"You're sure you ladies don't need to rest after traveling?" Aztek said when the Enforcers rejoined him after checking into the hotel. Yaris wasn't sure if he was being polite or obtuse.
"Adjutant, our travel consisted of standing in place for less than a minute during dimensional transport. It took longer to get out of the spaceport."
"Yeah, I guess you have a point there."
She ignored her own momentary reaction to the transport; the ill effects had faded in under twenty minutes, although Aztek's driving had brought back echoes of them. She wondered if she'd be better off putting on her Barrier Jacket to absorb the stress of the high-G maneuvers.
"Anyway, you said that you had a suggestion for our next step?"
Aztek nodded.
"Right. Now, you know that the Security Forces have already completed the initial investigation—crime scene examination, forensic tests, witness interviews, and so on."
"Uh-huh." In the interest of cooperation, Yaris chose not to mention that the locals had significantly exceeded their responsibilities before calling in the Enforcement Bureau. After all, they were here now, working together, so there was no point in complaining about how they got there.
"Well, one of the major players in the illegal antiquities trade is based here in Caledon City. I'd set up a meeting to talk with him, and I thought that the two of you might want to join me. He may have been able to hang out in the gray areas of local law, but offworld heat is another kettle of fish entirely. If he wasn't involved in swiping the Circlet of Thessidor, then he should be able to find out who was."
It was the first time any of them had used the name of the missing Lost Logia. It hadn't been intentional, but even so breaking that curious silence had an effect on them all. Even Harlaown apparently sensed it, a shadow seeming to flicker across her deep red eyes. Lost Logia were like that, these ghosts of the fallen pasts. When they were involved even simple cases of theft and sale for profit got complicated.
"So who is this man?" Yaris pushed past the moment, as she always did. "What do we need to know about him?"
"His name is Nicolas Zil. Ostensibly, he's a restauranteur. The Chateau d'Argent is, in fact, one of the most well-known and highly-regarded restaurants in the city."
"Five-star cuisine, eh?"
"Oh, yeah. He does business out of his private rooms above the restaurant, and he's well known as a collector of antiquities, particularly Legarian rarities. I'm sure that won't surprise you, since one of the best ways to conceal illegal business is to do it within a legal one, clouding the picture."
"If he had a fancy for Legarian artifacts, then is it likely he commissioned the theft?"
"It's possible. We're certain that his private collection is significantly larger than his 'public' private collection, if you know what I mean, and he's brokered deals that weren't for his own purchases as well."
"Why hasn't this man been arrested?" Harlaown asked.
"Knowing he's a crook and being able to prove it in court are different things, Enforcer. That's particularly true when a man has powerful friends as Zil does. That means we can't act without all the Is dotted and Ts crossed, probable cause obtained for every action and no allegations without solid evidence backing them up. There's no chance of acting on suspicion alone and getting away with anything. Lost Logia, though, that's a little different."
"You're looking forward to this, aren't you?" Yaris said slyly.
Aztek affected a face of mock innocence.
"Me? Whyever could you think so?"
"Oh, I don't know. But, if I were a law officer who's had to handle a suspected criminal with kid gloves and the opportunity came to bring him before TSAB authorities who haven't the slightest interest in how big a player he might be on this one single world and a mandate to make very sure that he isn't playing around with restricted magical technology, I'd probably be grinning from ear to ear at the idea."
Aztek's smile slowly widened until it matched Yaris's description.
"You know, there just might be something to that." He coded on the car's engine and shot out into traffic.
~X X X~
More than one person looked up when the three uniformed officers walked into the Chateau d'Argent's elaborately furnished lobby. Nicolas Zil's love for antiquities was plain to see, as four pillar-shaped display cases showed off artifacts: an elaborate mask of what looked like porcelain, an ornate double-bladed dagger, and other items. Along one wall a tapestry of a battle scene was covered by glass, opposite the maitre'd's stand. Yaris tried to keep her rubbernecking to a minimum, letting her eyes take in the décor without moving her head as she followed Aztek's crisp stride towards the host.
