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Chapter 21: Trask runs into a burning building
Trask was finally able to relax and enjoy a meal in leisure, then sat peacefully, digesting, watching the street outside in case the griefer came back.
It was a quiet night until suddenly people started running, panicked, and he heard yelling.
By the time he stood up and started for the door, several patrons had already run outside to see what was going on. Probably hoping for a chance at the bounty, too.
Then one of them ran back inside.
“There’s a building on fire!” The man pointed down the street, in the direction everyone had been running. “I think it’s the newspaper building. They need people for the fire brigades!”
Everyone else got up and rushed outside. A fire in Krim City was no joke. Fire codes hadn’t been invented yet, and the grid’s original designers had prioritized aesthetics over safety.
There was no help for it. Trask followed them. They’d need someone to supervise.
***
It was a dead body. Definitely.
There was no way of telling who the body belonged to under the dim light of the firefighters’ safety lanterns, but Trask doubted that he’d be able to tell who it was in the light of day, either. It was twisted up on itself, the hair and clothes almost completely gone.
It was probably someone he knew, he thought. Why would a tourist wander all the way out here after dark? It was probably Sidney.
Trask had a hard time tearing his eyes away from the body, even though the remnant smoke was making his eyes water and his stomach queasy. Sidney had a habit of disrespecting the chamber and other Krim institutions in the pages of her paper. But she also ran all of the chamber’s announcements and advertisements. She didn’t deserve to die, especially not in what seemed like such a slow, horrible way.
If this happened to Trask, he didn’t think he’d be able to come back to Krim again. Or to any virtual world with violence as part of its business model, even one of the other ones, where the physical sensations were toned down a bit. He’d probably go get a nice apartment on Facepage overlooking Main Street and spend all his waking hours in therapy trying to get over the trauma.
Trask was standing in the basement of the AviNewz building in just his shirt. He’d left most of his overclothes outside, so they wouldn’t get damaged by the smoke and soot. His badge was tucked under his shirt to protect it.
He looked around.
The stone walls and heavy wooden beams had withstood the fire well, but the papers piled around the body had gone up like… well, like paper.
Some of the bundles had been tied together and hadn’t had a chance to burn all the way through before the fire fighters drenched everything in water. He didn’t see a printing press anywhere. Wasn’t printing type made of lead? Maybe it all melted. But no, the printing press itself wouldn’t be made of lead, but of a more durable metal. It was probably somewhere else. There was a printing company on the chamber’s membership roster. Maybe that’s what AviNewz used, instead of printing the newspaper on premises.
Trask looked back at the body. The killer must have drenched it in something very flammable. Or maybe this was just the way bodies burned—Trask had little experience with fires. Normally, on Krim, fire-related deaths were due to smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning. And, in any case, it wasn’t something that the chamber would deal with unless it somehow affected commerce.
An attack on a merchant, within the merchant’s own building, seemingly unprovoked—that was something that could definitely affect commerce.
The best-case scenario was that Sidney had a personal beef with someone and brought this on herself. Maybe someone who didn’t like what Sidney wrote about them. Or one of the process server’s friends, trying to get information about where Crewe was being kept.
The worst-case scenario was that someone was deliberately trying to disrupt Krim’s economy, such as a disgruntled former employee or a rival grid. Or the Humanists, trying to destroy it. Or maybe the Baron, trying to cause so much chaos in the city that he could step in and become king of all Krim.
Trask turned away and walked back up the stairs, mostly feeling his way along by keeping one hand on the wet, grimy stones of the stair wall. He was glad he’d decided to leave his cape, leather jerkin, and doublet outside the building, but his wet and soot-stained shirt would have to go. Could he claim it as a business expense and get reimbursed? The chamber did not cover in-world clothing costs, but this had to be a special case. What form would he file? The chamber did run weekly notices in the newspaper. No newspaper meant no notices. So maybe solving the crime, and reimbursing him for his damaged shirt, could fall under the advertising budget.
Another possibility was membership. If the griefer continued to run amuk, the newspaper wouldn’t be the only chamber member going out of business. No members meant no membership dues.
A third option was the facilities maintenance budget, he thought, as he exited the building, but his train of thought was interrupted by booing.
Certainly not for him. Trask thought that he cut quite a dashing figure, standing at the top of the newspaper steps in his ripped shirt, emerging alive but not unscathed from a scene of horrible tragedy.
