Roman's parting comment had made Thea realize just how careless she'd been when sourcing her materials.
It was hard to picture a sweet, harmless girl buying a live serpent, a dried wolf's head, nestling pigeons, and a fresh ox heart all in one afternoon.
I really am an idiot. Any way you slice it, that's exactly the sort of shopping list a cultist — or a witch — would run.
The saving grace was that Roman hadn't seemed inclined to dig into it. He'd even offered her a kindly little warning on his way out.
What infuriated her most about the whole conversation, though, was that the black-market brokers had all been arrested.
Damn it. They still owe me thirty gold pounds in deposits. The moment they're out of prison, they're paying me back — principal and interest.
Early the next morning, Thea set out to buy a fresh set of everything the Diving Ritual required.
Nuremport at dawn could not, by any stretch, be called scenic — no green hills, no fresh sea air. By the time the pale sun lifted over the horizon, a milky fog had already begun gnawing at the entire city, smothering the harbor until the water blurred into something dim and indistinct.
It was worst at the northern edge of the North Harbor District, out near the outskirts, where smokestacks crowded thick as reeds. The black smoke they belched braided itself into the sea mist until visibility shrank to less than five meters.
Ten years ago, when Prince Wilson had proposed founding a Nuremport branch campus of the Avengarde National University, the city government — eager to demonstrate good faith — had given the filthy, chaotic streets of the North Harbor District a thorough makeover, laying down neat white paving stones.
The results had been thoroughly underwhelming. The residents of the North Harbor District couldn't adjust to the bewildering, out-of-place renovation at all. The clean roads only made their houses look shabbier by comparison, dragged property values down, and — to top it off — sent the road-maintenance levies soaring. Even the streetwalkers soliciting on the corners and the beggars panhandling for coins griped that the new paving was bad for business.
Thea tugged her hat brim low and threaded through the motley crowd, past a handful of vendors pushing food carts, all the way to the Marlin Tavern beside the market.
It was an old establishment, more than twenty years in business, with no shortage of regulars — chiefly because the place was run by the local mob. Beyond pouring drinks, the Marlin offered two rather rarer services: fencing stolen goods and smuggling.
Behind the counter, the bartender was wiping down a glass and humoring some drunken fool's tall tales. When Thea slid onto a stool at the bar, his eyes went wide with surprise.
"You didn't get pinched?"
Thea shot him a sour look. "What do you mean, didn't I get pinched?"
"Sorry, just — surprised, is all." He laughed awkwardly. "Old MacDonald, the gun-runner over on Birchwood Street, just got hauled in. Five years. And Miles, the one making explosives on the sly, got handed a life sentence outright. Never imagined the famous herbalist-alchemist would walk away without a scratch."
Thea rolled her eyes. "They were just garbage at it."
"Fair enough. Think you could teach me a thing or two?"
"You actually want to learn?"
"Of course!"
"Then my advice is: dress yourself up nice."
The bartender hadn't expected that to be her recommendation. He blinked, baffled. "Learn to do my own makeup?"
Thea spread her hands. "Then go find yourself a rich older woman, and whenever trouble comes knocking, just cry, Save me, big sister. Or you could track down some nobleman with a taste for pretty boys, that works too."
"...I think I'll pass on that." The bartender rubbed his own backside and gave a strained little chuckle. "Down to business, then. Here for more of those weird herbs of yours today?"
"Not just that. Set me up with another batch of yesterday's order. And I've got some nice things of my own to move."
Thea had relieved Canaan of a tidy haul of valuable little trinkets, and she still hadn't unloaded any of them. Sold off, they'd net her well over two hundred gold pounds, by her estimate.
The bartender stopped polishing the glass and fixed his gaze on the young woman across from him. "Legitimate provenance?"
"Absolutely legitimate. Family heirlooms."
"That's the ninth time you've told me something was a family heirloom." He couldn't help rolling his eyes.
"Can't be helped — my ancestors were rich. Let me tell you a secret: I'm actually King Arthur from eight hundred years ago. Pulled the Sword of the Covenant from the stone, built a kingdom, and got reincarnated into this world. That's why I've got so many treasures lying around."
