Celephaïs: Honey for Celephaïs
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
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Chapter 1
The alarm bells clanged her awake.
Fire!
Sergeant Jabari leapt to her feet, her hands pulling on her leather jacket and boots automatically.
She rushed out of the barracks, joining a dozen other women awakened by the alarm in the pre-dawn gloom.
Rasha called down from the tower: “It’s over near the Boreas Bath! It looks like just one building still!”
Good. If it was near the bath they’d have plenty of water.
“Rasha, hold the fort!” She turned to the others. “Double-time! Let’s go!”
They ran, each woman carrying buckets or poles.
The streets were largely deserted at this time of the morning, although as they passed the merchant area they could see a few early risers already preparing for the day’s work.
The public bath was just a short distance from there, and as they approached they could see flames shooting from a small, two-story building across the street from it.
“Larima, Georgina, douse the buildings on both sides and make sure it doesn’t spread,” she shouted. “Beth! Roust everyone and get them started with the buckets.”
Georgina, with a long orange braid hanging down her back, sprang into action. She got the bucket brigade up and running, her women rapidly joined by commandeered residents and shopkeepers gawking nearby, and the small pump they had brought shortly began to spray water on the flaming structure. With the fountain so near there was plenty of water available.
So far only the first floor was burning, but the building was made of wood, and the second story was already smoking dangerously. It was only a matter of time before it burst into flame, too.
Jabari tried to look inside to see if there was anyone still alive, but the fire was too intense.
If there was anyone in there, she thought, they’re dead by now. They’ll just have to wait a little longer.
The firefighters concentrated on dousing the adjacent buildings to prevent the fire from spreading—it had already jumped to one building, but fortunately was still small enough to be extinguished quickly.
The second floor suddenly exploded into fire, a puff of flame shooting out of the windows and shattering the few panes that remained. Glass shards rained down, but the heat was so intense the firefighters were safely distant. The fire shot up again with new energy, but that was its last gasp as the water sprays finally began to work. One wall of the building collapsed onto the wreckage, and with a cloud of glowing sparks, the fire was under control.
Embers and tiny flames remained, popping up here and there through the smoke and steam, but now it was just a matter of drenching the mess. By the time the sun rose the fire was dead, and adjacent buildings, though sooty and thoroughly soaked, were largely untouched.
Sipping a cup of cold tea provided by a local shopkeeper, Jabari sat on an upturned bucket, staring at the steaming ruin.
“Everyone says it was a saddlery, shop on the bottom and living upstairs,” said Larima. “No family, apparently—they say she lived alone.”
“It’s not so cold she’d need a fire this early in the morning,” said Jabari. “Brewing tea, perhaps?”
Larima shrugged.
“We’ll be able to look around in a bit. I don’t think there are any embers left now.”
Jabari wound a piece of cloth over her face and rose.
“Let’s go have a look now, shall we?”
Larima followed her into the wreckage.
Most of the second floor and roof had collapsed in the fire, and what wasn’t charred wood was covered with steaming ash. Puddles dotted the floor.
The woman’s body lay in the middle of what must have been the saddlery workshop.
She was dead, of course, and terribly burned, but the axe wedged in her skull made it very clear that it hadn’t been the fire that killed her.
What was even more interesting was the half-charred corpse of a man next to her.
* * *
“OK, so the woman’s body is Mistress de la Corda, just as everyone thought, but that doesn’t help us much,” said Jabari. “We still don’t know who the man was, or how he got into Skala Ereskou.”
“Or why he would want to kill de la Corda,” added Larima.
“Nothing’s turned up in the ashes yet?”
“Not yet. They’re clearing away the debris now.”
“I have to notify the captain, of course. A resident is dead, and somebody else. Almost surely an intruder,” mused Jabari. “He will not be happy with me.”
Larima grinned.
“This is one of the few times I’m happy you’re in charge, not me!”
“Bitch,” grinned Jabari right back. “In any case, though, ask around and find out more about her. And any men in her life.”
Larima nodded.
“Sarge, we’ve got another problem,” came a voice from outside the guardhouse.
It was Georgina. She’d rolled her long orange braid into a bun and pinned it to her head to get it out of the way. Her hands and tunic were dirty with soot.
“We got most of the wreckage cleared and didn’t find anything unusual. It looks like she and the man killed each other and the fire was started by accident; hard to tell for sure. Hard to tell much of anything, actually, but that’s our best guess based on the weapons and wounds. Doesn’t seem to have been any third weapon involved, at least.”
She paused and pulled a small leather pouch from her vest.
“We did find this, though, in the woman’s sash…”
She opened the pouch, and poured the contents out on the flat of her hand.
They looked almost like pearls, iridescent and almost glowing, but with a reddish glint no pearl could match.
“The Honey of the Goddess….” sighed Jabari. “Well, shit.”
She held out her hand.
Georgina rolled the “pearls” back into the bag and handed it over.
“Eight of them, Sarge. Offhand, that’s probably a year’s worth of all our salaries put together.”
“If you can sell them without getting caught, that is.”