"Good afternoon, Adjutant," the maitre'd said, his glance flicking over the rank insignia on Aztek's collar. "How may I help you?"
"Deacon Aztek, National Security Forces. My associates and I have an appointment with Mr. Zil."
The host looked surprised at that; he touched a button on his podium and a small screen, no more than three by five inches, appeared.
"Pardon me, but I have an Adjutant Aztek and companions to see Mr. Zil?"
"I'll be there immediately," replied whomever was on the other side of the screen.
"Very well." The host raised his eyes to Aztek and said said, "It will just be a moment, Adjutant, ladies."
The "moment" did in fact take no more than forty seconds before the lobby door opened and a slender, dark-skinned man with a shaved (or just bald) head and very sharp, angular features right down to the line of his eyebrows approached.
"Adjutant Aztek. We weren't expecting such an...imposingly official presence."
Yaris stepped up next to her local aide.
"Enforcers Yaris and Harlaown, Time-Space Administration Bureau," she said crisply, her tone matching the mood Aztek seemed to think would be the most effective approach with Zil. "Are you Mr. Zil?"
"No, Enforcer," the dark man said, momentarily taken aback.
"Then we'll save the explanations for when we see him. I don't like to repeat myself."
He glanced back and forth between Aztek and herself, the pause before his response long enough that Yaris wondered if he was a mage and communicating telepathically with his boss. If he was, he must have received a positive answer.
"Of course. Please come with me."
He led them from the lobby down a hall paneled in dark wood. Through doors on both sides Yaris could see dining rooms, light glittering off crystal, brightly polished silver, and snowy linens, and caught further hints of opulent furnishings. She wasn't familiar enough with Andorelan history to know the culture or time period being evoked, but it gave her the feeling of a post-medieval aristocratic luxury, of a time when birth meant privilege and entitlement and technology was sufficient to support it. At the end of the hall he touched a button and a section of paneling slid aside to reveal an elevator, the car outfitted in brass and more dark wood. Yaris felt a soft buzz at the back of her neck as they entered, her Device letting her know that they were being scanned for weapons.
The elevator ascended smoothly and their escort brought the three law officers to a large conference room. The furnishings here were equally elaborate, and the walls were pierced with glass cases, each bearing further antiquities. Was it because Zil liked to be surrounded by the objects of his passion, or because he was trying to show off, present an image to the people he met with?
Looking at the man who awaited them, Yaris had to conclude that it was the latter. Zil was a thick-bodied, well-fed man wearing an immaculate white suit, plum-colored shirt and lilac tie. His brown hair was a rich chocolate color with lighter highlights and he had a neatly trimmed beard into which he'd allowed a little gray, just enough to suggest experience and wisdom without a loss of strength and virility. He had short-fingered plowman's hands from which three rings glittered, and one ear was pierced for a diamond stud.
"Adjutant, Enforcers, good afternoon!" he greeted them heartily, waving his hand, but did not get up from his seat at the head of the long table—a classic power move. Yaris wasn't impressed; she'd seen it all before. "Come, join me, and tell me what I can do for such eminent guests." He gestured at the table.
The three of them approached, not responding to his hail-fellow-well-met heartiness. The point was to present a front of stern, overwhelming officialdom, although Yaris couldn't help but think that with Harlaown in tow they looked more like a family playing dress-up than a law enforcement squad.
Since beating around the bush would only undermine the impression they wanted to make, Yaris came out and said, "Adjutant Aztek tells up that you have extensive knowledge of the market for Legarian artifacts."
"You do me too much honor. I have a collector's instinct, true, but nothing more."
She gestured at the walls.
"More than just an ordinary collector, I'd say."
"Trinkets. Mere baubles to whet the appetite. The time period is fascinating to me: a technologically advanced lost civilization existing on our own world long before Belkans or Midchildans sailed the dimensional sea. It's inspiring to think of. The artifacts I collect are not priceless treasures of gems and precious metal; their value lies in that they offer a window into the far-off past, into the lives of people now long passed on."