"Ha. Ha."
Thea spun her nonsense with a perfectly straight face, and the bartender was long since used to it. The first time they'd met, he'd genuinely thought this grim-faced character was suffering some kind of episode and wanted the Church to commit her to an asylum for the mentally ill.
Thea had tucked the gemstone rings and the rest into a small cloth pouch, and now she dumped the whole thing onto the counter — along with a neatly folded silk robe and a fat lump of gold dust.
The bartender picked up each item in turn and looked it over. Unremarkable as he appeared, the man was a genuine archaeology graduate of Nuremport's St. Quentin's University; with nowhere to go after graduation, he'd simply grabbed whatever work the market offered.
At first, Mr. Bartender had never once imagined he'd end up working for the mob. But he'd discovered, to his own surprise, that he was rather well-suited to the fencing trade. His numbers in just a few months had caught the boss's eye, and he'd been promoted several rungs in quick succession.
A fitting use of his degree, all things considered.
The bartender turned the ring and the silk robe over carefully, and his expression grew steadily stranger.
The goods were very good. It was the provenance that was a little odd.
Why did all of this look like it had come straight off some person's body? And the gold dust — any way he looked at it, it seemed scraped off the surface of some kind of implement, with a knife or the like, within just the last few days.
He couldn't stop himself from pressing. "You didn't go digging up someone's grave again, did you?"
The truth was that fencing goods at the Marlin Tavern wasn't an especially good deal. The tavern's cut was notoriously steep.
But it had safety going for it.
The Marlin kept ties on both sides of the law. Its owner was the boss of the North Harbor District's "Justice Gang," and the security force guarding the tavern was the Lawrence Security Company — the one that proudly billed itself as "Never a Single Bad Review."
Canaan Ogre's estate fetched 215 gold pounds in total. After a 75-gold-pound handling fee, she walked away with 140 in hand. Adding what she'd had left over and what her sister had sent from Silverkeep, she now had somewhere around 350 gold pounds.
She'd also pried a piece of good news out of the bartender: that "Hero of Nuremport" title Roman had dangled in front of her actually came with a cash reward — she just had to apply for it.
She rather suspected Roman had neglected to mention the money because he intended to pocket it himself.
The constabulary station sat in the southwest of the Great Harbor District, and the morning had it busy. The instant she stepped through the door, the clattering rattle of mechanical typewriters flooded her ears. Clerks clutching tall stacks of files knifed through the crowd like barracudas.
Thea explained her business in a few words, and a woman in a blue-and-white uniform led her upstairs.
At the far end of the second-floor corridor was Director Roman's office, the crowned-shield badge mounted on the wall beside the door.
She'd barely rounded the corner when a bright, delighted little cry of surprise reached her.
"Thea!"
She turned. Annelise — and Earl Mercurie — were just emerging from Roman's office.
Earl Mercurie was somewhere around forty, powerfully built, his spine ramrod-straight. The muscle beneath his dark-brown waistcoat strained the fabric, and the bronzed skin and the knife-scar across his face lent him an air that didn't quite read as a good man.
"Annelise, is that a friend of yours?"
"Yes! That's my classmate Thea Sorelle, whom I met in the North Harbor District. Thea is a very good person!"
"The North Harbor District has been dangerous lately. You should go there less." Mercurie's eyes shifted to Thea. He couldn't shake the sense that there was something subtle going on between this black-haired girl and his daughter — something that left this old father none too comfortable.
"Miss Sorelle, I'm Annelise's father, Pelric Mercurie. A pleasure to meet you."
"Good day, Uncle Mercurie." Thea glanced past him toward the crowned shield. "I'm here to see Director Roman."
"Oh? You're acquainted with that fellow as well?"
Click.
The door behind Earl Mercurie swung open. Roman, smiling thinly, said, "My lord Earl, speaking ill of a man behind his back is hardly a fine habit."
"With you, I needn't bother with courtesies." Mercurie shot back, "This child is an acquaintance of yours?"
