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  She narrowed her eyes, but let it go. And now a whole cozy evening with him by the fireside lay ahead. Maybe she should read one of the books? Blah Theory. Applied Blah. The Complete Blahs of Professor Boring. Loxi was welcome to it.

  Her mind wandered back to the Stacks again. Why was the scholasticus so twitchy? How was she going to get past that sentinel charm? She racked her brains. All the time the rasp-rasp-rasp of the file. Her own teeth winced at the noise. Do you have to do that? she wanted to yell.

  The Fairy cocked his head. ‘Well, well. Here comes your horseboy.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She blushed scarlet. ‘He’ll be locked up in a penitent’s cell. And I’ve told you—we call them Zaarzuks.’

  He tucked the whetstone away and watched her. All she could hear was the rain. And kids out scrounging for Wolf Tide. Then boots. Striding. Her heart began to canter.

  Knock-knock!

  She sped to the door and opened it a crack. Sure enough, it was Dal Ramek. He’d ditched his robes. ‘Are you mad? What are you doing here?’

  To his credit, he looked chastened. ‘I come to grovel at your feet. Forgive me.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. Now get back, you idiot, before someone realises you’ve gone.’ She started to shut the door.

  ‘No! Wait! I come to tell you things,’ he whispered. ‘Important things about the Stacks. I risk everything!’

  She opened the door again. ‘Quickly then. Tell me how to get in.’

  ‘Ssh! There is an alley near the slums. You know it?’

  ‘By the Slackey, yes.’

  ‘Here there is a drinking trough, with a carved Zaarzuk chieftain. Charmed. I talk horseflesh and he lets me pass, yes?’ He glanced left and right. ‘There’s more, but I dare not tell you here, standing in the road like this. Let me in.’

  She opened the door for him. A yellow flash!—the Zaarzuk was flung sprawling across the street.

  ‘Oh my God! Are you all right?’ She blinked. The stench of sulphur filled her nostrils. ‘Oi, Paran! This charm of yours is acting up.’

  He came and studied the threshold. ‘The viper jinx has been triggered. Interesting.’

  The Zaarzuk picked himself up and limped back, eyes glinting in the daylamp.

  ‘Ah yes, I see what the problem is,’ said Paran.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Anabara.

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘You call me a liar, Fay-dog?’ Dal Ramek put up his fists. ‘Disarm this door and face me, coward!’

  Paran bared his fangs.

  ‘Stop that!’ cried Anabara. ‘He just wants to tell me about the Stacks, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Not so,’ Paran hissed. ‘The horseboy has a piece of unfinished business. Which chafes him, somewhat. He means to bed you, whether you will or no. Ah, you’d deny it, would you? Then come on in, horseboy. Cross the threshold and prove me wrong.’

  The Zaarzuk replied in his own language. Then spat at the Fairy’s feet. His spittle sizzled on the threshold, vaporised by the charm. Anabara watched opened-mouthed as he strode off, boots kicking sparks off the cobbles as he went.

  ‘It’s a brave tongue for cursing in, is it not?’ observed the Fairy. ‘He vows he will not stay to be insulted by a spavined knave and whoreson cock-sucking defiler of grandmothers and young boys such as myself; whose pox-raddled member, he prays God, will presently be struck by glanders and drop off.’

  The footsteps dwindled into the distance. Silence. Just the rain. I don’t believe it!—he snuck down here, bent on getting me into bed? Even if I said No?

  ‘A rough wooing would mend his manners,’ whispered Paran. His tongue flicked round his fangs. ‘Shall I go after him and pay him in his own coin?’

  Anabara banged the door shut in horror. ‘No!’

  ‘No? It would be a sweet chore. But as you wish.’ He cocked his head again. ‘You have another visitor. I will make myself scarce.’ He darted up the stairs in his nasty spider-ish way.

  Great. Now what? Anabara closed her eyes and waited for the footsteps. Well, whoever it was, she was safe. A viper jinx? Good God. So that’s what he meant by ‘nothing can enter here with ill intent’. She’d heard about them: the more evil the intent, the worse the whiplash of the jinx. Paran’s notion of justice in a nutshell.

  There was a tappity-tap.

  She opened the door a crack.

  A big spoon-faced figure loomed in the daylamp. ‘Can we talk?’

  Heh, heh, heh. Anabara held the door wide. ‘By all means, Detective. Won’t you come in?’

  But instead of knocking her on to her fat arse, the charm let Mooby through unscathed.

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘Whoa!’ said Mooby. ‘That I was not expecting.’