Georgina nodded. “If you can sell them without getting caught.”
“So how many people know what’s in this pouch, Georgina?”
“Just the three of us, Sarge.”
“And there were really eight, right?”
“Hey, c’mon… we’ve been through it all together for over ten years. Yeah, Sarge, eight. Really.”
“Larima, how much is in that fund for the three of us now?”
“Not enough yet, Sarge. It’s a good start, but not enough to buy us out, or buy homesteads.”
“So how do the two of you feel about these honeydrops?” asked Jabari, carefully removing three of the “pearls” from the bag, and handing them over to Larima. “You agree we have to report these five honeydrops to the captain?”
“Yes, sir! It’s our duty, sergeant!” said Georgina, standing up straight as if on parade.
“Absolutely, sergeant!” agreed Larima, dropping the honeydrops into an inner pocket in her tunic.
“Constable Georgina, I comment your honesty in reporting this contraband, and hereby authorize a prize money payout of three gold coins.”
“Thank you, sergeant.”
“And I’m off to report this to the captain immediately. Larima, you’re in charge.”
“Sure thing, Sarge!”
Larima waved a casual salute and walked over to lounge in Jabari’s chair. She stretched her feet out.
“My regards to the captain!”
It being a beautiful morning Jabari decided to walk through the Cirque of the Moon, cutting straight through Celephaïs. She used the Aglaea Gate, nodding to the constables there, who were (luckily for them) alert and on duty when she passed.
It was still quite early, and the Cirque was still largely deserted. People were visiting the Estates, as they did every morning whether in respect or prayer, and there was the usual gathering of people around the Hippocrene Spring and the Necklace getting water for the day.
Clean water was available throughout the city, of course: the Slarr River, fed by the mountain springs of Mt. Aran, but many preferred the fresh spring to the flat taste of aqueduct water.
Given a choice she’d prefer fresh spring water, too, but as a Constable she rarely had a choice.
She walked closer to one of the Necklace ponds and scooped up a mouthful.
Cold and delicious, but no time to dawdle.
She continued on around the curving Cirque to the Street of Pillars, which she then followed toward the wharves, and the sea.
The main Constabulary barracks and the captain were located down near the cargo docks, surrounded by warehouses, cargo of all sorts being dragged or wheeled about, laborers shouting and cursing, and the smell of fish, fish, fish. Most of the fish were unloaded on the other side of the Street of Pillars, where the fish market was, but you could never escape the smell.
Jabari once again thanked her gods she was in Skala Eresou… she couldn’t imagine having to live and work in this odor every day. The captain said he was so used to it he never even noticed it anymore, but she found that difficult to believe, much as she trusted the captain.
And since the captain chose to actually live elsewhere—up in High City, in fact—she figured he wasn’t as used to it as he claimed.
“Captain Ragnarsson? Sergeant Jabari, sir, from Skala Eresou.”
The captain was seated in his office, staring at a map of the farmland north of the city.
“Come in, Jabari,” he said, motioning her in. “Apparently there’s a leak in one of the High City cisterns, and the artificers say they’ll need to hook up an alternate from the Slarr Aqueduct for a few weeks so they can fix it. Be a bit of a pain in the neck to run that pipe without damaging the Wall or blocking the outer Boreas Gate.”
He pushed the map to the side and looked up at her.
“And what’s your problem, Sergeant?”
“Murder, and an unknown man in Skala Eresou,” she said, pulling up a bench to sit across from him. She pulled the cloth bag out, and handed it over.
“And this.”
The captain gave her a quizzical look, and opened the bag, rolling a honeydrop out onto his palm.
“Oh, my. More honey. And in Skala Eresou this time!”
“This time?” asked Jabari. “Where else?”
“High City, of course, where the money is. A number of nobles have begun to show signs, and there have been a few, um, incidents.”
“And Skala Eresou abuts High City, through the Wall of Euphrosyne,” mused Jabari. “That’s the lowest side of High City, but still…”
“When did you check that wall last?”
“Twice a year, sir. The last one was about two months ago.”
“Nothing unusual?”
“Not really… a few smaller buildings built up against the wall, but nothing more than one story. The regs only forbid structures on the outside of the walls, not the inside, but I didn’t see anything especially unusual on that side, either. Just the usual gardens and sheds of the smaller estates.”
“Tunnels?”
“We checked both sides thoroughly and couldn’t find anything. The Wall goes down to the rock there, so digging a tunnel would be quite an undertaking to handle in secrecy.”
“Maybe it’s time for a surprise inspection.”
“Yessir, I’ll get on it immediately.”
“Report back to me at once if any new information surfaces. Who’s the man?”
“No idea yet, Captain. I’m looking into it.”
“Damn. Well, keep me informed if you discover anything related to this. Anything at all.”
“Yessir,” she said, rising.
“Oh, Jabari, how many honeydrops were there again?”
“Five, sir. It’s in the report.”
“Oh, so it is. Yes, thank you. Dismissed.”
General outline of Skala Eresou
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Honey for Celephaïs: Chapter 2