"Then how much," Aztek said, "would an artifact that literally gave you a window into that past be worth to you?"
"I'm afraid that I don't follow."
"The Circlet of Thessidor has been stolen from the Provincial Museum."
"The Circ—" Zil began, and avarice flickered in the depths of his deep brown eyes. "Incredible. But why do you come to me?"
"You know the market," Aztek said. "If the Circlet was being offered for sale, you would know."
"Surely you are not asserting that you believe I would traffic in stolen goods."
"You know as well as I do that in the antiquities trade, provenance is often forged, winked at, or ignored entirely."
"You are being extremely insulting, Adjutant. I assure you that my ownership of every item you see here is backed up with complete and valid documentation."
"And the ones we don't see, in your private collection?" Yaris said, her voice somewhere between a drawl and a sneer. Zil puffed up with false indignation—or heck, maybe it was real; some of these crime-boss guys were touchy about being accused of things even when they were guilty, as a matter of face and ego. She cut him off, leaning forward, palms on the conference table so her face was no more than six inches from his, making his seated posture one of weakness instead of strength. "Maybe you don't quite grasp the situation. This isn't about what you may or may not have bought through legal, dubious, or illegal channels in the past. This is about a stolen Lost Logia. Do I have to spell out for you what that means?"
"Why you little—" Zil's urbane polish vanished as he shot to his feet, knocking his chair back. "I'll have you know—"
"Don't push me on this. I'm not in a mood to listen to a two-bit hustler—" she shot back, watching Zil's face turn purple, but she too was interrupted, by a voice from behind her carrying the telltale metallic echo of a Device.
"Get set."
Yaris, Zil, and Aztek all turned towards Harlaown. The triangular pendant around the girl's neck flashed and in an instant her uniform was gone, replaced by a Barrier Jacket of black tunic and tights—very similar, actually, to her Enforcer uniform—and high-collared white cape. Her black-gloved right hand closed around the shaft of a short-handled Device with a head like a blunt-edged axe blade. The yellow crystal in the axe-head flashed, and the metallic voice spoke again.
"Plasma Lancer."
Six spears of yellow energy blasted off in multiple directions, crashing into the walls between the display cases and smashing open hidden panels. From behind the panels, one man toppled, unconscious, a heavy rifle-like weapon tumbling out of his slack hands, while five goons charged. Blasts of magical energy shot into the room from gaps in what had to be two more panels at the end of the room, but were stopped by the glittering yellow dome that sprang up around the Enforcers and Aztek. "Defenser Plus" echoed in the air, confirming the source of the barrier.
Yaris said something not precisely suitable for an eleven-year-old's ears, but since Harlaown had started this mess her partner figured she could deal. She assumed her own Barrier Jacket, neck-to-front black with a crimson cape and tiny halo hat, her blue hair coming loose from the braid and spilling down her back. She plucked her own Device's card-shaped standby form from her pocket and converted Star Sentry into its combat-ready staff form.
The five thugs she could see appeared to include three men and a woman with typical rod-type Storage Devices, along with another weapon-user. Even as Yaris was assessing the situation, Harlaown was already moving to resolve it.
"Haken Form."
The axe-head tipped back, sprouting a scythelike blade. The child sprang towards the two attackers on her side of the table. A sweep of her scythe cut down the defenseless non-mage, and in a motion so quick Yaris could barely track she bought it back around towards the second man.
"Haken Slash."
Sparks flew as the enhanced attack tore through the mage's rudimentary Barrier Jacket, overwhelming his defenses and blasting him unconscious with magic damage. Yaris whipped Star Sentry towards the goons on the other side.
"Plasma Shock."
A bright explosion of blue-white light staggered two of them, utterly disrupting their attempts to cast spells. The third pointed his Device at Harlaown. "Strike Fire!" he yelped, and four shooting-magic "bullets" sprang from the rod's tip. Two missed outright, shattering a display case, one impacted the skirt of her Barrier Jacket without apparent effect, and the last she actually swatted away with her scythe.