  Bloody hell! thought Anabara. Nor was I. She gawped at the great brick-built woman filling her room. Looked like Butros was right: Mooby was on the level. Nothing for it but to play host. ‘Um, have a seat. Drink?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’ Mooby sat. Anabara sat.

  Mooby cleared her throat. Her hair was matted to her scalp like bleached bladderwrack. Out of uniform she looked as naked as a snail out of its shell. Rain dripped from her navy blue old lady coat. Her brown trousers were too short. Three inches of downy shin on display. And the blouse. Candy pink. With a pie-crust frill collar. This wasn’t a fashion statement, it was a distress flare. Someone take me to the seamstress! Please! Anabara bit her lips hard.

  They both said, ‘So’. Then, ‘No, you.’ Lord, it was like a blind date.

  Mooby took the bull abruptly by the horns. ‘Right. Owe you an apology. Bang out of order, treating you like that. Unprofessional. Let my frustrations get the better of me. Ponce says you’re considering pressing charges.’

  Ponce! Anabara bit her lips even harder. What to do? This was a different Mooby from the one who’d slapped her about in the cells. What the hell was going on? She decided to trust the charm. ‘Actually, I’m not pressing charges.’

  Mooby drew a long deep breath, let it out again. Ran a finger round the pie-crust. ‘Cheers. Appreciate that.’ There was another toe-curling silence. They shifted in their chairs. ‘Look, I’m off the case,’ Mooby said. ‘Sidelined, pending disciplinary hearing. Pressure from the top.’

  Chief Dhalafan, thought Anabara. Obeying grandmama’s orders. ‘I see.’

  Another silence. Then: ‘God, I hate this place,’ Mooby burst out. ‘Old boy networks, everyone’s someone’s relative. Undermining me, going behind my back, blocking me at every turn. This is the most sexist, racist outfit I’ve ever worked in—and I’m from Bogganland! And another thing—so much for the legendary Larridy hospitality! Know something? I’ve been here six months—six months!—and you’re the first person that’s ever asked me in and offered me a drink. Ever.’

  There was a long silence. She didn’t mean to let all that out, thought Anabara. A flush crept up from the frilly collar and covered Mooby’s face like a stain. And suddenly she wasn’t just some ball-breaking bullying Offcomer. She was a real woman. A large unhappy one, a long way from home. Overbalanced by an act of welcome—which Anabara hadn’t even intended to offer.

  ‘Look, detective,’ she said, guiltily. ‘I’ll put in writing to the Chief that I have no complaint.’

  ‘Cheers, but no way will Murder Squad hand the baby back now. Bastards. Right. Enough bitching.’ She cleared her throat again, slapped her thighs with a pair of vast knobble-knuckled hands and got a grip of herself. ‘Thought I owed you an explanation: your business card was found on one of the stiffs.’

  Anabara went cold. Yes—she’d dropped one, hadn’t she, that night. Saw it flutter to the ground. ‘Half Larridy’s got my card! You hauled me in for that?’

  ‘That, and a hunch. What do you know about slave trafficking?’

  Anabara’s heart thumped. ‘Not a lot. What everyone knows.’

  ‘Here’s my thoughts,’ she leant forward. ‘Some nice Larridy folks are up to their nice Larridy ears in trafficking. Right
! here!’ Mooby stabbed the chair arm with a finger. ‘And at least one of them is in the Guard. I get the psychs to seal up one illegal Thin Place, bang, another one opens. Trade coming through the whole time, always one jump ahead. It’s totally doing my head in. So when I hear about a nice Larridy girl who has dodgy business interests in the Slackey—with the same father-and-son Tressy duo who promptly turn up dead—well. Let’s shake her down, I think. Poke the hive, see what big important Larridy bees come buzzing out. Your card’s my excuse. Care to comment?’

  ‘Ponce told me not to.’

  ‘PAH-HA-HA!’

  Anabara jumped. God, that sounded like a demon-possessed fog-horn!

  ‘Anyway,’ Mooby was abruptly serious again, ‘turns out I was wrong about you.’ She scanned the room, glanced up at the ceiling. ‘The Fairy in?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Tell me about him. Like, name, where he’s from, so on.’

  ‘Paran a’Menehaïn. Freeman, artisan class. Came over looking for work at the last Crossing Time. I hired him when my former associate disappeared.’

  ‘Yeah, Thwyn Brakstone. Know where he is?’

  ‘Went home, I guess.’

  Mooby gave her a long disbelieving stare, but didn’t press it. ‘Reason I know I was wrong about you, I had a report come in this morning. From one of my undercover guys working the rivers.’

