Chapter 1.30 - In which Lieutenant Robards makes a house call

Calder

Month 12, Day 2, Wednesday 7:00 p.m.

When Calder confronted Mr. Irving with the evidence of his presence at the gang fight days before, the boy’s rather dark skin gained a pale, greenish tint.

As a concession, and due to the niggling worry that something was not right with the boy’s home life, Calder and Percy were talking at an outdoor table in front of a small pub a few blocks away from the boy’s house. The boy had slipped away with some excuse before any of his family members noticed Calder at the front door.

Now, he gripped the mug of hot cider that Calder had bought him between both hands, staring into the liquid’s trembling surface. Slowly at first, and then more rapidly until the words sometimes tripped over each other, the boy explained what had happened. As with each time before, Calder detected no signs of falsehood.

“And if I ask this Viv Sommers, would she give the same version of events?”

Mr. Irving winced. “Viv said she doesn’t remember any of it. Probably from some combination of the alcohol, that ‘sobering draught,’ and getting her head knocked on the ground.”

Calder made a note to suggest a surprise audit of this Healer Clements’ facilities and potion store. It sounded to him like the man had given them a dangerously expired draught whose magical properties had begun to degrade into unpredictability. “Why did you hide your involvement? You could have reported the attack, at the least.”

“I didn’t come forward because I never wanted to be involved—still don’t want to be involved. It’s dangerous. You guys might be able to investigate and punish people after the fact, but…it doesn’t really work to keep people safe from the beginning. At least not here, where the criminals are so powerful.”

Calder sighed, watching the sky from the reflection of his own drink. The boy’s opinion was unfortunately realistic. Calder had seen too much of it, and no matter how hard he worked, a Lieutenant alone couldn’t make much difference. One day, in a position just below that of Lord Westbay, the current Lord Commander of the coppers, that might change. Calder would make it change.

“How is it that you came to be involved, thrice, in what seems to an outsider’s point of view to be such similar circumstances?” Calder asked. “Each time, violence, or at least the attempt at violence, enacted against crime and injustice? You’ll understand that I find such a coincidence unlikely. My partner Shelleck has a favorite quote. ‘Once is coincidence. Twice is enemy action.’”

The boy looked down at the tattoo of a butterfly on his left wrist. “I am prone to bad luck. Predisposed to it, you might say. And I don’t mean the kind of bad luck normal people talk about. I mean the kind that makes it important for me to look up every time I pass under a balcony, just to make sure no potted plants are plunging toward my head. The kind that makes me carry around a second pair of shoes everywhere I go. The kind that my dad helped me train my endurance and reflexes to deal with. Because he was afraid that if it kept going like it was, I would die.”

Calder detected no signs of falsehood. None of the eye twitches, micro expressions, or altered mannerisms that usually accompanied such things. “How long has this been going on? Have you been to a cursebreaker?”

The boy stared at him for a few seconds. “You…believe me?”

Calder would have raised one eyebrow, as he had found this to be an effective tactic to encourage someone to speak, but he had never discovered the trick of controlling them separately. “Were you lying?”

“No!” Mr. Irving raised his hands and waved them back and forth. “It’s just…people are usually more skeptical. My parents did take me to healers and cursebreakers. A lot of them. They didn’t find anything wrong with me.”

“Was there ever an investigation done into the midwife or healer who attended your birth? Or, perhaps, any neighbors who might have had reason to be jealous or angry toward your family?”

“I…don’t think so?”

“It might be rather late, but if the problem persists, that could be a potential avenue to explore.”

Mr. Irving took a sip of his cider, smiling over the rim at Calder. “Well, that’s just it. The problem hasn’t exactly persisted.” The boy launched into a story about a hag, a talisman, a tattoo, and a strange series of coincidences. By the time he had finished, his cider was gone. “The talisman doesn’t protect me against everything, as you can see. And when things go bad, they go really bad. Maybe because I’m getting older.”

Calder considered for a moment. “I am going to contact some experts. I would like you to come in for some testing.”

“None of the experts have ever found anything before.”

“Even so. Tests will be paid for out of the station’s budget.” This was a lie, but, Calder believed, an innocent one. He would be paying for it himself, though at a significant discount due to his position.

Mr. Irving fidgeted. “And…if they do find something? Will they remove the tattoo?”

“If it’s dangerous.”

The boy nodded, his eyes closed and his head bowed over his empty mug. “I… Okay. That’s good. Because it could be dangerous. And I don’t want anything to happen to my family or friends. They don’t deserve that, just because I…” He swallowed hard, and then looked up and away, blinking rapidly to clear shiny eyes. “I just don’t want to go back to how things were before.”

Calder wished that he was one of those people who instinctively knew how to make others feel better. But instead, he saw too much and understood too little, always just a few degrees misaligned with those around him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Irving,” was all he could say.

The boy cleared his throat and gave Calder a surprisingly sincere, if somewhat lopsided, smile. “No need to apologize. I’m… Thank you. You’re a good man. And you can call me Percy.”

Calder smiled back tentatively. “Percy, then. But you still have to call me by my last name.”

Percy laughed.

Author Note:

Only one more chapter left in this book, and then we run out. :(

I'm hoping to have the next book, The Catastrophe Collector: Bloom, ready to start serializing again sometime in the spring (if the writing goes well), but in the meantime we'll have other things like character cards posted on Mondays.

Also, it looks like the Alcove has handily blown past the 50-post goal we set, and will probably be at 3-4 times that by this Thursday.

That means the AMA is on! It'll be after this Thursday's chapter, January 4th, from 6-9pm Mountain Time.