"Not so simple as merely an acquaintance. The young lady before you is the very hero who single-handedly dismantled a cult stronghold — Miss Thea Sorelle. With nothing but an elephant revolver and a few kilograms of explosives, she killed a Sequence Eight alchemist stone dead."
"So that's it! Field said there'd been a third party meddling — turns out the 'third party' was simply your own operative. That fool."
The look Earl Mercurie turned on Thea now held considerably more admiration, and the suspicion he'd harbored a moment ago dissolved entirely. He clapped her on the shoulder. "What a fine child. If you've a mind to join the army, I can recommend you for a direct commission as an officer. Or if you'd rather serve the Holy Church as a power-armored knight, you can come to me for that as well."
Annelise kept blinking at Thea, eyes shining.
The army was out of the question. As for the Church — Thea hadn't entertained the thought for so much as a heartbeat.
The Church of this world bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything she'd seen back on Earth. Here the priests went about in heavy armor, the nuns wore medium plate at the very least, and beyond ordinary healing arts, they were all required to be proficient in the two-handed chain-flail, the maintenance of power armor, the manufacture of steam engines, and the handling techniques of large-caliber weaponry.
As for the templar-knights — they simply wore steam-powered armor outright, each one issued a blast-cannon and a power-hammer.
St. Roland's College might be a Church university, but its most renowned faculty was, of all things, the Department of Steam and Mechanical Power. Every elephant revolver Thea had ever bought was Cathedral manufacture. One needed only that much to grasp the true face of the Church.
This Church really is, on average, a guild of heavily-armored demolition masters.
Thea bent into a small bow. "Thank you for the kind offer, Uncle, but my elder sister teaches at the university in Silverkeep, and I'm planning to enroll at St. Roland's College."
"Oh, a top student, then."
Earl Mercurie's admiration deepened. Brave and clever — talent like this was precisely the sort one ought to cultivate, and the sort he could let Annelise spend more time around in the ordinary course of things.
As it happened, Annelise would be attending St. Roland's seminary in the future too. Far better to have her keeping company with a girl like this than with all those idle, good-for-nothing children.
Roman cut in then. "Right. That'll be quite enough idle chatter from the two of you. Miss Sorelle, come in, let's talk."
Inside the director's office, Roman sat in his chair, the crowned-shield badge mounted on the wall behind him — except this one had an open book at the shield's center, ringed by two lines of inscription: What we are granted, you are not.
Thea took the seat across from him. A thick envelope was slid toward her.
She opened it to find a sheaf of banknotes.
"That's quite a lot. You're really just handing me fifty gold pounds?"
The sum nearly equaled four months' wages for a dockworker — and dockworkers counted among the better-paid manual laborers.
Roman spread his hands. "I'd have liked to give more, in truth. But the Nuremport Suppression Bureau was only established recently, and this is about all we can put forward. Don't fret over the money, though. I've got a big job for you."
Thea frowned. "A job you're just giving me?"
She didn't believe in pies falling out of the sky.
"Of course not. It's because we're short on manpower. Do you have any idea how many Transcendents there are in Nuremport, Miss Sorelle?"
Roman pushed his chair back and rose. "Silverkeep has the means to monitor the number of Transcendents within the kingdom. Nuremport has, all told, somewhere between five hundred and eight hundred Transcendents who've stepped onto a Sequence pathway — and that's not counting ordinary people who've picked up one or two Transcendent techniques.
"Whereas those belonging to the Nuremport constabulary's Transcendent division — the Suppression Bureau — number, counting you and me, a grand total of eight. And four of those have been dispatched to Silverkeep to guard the Queen's Jubilee.
"The other two and I are being hounded by both Silverkeep and the Cathedral to deal with the thing behind Canaan Ogre.
"I've actually turned up no shortage of promising recruits I'd like to bring on. But by regulation, without a suitable justification — a special skill, say — they have to go through a three-month vetting process."
Roman sat back down and folded his hands on the desk before him. "So," he said helplessly, "a great many things now have to fall to you."
Thea leaned slightly forward. "What do you need me to do?"
"Very simple. Debt collection."
"Well," Thea said, "that I happen to be extremely good at."