Krim Times Revisited: Chapter 13

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Chapter 13: Trask waits in City Hall lobby

“Weasel, I need to see the grid manager. This is urgent. I’m here on official chamber business.” Trask held up his badge with one hand, and, with the other, raised the briefcase with the evidence needed to permanently ban Jerald Rex Crewe from Krim. 

“That’s Wanda the Weasel to you,” she said.

“And it’s Security Chief Trask to you,” he said. 

She rolled her eyes. “Binkie’s not here, but you can talk to Willie.” Then she wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “Are you wearing perfume?”

Trask looked down at the little metal ball hanging on a chain around his neck, just above his badge. It was hollow and perforated, and the interior was filled with herbs, spices, scented oils, and aromatic resins. “It’s a pomander.” He tried to lift it off his neck, but its chain was entangled with that of the badge. “It’s all the latest craze.” He leaned towards Wanda and pulled the pomander out away from his chest and closer to her so that she could smell it better. “It’s got citrus, marjoram, lavender, sage, musk, and ambergris. Maybe a few other things.”

Wanda grimaced and waved her hand in front of his face. “Get that thing away from me.”

Trask tucked it under his shirt. “So can I go talk to Willie?”

 Wanda turned around awkwardly on her small wooden office chair and glanced towards the back hall, the one that led to the main administrative and staff-only areas. “I forgot, he’s in a meeting. You can wait.” She pointed her knife at a row of even smaller chairs on one side of the lobby then went back to slicing envelopes open. Some were fancy, with wax stamps. Most of the letters went into the trash after barely even a glance. That was just one of the reasons why Trask always did everything in person whenever possible. It was too easy to ignore a piece of paper.

“Did Joe stop by with a bunch of bags and purses?” Trask asked her.

Wanda nodded without looking up at him. “They’re in the lost and found, in case anyone comes by to collect them.”

There didn’t seem to be any more to say, so Trask walked over to the chairs and set down the briefcase. He didn’t sit. The chairs looked child-sized to him, which was an odd choice, given that there were no children on Krim. Maybe the chairs were supposed to be historically accurate. In the actual middle ages, people were probably on the smaller side, what with the lack of food and all the diseases. 

The wall above the seats was filled with clippings from the local press, mostly AviNewz. Ribbon-cutting ceremonies. The Assassin Guild awarding grid owner Wilson Courtney Gully with a gold garotte. Residents celebrating the creation of new neighborhoods.

But one framed print caught his attention because it featured an archery competition. The griefer was an archer. And, now that he thought about it, archery wasn’t all that common a skill. He himself, for example, had never used a bow. Even the mercenaries and assassins and what-not tended to go for easier weapons. Knives. Swords. Poisons.

Trask peered closer at the print. The faces in the image were completely unrecognizable but, according to the caption, the winner was Margrave Ademar, the Baron’s top commander. He wasn’t sure why this picture was hanging up in the City Hall lobby, other than that the Baron was good friends with Gully, Krim’s owner, and maybe Gully wanted to flatter his best customer… Still, Margrave probably won plenty of competitions of all kinds. 

She probably wasn’t the griefer, though. First of all, the griefer was dead, and she was definitely still alive. Also, if she’d been the griefer, she’d have hit what she was aiming at. A seasoned veteran like her wouldn’t be thrown off by a little wind and elevation. 

The caption under the illustration didn’t say who the other winners were, just describing the second-place archer as “a fellow member of the Armforge Guild” and the guy in third place as “a Krim World grid administrator.”

The caption didn’t say who the artist was, but there was a squiggle in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture.

Trask couldn’t be expected to know the signature of every artist on the grid. It really wasn’t his domain of expertise. He had better things to do. No, wait… that was Thomasin’s scrawl. He should have known from the odd body proportions, since she was always struggling with the human form. She should really go in for abstract art, Trask thought. Or maybe primitivism. Not that he’d ever suggest such a thing, since neither style had been invented yet.

She’d have to limit her showings to underground art galleries and sell her works on the black market, out of sight of the administration.

Or she could do cats. Medieval painters were notoriously bad at cats.

He walked back to the reception desk. “Can you just let him know that I’m here?”

Wanda didn’t even glance up at him. “No.”

But then he heard a door open down the hall and a few second later his boss, Osgar Cerdic Sigeweard, entered the lobby. 

Osgar was historically accurate. He cared about Krim, and was dressed appropriately for the world, in traditional Tudor-style merchant garb. A little bit more understated than Trask would have preferred, but then again, Osgar wasn’t out there every day presenting a show of the chamber’s power and authority to the public. He mostly stayed in his office, doing administrative work and meeting with individual merchants. Something must be really wrong for him to have walked over here to city hall.

“Marshall,” he said, nodding his head at Trask, then turned to Wanda. “Can I get the list of the latest griefing complaints?” he asked. “Willie said I could take them.”

“We haven’t gotten any new ones for about an hour,” she said, passing him a sheaf of papers. “These are all from this morning.”

“I can tell you why,” Trask said. 

Osgar looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Yes?”

“The griefer’s dead,” Trask said. “Joe and I disposed of the body, and won’t be seeing him again for at least two weeks. Possibly, ever, if he gets bored of waiting and goes somewhere else.”

“That’s fantastic news!” Osgar said, and patted Trask on the shoulder. “Great job! I knew you were the right guy to do this. And, in that case, I guess that it’s not all bad news that my meeting with Willie didn’t go well.”

“You were there about the two-week suspension, right?”

“I gave him the results of the Chamber survey. Our members overwhelmingly want the two-week rule gone,” Osgar said. “It’s really hurting business. He just told me to leave it on his desk and he’ll discuss it with Binkie.” He sighed. “I’m not holding my breath. But at least we won’t be seeing the griefer again anytime soon. Who was he?”

“No idea. He was wearing a default avatar. Could have been anybody. Well, anybody who could shoot an arrow. But not too well. Oh, and I was at the Barley Mow for lunch and people asked about the import export licenses.”

“That was even more of a dead end,” said Osgar. “Willie told me that the Impex Board of Appeals works at its own pace.” Osgar shook his head. “So what brings you here?”

Trask held up the briefcase. “There’s a process server wandering around the grid, trying to serve papers on people.” He opened the case and a couple of envelopes flew out before he could catch them. He set the case down on Wanda’s desk and bent down to pick up the errant subpoenas.

“Hmm.” Osgar leafed through the contents of the briefcase. “I don’t recognize any of the names, but they don’t sound Krimmish.”

“Probably the people’s real names,” Trask said.

“That has to be a privacy violation,” said Osgar. “I don’t think our members will like having this guy in-world. And how would he even know who anyone was?”

“We found his briefcase near the griefer’s body,” Trask said. “But I don’t know if they’re connected. The process server claimed that his briefcase had been stolen, and we found a pile of bags and purses in the same alley.”

“Larry?”

“Probably.”

“Doesn’t mean that they’re not connected,” Osgar said.

“Maybe the guy hired the griefer to flush out his targets,” Trask said. “Or they just both happened to show up on Krim at the same time by coincidence.”

 “You know, one time, on Olaf’s Own, there was an unusual run of coincidences….”

Trask quickly interrupted before Osgar could go into a long, convoluted story. “Do you want to come with me to talk to Lockton about it?”

“God, no. I’ve had more than enough of the man for one day.” He glanced at Wanda. “No offense meant.”

“None taken,” she said. “He’s a jerk.”

“But while you’re in there, ask him about the groups looking to invest money in Krim,” Osgar said. “I got the sense that Lockton knows more about it than he was willing to tell me. Maybe you could wheedle it out of him. You are my chief investigator, after all.”