“Defund the police!” someone yelled. Trask couldn’t see who it was, but the voice sounded like Quimby. It couldn’t be. Trask was Quimby’s favorite customer.
“Your job is keeping us safe!” someone else yelled. It sounded like Tottie. It definitely couldn’t be her. Didn’t she just call Trask her favorite customer earlier?
He pulled out his badge and held it up and the people at the front of the crowd quieted down to hear what he had to stay, though sporadic boos still came from the back.
He let the badge fall back onto his chest. “Technically,” he said, “My job is to make sure that chamber members pay their dues.”
The whole crowd erupted in boos.
“We pay your salary!”
“Do your job!”
“Get the bastards!”
“Bad cop! No crumpets!”
Trask winced. “I know we’ve had some trouble recently on Leadenhall Street…”
“And Banking Street!”
“… And Banking Street…”
“And East Upping!”
“East Upping? Is Jacques Bar and Grill… never mind.” He paused and gathered his thoughts. “I know we’ve had a series of unprovoked attacks against innocent tourists and against the business owners who are the lifeblood of our world. But, tomorrow morning, the chamber will officially announce a sizable bounty on the heads of the perpetrators. You’ll get all the details then, but trust me, we’re doing everything…”
“How big a bounty, exactly?” yelled someone in the back of the crowd. Gorehair, maybe.
“A hundred golds. But my point is…”
“You want them dead, or alive?”
“Just the heads,” Trask said. “But my point is that we must not let these foreign enemies destroy what makes Krim great!”
“Did he say foreign enemies?” someone in the back of the crowd asked. Not Gorehair, someone else. Not a merchant, but another mercenary. There were a lot of role-players on Krim. He couldn’t keep track of them all.
“It must be Clem Brana,” the person continued. Marston. Marston Thorne, Trask thought, recognizing the mercenary by his voice and general lumpy shape.
The people at the back of the crowd roared.
“I meant that our commitment to privacy makes Krim great,” Trask said, but his voice was drowned out by angry shouts. “Process servers destroy our privacy…” He realized that the crowd had no interest in a convoluted explanation about how Jordan Rex Crewe was a threat to Krim and the privacy of its residents.
“Death to foreigners!” someone shouted.
“Clem Branans must go! Kill them all!”
“A hundred golds for their heads!”
The mob suddenly quieted and its members looked at each other. There was a moment of stillness and the crowd suddenly scattered in all directions.
“No, wait,” Trask said, but it was pointless. He hoped that they weren’t expecting a hundred gold coins for every head they brought in from anyone who didn’t look like a Krim native.
He glanced up at the sky. The regularly-scheduled rains would start soon and get everyone off the streets. Tomorrow morning, Osgar would issue the official bounty announcement and explain how it all worked.
“So now you’re thinking the griefer is from Clem Brana, and not working for our process server?” said Quimby, stepping into the light cast by the firefighters’ lanterns.
“No reason he can’t be both,” said Trask. “Where’s Crewe now?”
“I’ve turned him over to someone who will take very good care of him,” said Quimby.
“Could he have escaped and set the fire?”
“Not with four broken bones,” said Quimby. “Also, I gave him to the Baron.”
So that’s what Quimby meant by “take good care of him,” Trask thought. He might not like the Baron, but he had to give him his due when it came to keeping prisoners. Nobody ever escaped.
“Are you sure this morning’s shooter is dead?” Quimby asked.
“Yes,” Trask said. “Throat slit. And then Joe dropped him down the trash chute, so we’re pretty sure.”
Quimby scratched his chin. “You know, people have been known to wedge themselves in the chute, with their elbows and knees and whatnot, and kind of wriggle their way back up.”
“Not with their throats slit and no blood left in their bodies,” said Trask.
They both looked back at the AviNewz building. Someone still alive did the torturing and the fire-setting.
“The process server could have had two people working for him,” Trask finally said. “Or more. I mean, think about it. How would he know who anyone on Krim was? Crewe had to have had spies here on the grid, gathering information on us for months.”
“There’s the spy guild,” said Quimby.
“I don’t think anyone local would work for him,” said Trask. “And you heard Crewe talk. He didn’t know much about how Krim works. Plus, the griefer who got killed was a noob and almost definitely a foreigner.”
“I don’t think it was a foreigner,” a woman’s voice piped up from the few people still remaining around the steps.
Trask stepped towards her. “Are you talking about the griefer?” he asked.