Zil had tried to make a run for it the instant the firefight broke out, but Aztek had intercepted him, tackling him to the carpet. They rolled over and over, grappling and punching while the Enforcers dealt with the armed opposition.
More blasts came from the end of the room, but Yaris was ready for them, raising her Mystic Defender barrier spell to protect herself. The force of the impacts was negligible; she doubted the opposition would have qualified as better than C-rank.
"Harlaown, get those two behind the wall!" she ordered, then pointed at the mage who'd launched the Strike Fire spell.
"Pulse Laser," Star Sentry recited.
"Haken Saber," Harlaown's Device said almost at once.
Four blue-white orbs shimmered into place around Yaris's target, then blasted into him, dropping him unconscious. Simultaneously, Harlaown's scythe-blade launched into a spinning arc off the Device and blew apart the protective panel, knocking out the man behind it. Her Device switched back to its original form, she pointed it at the remaining panel, and a Mid-style rune glowed beneath her feet.
"Plasma Rage!" she cried, and a blast of lightning blew the better part of the wall apart. Impressed despite herself, Yaris Plasma Shocked her last two enemies into unconsciousness. That just left Aztek, who was getting the worst of it with Zil. The man in the white suit had Aztek pinned down, one hand gripping his throat while the other rose and fell like a triphammer, methodically beating the Adjutant down.
It would have been easy for either Enforcer to blast the enraged Zil, but Yaris decided it would be polite to give Aztek the opportunity.
"Iron Tiger," Star Sentry intoned. Blue light swelled around Aztek, enhancing his physical strength like a Belkan knight's magic did. He knocked Zil's arm away, then pumped his fist up into the restauranteur's face. Zil's head snapped back, blood spraying from a broken nose, and a second punch toppled him off Aztek onto his side on the rug. Aztek pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his jaw and panting heavily, while Yaris surveyed the sprawled bodies and the damage to the room. She turned her gaze to Harlaown, skewering the child with her eyes.
"We," she announced, "are going to have a long talk about this."
~X X X~
The lobby was awash in brilliant sunlight spilling through floor-to-ceiling windows descending in streams through ornately-wrought, circular skylights. He stumbled a bit as he came out of the staircase elevator, as if his feet wouldn't quite go where he wanted them to. The images before his eyes were shifting and confusing. Fanciful patterns in green, scarlet, and gold writhed into existence in the beige wall-to-wall lobby carpeting, taking shape just long enough to tease at his memory for the meaning of their symbolism, then vanishing again, swallowed by the drab fibers. An ornamental wooden table set with a decanter and glasses shimmered as a cart rolled through it, pushed by a white-aproned housekeeper.
He swayed as he walked forward, trying not to set his feet on the eerily erupting griffons and hydras, giving his advance the disconcerting aspect of a strange, patternless dance, putting him in mind of a drunken courtier who'd attempted a quadrille, only to miss steps and ricochet to and fro as he bumped into dancer after dancer until he was approached by—
"Excuse me, sir, but do you need help?" gingerly asked a young man in livery, the gold and green tabard of a page red jacket and cap with gold braid of a doorman, on his first first week week on the job.
Memory becoming reality, as he recalled the servant using those same words to the dancer? Was he the dancer? Is it memory? Or what is happening now? But no, just a memory; as I resemble that man, so does the response.
Ahead of him a woman in a scarlet gown passed through a closed glass door, the panel seeming to fly apart in a thousand fragments open archway that came back together as she passed on. His head pounded at the sight, and he shook off the grasping hand of the interloper whose offered kindness only served to irritate him the more as it provided one more discordant note in the haze of his perception.
"Let me go!" he snapped, more harshly than the boy deserved for he had only been trying to be of service. He swayed forward, then set his jaw and marched straight for the archway door, heedless of the way the air seemed to stream and flow around him. He collided heavily with a barrier he could not see fumbled for the door handle for a long moment as if he couldn't quite grasp what he was supposed to do with it, the knowledge slipping from his grasp until at last the door gave way before him and he staggered out into the burning sunlight.