The Effaced: Chapter Six

“You’re free to go,” my attorney informed me as we strode down into the lobby of the constable’s station. “Well, relatively free?” 

“Relatively free?” I asked. 

“Until we get an innocent verdict, you’re not entirely free,” the attorney said. “You’re out on bail. You’ll need to check in with this constable station at least once a week. You’re not allowed to leave the city. You’re also much more likely to be treated with suspicion by any constables, and they’ve got the right to swing by your place and check things out whenever they wish until the case is set.” 

That left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I nodded my agreement. 

“Understood,” I said. “Any other rules?” 

“No, but we should discuss payment. I presume you have enough?” 

“How much?” I asked warily, and the attorney gave me a mild, professional smile. 

“Twelve thousand thin-panes, since there is a strong risk of going to trial. Oh, and six hundred thin-panes for the bail. You’re lucky I was able to get you bail, by the way – treason charges normally don’t allow for it. Your judge didn’t want to. I had to argue up to the district attorney, and she agreed that there was something strange about how quickly it moved.”

I winced at the number as I did mental math and said my thanks to the attorney. That was a thousand medium-panes, or eighty three and a third thick-panes. And that was just for the legal payment alone, not even including bail, so I was forced to redo my mental math again to account for it. 

I was suddenly regretting my choice to be so cavalier with the rickshaw I’d hired. A single thick-pane wasn’t enough to pay for this entire bill, but it would have certainly helped.

I considered what was for the best. I had about half that amount in savings, and while I could put all of that money towards it, it wouldn’t cover the rest…

“Do you offer any deferred payment plans?” I asked. 

“We do, and our interest rates are quite reasonable,” the attorney said. “How much do you have for the initial payment?” 

“Four hundred medium-panes,” I said. That would leave me with a hundred medium-panes left in my account, or twelve hundred thin-pane, which should be enough for an emergency. 

I hoped.

I wrote out the check, with the attorney warning me that there would be a four medium-pane charge added if the check bounced, which I assured him that it wouldn’t. 

“Excellent, thank you very much,” he said, tucking it away. “When can we meet so that I can get the full accounting of your side of the story?” 

“Now?” I asked. I had been sleeping on and off in there…

“Very well,” he said, smiling. “My name is Aiden Pine, and I’m going to be managing your case.” 

“Axel Font,” I said as he hailed an automobile cab, and we both stepped into the back. “By the way, is there any chance of me getting my briefcase back? It had several tools.” 

“Not until their examination of its contents is complete,” Aiden said, a thin smile on his face. 

“How long will that take?” I asked, sighing slightly. The last time I’d had to retrieve things from police lockup, I’d been in a rather different state. For one thing, the constables had been on my side that time, even if I’d not known it then.

“It will take as long as it takes, I’m afraid,” Aiden said, before turning to give the driver the address. We rode in silence until we arrived at his building, at which point Aiden paid the driver, and we headed into the lobby and towards the lift. 

“Our offices are on the forty-seventh floor,” Aiden informed me as the lift began rising, and I lifted my eyebrows. That was prestigious. With that kind of money, I wondered if they’d paid off the telephone operator to direct calls asking for a criminal defense attorney to them…

Their offices were clean, stark marble and glass, and very professional. It reminded me too much of the Arenamaster’s offices. I’d thought I’d moved past that trauma, but dealing so much with the constables and getting arrested had flared up some of the old scars. 

Aiden’s office was slightly better, with wooden furnishings, soft recessed lighting, and paintings set in carved wooden frames. That impressed me even more – importing wood was expensive. 

Even if the price had dropped in the last couple of years, thanks to commercial imports through airships, it was still too expensive to be wasted on things like picture frames, at least for most people. 

Once I was inside, I was made to do a full recounting of the last several days of my life, down to the identification numbers of the ships that I’d worked on, and if any of them would recognize me. I mentioned the strange airship core on the Dancer, and Aiden’s eyes lit up as he scribbled it down.

“Excellent. That will be a great detail for the case, if we can’t get the captain to sign off on paperwork saying you were there the whole time. How would you have known about the strange core otherwise?” 

He went on questioning me, and I told him everything. While my mentor hadn’t always had the best of lessons, one thing that I’d found to be true, even after I left the care of the Arenamaster, was to tell your defense attorney everything, and tell the constables and prosecution nothing. 

“I think that’s all,” Aiden said, lowering the paperwork. “Do you have a home telephone? Or should I simply ring the building and ask for a runner to be sent to your apartment?” 

“I don’t have a telephone,” I said. “But there is an eighth story private booth with one as a part of the building’s amenities. If they can send a runner, it should provide some reasonable privacy to speak.” 

“Wonderful.” Aiden said, standing and gathering up his papers. “I’ll call you with updates.” 

“Before I go,” I said. “What actually… happened?”

The attorney stared at me, the papers halfway to his briefcase. 

“Are you quite serious?” he finally asked. 

“Yes?” I said. “They never told me. I know a senator is dead, but I don’t know how or why I’m a suspect. I mean, I can make a guess, but I don’t know.” 

“Senator Ermonte was killed during the same time that you were working on The Dancer,” Aiden said. “He was shot through his wards.” 

Aiden held up his hand. 

“Let me be clear. I don’t mean the wards around his window were overpowered. Nor do I mean that they had been turned off. I mean that somehow, the bullet passed through the wards completely unimpaired, without triggering the alarm ward, being stopped by the protective force ward, or activating the esoteric protection wards.” 