“My lodger. If he was the griefer. I keep hearing people say he was from Clem Brana, but he wasn’t,” said the woman.
Trask squinted, trying to make our her face in the light of the oil lamps. It was Tottie.
“Well, Clem Branans don’t all go around saying ‘wess hale’ and ‘hwhat,’” Trask said. “Not all of them. Not all the time.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Tottie. “The lodger spoke Krimmish. Good, official Krimmish. Not like a noob would. When he asked for a room, he said ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and called me ‘grandam.’”
“I’ve never heard anyone say ‘grandam,’” Trask said. “Except for…” He thought back. There was a mandatory lecture he had to attend when he was first hired at the chamber. “So the griefer is… a language instructor?”
“Or someone who went to the lecture and took notes,” said another woman, stepping forward from out of the shadows. “Also, I’m not dead.”
“Sidney!” said Trask. “I saw your body!”
“No, I’m the one who rang the alarm. I was on my way back from the scriptorium when I saw the smoke,” Sidney said. “The front door was open. I didn’t go inside, but I helped get the water going. How bad is it in there?”
“Pretty bad,” said Trask. “Do you know who the body in the basement belongs to, then?”
“The fire chief says it was a woman,” said Sidney. “Tortured to death. Grim.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Emily. Or Mary. Maybe Emma? One of the new delivery drivers from the paper supply company.” Sidney held up her notepad. “I’ll check first thing tomorrow, for the obituary.”
“Emma? Was it Emma?” Tottie pulled at Sidney’s coat. “What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to the driver.” Sidney pulled away from the seamstress and raised her notepad. “I’ll find out for sure tomorrow, but in case this was Emma, how do you know her?”
“She was my new assistant.”
“And, if this was Emma, how do you feel about her having been tortured to death and set on fire?”
“How do you think I feel!” Tottie slapped Sidney across the face, hard enough for the editor to rock back on her feet and drop her notepad. “What kind of monster are you?” She whirled to face Trask. “And what kind of monster are you to allow this to happen? I don’t want to see either of you ever again as I long as I live.” She bit back a sob, turned, and strode away.
Sidney bent down and picked up her notepad. “Well, I had to ask,” she said, wiping off the mud smearing the paper. “It’s my job.”
“You’re still publishing?” Trask asked.
“Of course. Tomorrow’s edition is already in the can, and I’m working on a special mid-week edition right now.”
“I thought…” Trask gestured back towards the building. “With the fire and everything gone… Weren’t all your important papers in that basement?”
“It was just the morgue,” said Sidney. “Copies of old editions. But I’ve got backups of everything off-world. In fact, so does the scriptorium. And so does my distribution company. We’re good.” She tapped her pencil sharply against the notepad. “If the Baron thinks he can put me out of business by torturing my delivery drivers and burning my building, he’s wrong.”
“You think the Baron is behind this?”
“Yes, and I’m also reasonably confident that he has my reporter,” Sidney said. “According to my sources, the Baron’s men grabbed him as he was leaving City Hall.”
“What was he working on?” Trask asked.
“I can’t tell you that!”
“It might make it easier to find him.”
Sidney grumbled softly to herself, then finally said, “He was working on getting some background information on the three investment groups. Just routine. I don’t think anyone even knew he was doing this.”
“What about the people he talked to?”
“It was mostly off-world research,” Sidney said. “And he talked to Krim’s administration, but they wouldn’t have him kidnapped.”
“What happens with his article now?”
“Nothing, he hasn’t filed it yet. If he shows up tomorrow, I’ll run it in Wednesday’s paper. If not, I’ll just put in a quick overview of who the main players are. I’ve got some of Cyril’s notes.”
“It wouldn’t affect the board’s vote?”
“I don’t see how,” Sidney said. “They’ve got their own legal team and did their own background research. Even if Krim residents were to rise up in protest, I doubt it would change anything.” She lowered her voice. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but, since you’re investigating his disappearance–“
Trask wasn’t, but didn’t correct her.
“–there’s nothing particularly incendiary there. No, the kidnapping probably had to do with one of his older articles. He’s done a lot of fashion coverage for us, and the Baron was furious about some of the stories.”
Trask mentally reviewed his list of suspects.
“So you don’t think the Clem Branans are behind this? Or my predecessor, Vorgath? Or the process server? They could be behind the kidnapping, the fire, and Emma’s murder.” But even as he said that last one out loud, Trask thought that the possibility was sounding less and less likely.