  The wind rushed outside. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, apparently, some mad bird—little Galen-Gull demy—turns up at Saturday’s slave auction, claiming her uncle is the Patriarch and demanding to buy a slave. And because he has a sick twisted sense of humour, old Boagle-eyes Golar—the slavers’ boss—sells her the ship’s Fay. Know what that is?’

  ‘The old “fairies can’t drown” superstition?’ Anabara tried. ‘Keep one on board to prevent shipwreck?’

  ‘Afraid not, lovey. Your ship’s Fay’s the one they keep for long voyages. For when there’s no women handy, get my drift. Last decades in their little cages, some of them.’

  Anabara’s hand flew to her mouth. Loxi hadn’t mentioned that.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mooby. ‘My feelings entirely. Now, mad demy bird was never meant to keep him, you understand. It was a spot of cat-and-mouse. Let her get home, then go after her. Teach her a lesson, fetch the Fay back, stick the poor bastard in his cage again. Only something went wrong. Any idea what?’

  She was trembling. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, according to my guy, the skiff comes floating back down river next morning with two corpses in. Tongues cut out. And each one has a nasty big spiky manacle rammed down his throat. Still no comment?’

  Anabara shook her head again. Wrapped her arms tight round herself to stop the shaking. He killed them. Paran killed them after all.

  ‘But by the time the bodies had been dumped where the mud-lark found them, no manacles. Straightforward tribal punishment killing, which the Murder Squad aren’t going to lose sleep over—apart from your card. Someone’s trying to tie you into this.’

  Golar, thought Anabara. Her spirit quailed. Those moonstone eyes. He hadn’t forgotten that mad demy bird and his lost ship’s Fay. And now he’d lost two crew members as well. Oh dear God. What was she going to do? How far was Mooby to be trusted?

  The detective fixed her with a bulging watery gaze. ‘Now then. Apropos of nothing at all, Murder Squad are a bunch of macho tossers. They have one brain cell which they pass round in an emergency; rest of the time they think with their dicks. Still, I took the precaution of accidentally misfiling that undercover report when I handed the case over this morning.’

  ‘Thanks,’ whispered Anabara.

  ‘Pleasure. So only ATU know about it. My squad,’ she explained. ‘Anti-Trafficking Unit. All the same, if you do happen to have any heavy-duty cutting tools lying about the place,’ her gaze zapped to corner where the bolt-cutters were propped, ‘you might want to lose them before Murder Squad call. Which they will—redoing my work in case the stupid Bog-whacker missed something. Another thing, hope your Fairy’s papers are in order.’ She slapped her mighty thighs again and got to her feet. ‘Right. I’ll be making tracks.’

  Anabara stood. Steadied herself on the central mast timber. ‘Thanks, detective.’

  ‘You, my little demy friend, are as mad as a bag of grasshoppers. But you’re on the side of life. Afraid I hadn’t clocked who your parents were. Heroes of mine, Nolio and Bharossa, to tell the truth. Read all about their work. Anyway, I salute you. Shake?’ She stuck out a hand.

  Anabara shook it. ‘Um, anonymous tip-off? The shack those Tressies lived in—it used to be Brakstone’s. You might want to dig up the floor.’

  Mooby gave a her a crushing grip. Nodded. ‘I’m all over it. Take care, now. And, um, cheers. Might take you up on that drink some time.’ Throat clear. ‘If you… Whenever, obviously.’ With another hand-crush she was gone.

  Anabara stumbled back to her chair. The door closed. Mooby’s light tread faded. Rain came in gusts. Some trick of the wind kept hurling drops at her windows like handfuls of shingle. The storm hunted round the city and the flutes howled like wolves. He’s going to come for me, she thought. He’s biding his time, but he’ll come. The horrors of that night surged up again, along with a host of new fears. Out they burst from the cellar of her mind, gibbering like a pack of goblins.

  Pelago, help me, protect me! Her hand clutched the amulet. What could she do? Move in with grandmama till it was all over! But when would it be over? It wouldn’t be over till that monster had killed her! Every fresh burst of rain became Tressy fingernails clattering on her windows, clawing for purchase. I wish I wasn’t so alone! I wish my Linna was still living here. I just need someone to be with. She tried to stifle her sobs so the Fairy wouldn’t hear. So the killer wouldn’t hear!

