, before the people of Tarrah had been enriched by the fruits of trade and conquest, the population had had to crouch in whatever squalid space was available to them. Those days were gone: now, the Kamareans live in marble palazzos and ivory towers, and the sewers, stripped of their native inhabitants, now played host only to the horde of immigrants that comprised the city's underclass.
Maybe there was a clue there. Zantikus sucked his teeth, and looked again. There, he had been right again: she had been trampled into the ground, and her attacker had left footprints, plain as day. So whoever it was was confident. Zantikus laid his hand reassuringly on the comforting weight in his breast pocket and then, gingerly, stepped into the disgusting gunge at the bottom of the passage.
Zantikus ducked under the arch, and his light was suddenly cramped into the cloying closeness of the passage. Operating on instinct alone, breathing as little of the foul sewer air as possible, he edged his way with bent head down the tunnel, his mind working. The dead people were all immigrants, but he was inclined to think that was coincidence: of far greater import, in his opinion, was that they had all been found in the sewers. Someone had something to hide in the sewers, and they were killing anyone who came across it. Once they got out, if they juxtaposed the sites of the killings onto a map, they could work out where the location was...
The tunnel ended, he stepped a way out, and he was rewarded by the sight of damp footprints leading up the mouldy stairs to the pavement on the side. So the killer had come this way -
Wait a minute.
The footprints were facing the wrong way. That meant that the killer had come this way -
A cold, hard hand gripped each shoulder from behind and hoisted him inhumanly high into the air, shaking the torch from his hand. His heart skipped a beat as he was plunged into darkness and, terrifiedly, he fumbled with the gun, fiddling the weight out from beneath his jacket. As his captor advanced up the stairs, he raised it – and dropped it! Fast as a flash, he caught the gun between his knees. Yes! He swung the gun up to his head, pointing backwards, and pulled the trigger -
And the bullet sparked off of unyielding metal.
It occurred to Zantikus that he may be in some considerable trouble.
The clatter of the bullet expending its momentum on the greasy bricks died away to be replaced by the gentle tread of soft-soled boots. In the darkness, he could see nothing, save a tall robed silhouette that told him next to nothing.
The figure seemed to think.
“I'm disappointed.” an educated voice with perhaps the slightest trace of a Markanian accent told him. “You're Praefect Zantikus, yes?”
“Retired.” Zantikus growled.
“Yes, yes.” the figure continued, a slight trace of irritation evident. “You worked for forty years in the Urbans and you fall for a trap as abominably simple as this. Again, I restate: I am disappointed. You know, when I heard you coming, I thought to myself: blast. That's our cover gone; we'll have to kill all of them. But no: like a lamb to the slaughter, you followed the trail. And that leaves you here: an inconvenience which I now have the power to remove.” The figure shifted his attention slightly, to Zantikus' metallic captor.
“Well then. Finish him.” And the figure left. The metallic figure spun him around to face it. In the all-consuming darkness, Zantikus caught a glimmer of crystal and a flash of light before his vision was slashed into blackness.

* * *

Valenze sat at the window of their mansion, looking fretfully at the mana geysers casting their charges into the sky. Their beauty absorbed her, really: she wasn't normally a poetic person, but she had met Zantikus to the backdrop of the mana geysers. They always took her back, to better times when there were choices to be made and smiles to be had.
In this frame of mind, she was nearly startled to death by the knock on her door. As soon as she heard it, she knew it wasn't Zantikus' knock: he always rapped on the door boldly, demanding to be let in. This was soft and apologetic, the knock of someone who had something very bad to tell.
She opened the door to find Nicolas' round, honest face above the policeman's cap clenched mournfully in his hands.
“I'm sorry - ” he began.
“He's dead.” she stated baldly. He kept his composure for half a moment, then seemed to collapse in on himself.
“Yes.” Valenze nodded, understandingly. She had always been understanding: only that kind of person could have lived with Zantikus.
“Well.” she said. “He could never give the policing up, you know – I always knew it would kill him.” She considered a moment. “I suppose he lived a good life and died a fitting end.”
Nicolas shuffled his feet again. “Yes, ma'am... a fitting end.”