“You torture someone to get information,” said Sidney. “Or because you like it. Crewe already knew who I was. He just had to wait for me outside the newspaper building. As for Vorgath–I think he’s long moved on. But the Baron… the Baron likes to torture. And he wants revenge. And he probably wants to know what’s going to be in tomorrow’s paper. He is gearing up for a big military campaign–maybe he thought we were going to publish secret war plans and that Emma knew where to find the page proofs.”
“What about all the griefers? Do you think they work for the Baron?” Personally, Trask had doubts. If the Baron wanted to make Sidney suffer, why would he have his men take potshots at tourists? And if the first griefer worked for the Baron, he wouldn’t have missed and he certainly wouldn’t have let himself get killed in a back alley. The Armstrong Guild was famous for its combat skills. There wasn’t a single armchair archer among them.
“I see you’re skeptical,” said Sidney. “But hear me out. There are a lot of people who want to get into the Baron’s guild, right? Especially with him gearing up for war. But he’s selective. Maybe the griefing is…”
“Part of an initiation ritual?” Trask asked. “Admissions test? In that case, they’re clearly failing.”
“Or they’re just trying to get the Baron’s attention,” Sidney said. “And this…” She looked up at her building. “That’s exactly the kind of nastiness the Baron appreciates.”
“I don’t think you should publish that theory,” said Trask.
“Oh? Are you speaking as an official representative of the chamber right now? Or maybe you’re also on retainer for the Baron?”
“I’m just saying that if half the grid thinks that the Armforge Guild is killing tourists, and there’s a hundred gold bounty on their heads, then we’d see a civil war break out right here in the city.”
Sidney’s eyes lit up.
Trask knew he’d just made a big mistake. Sidney was a journalist. She’d love to cover a war. Nothing sells newspapers like death and destruction. Trask sighed. He shouldn’t have said anything. Civil wars made it almost impossible to maintain a regular meal schedule, or get laundry done.
Maybe Sidney herself was behind all this. Wasn’t there a history of newspapers starting wars in order to increase circulation? Not that she’d be likely to burn down her own newspaper, torture her own delivery driver, or hire someone to try to shoot her down in the street.
Still, he should make a note of it.
Trask reached for his own notepad but couldn’t feel his pocket. Which was because it was attached to his jerkin, which he’d taken off. Trask looked around. Where did he put his clothes? It was too dark to see well, but a bright lantern was approaching and Trask stepped towards it.
“Chief,” he said, recognizing the person carrying it.
“Marshall Trask,” the fire chief said, leaving out Trask’s middle name, but Trask didn’t correct her.
“What’s the damage?” he asked.
“Minimal,” said the fire chief, also known as Lucilicious, former wench and now co-owner of the Wench’s Rest wine shop on East Upping Street that also had a very nice cheese selection at its wine tastings. Being a fire chief was a part-time, volunteer gig. “A little bit of smoke damage on the upper floors, but most of the fire was contained to the basement.” She paused. “It could have been a lot worse. I don’t think the arsonist wanted the fire to spread.”
Chapter 22: The merchants are mad
So the griefer wasn’t just trying to do as much damage to the grid as possible, Trask thought. The attacks were targeted.
Somebody did want Sidney dead. And the list of potential suspects was long. At one point or another, everybody thought the paper had a personal bias against them. But from what he could tell, both the negative coverage and the positive coverage was distributed about equally. Except for Sidney’s coverage of the Chamber, of course. That was clearly overly critical and personally motivated. If Trask didn’t have a room full of witnesses who could testify he was eating dinner at the time, he’d even consider himself a suspect.
In fact, he still could be. He could have hired people to do the griefing. Gorehair, for example. Matilda. Any of a hundred different people, really. Of course, they’d all spill the beans the minute they got drunk.
He should send Joe and Matilda out to the King’s Armpit and listen to gossip.
He turned his attention back to Lucilicious, who was explaining how the fire squad had watered down all the neighboring buildings, in case a gust of wind blew an ember in their direction.
“If we missed anything, the rain is due in an hour,” she added. “That should take care of it.”
Krim’s nightly rains were fierce. They had to be, to clear all the muck from the streets. It’s not like there was a vibrant role-playing community of street-sweepers and night-soil collectors out there. The Chamber of Commerce would have preferred bots or non-player characters to do the cleaning, or even magic, but the rain was at least something. When the grid first launched, it didn’t even have that, Trask heard, and Krim City became uninhabitable in less than a week.