My fingers started to shake, and I took a deep breath. 

So, that was why. I had suspected that it was, but I hadn’t been certain. 

“Given your history as Mist, champion of the underground, and killer attack dog of the Arenamaster, it already didn’t look great,” Aiden continued. “But combine it with the fact that only a highly talented abjurer, like the posthumous barbarian rebel, Evander Tailor, should be capable of such a feat? Their suspect list was narrow, only a few hundred people.” 

My hands were shaking now, and I tucked them into my pockets to hide that. 

“Or someone like me,” I said. “Someone who can shoot through wards without triggering them.” 

“Exactly,” Aiden said. “While they haven’t submitted all evidence to the judge yet, our sources within the constables suggest that there is little to no evidence that any of the surrounding buildings with a clear view into the senator’s building had such a ritual set up…” 

“Or in an airship?” I asked. 

“Investigations are ongoing,” Aiden said, then finished packing his suitcase up. “Let me be clear, mister Font. You are innocent, and in a fair court of law, I believe without a shadow of a doubt I can prove that. But… For you to be slapped with charges so quickly and decisively. Well, we can try to bring it to higher courts, but you should be prepared for the worst, at least for a while.”

“I understand,” I said, then took a deep breath. “Thank you.” 

“Of course.” Aiden said. “Just give us a ring if you need anything.” 

I left the office in a foul mood, working through who exactly might be responsible for being invested in pinning the blame on me. 

The trouble was, I didn’t know. If it was an undercity faction, then I’d be able to get some answers, and there was a chance that it was, that it was someone who I’d made angry when I’d been Mist. 

But if someone from the skyways had decided to pin the blame on me, or some political faction… they’d have their own rules and games, and I didn’t know them. 

I stopped to buy a paper as I walked back to the apartment, using the opportunity to clear my head, only to stop, realizing that I didn’t have any money on me, and just started the walk back home. 

Walking on the street wasn’t nearly as dangerous as walking in the undercity, but I still felt somewhat uncertain, since I didn’t have so much as a knife on me. Metal magic was great, but without my gear, it wasn’t the best at melee combat.

When I got back to my building, I took the lift up to the eighth floor, then headed inside. 

The entire place was a wreck. The door had been knocked off its hinges with a battering ram, probably a force ram from one of the constable’s utility wands, and while it had been propped up against the outside wall, it was in bad shape. The insides were in even worse shape. My kitchen had been torn through, the contents of my cabinent spilled out on the floor. The cushions on the living room couch had been thrown out of order, and the back of the large listening radio had been pried off and tossed aside. 

My bedroom wasn’t in much better condition. My dresser had been emptied out, and the clothes strewn all over the room without rhyme or reason. The storage under my bed had been pulled out and tossed through as well, and even the drawer on my nightstand had been tossed to the side. 

The bathroom was only in relative order because I kept it so sparse – just a brush, the box of tooth powder, and some soap. 

I returned to the front door and focused, reaching up to my second arch-star, split mind. 

My normal ability to focus diminished slightly, as within moments, a second, separate ability to focus appeared. 

Something that most people didn’t understand was that multitasking was really just rapidly switching between the ability to focus on one thing at a time.

The best way I’d had this illustrated to me was to count to twenty-six, then sing the letters of the alphabet, before finally alternating between them – one, B, three, D, five, F, so on and so forth. Most people could do the counting or the alphabet, but swapping between them was much harder.

But this arch-star allowed the true splitting of attention, and while neither of them alone were able to work quite as well as the entire mind focusing, together they were able to do far more. 

With half of my mind, I started constructing spells to move metal, pulling the door back into frame, then shifted its focus to working on putting all of my pots and pans and cooking tools away. With the other half of my mind, I started crafting spells to alter the copper in the door, molding its frame back into shape and fusing the hinges back together. 

Once I finished the door, I shifted that part of my mind to putting away the things that my metal magic couldn’t move. 

It took me a long time to get my apartment back in order, and once I’d finally finished, I used a spell to lift my copper dresser into the air and shift it several feet over. 

The constables had been right that I had some items that I would prefer for them not to find in my home. They just hadn’t been right about where I kept them.

And I needed to check. Just to check, and make sure I had it. Sure, it wouldn’t help me if I was stuck in jail, but…

I pried up one of the slightly ceramic tiles of my floor to reveal a neatly folded sheet of silk, inscribed with spells all over it. Most of the spells laid onto it were meant to protect from divination and tracking, and the shimmering runes had dimmed some – doubtless hiding from the constables’ wands. 

Only the first layer had been triggered, though, so I let my gray aura slip into it, causing the storage runes to shimmer as they filled back up with magic, then I turned to the spell in the center of the cloth and pressed my hand into it. 

I wasn’t a master of planar magic – that was Druidry stuff, and I’d only ever learned the simplest of Druidic magic, like memorizing the layout of the planes, and the rules for bargaining with their denizens.

But while I didn’t understand the exact magic involved, I knew the basic theory of this circle. It created a portal to the Wandering Path, an empty world that overlaid our own. Someone the Arenamaster had hired had claimed this portion of the Path, then worked that magic into the cloth.

This spell was old, and I hadn’t used it in a long time. Its magic might have frayed or dissipated or been broken. If it was, then that would be a problem, but…

My thoughts were interrupted as the fabric of reality tore apart, forming into a shimmering gray portal.