  Too late—he was coming back down the stairs. She rubbed a sleeve over her face, snatched up the nearest book and pretended to study. …thus we may see that a particle of psycho-matter traveling backwards in time, or rather, forward in reverse time… He was watching her. She read on. But then a movement caught her eye. A tiny blue humming bird darted across the room and hovered in front of her! It glowed as if lit from within. She cried out in delight.

  ‘Oh, where did you come from?’ She reached out a finger. The bird landed on it. Again the wings whirred. Mauve light scattered like dust over her hand. ‘What are you?’

  ‘It’s a sleep charm,’ said the Fairy. ‘Hush, all is well.’

  Her mind surfed for a moment on a velvet wave. She had just long enough to think, Bugger, I remember this from last time, then she tumbled down, down, down into blackness.

  She woke next morning with a lurch. Rain against the porthole window. Not yet dawn. There it was again: a hammering at the door. That’s what had woken her. She reached for the lamp switch and pushed back the quilt. What on earth—Why was she still dressed? Hammer-hammer. Yes, I’m coming.

  She stuck her feet in her boots and clomped down the stairs. The lamps were all on. Just a moment—that fecker charmed me again! Paran stood in front of the door. He raised a finger to his lips before she could yell at him.

  ‘It’s the Murder Squad. They have a search warrant.’

  ‘What? At this hour?’ Shit! The cutters. They were still standing propped in the corner. ‘Hide them!’ she mouthed.

  Bang bang. ‘Ms Nolio, open up. It’s the Guard.’

  ‘Will the charm let them past?’ she whispered.

  ‘If they are honest men doing their duty, yes.’

  Her hands shook as she opened the door. Four of them. They bundled past her into the room. The first was dark and simian, the second was a Gull. She recognised him. Benny Macko.

  A red-haired officer dangled a warrant in front of her, then flipped his ID open. She didn’t have to look: it was Lieutenant Jack Gannerby. Larridy born and bred. Three of them grinned. The fourth stood silent with his arms folded. All in black, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Feck. Psych Unit.

  ‘Who’s t
his?’ she asked.

  ‘Him? Oh, he’s just along to learn,’ said Gannerby. ‘Take no notice.’ He put his badge away. ‘Well, aren’t you a naughty little minx. Not co-operating with Guard enquiries? What’s all that about?’

  ‘Nah, Lefty, man,’ said Macko. ‘She wasn’t co-operating with Bog-whackers. She’ll cooperate with us, eh, won’t you Nan?’

  ‘We can come back in blond wigs and boots,’ suggested the monkeylike one, waggling his eyebrows. Eyebrow. ‘Interrogate you in the bathhouse, maybe?’

  Time for the spoilt Galen princess act. Anabara stamped her foot. ‘Shut up, you fat ape!’ In the corner of her eye she could see Paran. Had he hidden the cutters? The three men snickered. The psych was silent.

  ‘Yes, Doogie! Shut UP!’ warbled Gannerby. ‘Bit of respect, for Dhalafan’s favourite private eye. Sorry to drag you out of bed, Ms Nolio. We need to take a quick look round. Just a formality.’

  Looked like the Lieutenant had commandeered the squad brain cell this morning. She folded her arms and jutted out her lip. ‘Fine. But don’t you dare mess up my stuff.’

  ‘And we need to see the Fay’s ID,’ he said.

  ‘The Fairy’s name is Paran a’Menehaïn, Lieutenant. He’s standing right there. Ask him yourself.’

  He barely glanced. Just clicked his fingers. Paran produced his Freeman Pass. The Lieutenant handed it to the psych, who flipped through, then pocketed it, face inscrutable behind his shades. Had the charm-sensitive lenses picked anything up?

  Anabara snuck a look at the cutters. They were still there, in plain view! Quick, a distraction.

  ‘Hey! He can’t just take that!’ she squeaked. ‘How’s my associate meant to manage without ID? I’m going to complain to Uncle Hector about you!’

  ‘Calm down, Ms Nolio,’ said Gannerby. ‘Psych Unit needs to run some tests on it. I’m taking the Fay in for questioning, too.’

  ‘What, now? You can’t. He’s got work to do.’

  ‘This very moment, sweet cheeks. You’ll just have to muddle through without him.’

  Shit. Not good, not good.

  The two other guards had started their search, opening drawers, pulling books off shelves, riffling through the old case files in the cupboard. Macko flipped back the hearth rug, indicated the floor safe. She sprang the charm for him, trying not to let her eyes flick towards the cutters. Why was Paran just standing there? The psych paid him no attention, just prowled and scanned with his bug-eyed glasses, like a wolf mantis looking for breakfast.