“Any clues about who the arsonist is?” Trask asked.
“I had my kids canvas the neighborhood,” said Lucilicious. “Can’t have a fire bug running around on the loose. Nobody saw or heard anything, other than the usual screams.”
“Usual screams? Like someone being tortured?”
“Exactly,” she said. “At the Barley Mow.”
Probably Crewe, Trask thought, and waved a hand in dismissal. “That was nothing.”
“And you? Do you have any leads on the victim?” Lucilicious asked.
“We think it might have been a new delivery driver, Emma,” said Trask. “She also helps out at Tottie’s Threads.”
Lucilicious sucked in her breath. “A civilian,” she said. “That’s very unusual. People who get tortured normally do something to deserve it. Could she have been a secret assassin? Or a thief who had a falling-out with the rest of her gang?”
“I doubt it,” said Trask. “Not if she was working for Tottie.”
“People are going to be furious,” she said. “Hell, I’m furious. And once word spreads… who’s going to want to come visit Krim if this is the kind of thing that happens to non-combatants?”
“Well, let’s hope the grid admins step up and do something,” Trask said.
“That’s what you’re hoping for? Really?” Lucilicious spit on the ground. “They’ll just call it free publicity.”
“Then they’ll sue anyone publishing the news for violating the no-spoiler laws,” Sidney added.
A short balding man wearing a brown monk’s robe appeared out of the shadows and tugged at Sidney’s sleeve.
“Pardon me, don’t mean to interrupt,” the man said.
Sidney turned, annoyed to be interrupted. “Yes?”
“Did you see who set the fire?” Lucilicious asked.
“No,” the man told her, then turned back to Sidney. “Did you get the letter I sent in?”
“What letter?” Sidney asked.
“I think that’s why they burned down your newspaper,” said the man. “To keep you from reading the letter or publishing it.”
“What letter?” Sidney repeated.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself.” The man stuck out his hand. “Brother Fulke. I’m with the Brotherhood of the Round Krim Society. I’ve uncovered evidence that Krim isn’t actually flat, but a round sphere.”
“Ships go over the edge of Krim all the time,” said Trask.
“That’s just what they want you to think,” said Brother Fulke. “It’s just a cover for shoddy shipbuilding techniques.”
“They sell Krim maps on the central plaza,” said Trask. “They’re all flat.”
“The maps are all fake,” said Brother Fulke.
Well, he was right about that, Trask thought. There were no official maps of Krim, so the map-makers just made up most of the geography.
“There’s a lost continent on the other side of Krim,” Brother Fulke continued. “Potatoes grow there, and so does coffee. It’s all in this pamphlet.” He passed copies to Sidney, Trask, and Lucilicious. “And they don’t want us to know.”
“So you’re claiming that the grid administrators burned down the building to keep your letter from being published?” Trask glanced at the pamphlet. “This looks familiar… Don’t you have a stand on the plaza, right to the left as the tourists come in?”
“Yes,” said Brother Fulke.
“And isn’t city hall right on the other side of that plaza?” Trask asked.
“Well, yes…”
“And don’t grid officials have to walk past your stand each time they come out for a snack?”
“Possibly… But they don’t like the food on Krim, so we don’t see them all that much.”
“So the admins already know about your theory, and they’re letting you scream at tourists all you want.” Trask handed the pamphlet back. “I’ll keep your theory in mind.”
“I’m heading home for the night,” Sidney told Trask and Lucilicious. “I’ll let both of you know if I find anything incriminating tomorrow during the cleanup.”
“Hey,” Brother Fulke tugged at Sidney’s sleeve again, but the editor ignored him.
“I guess I’m done here as well,” said Lucilicious. “I’ll send someone over tomorrow to do another canvas.”
Trask shivered. It was getting cold, and he could feel the change in the air that signaled that the rain was coming soon. He looked around for his cape, his leather jerkin, and his doublet but they were gone. Some miscreant had made off with all three.
“See if you can get the chamber to issue a reward for information about the fire,” Lucilicious said as she turned to leave. “I don’t want any copycats getting ideas. The whole city could go up in flames.”
Trask nodded and started walking behind her, Sidney joining them.
The street was mostly empty now, except for a small clump of people on the next street corner down. They stood below the lantern that illuminated the sign marking the cross-street: Gibbet Alley. The light also showed their faces. Quimby. Tottie. A couple of other local merchants. They all had grim, determined looks on their faces and the looks got grimmer when they saw who was approaching.
“Sidney, chief,” Quimby said, nodding at each of them in turn. Then he curled his lip and added, “Trask.”
“We’ve been talking,” Tottie said. The other merchants nodded. “We don’t want you back in our establishments.” She pointed at Trask. “No more custom orders.”
“No more discounts,” added another merchant.
“No more free meals,” added Quimby. “No more meals at all.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you should be out finding the person who did this,” Tottie said. She nodded back in the direction of the newspaper building.
“Instead of sitting around with your fifth dessert,” added Quimby.
Trask drew himself up. “Well, I never…”
“He’ll probably just leave the grid and get his free meals on Facepage,” said Kafay the Bitter.
“And he can sleep there, too,” said Petronilla Plantagenet-Neville, the woman who ran the Strangler’s Run Boardinghouse. She held out her hand. “Give me back your keys.”
“What? But it’s cold,” Trask said.
“I said, hand them over.” Petronilla repeated.
“But, but…” Trask sputtered but reached for his pocket, which still wasn’t there. “I’ve lost them,” he said.
“Likely story.”
“No, the pocket was attached to my jerkin, which I took off to go inside the burned building…”
“That’s true enough,” Tottie said. “I sewed it.” She looked at Petronilla. “It’s not actually a pocket. It’s more like a little bag on a ribbon. A purse, really.”
“It’s a pocket, and it’s gone.”
“Well, when you catch whoever did this, you can stop by and get a new set of keys,” said Petronilla. “I’ll charge you for the replacement.”
“But… but it’s cold,” Trask said. “And I’m hungry.”
“I heard there are free apartments on Facepage,” said Petronilla.
“I’m not leaving Krim in its time of crisis.” Trask nodded at the merchants. “Ladies. Gentlemen. I bid you good night.”
He resumed walking, at a faster, more furious pace. Lucilicious jogged a couple of steps and caught up to him while Sidney stayed behind. Trask could hear her interviewing the business owners behind him, and walked even faster to get out of hearing range. This was unconscionable.
Trask crossed his arms tightly in front of him to try to keep a little bit of his body heat from escaping and glanced up at the sky. The clouds were hanging low and dark, ready for their nightly downpour.
He didn’t want to leave the grid. There was nothing waiting for him out in the real world. Well, except for a freebie apartment on Facepage.
But if he stayed on Krim what was he going to do? A man could not live on wine and cheese alone. If, that is, he could even get wine and cheese. He doubted Lovely Lora would feed him after she learned that the other merchants were freezing him out, no matter what her wife thought.
He had never felt so sorry for himself in his life. Not even when he woke up in the hospital and learned that he’d been in a fatal accident and was going to be living online from then on—and nobody had come to visit.
“This is unconscionable,” he told Sidney after the woman had caught up with him. “I’ve never seen this level of disrespect.”
“I just have a quick question about the board meeting on Thursday,” said Sidney. “Is the Chamber of Commerce involved at all? The Chamber’s members and other merchants contribute to seventy-five percent of grid revenues, the rest being fees, character upgrades and premium subscriptions. Has grid management asked for your input about the proposed ownership changes? Have the potential investors approached you to get a sense of the sentiment in the creator community?”
No, they hadn’t. Osgar would have told him. “I’m sorry, I can’t comment on that,” said Trask.
“So… that means yes, but you’re not allowed to say anything?” Sidney pressed. “Or no, and you don’t want to admit that you’re out of the loop? Just cough once for yes, twice for no.”
Trask ignored her.
“I heard that traffic and commercial activity have been up since the griefing started,” said Sidney. “But that Krim’s market valuation may have actually fallen due to the in-world instability. I’ve heard that at least one of the investor groups is worrying that the grid is about to implode or descend into civil war. They must have heard about the severed heads.”
“No comment.”
“Where will you go if Krim shuts down?” Sidney asked. “Will you move to Clem Brana?”
Trask didn’t answer and after a couple of minutes, as they approached the intersection with Banking Street, Sidney gave up and went to the right, in the direction of city hall and the central gate. The wind blew straight down from the north, and, without buildings to block it, went straight though Trask’s shirt.
Trask shivered and nearly ran across Banking and continued jogging forward, avoiding the torch-bearing angry crowd in front of the chamber building. Leadenhall Street was Butters Street on this side. He turned left at the first alley and speed-walked to the back entrance of the chamber building, when he realized that he didn’t have the key. They’d have to install a new lock on the door. Osgar would probably take it out of his pay. Now that he wasn’t moving, he felt the chill even more.
He banged on the door until, to his relief, Joe let him in.
The man was happy to see him, which made Trask feel warm inside.
“Am I glad to see you,” Joe said, confirming Trask’s guess. “Osgar told me to stay here all night and make sure nobody burned down the building while Matilda was out there keeping an eye out for the griefer, but since you’re here…”
“I’ll lock and bar the doors, and the rain will start soon anyway,” Trask said. “We’ll be good, fire-wise.” Then he remembered his idea about hired killers getting drunk and bragging about what they did. “Maybe you and Matilda can visit some of the more down-market bars and see if anyone’s taking credit for the attacks.”
“The King’s Armpit is having a knife-throwing contest, and I’m planning to place big bets on Matilda,” Joe said. “Once it rains, nobody is going to be out on the streets anyway. We’ll listen for confessions.”
He left and Trask fetched some scratchy wool blankets from the basement. He hoped that they didn’t have too many fleas. There were no pillows. He should do something about prisoner comfort, he thought. He considered sleeping in the cell but then decided to sleep on the floor of his office, instead.
If an angry mob set the building on fire after the rain was over he’d be able to escape out the window.
As he added more wood to the fire that Joe had set before leaving, Trask had a suspicion that there was a lot more he should be doing, in his role as security chief. He was, after all, the closest thing that Krim City had to a police chief.
He sat down in his office chair, wrapped in a blanket, and tried to go to sleep, but his mind kept going around in circles.
If he was back out in the real world, he’d have an AI assistant coach him through what he was supposed to be doing next. If he was willing to brave the angry mob, and Krim’s nightly chill, and the city’s night-time bandits, and the possibility of being caught in the nightly rain, he might walk over to the central plaza and go through the gate. He wouldn’t even have to leave the grid completely. The welcome area had a regular user interface. He could sit down, have a warm beverage, check his mail, and chat with his assistant about how his job was going, like a normal person.
But here on Krim, the only resources currently at his disposal were whatever was already in his head.
In his previous career as an anonymous small-town bureaucrat, he’d had plenty of opportunities to interact with law enforcement, but everyone had AI assistants, so asking himself what they would do in this situation wasn’t particularly helpful.
But he’d also watched hundreds–no, thousands–of hours of cop shows. What would an old-fashioned small town police chief do if there was a mass murderer on the loose, one who moved in the shadows, and could be anybody at all?
And, say, this was a show set before security cameras everywhere and facial recognition system…
Trask went down the hall to the supply closet. Osgar should have a bulletin board in there somewhere that he used for presentations. He found the board and a small jar of nails that Osgar used in place of thumbtacks.
Back in his office, there was no obvious place to put it, so he propped it up on the cabinet next to the window. It covered up the framed drawings of him posing with tourists in front of various Krim City landmarks, but that was the sacrifice he’d have to make.
He ripped a sheet of paper into smaller pieces and started writing.
First, there were suspects. The Baron, or someone working for him, obviously. Maybe the Humanists. Someone from Clem Brana. A random disgruntled group of Krim residents or former residents. The guy who had Trask’s job before he got it. What was his name? Oh, yes, Vorgath Steelhand. Matilda had killed him, but that was more than two weeks ago now, and he might also have friends. For example, there was Grimnar Bloodaxe, his second-in-command, Joe’s old partner. Grimnar expected to become security chief after Vorgath and he’d hung around for a while when Trask had first been hired, muttering ominously under his breath, before he’d disappeared.
Then Trask started adding the names of all the trouble makers that he came into regular contact with, and that corner of the board grew crowded with overlapping slips of paper.
He tore up a second sheet and moved on to times and locations. This list was shorter, possibly because he wasn’t completely up-to-date on all the griefing attacks. He’d have Joe and Matilda fill it in later.
The last list was motives, and it was shorter still. Money. Revenge. Which category did the Humanists fall into? Neither of those. He added “crazy” to the list of motives and decided he’d done enough for now.
He still had nightmares that night. But instead of being murdered by a homicidal maniac, he was burning alive in the newspaper basement, with the Baron standing over him, laughing.